Now it is 2011. Boston has constant representation on Top Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, Masters and the like. Boston Chefs are multimillionaires, famous and treated like movie stars. The bar in Boston has been set much, much higher. Bostonians are among some of the most cosmopolitan eaters in the world now. The caliber of cooking is so much higher across the board. The Boston restaurant scene has Michelin Starred Chefs, eight million dollar restaurants,  Ming has an Emmy in the middle of his restaurant [deservedly so] and many New York Chefs and Chefs from around the world have turned their eyes to Boston for the next venture.

Like 1996, new restaurants are opening every month. Unlike 1996, it is despite a tragic and uncertain economy. Cities like San Francisco and New York have devastated restaurant markets while Boston still hangs on. We are happy to have the opportunity to be a part of this and despite the fears that the Boston Scene is getting diluted, or is becoming cookie cutter. Despite what a friend of mine in the industry said to me the other day; we do not take risks like in other Cities and it can make us unoriginal. Seth Woods, Owner of Aquitaine Group and a brilliant Restauranteur, once told me a few years back that he felt the scale had tipped and now there were too many seats compared to Patrons in Boston. Although he was probably right, I believe our places are better because of the competition and will just get stronger. Lets face it, the increased competition is always better for the Patrons. You already demand higher standards than you did when I first opened…and you get them.

This is your Boston, of your making. Keep supporting your local places and we can all look forward to what’s around the corner.

Dave DuBois

S I guess I will leave that for you, the Diners of Boston, to decide.

By Kelly Hartman

I’m going to take a short break from my current blog posts on the meaning of New American Food to write a little something more pertinent to the current season.  While I know there are a thousand holiday gift guides out there written for culinary enthusiasts, most of them read more like the “Out this month” section of the Williams-Sonoma catalog than a real, meat and potatoes list of things that professional chefs use in their kitchen.  (Incidentally, I mean no disrespect to retailers like Williams-Sonoma.  They have some genuinely hard-to-find items on their shelves, and I’m thankful for that.  If you can look past the silly, overpriced gadgets that promise to make your next dinner party guests think you’re hiding Grant Achatz in your kitchen, you can find some great things there).

Most of what I’m going to talk about can be found online, or at any of a number of culinary retail specialty shops.  I prefer the smaller spots, like Kitchen Arts on Newbury or Gadgets in Jamaica Plain, as you can find some random treasures if you spend a few extra minutes.  Of course, Amazon has most everything these days, but these days that’s more of a last resort for me.

Small kitchen utensils make great stocking-stuffers, and there are certain implements that are absolutely indispensible to do some things:

• Fish Spatulas are a must-have item to every chef in the world, and it’s one of the few things I still carry in my knife bag wherever I may go to cook.  These are (usually) wooden-handled, (always) slotted, metal and offset.  They make it possible to flip delicate items like fish, though I use mine for just about everything I put in a pan.
• Spoontulas – They come in a variety of sizes and shapes, but the basic principle is a combination between a spoon and a spatula.  They have a wooden handle, and usually a brightly colored head.  Invaluable for scraping, stirring, and plating.  Things like mash potatoes don’t stick to them, as they do with metal spoons.  That’s how we make our perfect quenelles.
• Kitchen Scissors.  Believe it or not, a lot of chefs take their scissors as seriously as their knives, and it’s entirely possible to spend more than a few Benjamins on a good pair. My favorite is made by Joyce Chen, and has red plastic-coated handles.  Those should set you back about 15-20 bucks, but they’ll hold an edge for a long time.
• Brine Pumps.  This one’s huge, as it makes it possible to get that perfectly juicy and delicious chicken, pork roast, or turkey.  They look like giant metal syringes, and usually come with a couple of different tips for different purposes.  The cheap kind will hold up to weekly or monthly use for long enough, and shouldn’t cost more than twenty or thirty dollars.  These are available through any meat curing specialty shop (Butcherandpacker.com and Sausagemaker.com are two great ones).
• Benreiner Mandolins.  Forget the hundred and fifty dollar French Mandolins they sell at specialty stores.  While they’re great for making potato gaufrettes, you’ll get a lot more use out of the plastic Benreiner mandolins they sell at Asian Markets, and you’ll only have to drop about twenty dollars to do so.  These make the perfect matchsticks and paper-thin cuts you see in restaurants.  We all have four or five of them in varying degrees of sharpness in our small wares bin.

