Black Trumpet Blog: Table Zero

VOTE PROSTALGIA IN 2012: ruminations from a hospital bed

2012-01-11T20:24:00.001-05:00

Let’s face it, people: not all calendar years are built alike. We have just entered into one, in fact, that carries with it the weight of great expectations. To add to the excitement, soothsayers are (once again) suggesting that the end is nigh. And if it isn’t nigh, it is surely moving nighward, our planet having been battered by a litany of wars, droughts, famines, natural disasters, man-made disasters, economic vortexes, reality TV programming and other cataclysmic crap that is certain to bring us all down. It’s enough to make you want to surrender to the inevitable…or rise up and meet it head-on, perchance to alter the fate of the world. I would like to place myself in the latter camp.

Not to wax sanguine about the whole mess we’re in, but I can’t help feeling an unfiltered ray of hope about it all. In fact, I am going to tilt my head back and let the extra-potent violets and ultraviolets from the man-hewn fissures in the atmosphere warm my face while I stretch my becalmed brain around the idea of a self-cleansing universe. And I urge you to do the same. Not only is this stance easier on the sphygmomanometer than anxiety; it promotes long-term happiness.

The truth is, perhaps more than ever before, I am looking forward to looking back at this year. When the Mayan calendar ends and we weather the fin de siecle tempests that ensue, and after we survey the post-apocalyptic landscape, we will—I think—see 2012 as a pivotal year, the beginning of the post-post-postmodern Renaissance. We can draw our inspiration from the sybarites, Sodom and Gomorrah, Atlantis, the court of the Sun King, the Roaring Twenties, the Nineteen Eighties, The Lorax, pre-mortgage crisis America and other eras of wanton human excess as examples of coda crescendos in the epic worksong of humankind.

All good things must come to an end to make way for the birth of new good things. But, in order for that to happen, we have to let stuff go, and—for those of us lucky enough to face this choice--we have to be OK with minimizing luxury. If I were a politician—and thank God I’m not--this is where I would lose my audience. And I get that. Unlike the Mayans, I have trouble with the idea of sacrifice, too. I like my modest luxuries: iTunes, massage therapy, smartphone apps, vacation. I want to keep those things. But, in the end, they are extras, ornamental contrivances designed to cushion the blow of living in a sometimes real world. I denounce thee, driver’s seat warmer! I shun thee, New York Times Travel section! And you, social media demons! You know how I feel about you….But I’ll keep my smartphone for now, thank you very much.

I propose that we Earthlings need to draw the line between pleasure-seeking and gluttony. Likewise, ambition and greed. Finally, I’ll throw in ingenuity and technology. In order to make any real progress, we will have to release our baggage and be ready to make short-term sacrifices for a much greater long-term gain. This will be the revolutionary idea that changes the world in a single generation. With my head still tilted back in the carcinogenic UV rays, I envision a world that can feed itself, regulate its growth and begin the long, shameless walk back to the sheer naked bliss of Eden. Which is to say, growing biodiverse organic gardens in every suburban backyard and urban rooftop can actually feed the world. I swear. I counted backyards and rooftops, and I can prove it. Besides, John Forti at Strawbery Banke agrees with me on this point, and he knows everything.

I hope 2012 will be the first year humans work together irrespective of race, creed and nationality, to fix the broken planet of which we have appointed ourselves stewards. I predict that the retro-progressive agrarian movement will continue to grow like a hardy perennial despite the many industrial, economical and political obstacles that still clog its path. More and more school gardens will breed more and more home gardens, and from there I expect the idea to spread like a Monsanto GMO shot from a tractor beam.

So, I’m wistful yet hopeful. It’s like raaaaaain on your wedding day. What I mean is, I really can’t wait to survive the bleak end and look ahead with a new hope on the horizon. I dub this idea “Prostalgia,” and I invite you to join me in making our immediate future the kind of past our children will be proud of.

Most of these prostalgic perambulations came to me along with a low fever while I lay in a hospital bed. Nothing’ll make you feel prostalgic like an overnight hospital stay on the eve of a major holiday with a misdiagnosed hernia that ends up being an advanced, unidentifiable bacterial infection in the soft tissue of your right leg. I was supposed to be cooking for the masses on Christmas Eve, not brooding over Mother Earth’s (or my own) mortality. And despite my children’s exhortations to the contrary, how could I not be home on Christmas morning to play Père Noël?

After pleading with the doctor to let me go home for Christmas, I finally got released from the hospital—on Christmas Eve night—with one major caveat: I had to have an IV catheter called a PICC line inserted into a vein in my arm that would snake its way into the upper chamber of my heart. Twice a day for two weeks, the doctor mandated, I would have to hook up a balloon full of potent antibiotics and let them slowly drip into my heart, where they would battle the bacterial beast that was threatening to take over my body. The radiologist—later described as an eccentric genius with an unorthodox approach—had no support staff due to the holiday, so he asked me to help with the procedure. After some fumbling around for the requisite equipment, he (actually, we) embarked on the insertion. Blood spattered all over the dropcloth as the little tube went into my arm. I continued to perform the tasks required of me by the doctor as he conducted a play-by-play of the little tube’s travels through my arm and torso. We watched it on X-ray television. It was pretty cool and in some ways more suspenseful than watching a holiday bowl game.

Erin & RJ in full 1920's character!

Thankfully, this story—in spite of a few subsequent mishaps—had a happy ending. I got to watch my kids open their Christmas presents, and I was pretty much back to normal for the hectic onslaught we call New Year’s Eve. I even got to participate fully in our annual holiday party, which began as a 1920’s murder mystery with each member of our staff and their partners playing a role, and ending with a fabulous meal at 50 Local in Kennebunk.

When I got home, I sequestered myself in my office to wrap some last minute presents. There, on the wall, on a wrinkled and faded sheet of construction paper, was my son’s footprints from a few years ago. Under the words “HAPPY FATHER’S DAY,” and above my son’s name scrawled in blue marker, is a poem called Footprints. I have read it hundreds of times, and I keep it up on the wall by my desk for a reason, but two stanzas of the poem on that occasion leapt out at me and gave me my New Year’s Resolution:

“’Walk a little slower, Daddy,’

Said a child so small.

‘I’m walking in your footsteps

And I don’t want to fall.

Sometimes your steps are very fast.

Sometimes they are hard to see.

So walk a little slower, Daddy,

For you are leading me.’”

Top Ten 2011 Highlights (in no particular order)

1. My daughter’s Columbus Day Lemonade Stand

2. Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner (televised on Chronicle)

3. A Winter’s Tale: another spoken word paean about my love of wife

4. The James Beard Award nomination

5. Guest cheffing at events, most notably at Gracie’s in Providence

6. Pecha Kucha Haiku about my life in food

7. Chef’s Collaborative Summit, New Orleans

8. My new relationships with Archer Angus and other farmers

9. Our Kitchen Farm Garden at Meadow’s Mirth Farm

10. Working with Slow Food, Chef’s Collaborative, Seacoast Local, UNH and other food-based local organizations motivated to continue our path toward a sustainable and self-reliant food community.

