The Locals by Jonathan Dee

Author:Jonathan Dee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

March: Turnips, carrots, javelin parsnips, arugula, mâche, rainbow chard, Finn Dorset lambs, Tamworth pigs, Belgian endives, cardoons, honey.

The restaurant was rarely more than two-thirds booked, but that was the way Todd liked it. Better atmosphere in the dining room, better pace and attitude in the kitchen. More of a learning atmosphere, like a teaching hospital as opposed to a battlefield, a MASH unit. He had the time and the patience to explain what he was doing, not only to the diners but to the young sous-chefs and line cooks and culinary students who cycled through. Students at CIA, forty or fifty miles down the Hudson, could sign up for a full-credit internship with him now, and why wouldn’t they? Cutting-edge work was being done here—not in terms of technique, which had become a sort of louche dead end anyway, but in terms of philosophy—and the countryside was beautiful, even in winter, especially for those unused to it.

As for the economics of a two-thirds-full dining room, that was not a concern. Pricing wasn’t something they needed to worry about. The restaurant had no menu, just a nightly prix fixe for whatever Todd felt like preparing; right now it was $195, but he could have doubled it if he wanted to. He didn’t want to price the locals out completely. Let them come for a special occasion. Still, he knew from his nightly tour through the dining room—talking to them, although he could have told just by looking at them—that he was serving mostly out-of-towners now. The restaurant had become a destination. The maître d’ had a list of local hotel and B&B recommendations for people who called for reservations from the city, people who maybe didn’t realize how hard it would be to make the long drive back home after being fed like that.

And the writers were starting to sniff around, the journalists and critics, from the Times, from Gourmet. Once word got out that way, they’d be booked solid every night. He should enjoy these easy servings while he could.

April: Ramps, shiitake mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns, watercress, asparagus, rhubarb, Swiss chard, beets, French fingerling potatoes, Finn Dorset lambs, Toulouse goslings, Tamworth pigs, leeks, horseradish, mâche, dandelion greens.

Diners were given, in lieu of a traditional menu, a booklet listing by month the local, seasonal ingredients from which the courses of the evening’s meal would be assembled. They were also given a small pencil, in case they wanted to record, for memory’s sake, any details or impressions. The dinner was usually sixteen or seventeen courses, so he found people appreciated the thoughtfulness of leaving space for notes.

You wanted to give them what was seasonal, what was local—to restrict and awaken them, as most high-end restaurants did not trouble themselves to do, to the specific place that they were in, and to the revolutions of time—but then it was also a matter of educating local suppliers about what else they might be growing: produce that would thrive up here, in every natural sense, but that few Berkshire family farms were familiar with.

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