If you want to spend a little more money, there’s a variety of routes you can go.  As a general rule, stay away from things that seem more expensive than they should be (especially if they’re stainless steel and regardless of whether they are made in Italy or France by some company you’ve never heard of), or have any type of “automatic” or battery powered feature that makes it do more than it should (mechanical pasta makers or potato mashers are a great example), as they’ll probably soon break.  I also try to avoid things that have too many attachments that make it useful for multiple tasks.  The old rule of “if it sounds too good to be true…” definitely applies here.  In restaurant kitchens, we have very heavy, often very expensive machines that do only one specific thing, and that’s just how it should be.  Here are a few that are less than five hundred dollars.

• Vita prep makes the best blender known to man.  This is how we get those perfectly smooth sauces and purees.  The standard one will set you back about four to five hundred dollars, but you’ll never want or need another.  If it can’t be pureed by Vita prep, it shouldn’t be pureed at all.  Look for the best price you can find online for this, as I don’t know anywhere short of restaurant supplies that sell these.
• Along the same lines, a good Chinoise (and here is one exception to the “seems more expensive than it should” rule) is a true must-have for any home gourmet.  This is a cone-shaped, mesh strainer with a handle.  Don’t waste your money on anything that’s not stainless steel, or costs less than about a hundred dollars.
• All-Clad pans have been, and continue to be, the gold standard among chefs.  Over the last fifteen years, thanks mainly to the bargain-hunting prowess of my Wife, I’ve slowly developed a fairly impressive collection of these.  There are a number of places that these can be purchased.  At full price, they can set you back quite a bit, but if you have the time and patience, you can often find them at post-department store outlets like Ross, Marshall’s, or Filene’s Basement for a fraction of the original price.  (Pots that every cook should have include:  one 12-in fry pan, a small nonstick egg pan, one two-quart sauce pot, and a good, twelve quart stock pot.  I like to have a number of small, one quart saucepot for heating up small sauces as well.)
• Knives are at the heart of any chef’s collection of gadgets and whiz gigs.  I don’t know a single chef who doesn’t have somewhat of a knife “fetish,” and it is often said that one gauge of the skill of a chef is the sharpness and quality of his or her knife.  While some will claim that German steel is sufficient (and for some, it is), I have a particular love for Japanese blades, and I’m definitely not alone here.  A Japanese knife of quality is something of a work of art, and hand forged steel is superior it’s machined or cast European or domestic counterpart by orders of magnitude.  Unfortunately, this quality difference is definitely reflected in the price, so this probably isn’t something you’ll be buying to fill a stocking.  While you can pick up a German-made Henkel’s or Woostholf chef’s knife for about eighty bucks, a good Japanese equivalent can set you back multiple times that.   My favorite is Nenohi (the Western-style blades are called Nenox) If you’re interested, visit Korin.com.    No collection of knives is complete without a chef’s knife, either 8 or 10 inches, a pairing (or petty) knife, and a slicing knife (usually 11-14 inches).  Past that, serrated knifes are good for bread, and boning knives are fairly popular for cutting meats and poultry, though by no means necessary.

This list is, of course, in no way definitive, but it should give you some pointers from the point of view of somebody who cooks professionally and daily.  While, obviously, fancy gadgets won’t turn a bad cook into a good one, it can certainly make things a lot easier in the kitchen, and in my opinion, it is next to impossible to achieve greatness in the craft without investing in well-made equipment.  Happy holidays, and happy cooking!