2011 Lowlights

1. Overbooking my September calendar

2. Overbooking my October calendar after overbooking my September one

3. The beginning of a high voltage line that will, by virtue of eminent domain, cut right through our tranquil, rural woodlot behind our house, effectively bisecting our property and carving a 100-foot-wide scar through wildlife habitat and mushroom foraging nirvana

4. Advanced Bacterial Infection to Soft Tissue landing me in the hospital two days before Christmas, followed by a PICC line I helped guide from my bicep to my heart.
5. Accidentally snipping the blood line that led to my heart with dirty scissors. (Medical personnel had a field day with that one.)

Evan’s Top Ten for Twenty Twelve

1. Holiday Party!

2. Doing the RPM Challenge with my kids

3. Going back to Gracie’s in April

4. Tough Mudder in May

5. Refurbished Wine Bar!

6. Cookbook?

7. My son’s passion for TaeKwon Do and geography

8. My daughter’s National History project, soccer exploits and screenplay

9. Black Trumpet’s Fifth Anniversary

10. Slowing down and spending more time with my family

Happy New Year!

Table to Farm

2011-09-21T11:14:00.001-04:00

So, after three seasons of planning, another Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner is behind us, and another post-partum melancholy seeps into my cold chef heart.

The grand table
Photo by Michelle Samdperil

What a joy it is to have watched this event in four years evolve from a seemingly ingerminable seed to a hardy perennial that will likely last for generations. So many people come together from our community at large to make it happen, it is truly inspiring to be a part of it. As I said from my bully pulpit in the barn on Sunday evening, I don’t know any other event that has a waiting list, not only for tickets, but also for volunteers. The solidarity and collaboration make this the most rewarding night of the year for me, and I am eternally grateful to everyone who played a role, however small, in bringing this idea to fruition.

With this blog, I’m putting some needed psychological closure to the Barn Dinner, but I can’t quite do that without pointing out a few omissions from my rambling emcee narrative on Sunday.

First of all, from the loft, I thanked about a hundred people by name, including farmers, sponsors, the fantastic musicians, decorators, administrators and volunteers, but I left out three of the most important brains behind the operation. Debra Kam--nominally affiliated with Seacoast Eat Local, but actually a vital part of every local food-based conversation in our area—was a key member of the steering committee for this event and remains one of my personal heroes. Alison Magill, who heads up our Seacoast chapter of Slow Food, was instrumental in making the right connections and providing the necessary non-profit guidance to us, not to mention she worked the Slow Food Seed Table like the pro she is. And, finally, my wife Denise, who held the purse strings, managed ticket sales, and coordinated lots of moving parts for the event. These three women—all accustomed to being unrecognized angels—have put the gears of our local food network in motion, and I want the community to know what an asset they are.

Meadow's Mirth Farm
Photo by Michelle Sampderil

In my welcoming words in the barn, I left out an anecdote that really illustrates my beliefs about agricultural biodiversity. I think I omitted it because I was literally wired for sound for the Chronicle television episode coming up in October, as if the normal dose of stage fright wasn’t enough.

This year, with the help of Josh and Jean (the farmers who work the land at Meadow’s Mirth, site of the Barn Dinner), my kitchen staff and I borrowed a plot of land to produce vegetables for Black Trumpet. It was a labor of love, but also a great educational tool for our crew, many of whom have never grown vegetables or worked directly with farmers.

In keeping with my own philosophy, but also the Meadows Mirth mandate, I and our team planted only organic seeds—everything from tomatoes to potatoes, lettuces to legumes, cabbages to carrots, a pretty wide array of stuff, much of which has found its way onto the Black Trumpet menu. One fifty-foot row of our farm garden was hilled up and planted with four different varieties of potatoes. Three of the varieties were fancy hybrids that have been bred for cool color traits or unusual shapes. One variety was a plain, white heirloom potato known as a Katahdin potato. The katahdin variety, although no aesthetic prizewinner, tends to yield well, and its importance to our regional heritage makes it a good basic potato to have in the mix.

At first, our potato row showed great promise, the hearty goth-spiky sprouts coming up quickly. But two weeks or so into the potato program, Beetlemania happened. Flea beetles, potato beetles, dung beetles, Volkswagens, even a zombified George Harrison appeared, instantly stripping the fleshy foliage of its essence and leaving behind only the ghastly skeletal remains. When I inquired with consulting farmer friends Josh and Jean about the tragic invasion, they laughed, exchanged knowing glances, and thanked me for planting potatoes so their miles of potatoes across the street would be spared.

Savory Goat Cheesecake with Brookford Farm
Wheat Crust and Blueberry Glaze
Photo by Michelle Samdperil

When I returned to the field, feeling beetle-beaten (and a farmer-duped to boot), I sat down among the skeletal remains. It was then that I noticed the far end of the battlefield formerly known as Potato Row. Six plants, rugged and defiant, stood tall among the carcasses of their relatives. Six plants with nary a bug on them stood slightly bent but silently proud, like Aroostook farmers themselves. Indeed, upon inspection of the crude garden map I had drawn, it became clear that these six rogues were indeed Katahdin potato plants, thriving in the midst of carnage.

The lesson of my little potato disaster is best elucidated by Charles Siebert in his gripping article in the July issue of National Geographic, “The movement to preserve heirloom varieties goes way beyond America’s renewed romance with tasty locally grown food and countless varieties of tomatoes. It’s also a campaign to protect the world’s future food supply.” He follows up this powerful assertion by saying that 90 percent of America’s historic produce varieties have vanished completely. Our country’s wheat crops, having been reduced to a scant few varieties, cannot protect themselves from global scourges like stem rust. Instead of genetically developing strains that resist specific diseases and pests, spraying the bejeesus out of them and planting them to the exclusion of all else for endless miles, we can be using agricultural biodiversity to ensure that no staple food is vulnerable to eradication. This is the way it was meant to be, for Ceres’ sake, and to hell with any monoculture advocate that thinks otherwise,

And, if the bottom line of worldwide food security isn’t enough of a reason to convince you to grow, buy and eat heirlooms, imagine a world where your only option for a salad is a shrink-wrapped marble-hard GMO tomato named 223-QX.

I got so worked up about this whole thing that I called Tom Stearns from High Mowing Seed Company. Tom himself is a rare breed: an organic hybrid of businessman and creative type, half entrepreneur, half farmer. I told him my katahdin potato story and asked him what it meant to him.

Chuck Cox delivering heirloom melons
Photo by Michelle Samdperil

Favorite Memory from this year’s Barn Dinner:

Chuck Cox, timeless icon of New England farming, standing amid a sea of volunteers at the after-party, slicing his three varieties of heirloom watermelon that he brought to the dinner. The man has a passion for what he does that should inspire would-be farmers everywhere.

Second favorite memory:

The perennial lump-in-the-throat moment when the chefs come out to an ovation, followed by the impossibly long queue of volunteers emerging one by one from the “kitchen” area and wrapping in a line around the grand table.

Least favorite memory:

Feeling compelled to break into a frenzied elbowy tribal jig at the conclusion of the dinner by the stomping ovation from the crowd. If that shows up on the Chronicle episode, I’m moving to northern Saskatchewan.