By Kelly Hartman

In my last post, I discussed the “New American” food movement, expressed my dismay with the tendency of some restaurants and chefs to apply the label to cuisine which is generally unfocused, poor attempts at authentic food, and posed the question of what can be done to redeem the movement.  Let me start by saying that I feel that most, if not all, food trends start with the honest intentions of creative Chefs or restaurateurs seeking to put they’re own distinctly original spin on food they love to eat and to prepare.  I am thankful for this innovation, because without it, we’d be looking at the very bleak prospect of deciding which strip mall chain or fast food restaurant to go to on our big Saturday on the town.  It is chefs like Rick Bayless, Tom Collicio, and Roy Yamaguchi who have managed to bring their own very unique and delicious styles into vogue through the years by being so creative and inspirational that others, either following their passion or for want of a quick buck, attempted to emulate them (with varying degrees of success).
Now, let me get one thing clear:  I don’t know a single person (Chef, “Foodie”, Blogger, or otherwise) who can give a clear and concise definition of what “New American” means.  It is endlessly debated, credit is taken or offered for it’s popularity by and to dozens of chefs, and none of them seem to agree about what the term means either.  Bill Daley of the Chicago Tribune seems to get it right when he says, “…The lack of consensus reminded us of Justice Potter Stewart’s classic definition of pornography: You know it when you see it. And even that old adage was gently challenged.”  Some think it was started in the 80’s with the convergence of Asian Fusion and California Cuisine, others think it started much earlier, while others think the movement is simply too broad and diffuse to name a source or single influence.  You can read countless articles and blogs by countless food writers and chefs that ramble on and on about the issue (some even more poorly written than my own), but few arrive at a discern-able or concise definition.  Most agree that it celebrates the cultural plurality of America using contemporary techniques, presentations, and flavor combinations in (usually) an upscale dining milieu.
While this common ground seems like a good starting point, I’d argue that it is still incredibly unfocused.  If I put Chinese-style Pork Sticky Buns on the same menu as Lobster Macaroni, is my restaurant New American?  What if I am serving Cajun Food in the form of small plates at a bar?  And if I serve a mish-mash of cultural concoctions on bamboo skewers in a snazzy, modern dining room, is that New American?
I think the best way to go about this is to examine what New American is not, or can’t be.  By disqualifying certain types of restaurants, we can narrow our focus a bit.  In order to do that, we need only look at the term: “New” plus “American”.  There is an obvious distinction:  It’s not “Old American,” so traditional institution restaurants, (places like Tavern on the Green or Delmonico’s in New York, Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, The Griswold Inn or Durgin-Park Cafe here in New England) that have historical significance in American cuisine, are not to be considered.  While these spots may be distinctly American, the restaurants themselves have been around long enough to have Daguerreotype original staff photographs, so they can hardly be considered “New”.  I would argue that restaurants serving specifically and distinctly ethnic food of a specific variety are obviously out too, since their attempt is to recreate an international experience within their walls which is by intent not “American.”  Also out would be restaurants, whether old or new, following a specific tried-and-true theme, American or not (Steakhouses, Deli’s, Burger Joints, Diners, and Seafood Shacks come to mind here).  And because this is my definition, I’m going to take the liberty to disqualify any restaurant with a corporate office in which “Units” are discussed on a “National” level by men in ties at board meetings as I don’t believe they have the passion or influence when it comes to food to be considered part of a “culinary movement”.  And if their menu is tri-fold and laminated with lots of pictures, and prices that end in in ninety nine cent increments, that disqualifies them too.
So, now that we’ve knocked out about ninety five percent of the restaurants from consideration, I think I’m starting to arrive at a frame of reference, or at least basis, on which to make some distinctions.  From here, we just need to continue to hone this definition to a fine, exclusive, and distinct point, and since we’ve trimmed much of the “fat”, this shouldn’t be too difficult, right? (I have a feeling that it won’t be so easy, but I will spend the next few weeks in solemn contemplation of this.)  In this time, I’ll arrive at a final definition for the term by rigorously passing various restaurants through various proofs in my next blog, which I intend to get out fairly soon (no promises this time…)  One way or another, we’ll get the riddle of “New American Cuisine” figured out, so we can finally move on…

By Kelly Hartman

American Food has always been my primary culinary focus. It should be; I’m American of no particular heritage – a mixture English, Scotch, Hungarian, and whatever else. Consequently, I didn’t have the influence of a first generation immigrant grandmother making me divine Pirogi’s, Gnocchi, or Shu Mai. My grandmother lived through the Great Depression, a student of Betty Crocker and Fanny Farmer (I’ve heard that her shrimp and lime jello was quite something…)

As for my own experience, I’ve lived, for extended periods of time, in Northern and Southern California, the Deep South, and the Northeast. Along the way, I’ve picked up a fairly diverse set of distinctly American culinary influences. So, as I sat moments ago preparing to write this bit on what I think “New American Food” really is, I realized the complexity of this issue. It is a term that is used so frequently used to describe so many types of food that it defies simple definition. The fact that I have no idea what to expect when I hear this used to describe a restaurant.

Now, I need two hands to count the number of times I’ve read in the last week about a restaurant opening, reviewed, or otherwise mentioned that describes their fare as “New American”. I’ve worked at quite a few spots that use this monicker. While, at it’s core, the idea of updating heritage cuisine is intriguing, I’ve always seen it as a way of dodging the somewhat limiting “restaurant category” issue. “New American”, in many restaurants, describes anything the Chef feels like cooking at that moment, even if it can be found in a more authentic form at an ethnic restaurant around the corner. Usually, there’s a little Asian influence, always some Italian, a few Bistro items, some Sandwiches, and the occasional Middle Eastern or Latino dish thrown in. Of course, to qualify it as “American”, the Chef has to include the obligatory kicked-up Meatloaf, Macaroni and Cheese, or Beef Strogonov. Much of the success of these restaurants of this sort is their ability to appeal to a wide range of tastes and preferences without taking too many risks; At least you know you can take your picky Aunt there, because they’ll have an acceptable Chicken Caesar or Thai Chicken Flatbread.

What disturbs me a bit is that these places seem to forgo, forget, or are just ignorant to, the real “heritage” of the American variety for simple accessible “variety”. They label it “American”, and we believe it to be. In fact, we can’t get enough of it.

Does “New American” food need to represent the range of ethnicities in this country presently, or should it be a term that refers to contemporary treatments the foods traditionally enjoyed by Americans in past years? Personally, I think that America has a culinary heritage that is not necessarily completely European, but does involve more than just watered-down caricaturizations of ethnic foods. I think that there are distinctly American cuisines that could be, have been, and sometimes are presently executed in a fresh and interesting way. Various regions of this country have developed over the last three or four hundred years, food cultures which are distinct an unique, borrowing from a broad range of influences to create something which in its synthesis, is often better than the sum of its parts. Often, over the years, these traditions have been lost, forgotten, or otherwise poorly represented, and are in desperate need of re-exploration and a facelift. I feel that this is the type of food that deserves the label “New American”, and this type of food is what truly intrigues me. The question of what defines this will be the focus of my next two blogs, as well as my Fall menu, which I’ll be putting in place this September.

We know you’re sorry.  We know that you wish your safety precautions had been more effective, and we’re aware that you are taking “every possible measure” to make sure that the massive oil leak that is still spitting millions upon millions of gallons of crude oil into this planet’s fragile marine ecosystem is contained as quickly as possible. We also understand that you intend to open a formal inquiry into the cause, so that you can make sure that this kind of “system failure” doesn’t happen again.  We’ve heard this rhetoric before from corporate CEO’s and spokespeople more times than we care to remember.  I can only speak for myself, and my small perspective when I say that this time, an apology and a “won’t happen again” isn’t going to be good enough.

Let me explain why.

As a chef, I have to deal on a daily basis with the effect mother nature can exert on the product I use.  Late rain in Florida?  Lemons just went up eight bucks a case.  No rain in California?  No Chantrelle mushrooms this month.  Volcano in Iceland?  No fish from the Atlantic until next Tuesday.  I tolerate this (sometimes grudgingly), and make the necessary adjustments because I know that we have no control over things like the weather, geology, and the feeding habits of fish.

However, when I have to make adjustments, deal with a spike in my food cost, or rewrite my menu because your company failed to do it’s job, and a completely preventable mistake is ruining the habitat of the fish I serve, I tend to be a little less forgiving.  I know you are going to end up paying a whole bunch of money to cover the cleanup costs of this little debacle.  I’ve heard analysts say that this may bankrupt your company.  In this case, I have to admit that I hope it does, because I don’t think any other result would send a strong enough message to the other companies that are operating oil platforms in our oceans.  I need you to realize that your carelessness and greed effects everyone, and we are all going to experience the negative fallout from this in one way or another.  Are you prepared to compensate The Franklin Cafe for the three dollar a pound price jump in Florida White Shrimp?  Or should I just add that to the price of the plate I’m serving them on?   (I’m sure my guests will understand that their dinner is going to be a bit more expensive this week than it was last week because your company screwed up a little.)

And I’m sure this is just the beginning, too.  As a former resident of the gulf coast, I know how fragile that area is, and how dependent the people of the region are on those waters.   I have to wonder how long it will take for the oyster farms, already struggling from the long-term effects of hurricane Katrina, to be able to sell oysters again.  I wonder about my old Shrimp purveyor Dino, who used to bring us our daily order of shrimp within a few hours of hauling it into the boat that provided his family’s livelihood.  Are you planning on making sure that his wife and kids taken care of while he can’t work?