The Educator Gets a Lesson

2011-05-17T11:43:00.001-04:00

Last Friday--a day that may be remembered as the only warm sunny day on record for this May--while the rest of the world was moving along apace and going through its quotidian rituals, I broke from my kitchen routine and made tacos for school lunch at Dover High School. It may seem strange for the chef of a little Portsmouth bistro to be scooping from the steam table at one of our region’s largest public school cafeterias, but I gotta say, it was right up there with the most edifying experiences I have had in recent months, if not years.

To be clear, this was not my first time cooking in a school. I have worked directly with small groups of students at New Heights in Portsmouth, and I have made smoothies for my kids’ first grade classes. And, around the holidays last year, I made beet and spinach pasta for the elementary students at Central School in South Berwick, working at the behest of Kathy Gunst, a fellow food blogger, chef and cookbook writer who heeded the summons of Michelle Obama and attended the Chefs Move to Schools kickoff event on the White House lawn last year. (Also representing our area at that event were Mark Segal of the 100 Club and Dan Dumont of Wentworth by the Sea.) I could not rearrange my schedule on the short notice I was given, and still regret not having attended the event. However, one needn’t stand on the White House lawn to be inspired by Mrs. Obama’s philosophy: the way to improve school lunches in America is not to preach to the parents, but to reach the students who eat the lunches. Cultivate the non-GMO farm field, as it were, and they will come.

So, back to the Dover High event. I had been invited by Amy Winans, UNH Hospitality maven and indomitable force behind much of the knowledge transfer that goes on between generations on the food front in our area. Amy, along with her husband Dan (who heads up UNH’s semi-revolutionary EcoGastronomy program), have positioned themselves at the forefront of the fight for fair, local and sustainable food systems in the seacoast region. As a rule of thumb, when Amy or Dan asks me to participate in dinners or lecture to their classes, I don’t hesitate. The power of their persuasion is not merely political; they are also uncommonly nice people.

My assignment, issued by Amy, was to produce a sample dish for 300-plus growing, demanding and sometimes vocally defiant high school kids. The sample had to be built around the idea of locally sourced ingredients, and that was—it turns out—the easiest part. A Maine farmer ponied up 25 pounds of beef, a New Hampshire farmer pitched in black beans and lettuces, and so recipe ideas quickly turned to tacos. I made a gallon of roasted chile salsa the day before, spilled about two cups on the passenger seat of my car, and the rest was a matter of waking up really early and getting to class on time.

The Dover High School cafeteria—a far cry from what I had expected--was stocked with hundred-gallon steam kettles, Volkswagen-size standing mixers and seriously high quality industrial equipment. All surfaces were spotless and food very well respected and handled. I quickly realized that the problem with Dover’s school lunch, like that of so many other school systems in America, lies not with the facilities or the staff but with the food the eager and talented crew has to work with. In short, subsidized foods are crap. They have to be, in order to get calories into the kids at the lowest possible cost to the government, the school systems and—ultimately—the parents. Even the most endowed public school dining budgets can only afford to buy the lowest-end commodity, and so that crap (which, unfortunately, can actually taste pretty good sometimes) goes into the kids who will grow up to make future food policy via their own shopping priorities. Bottom line: we can’t keep teaching health and nutrition in the same schools that are shunning those values in their kitchens.

So how do we twist that paradigm until the inconsistencies shake out? How do we make good food a higher priority in the hallowed halls of education while simultaneously making local and responsible ingredients available at affordable prices? The answer, obviously, is quite complex. Judging by the recent presentations made by Dan Winans’ EcoG students at UNH, solutions might emerge in the upcoming generation of food policy makers.

Back again to the classroom…..After greeting me at the DHS door, Amy introduced me to her charming and cheerful assistants—Lauren, Sarah and Kim—who were volunteering for their second such event at Dover High. I would later find out that these young ladies had signed up not only to chop vegetables for a tyrannical chef but also to schlep the samples canapé-style through the dining hall, where they would be besieged by students clambering for free taco samples. Brave is not a strong enough word for these dedicated young women.

In short time, I met the cafeteria staff. Mark Covell, the District’s Food Service Administrator, could not have been more receptive to my intrusion on his turf. He made me feel at home and played gracious host for the duration of my visit.

Sue, the Assistant FSA, gave me a tour while rattling off her past cooking credentials, which were very impressive indeed, and Melinda (one of the key cooks) later came to my aid at the steam kettle. Melinda’s culinary heritage included New Orleans and Las Vegas, combining the Old Guard and the New Frontier food cities, both of which would inform her culinary style if she were allowed to incorporate it more into the lunch program. I suggested that I come back in the fall to do shrimp po-boys. Mmmm.

I didn’t bring an apron, and the one I was loaned was a disposable sheet of thin plastic with a neck strap. My new Culinary Rule Number One: Don’t work with large, boiling stockpots on a gas range when wearing a thin plastic apron. It’s a good rule, especially for chefs who should know better.

I came away from Dover High School with a melted apron and a strong sense that those cooks I worked with are not only willing to learn, but already have the desire to do more with local foods that are whole, safe and nutritious alternatives to the “spicy fried chicken burger” that was being offered on the day we were in the kitchen. I overheard Melinda, the Head Cook, say to her boss, “See, we could be doing this [pointing to the homemade salsa] instead of getting that canned stuff.”

I haven’t seen the student surveys that were passed out by Amy’s charming assistants, but I hear they were generally quite positive, meaning that high school students enjoyed the fresh taco experiment and crave an alternative to the packaged, processed and insalubrious status quo.

For me, the defining moment of the day came when three jocks--the kind of linebacker material that would have eaten my lunch and then made me pay for it in high school (not that that ever happened, but you get the picture)--came into the kitchen while we were wrapping up the third seating. One of them hollered at me, “Hey, are you the chef who made the tacos?”

Reluctantly, pretending to be busier than I was, I replied, “Yes.” Even though I’m beefier than I was in high school, I think my voice cracked a little, just for old time’s sake.

The three boys (I say boys, but they were young men of great mass and height) approached me and reached out their hands in what appeared to be the conventional, old-school handshake gesture. Unsure of how to respond, I went with what I knew and shook their hands without slaps, snaps, palm-slides or fist-pounds. They seemed to fully understand the gesture and reciprocated in kind.

“That was really good,” one of the three jocks said, stretching out the first syllable in “really” so that it hung in the air like a game-winning field goal.

Phew. Happy jocks. Happy chef. Amazing how food can bring people together, eh?

3) ODE TO SPRING: intimations on immortality, power lines and mud

2011-05-07T09:53:00.001-04:00

THE GRINGO AND THE MANGO

Now let’s flash to April 16, to Punta de Mita, a surfer-infested Mexican fishing village just south of the privatized point of land where St. Regis and Four Seasons have plopped down some pretty spectacular structures in the gated acreage on the point.

It’s Spring Break ’11, and my family and I are on vacation. For one week, we are like a Norman Rockwell family with a little Griswold streak. There is Griswoldian pressure on us, because we don’t do family vacation—at least not of this caliber—more than once a decade. The pressure can manifest itself in some strange ways.