I expect that you will continue to speak publicly of how you spared no expense to contain and clean up this mess.  I’m sure you will appeal to the world about the financial burden your company has endured.  And if recent history is any guide for what’s to come, I wouldn’t be surprised to see your company find a way to leverage its own careless indiscretion into a big fat “relief” or “bailout” check to keep your company’s bankruptcy from effecting the world economy.  I might be wrong about this, and I’d love nothing more than for your company to prove to me that I am.

My heart goes out to the families of those employees of your company who suffered loss because of the ineptitude of a few select people, and I in no way blame B.P., the company en mass.  I’d hate to see more of your company’s employees suffer loss of income, job, or worse because of this event, and I hope that my words do not imply any ill will towards those who have done no wrong, employees of B.P. or otherwise.  I genuinely beleive that there can and should be some positive that can come of this disaster, if you spare no expense in effort or capitol to get it figured out and cleaned up as quickly as possible.   You need to do whatever you have to do to assure us that this type of blunder is absolutely never, ever going to happen again.  Honestly and realistically assess whether this is a tangible possibility, and decide whether you can afford to keep these things open.  If you can’t assure us that we won’t have to deal with this again, close them down.  Don’t wait for governments to pass legislation, or impose impossible safety precautions.  For once, please do the right thing; the prudent thing.  Do what is  in the best interest of the people of the gulf region, your employees, and our fragile ecosystem.  This is your moral and ethical obligation to each one of us who is suffering because this wasn’t done sooner.

Very Sincerely,

Kelly Hartman
Chef,
Franklin Cafe, Boston

By Kelly Hartman

A friend recently asked me to think about food for a restaurant he’s considering opening.  He described the type of cuisine he’s going for as “Simple American”.  He said he wants to open a place that serves comfort and pub-type food “Stripped down to the essentials:  Meat, sauce, vegetable.  No frills, no fancy garnishes, tricks, smoke, or mirrors.”
While at first this might sound easy to a chef with fifteen or twenty years professionally cooking, it is this type of food with which they struggle the most.  Not because it’s boring, or beneath our dignity, and not because it doesn’t inspire creativity.  None of these things could be further from the truth (I think most of us would agree that we’ve had enough truffles, foie gras, and uni for two or three lifetimes…)  We cringe at the notion of simple food because it can be the most difficult type of food to cook.
Writing a menu full of simple, understated yet bold and accessible flavors is not difficult.  All one really need do is open the Joy of Cooking, The Fanny Farmer cookbook, or their Mom’s Betty Crocker cookbook for ideas:  Roasted chicken with Brown Gravy, Chicken Pot Pie, Green Beans with Sliced Almonds, Iceberg Salad, etc..  Conceptually, this type of food couldn’t be easier to dream up — we probably ate it growing up.  A menu like this takes a few hours at the most to write.  You are not challenging any culinary norms, or bringing anything new to it so it’s more a matter of selecting which dishes you want to include than inventing new ones, or experimenting with new flavor pairings.
The tough part for us comes when it’s time to cook these things, put the elements together in a cohesive manner, and send it out to the diner.  While putting a roasted chicken with some string beans, mashed potatoes and gravy might be second nature to any home cook putting together dinner for a family, it is not what most professional chefs are accustomed to doing.  Most of us have been trained to think of food in a very different way.  We use strange ingredients, garnish plates, and arrange things attractively and colorfully out of instinct.   We all know how to use a little beat reduction, infused oil, or dry spice to dress up an otherwise empty or boring looking plate.  We rely on an arsenal of tricks and secret ingredients to make the food that we cook in the restaurant absolutely unlike anything most people would make at home.  These things are our bread and butter, and without them, we are forced to rely on our skill and precision to impress the diner.  This can be a scary process, because many chefs aren’t nearly as adept at these things as they would like to believe they are.  I’ve met more cooks than I can count that don’t blink an eye at making cucumber gelee or beet sorbet, but fumble miserably when attempting to cook a pot of white rice.
Simple food also, by its very nature, must be far more ingredient-driven.  By this I mean that when you take away the vinaigrettes, spice rubs, brines, marinades, and sauces, you are left with a very lonely item on a white plate, and if that is going to taste better than what you get at the corner store, it must be of superior quality before it even comes in the back door.  That means going to local farmers and foragers to source product that has characteristic or unique flavor.  That takes time, energy, and is invariably far more expensive than using regular purveyors.   It involves having separate sources for individual things, keeping track of delivery schedules, staying up on product consistency and availability, and often putting up with the eccentricities of the growers themselves.  All of this is infinitely more work than simply putting in a phone call to the meat guy at the end of the night for all your lamb, chicken, and beef.
Finally, even if you can get, for example, the best chicken in the region at a fair price with relative consistency year-round, and you have the simplest, most delicious way in mind to roast it so that all of the flavor of this scrumptious bird comes through unfettered, there is the challenge of teaching the people who are going to be cooking it every night how to do it properly each time.  Simple roasted chicken, to continue this example, can be a religious experience if it is cooked right, but there’s far more to cooking it perfectly than one might think:  The bird has to be butchered, trussed, and stored properly.  It must be seasoned appropriately (a tablespoon to much or too little salt can ruin the whole experience), and then it must be roasted for the right amount of time, at the perfect heat, then rested for a period of time before being precisely carved, cleanly plated, and sent out.  When all of these things are executed without fault, the result is a hot, juicy, and otherwise delicious feast, which upon finishing, the diner thinks something along the lines of “how come I can never do chicken like this at home?”  However, if anything along the way is botched — say the cook left it in the oven for five minutes longer than he should have, or hurriedly threw too much salt on it — the chicken that hits the table will be dry, tough, or salty, and generally mediocre.  There’s absolutely no way to cover this up with sauces, more butter, or a sprig of chervil.  In the end, the diner is faced with a cooked chicken, at which point, they’ll most likely wonder why they came all the way out for chicken that’s no better than what they can make at home.
Think about this next time you are out for dinner at a place that serves you that perfect hamburger, or perfectly moist swordfish loin with nothing but a lemon wedge.  Don’t ever make the mistake of assuming that a chef whose menu doesn’t list yuzo emulsion and lavender foam is taking the soft option or playing it safe, because often, simplicity can be far more risky.