For example, I am gazing up into a mango tree, thinking seriously about climbing it. The tree itself weaves up through power lines at the edge of the street where restaurants and surfer shops block the view of the waves and the rock-studded beach. I find myself there because of my own intrepid (read: stupid) spirit. (While walking through the village under the heavy late-morning sun, my family and I had stopped, bemused, to watch five older gentlemen trying to literally pick the ripe, low-hanging fruit from the tree with a mangled rake. The problem, as we saw it, was that there was no low-hanging fruit left on the tree. The only mangoes worth groping for were fifteen to twenty feet up, above the rickety plastic chair, above the retaining wall, above the power lines.)

I rupture the charming image before us—men poking in vain at the low branches in hopes that ripe fruit would somehow fall from above—by gesturing to the men that I, a very pale but nimble tourist, was willing to scale great heights for their desired bounty. Without hesitation and with plenty of bastardized Mexican slang, I promptly climb up into the tree, fully intent on being a gringo Samaritan, an ambassador of goodwill to these earnest Mexican gentlemen.

Once in the tree, like a graceless grimalkin, I realize that I have no means of descent. As I make this realization, my wife brings to my attention the power lines weaving through the branches. I have the metal-tined, mangled rake in my hand and I can see the wires but note that they appear to be insulated. I continue to stab up into the branches unfazed. I am on vacation and am therefore invincible (also impervious to the effects of harmful sun rays). As I strike at the ripe fruits, they begin to fly from the tree like fat little jewels in the morning sun. The phalanx of men, who are now cheering me on, have gathered below the tree and are attempting to catch the falling fruit in their inverted hats. My quixotic folly has now become sport. I have brought fruit to the village and feel like a god on high.

Engulfed in an aura of self-sanctimony, my attention lapses and I do the inevitable, brushing my forearm against the power line. I gasp. I pause. I live. So, of course, I reach out and touch the line again. And again. I continue, to my amazement, to live. The men are now watching me, twenty feet or so above their heads, as I face the true test. Having survived electrocution, how does the silly gringo get down from way up there? I know they are wondering this, because they are humans with common sense and survival mechanisms built into their brains. When they were passing out this gene, I was taking a potty break, apparently. Nevertheless, I am peripherally aware of the laws of gravity, and so I begin to calculate my next move.

I begin my descent, dropping the rake to one of the men below. When he moves to catch it, it hits him in the head. I feel bad, but still invincible. When I get to the top of the wall (was it brick? I remember it being brick), I find myself astraddle a power line. Speaking to the men with the fallen mangoes, I make a joke in Spanish that won’t translate well at all: “Si me bajo asi, vamos a tener huevos revueltos para comer!” Very loosely: If I jump down now like this, we’re all going to have scrambled eggs for breakfast! (Ed. Note: the word huevos in Spanish refers not only to hen’s eggs that are eaten frequently for breakfast, but also to the low-hanging reproductive fruits of the human male.)

((Ed. Note Sidebar: The Spanish name for the avocado, aguacate, comes from a Nahuatl word meaning “testicles”. Evidently, the word was used originally because the early denizens of central Mexico had not yet learned the word “cojones”.))

In a leap of faith, I swing a leg over the wire and jump from the wall. It’s a high wall, maybe eight to ten feet. Maybe less than that too, but I’m telling a story here, so let’s say ten-plus feet. No eggs are scrambled in the process. Again, I live. I laugh a little as I land on the street.

The men are parsing out the fallen fruit in a democratic fashion. My family rushes over to me and tells me they think it’s really cool that I just climbed a mango tree. I don’t hurt, miraculously. The men hand my wife three ripe mangoes (because, we assume, it is a woman’s duty to carry the mangoes for the family), which we will eat three days later in the form of a perfect breakfast smoothie.

As I am walking away, the men are talking among themselves, holding the mango bounty they have dealt out, and one of them turns to me and says, “Thank you, Soo-pear-mon.”

Soo-pear-mon. He really says that, maybe with a slight undercurrent of playful mockery. I walk away with three mangoes and a secure notion that I would rather risk life and limb so that I can taste the glory of the high-hanging fruit.

ODE TO SPRING: intimations on immortality, power lines and mud

2011-05-06T09:35:00.002-04:00

AMAZING GRACIE’S, PART DEUX

For the second year running, I have been invited to participate in the “Star Chef” Series at Gracie’s, a truly inspiring restaurant in Providence, RI. Last year, I worked with gifted young chef Matt Varga to produce some dishes paired with the always stunning wines of Michael Honig (see 4/10 blog). At that dinner, I and then-sous chef Mike learned a lot about how technology can expand the creative palette of the cook while simultaneously reducing risk. The dinner went off without a hitch, although being the day after Easter, attendance was lower than we had hoped for.

This year, the stakes and the attendance were higher. We had to live up to the expectation set by last year’s dinner, and attendees included foodbloggers and Matt Jennings and his wife, Sarah. In March, when I was nominated for the James Beard Award for Best Chef of the Northeast, I was shocked (to say the least) to see my name on the list, and simultaneously thrilled to see Matt Jennings in the running. Our paths have crossed a few times. I have eaten Matt’s lunchy food at Farmstead twice now, although I haven’t yet had the pleasure of dining at his full-service restaurant, La Laiterie, and Chef Jennings has dined at Black Trumpet a while back. So, when I heard he was on the list of attendees at Gracie’s, I was thrilled to be able to feed him and cheer him on as he continues to go forward into the finals of The James Beard Award. I want to see him win, not only because he embodies for his community the same values we do for ours, but also because he is the nicest guy ever to be nominated for a big award. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York on May 9th. Go Matt!

Back at Gracie’s in mid-April, sous chef Carrie and I arrived the afternoon prior to the dinner and helped prep a few things. When I say that, I mean the kitchen staff at Gracie’s let us stand around and talk about stuff that they prepped diligently in our midst. Carrie and I are used to multitasking to the oldies, stressing out over deliveries coming in and phones ringing while we’re managing two pots, one oven, four pans and a cutting board. There is an element of luxury attached to the “Star Chef” status that made us feel simultaneously luxuriant and somewhat uncomfortable.

The graceful and gracious Gracie’s owner, “Miss Ellen” Gracyalny put us up in the lovely Hotel Providence. After prep, we ate dinner at the charming and delicious Beard nominee for Best New Restaurant in the U.S., an unassuming little spot called Cook and Brown. Food and drink at Cook and Brown, it turns out, are humbly spectacular. Barbecued pig tails for everyone! Cook and Brown--with chef Demo, his wife and their newborn—get my unqualified Beard vote for sure.

The day of the dinner, the Gracie’s crew assembled in impressive numbers, led by Chef Matt and his magic spoons. I was permitted to handle a few food items, but by-and-large, Carrie and I stood in awe as the Gracie’s team breathed life into a hard-to-execute menu right before our very eyes. Props go to Matt and pastry chef Melissa in particular, for being so thorough in their preparation that I had to go out of my way to confuse them.

There were passed hors d’oeuvres that included lobster sangrita pipettes, fresh flower and ricotta pupusas, pig trotter cakes and something else I have since spaced.