One of the things that always drew me to the culinary arts was the, for lack of a better word, timeless nature of it.  When I started cooking, the internet didn’t exist yet, but there was still a feeling that we were at a great technological crossroads.  Computers were in most homes, digital cameras were brand new, and cellular phones were still a thing of fascination.  I’d be lying if I said these things held no interest for me, but I think my wonderment of things traditional and rustic was a response to what I viewed as the uncertain and transient nature of modern technology.  Cooking was still somewhat untouched by technological gadgetry:  It was still done with much the same apparatus as one might have used fifty or even a hundred years ago.  And with the possible exception of gas heat replacing coal, not much had changed in the way things were done in hundreds of years.  Escoffier’s century-old “kitchen brigade” system, many of his recipes, techniques, and ideas were (and still are) alive and well, untouched by the obsolescence that plagues modern technology.  While all of my friends were going off to jobs working on or around computers, nervous and  uncertain about the future of their industry, I took comfort knowing that at least I was learning a trade that could never be effectively or more efficiently done by a robot.
A lot has changed about that in the last few years.   While I’m still comfortable that I won’t come in to work tomorrow to see a computer making the sauces and planning the menu, there’s absolutely no doubt that our modern technology has had a profound effect on the rustic and traditional culinary arts.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
Obviously, the most modern kitchens and experimental chefs have embraced technology for the creative freedoms and level of control it gives them over their product.  Things like sous-vide cooking, computer-driven sources of heat and frost with perfect calibration, and an intense and almost scientific understanding of chemistry behind gastronomy  (on the molecular level) have helped chefs like Grant Achatz and Wiley Dufregne attain a level of conceptual culinary interpretation previously not possible.  While I salute these efforts, and have spent countless hours trying to understand and replicate these effects, it saddens me to think that this technology can sometimes make the product that comes off a six burner stove and oven seem somehow provincial and obsolete.  I know the power of, for example, sous vide cooking.  Meats can be cooked with mathematical precision, eliminating all guesswork, and essentially producing a perfect (to the tenth of a degree) end result — more tender, succulent, and flavorful than anything to come out of a crude gas oven.  It gives a definite and noticeable advantage to the chef who has the means to employ it.  I only hope that this remains an obscure luxury employed by some chefs, because I love six-burners and ovens, and I don’t want to be cooking in a world in which in order to keep up, everybody needs a Kryo machine and a circulator.
More profound than the effect of technological advances in the kitchen on modern restaurants is the effect of the internet.  The immediacy of the internet gives me the ability to make potential guests aware of what the restaurant is doing right now, and often without costing a dime.  We can put up specials on the website, or Tweet them to anyone who’s listening, put up event calendars, and put out newsletters without the need for a printing shops or stamps.  Its an amazing thing for smaller restaurants that don’t have the budget for half-page ads in the Sunday paper.  This doesn’t come without a price.  While the web lets us post and Tweet all of the great things we are doing, it also allows anybody with internet access to do the same about us.  Whereas ten years ago, a chef could look out at a dining room and be fairly certain that he wasn’t cooking for a food critic (probably the most stressful experience a chef can look forward to), today, with all of the forums and blogs only a few clicks and a free membership away, the dining room is always full of food critics.    While I have mostly reaped the positive rewards of this, there are times when reading the rantings of frustrated diners has made me long for the steady and at least somewhat objective hand of a professional food critic.
Although I remain curious about what the future holds, I can’t help but feel a certain lament that our current digital obsession has had such a profound impact on the rustic old kitchen.  I think this sentiment is crystallized in a single event that I witnessed less than a year ago, when our state of the art combination oven went down.  We called the shop, and they dispatched a repairman I’ve seen countless times rewire, bypass, or otherwise magically cure equipment that’s older than most line cooks.  This man, a wizard with high-limits, thermostats, and gas couplings, stared at the open circuitry on the new oven like a NASA engineer peering inside a flying saucer for the first time, shook his head, and simply said, “I think it’s time for me to retire, buddy…”

A couple recent cool wine happenings at the Franklin: We asked Robert Foley Vineyards to make a house pour red wine for us that could be sold by the glass. He made Franklin Cuvee’, an unbelievable Petite Sirah bottled just for us in very limited quantity. It was available at all three Franklin’s and the 100 cases sold in a flash. He has graciously agreed to make more for us this summer if possible. Truchard Vineyards has also agreed to make us a Franklin Sauvignon Blanc house glass pour which should be ready by April. This will be Truchard’s only Sauvignon Blanc worldwide. We have known Kelly & Bob Foley and Jo Ann & Tony Truchard for many years and they are great people, not just great Winemakers.

Having two top boutique Napa Wineries willing to do this for our little places is a real honor.  It is an amazing chance for our patrons to taste an individually crafted one of a kind wine made by Master Winemakers from Napa. Wines that can only be tasted at the Franklin. This makes me very proud of our little hole in the wall places.

Chef Dave DuBois

I spoke with IFAW representatives about the situation on the ground in Haiti today and what they had to say was very compelling. They are shipping over a State of the Art Mobile Lab this week that will be able to care for many types of animals in major parts of the city. As the roads are cleared this Facility will be able to get to every part of the City. They are going into areas and speaking to the Senior leaders letting them know they are coming back the next day and to let people know in case they have animals with medical issues. In every case they come back the next day and lines of people are there waiting. Because of the poverty there are not many household pets, but there are some and they are being treated. Many for the first time in their lives. There is also a large not quite ferrel street animal population that are being treated, fed, spayed & neutered.

Overall, the IFAW is looking upon this as an opportunity to effect permanent change in Haiti. They are creating five Semi-Temporary & Fixed facilities around the population centers that abandoned animals can be dropped off at. Something that has never been there before. These will have Clinics that sick animals can receive proper medical care. The lead teams from IFAW were very pleasantly surprised to find that Haiti has a fairly large quantity of Veterinarians that have been unemployed due to poor infrastructure and lack of ability for people to pay in such a impoverished society. This will allow IFAW to create permanent Jobs for many of these Haitian professionals and help establish a Haitian animal well being infrastructure long after the immediate crisis has subsided.

It is in times like these that I feel most proud to be in the business I’m in. The Boston Restaurant community has stepped up to help in the most impressive way; and the patrons who fuel this relief giving make it possible. It is truly reflective of the role restaurants have played for centuries as a central part of the community. As part of peoples daily lives. We in Boston are part of a global society and we prove it every time a crisis occurs. Ultimately, as cliche as the saying is, the measure of a Society is in how it treats it weakest members, thank you Boston for measuring up.

Chef Dave DuBois 2/2/10

Chef Adam Williams