Then came the spring pea flan with deliciously fresh local vegetables, a giant sea scallop served in its shell with lobster nage, a chicken roulade with morels, an intermezzo of passionfruit tapioca, a steak and egg dish that involved technical precision beyond the scope of most food pornographers, and finally, a beautiful peanut financier with bourbon-spiked black trumpet mushroom ice cream.

Art and science. Passion and insanity. Form and function. Thank you, Gracie’s, for joining me in the quest to understand where those boundaries lie. Yet it’s OK, I think, to muddy them a little. It feels good, and we should—as often as possible--wallow in the muddy area, to be as simple and playful as pigs. Ad astra per aspera!

ODE TO SPRING: intimations on immortality, power lines and mud

2011-05-05T13:56:00.003-04:00

INTROSUCTION: SCREW THE ROBIN

The girls collecting sap at White Gate Farm

That’s right: screw the robin. There are new signs of spring in New England. Robins overwinter in our area now, courtesy of climate change. To hell with the groundhog. He is a lying sonofabitch, and we all know it. Peepers? Fugeddaboudit. They are relegated to the last seven or eight vernal pools left in our area, all of which are slated for development in the immediate future. Which reminds me: on the homefront, we Malletts have been informed recently that, due to the laws of imminent domain, our 10-acre property is most likely going to be bisected by a 100-foot-wide swath of clear-cutting for a new power line. This is deeply regrettable, not to mention powerful foreshadowing. The only way to stop the power line powers that be, we are told, is to prove that some endangered species might have a sacred vernal haven in our midst. To that end, if anyone knows where I can find some rare salamanders on the black market, please contact me immediately (using untraceable media, please).

Cormac getting kisses from Nutmeg

So I propose that the new symbol of spring be not a visual image but the sucking sound boots make when they get stuck in the deep mud. Like when the kids and Denise and I went to White Gate Farm in Epping to help with the sugaring of the maple trees. Black Trumpet bartender and wine buyer RJ works on that farm with his mom, Susan, who is also a schoolteacher. Farmer and schoolteacher--gives work ethic a whole new depth of meaning. The hard-working farmer in Susan was busy boiling sap into the large syrup-making device in her sugar shack when we arrived. The schoolteacher in Susan patiently explained the process of refining luscious golden syrup from tree juice while also cautioning the children about the enormous quicksand-esque mud puddle that, in drier climates, is actually the driveway to the shack. Naturally, after the warning, my intrepid and obdurate son proceeded to get a boot stuck in the mud. The ensuing burst of sound that emanated from that boot when we pulled it from the murky quagmire was ungraphable, but let’s say it was something like, “Thwuck!”

Making Maple Syrup at the farm

Having now purged the last of my lingering Winter darkness, I’d like to begin this seasonal blog—which I’ll post in a series of installments--with a statement of the obvious: the best way to ring in the mud season is to get out of Dodge.

Three of the last five Sundays, I was nowhere to be seen at Black Trumpet. My three excursions—to Providence, Mexico and North Carolina—all took me out of Dodge during some especially nasty spring weather. Sous Chef Carrie went above and beyond to ensure smooth sailing while we were gone, and she even joined me on one junket, for which I salute her here in immortal cybertext. Thank you, Carrie, for your supreme dedication. The following blog posts are centered around those three events that took me away like a series of Calgon commercials, although in each post you will find plenty of contextual leaps and mindless meandering, as you have come to expect, I’m sure.

Evan and the kids in Mexico...finally

Enjoy. Or be bored. Either way. Thanks for reading. Oh, and for those of you who say I don’t post often enough, I say to you now, “p-l-l-l-l-l-l,” or whatever the raspberry sound looks like in print.

2011 -- Chaos is the new Order

2011-01-11T12:56:00.000-05:00

The last six months have represented an unprecedented lapse in blogposting for me, an already spotty blogger at best. I chalk this communication gap up to unusual busy-ness, with a transition on kitchen staff coinciding with a series of events I could not say no to, although perhaps in many cases I should have. I know it has been an unprecedentedly busy time because my office desk at home has developed a sort of paper cancer.

My desk has become a barometer for how overbooked I am. The pile—an amorphous amalgam of often unimportant papers and plastics that are a nuisance to categorize, register and deal with—has shown signs that it is a self-sustaining organism, growing even in low light and with little oxygen. One possible solution, a smaller desk, would mean using floorspace, which creates traffic impediments for children and pets, all of whom seem to enjoy wrestling on the office floor when Denise and I are trying to accomplish anything. Denise, meanwhile, remains unafraid to let her unique filing system occupy every flat surface (including my desk) in the “shared” office space. I allow this stealth behavior because resisting might mean being assigned aspects of our restaurant’s accounting, a fate worse than trying to organize my desk. Speaking of shared “office space,” I am reminded of the film by that name, whose denouement--the brutal beating of a fax machine followed by Stephen Root’s character setting fire to the office building--often tempts me to deal with my cluttered desk in more dramatic and permanent ways.

Here at the outset of this promising new year, I have decided to address the blog lapse and desk situation simultaneously: I will use the papers to report what I’ve been up to since the last blog! How’s that for efficient? The result I have in mind is a fragmented free association of events and thoughts that will seem as crazy to read as it was to experience. Here goes, complete with explanatory footnotes and gratuitous namedropping wherever appropriate:

A brochure for “Marco Polo 2010--Exploring genetics through different ethnic groups, tastes, traditions and cultures.” A Volvo of curious social scientists followed Marco Polo’s supposed Spice Route, tracing cultural connections along the way. I can’t say why, but I am obsessed with this idea. Must not ever throw this away until I join the team for the next pilgrimage.

A scrap of lined paper with tasting notes for Beltane Ranch Sauvignon Blanc 09 and Dutch Henry Chardonnay 07. Two beautiful places we stayed in our whirlwind tour of California wine country last June, both of which have wineries on premises.

New England Cheesemaking Supply Company Catalogue. When I am too old to cook on a restaurant line, I will milk goats by the ocean and make really good chevre wrapped in seaweed and aged in ocean caves guarded by half-naked sirens. Must not throw away this catalogue until that dream is realized!

The Crooked Chimney Pure New Hampshire Birch Syrup brochure

Crookedchimneysyrup@gmail.com. We used this amazing product as a condiment for sausage at September’s Passport event at Strawbery Banke.

2010 Black Trumpet Sous Chef contract – Carrie Dahlgren. Our Little Bear (who looks more like Goldilocks) had big shoes to fill and made a difficult transition seamless. Now she’s our Ursa Major!

Bent envelope from The White House that says “FIRST CLASS DO NOT BEND”. I remember shaking a little as I opened the envelope, fearing some subversive thought had been dredged from my subconscious by the microchip installed there when I was in utero. Alas, it was an invitation to join the throngs of chefs from around the country on the White House Lawn as part of Michelle Obama’s wonderful “Chefs in Schools” program. In December, I went into South Berwick’s Central School with the ambitious and delightful Kathy Gunst to get the fresh and nutritious school lunch idea rolling in our community.

Invitation to participate in New Hampshire Farm Museum’s Spring Fling. Around the same time, I signed up to participate in the Farm Board’s Annual Meeting (of chefs and farmers).

PART He-P 2331 of NH laws for “Special Requirement for food service establishments processing food in a commercial kitchen”. The idea was to have a HACCP plan in place to preserve any surplus vegetables form farms. We pickled a ton of them for the restaurant, which we are still utilizing, but the HACCP plan remains incomplete on my desk, lacking necessary research and legwork.

Il Porticciolo menu from Torino, where John Forti, Jean Jennings and I went for a spectacular week in October as delegates at Slow Food International’s biennial Terra Madre Conference.

Fllight itinerary to Italy from Boston Logan - Oct. 20 and 27^th.

Terra Madre again. Throwing away itineraries is like throwing away memories…like Patriots playoff tickets or front row seat stubs for Michael Jackson’s last concert.

Failla Winery’s Fall Offering Catalogue. The one that got away when we were in Napa. Keeping this list of their wines is a reminder to go back soon.

“Ribs Ham Tongue Belly” – words written on the back of Waring Blender warranty, complete with a map for Denise to follow when she offered to do the smoking of meat from a Tom Hasty pig we broke down at the restaurant in November.

Eddie and Lynn’s Production Schedule for preparation at the UNH Gourmet Dinner, which I was honored to serve as a guest chef and counselor.

Menu to the “Common Table” Gourmet Dinner event at UNH mentioned above.

List of Items voted onto the 2009 Slow Food Ark of Taste. That’s right, 2009! It was such an honor to be a part of, I can’t bring myself to file the list away.

Navarro Vineyards, Mendocino, CA catalogue.

New Hampshire Seafood Brand & Logo Standards

2010 Hood Cookoff guidelines. A weird event in Portland that pitted likeminded chefs from each New England state against each other in competition. The event came two days after my return from Italy, and I failed to understand the rules and therefore made a huge mess, a mediocre dish and a fool of myself all at the same time (while alienating my kitchen staff and missing my daughter’s last soccer game of the season). In short, a complete and utter failure. (Denise’s feelings are much harsher!)

Salone del Gusto food and wine catalogues. Evidence of the greatest food fair on Earth. Seriously.

Favorite Foods current price list – for a friend’s new restaurant. I’ve been trying to help him without getting emotionally involved. Which is, of course, impossible.

New England Groundfish Population Management information sheet – Pew Industries – notes on the back from September’s annual Chefs Collaborative Summit in Boston. I was a panelist and also an attendee of many breakout sessions. Met author Paul Greenberg in elevator. Also rubbed elbows with legendary chefs Sam Heyward, Jasper White and numerous renowned food writers. Learned a thing or two in the process, including not to make chickpea tortillas three days in advance of an event.

Invitation to 25^th High School reunion. A glaring reminder of age’s stealthy agenda.

Undercounter Dishwasher Manual

Scrawled menu for November’s sold-out Beer and Game Dinner. What a success it was, and what a lot of fun, too!

Calendar of private parties in Black Trumpet for November and December. The return of the private party is a great economic indicator. Thanks, party people!

Thank you Card from Caroline Robinson. Can’t throw out some mementos, especially when they are the only record one has for a meaningful person who has departed this world.

Obituary I wrote for my Uncle Jack, who died in June. A great man who will be remembered fondly for a very long time.

And that about wraps it up.

Happy New Year, All.

Evan

the idle idealogue's idyll, or, when something comes of nothing

2010-08-03T12:58:00.000-04:00

We have all been there, to varying degrees. We have visited that gray and plasmatic quagmire of the human mind where confusion and chaos swirl into recognizable patterns and then disperse back into the turbid muck. We have gawked at these fleeting formations, consciously or not, and withdrawn with conclusions befitting either a college stoner session or a great philosophical treatise. My observations may belong more on the stoner end of the spectrum, but I confess to feeling (in my rare moments of lucubration) on the cusp of a greater realization. Naturally, just when I think I have the bird of truth in my grasp, a herd of rabid purple pachyderms stampedes their way into my brain, as though choreographed by Jim Henson to a Wagnerian soundtrack played by Jimi Hendrix. Of course, in the event that I ever have that bird in hand, I promise to share it with whatever patient blogreaders remain out there in the world of Comparitive Twitterature. Which, by the way, will be a valid college major when my children are ready to declare.

So, my not-so-sane point is that this blog post is at once a Seinfeldian glimpse into the obvious, a Thelonius-esque tribute to nothingness, and an unapologetic abstract post expressionist ode to white space. All of this without the talent, and I might add, without our friend brevity--therefore, simultaneously soulless and witless. Still reading? Shame on you.

Forsooth, it has been too many months, busy months at home and in the restaurant, since I sat down to write. There have been birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, vacations, funerals, many of these happening simultaneously, the whirlwind of activity in our lives mirroring the aforementioned quagmire of ideation. [Valkyrie rides through Purple Haze.] Yet, as stressful and difficult to manage as these events have been, they have served as mile markers on the route to progress, and it feels good to be moving in that direction. I don't believe many of us will look back wistfully on the turn of this decade, but we will doubtlessly have taken a few hard life lessons from it.

The Gulf of Mexico--now a man-made, rust-hued toxic salad dressing waiting to be shaken up by the hurricane season--reminds us that tampering with dinosaur remnants to power our modern conveniences is a dangerous and primitive idea in itself. Somewhere deep inside, we all know that human sacrifice is the answer: not the Mayan kind, as in humans being sacrificed, although that might help too; but the impossible kind, as in humans making sacrifices. Such a radical concept, I don't think most people are even ready to discuss it, much less engage in it.

Which brings us to Facebook. Recently, something good came of Facebook. Really. On our restaurant's page, a bold reader commented that our bluefin tuna special one night in early July was decidedly irresponsible (I'm paraphrasing). According to the post, "taking a bluefin is not 'preventing it from going to waste,'...it is demonstrating a continued market." (I'm no longer paraphrasing.) The opinion, a valid and hotly disputed point, was quickly snubbed by the Black Trumpet Defense Department, which consists of regular guests, friends and even employees who wanted to weigh in on the topic. Anyone who cares about the future of wild fisheries, or the future of the earth in general, should read this amusing but thought-provoking stream of commentary. It points to the disparate set of ideas and opinions that form a collective consumer subconscious. [Insert Hendrix riff here.] From the dark depths of our oceanic conundrum, economy and ecology once again engage in battle. As a chef in a fishing community, I want to support local fisherpeople; but if a local boat going for another species brings in a bluefin, whose population is under scrutiny in the Western Atlantic, and I buy some of that fish, am I guilty of culinary malfeasance?

I recently attended an event in Cambridge, wherein a sustainable fisheries advocate from the New England Aquarium referred to chefs as "stewards of the sustainable food movement." I agree that we can help bring about change. In fact a group of us chef types from Portsmouth are currently working on the Michele Obama initiative called Chefs in Schools, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of lunches in public schools around the country. But if the onus rests on the shoulders of a few chefs who run small kitchens, what do we do about the chef from the TD Garden, who pleaded his cause at the meeting in Cambridge? He goes through 14,000 pounds of frozen shrimp per annum, and there are thousands of places like his in our country, never mind the world. This idea of feeding the world is already very tricky before any conservation conversation comes up. As soon as you look at the grand scheme, what difference can we really make? I don't think the earth's condition is terminal, as many people seem to think, and I'm no scientist, but I do think everyone needs to make an effort to understand, and act on, our most egregious excesses. If we don't limit those excesses and eliminate some fringe luxuries, at the very least, I'll be hopping up on the soap box with the doomsayers. Until then, I'll continue to be the best steward of sustainability I can be while doing my part to maintain a healthy fishing economy in our area.

Back to the narrative quagmire, these are a few notes without a blog heading of their own:

In May, two great friends of Black Trumpet got married in Exeter and had their reception in our restaurant. Their ceremony was worthy of a long, dedicated and heartfelt blog, but I missed the window to pay them a dual homage. Indeed, the happy couple is comprised of two men, and in retrospect, I couldn't be more thrilled for them that they live in two states (New Hampshire and marital bliss) that will recognize and celebrate the bonds of their love.

Flash to the next wedding, in June, on a little tugboat a few steps from Black Trumpet. Two other good friends of the restaurant, this time a he and a she, locking their destinies together after years of obstacles. Love conquers all, you two! Denise and I were honored and thrilled to be a part it.

Lastly, but not leastly, we just recently hosted the wedding of one of our own, bartender/server/manager/goddess Jody, and her mate Bjorn. The ceremony in the park, the dinner at Black Trumpet, and the Red Door after-party were beautiful and intimate, leaving nary a dry eye in the house. The images in our heads, fortunately, will outlast the multi-day hangover. Whole-hearted congratulations to you good friends!

In conclusion, we at Black Trumpet try really hard to make people happy. It consumes our every-day existence in ways that are disputably unhealthy. When someone has a beef with our beef, or our service, or--as in one recent instance--table placement, we do what we can to make it better. One exhortation to guests: constructive criticism at the time of the dining experience (when we can actually do something about it) is far better than a posthumous raking over the Interweb coals.

In summation of my conclusion, after the flood zones are permanently flooded, the great gulves are all gummed with gloppity-glopp, and all the yummiest fish have been fished, and after our land has been pocked by bombs and scraped free of animal, vegetable and mineral for the greater consumption of megalomonocrops, and after castles made of sand have slipped into the sea, we the people will still have love. And we at Black Trumpet love love.

Love,
Evan

Providence Indeed

2010-04-20T23:15:00.000-04:00

Providence, the city name, is said to have been dubbed by none other than north-of-the-border carpetbagger Roger Williams himself. Even if he was the first arrogant Masshole and an opportunist of the highest order, Governor Williams was onto something with that name. Providence. We use it today to mean good fortune on the horizon, or divine guidance, but it should adhere more to its true Latin roots, which it shares with the verb "provide" and its nominal cognate, "provision". "To prepare for the future" might be the best definition; e.g., "Investors' providence will be rewarded." Not only is it a cool name for a city, but it's also apropos in today's amped-up, televised gastronomic world. Providence the city--based on my recent thirty-six hour junket with Denise, sous chef Mike and his sweetheart Rebecca--appears to be paving the way for the future of how Americans will eat, and it appears we will eat well. Yes, that is a confusing and loaded statement, but relax, because I'm telling a story here. This means, if history be the judge, that I need a tangent right about now...

Easter Sunday of 2010, Denise and I closed the restaurant, thrilled to give our staff a rest after a wonderfully busy Restaurant Week. We were supposed to rest, too, but that wish changed when the sacrificial spring lamb of our Christian holiday (perhaps angry for being superimposed on the pagan rite of vernal equinox) went up in literal flames just a few inches from our noses. Totally unexaggerated truth here. Stay with me. More on that in a New England minute.

Easter is a good holiday. I still believe that. I believe that because (A) Easter is the Christian word for Spring, and (B) I like to eat lamb. For many years, wherever I was living in the universe, I traveled to Sherborn, MA (my hometown, if I have one) on Easter Eve, spent the night at my Mom's, and woke up an hour before dawn to watch the sun come up on Easter as part of an annual ritual affiliated with the church of my youth. I did this more than a few times in my teens, twenties, even into my thirties. This is such an obscenely unthinkable feat to me now, I marvel at whatever impetus (neither Judeo nor Catholic) drove me to perform this strange pilgrimage all those years.

While living in Mexico, we would often have to stop on a desert highway in our station wagon to let several hundred people--many of them barefoot--cross the road to get to their religious destination, which was often several hundred miles away. Peregrinacion, it was called, and occasionally the ladies who worked in the kitchen would ask me for three or four days off to participate in such a thoroughly exhausting devotion. Awed by their strength and commitment, I always said yes for fear that the bloodied, horrific Mexican version of Jesus would bring a little wrath my way.

Like most Easters, this one started out fine enough, our two children joined by cousins visiting from the Carolinas, the lot of them canvasing our tick-strewn woods for strategically placed neon plastic eggs filled with little capsules of corn syrup, artificial color and chocolate. (The Easter Bunny, I thought, has never been clued in to the childhood obesity epidemic in this country). By noon, the air temperature clocked in at a preposterous seventy degrees in the shade. Undiscovered chocolate eggs all over New England were now muddy puddles of their former selves. By two o'clock, my assiduously rubbed leg of American lamb, impaled on a new rotisserie my dad picked up for the grill, took on a little too much heat, dropped a little too much fat, and burst into Hollywood-caliber flames. I noticed this while looking lazily out the bathroom window during a moment of micturative meditation. I think my fly was still down while I tried desperately to remove the carbon-crusted lamb from the wall of flame that had engulfed it. The new rotisserie was sticking and a quick release of the skewer proved impossible, so I wrestled with the black sheep and the flames as Denise arrived on the scene to point out that the deck railing behind the grill was now also on fire. I finally freed the crisp meat from its bonds and Denise doused the flaming deck. Our family devoured that leg of lamb, a few hours later, after some strategic carbon removal and a conciliatory oven treatment. Safe to say it tasted better knowing it almost burned our house down in the process. We were almost, in effect, the lamb's own sacrificial lambs.

OK, so Providence is the theme, and you, the reader, are still trapped in Maine. What gives? you ask. Just rambling, as usual. So, as radioman Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story...

A few months ago, Michael Honig--acclaimed Napa winemaker and sustainability spokesman whose vinous juice is synonymous with greatness--was asked to present his wines at Gracie's, an equally acclaimed restaurant in Providence, RI. He suggested to the Gracie's organizers, among them Anter (the charming and lovably persuasive GM), that I come down for a guest chef dinner, pairing five courses with Honig's five wonderful wines. I have done this before, over a year ago, at my own restaurant, so my answer was easy. Of course, I would love to come down to Providence to cook a few dishes for a wine dinner featuring Honig wines at someone else's restaurant.

Gracie's is the kind of restaurant diners travel for. It is truly a destination around which one should craft a vacation. A growing minority of us in the US do this kind of thing nowadays; the food comes first, and the rest will follow. That's our mindset for travel planning. If you put Providence on your map, Gracie's has to be part of the experience. Here's why:

Gracie's is owned by a woman whose own grace makes us mortals feel clumsy. She holds herself in such a way, with such finesse and elan (only French words can describe this kind of person), that you might wonder if her surname is a pseudonym. Ellen Gracyalny has managed to raise a family while also running a star-studded restaurant in a city whose culinary identity has soared in recent years, in large part due to the presence of one of the country's foremost culinary schools, Johnson & Wales. Ellen, who answers to "Miss Ellen" among her staff, is the consummate host, the kind of person who pampers you and makes you feel special.

Matt Varga, the recently named Executive Chef of Gracie's, has been in the kitchen of the Providence institution for a few years now, having inherited the esteemed role from Joe Hafner only in recent months, and he has the heart and passion--coupled with the respect of his seemingly endless culinary crew--to keep the Gracie's formula going for many years to come.

Matt and I decided to collaborate on a menu (rather than alternating courses), which I enjoyed because it put my ideas in the brain of another chef with another perspective, and vice versa. It takes an ego-free chemistry to make this process work, and Matt and I managed to pull off the menu-writing phase of the project in a two-hour phone call, each of us bearing our incoherently scribbled plate map as a guide.

Mike and Rebecca went to Providence on Sunday, when Mike joined Chef Matt and the Gracie's team for an evening of prep, followed by dinner and cocktails. Denise and I caught the tail end of the cocktails, perfect concoctions at Cafe Noir. The next day was dedicated to cooking, although most of my attempts to perform any actual culinary tasks were taken from me by the incredibly eager support staff at Gracie's. At one point, we had a team of nine cooks and a dishwasher plating food for the event.

The timing of the event could have been better, the Monday after Easter not being a night most folks think about going out for a multi-course meal, but other than that, it was unforgettably flawless--a learning experience that didn't come with any hard life lessons.

Rather than walk through each course, I can sum up the evening by saying that technology (something I try to keep out of my kitchen) does have its place. So many things I have only dreamed of are possible, and are easily executed in a kitchen like that of Gracie's, that I have to envy the regular clientele that gets to play guinea pig to such coolness.

Through Chefs Collaborative and the RAFT Grow Out program last year, I heard a lot of comparisons between the Providence restaurant scene and that of Portsmouth, in the sense that each community boasted a high number of chefs working directly with farmers. Indeed, even a nightclub we passed in Providence had proudly displayed the names of farmers they bought from on the window by the door, but I have to admit that my most blissful gustatory experience came on the heels of cooking for a lot of people, when Chef Matt and some of his crew met Denise, Mike and me at an Irish Pub with a late night menu that included one of the most incredible grilled reubens I have ever tasted.

The morning we left Providence, Denise and I swung by a small storefront on Federal Hill where we picked out a live chicken from an assortment of caged fowl and took home the dressed bird fifteen minutes later, feet and all. Our children proclaimed it the best chicken they had ever tasted.

From Gracie's to Murphy's (home of the perfect reuben) to the anonymous chicken store, Providence left me with a sense of hope for the future of American cuisine. I am proud of what we have been able to achieve in Portsmouth, too, and I look forward to the day when such communities are not so unusual.

Thank you, Gracie's, Honig and Providence. We had a glorious time.

Revelation 2:25

2010-03-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

At 1:30 last Friday morning, as I lay down on the hard, wooden bench at the back of Black Trumpet’s dining room, head propped at an unnatural angle against a pile of kitchen towels, and attempted to sleep, my thoughts bounced almost audibly from Nostradamus to the Mayan calendar to the Book of Revelation. One reason for this was the upside-down waterfall that had been surging through the front door of my restaurant, mirrored by the torrent of water cascading over the ancient eaves above the front window. Behind the wall of water, I could barely discern occasional windborne UFO’s, some as large as chubby schnauzers, flying past like cows in “Twister.” At one point, I half-expected to witness Revelation 13 unfold before my eyes on the Piscataqua: “I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads,” etc. It was that dramatic, believe me. And I’m not a Bible-quoting kind of guy.

To calm my nerves, I had popped a short shot of Herradura tequila at around midnight, perhaps explaining the ten-horned, seven-headed beast of Revelation. Gilligan’s Island also came to mind when I peered out the window at the harbor boat across the street. The hull of said harbor boat, labeled “PILOT,” is only visible when a perfect storm—Biblical winds, Great Bay snowmelt and swollen tides--converge on the scene. We have only seen weather of such magnitude once before in this lifetime: Mother’s Day, 2008. You may recall the cats-and-dogs onslaught.

Earlier that night, around the time attendees of our highly successful Spanish wine dinner had begun to file out the door into the deluge, I had laughed aloud at the storm’s severity: the almost comically contorted poses people with umbrellas assumed as they braced against the 70 MPH winds and walked to their cars. Perhaps my laughter elicited an immediate karmic coda, because soon I was racing down the street to recover our planter and trash can, which were racing away in some clumsy dance, like a drunk Laurel and Hardy skit.

To grasp the true nature of portent that seized me in my postpartum wine dinner depression, we must also consider the two earthquakes that shook and shocked the world this February, bringing unthinkable tragedy to us at a vulnerable moment in world history. And, of course, there’s the general state of the economy, the environment and the world at large. Blecchhh. Yet, as we sandbag ourselves from the horror, we must also embrace the gift that is beauty, and find happiness in the little things we so often take for granted. I look at my kids when I need that boost. Or I think about the heaps of praise I hear from people dining in my restaurant for the first time. Or I think about the fact that Denise and I have just allowed our third anniversary as restaurant owners to pass quietly by. The morning sun reflects off the puddles left in the wake of the storm. That’s kind of where it feels like we are with our restaurant. Whether or not the worst of the storm is behind us, there is between Denise and me a new zen understanding of the ebbs and flows of the business. To find peace in chaos is a milestone, I think. If not, then it’s a sign that we have both finally plummeted over the edge of our own waterfall, into the blissful abyss of insanity. I prefer to go with the former, though.

Later Friday morning, when I awoke from a surprisingly sound sleep with two numb legs and a linen hemline on my cheek, I stumbled through the dining room, past the mirror reflecting a monstrous specter, to the front window, where Revelation 22 came to life: “Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city.”

Indeed, water had breached the banks and receded while I slept, and at 6:00, dawn’s bright sun reflected off every surface of the city. The detritus-strewn aftermath, illuminated for all to see and marvel at, was kind of beautiful in its own way. The dirty linen bags and flattened cardboard boxes I had used to mop the floor had absorbed most of the flood, and the steady window waterfall had been reduced to a drip.

Four of my seven kitchen employees, including sous chef/linchpin Mike, were away on vacation or on medical leave, and last-minute changes in childcare had caused a scramble that Thursday. Fortunately, kitchen workhorses Carrie, Gabe and Sam—along with talented guest chef Gregg Sessler from Cava—pulled together a difficult menu for Thursday’s wine dinner. The event was spectacular. The restaurant remained intact, despite natural forces way beyond reckoning. And I was not a Herald headline, “Restaurant Captain Goes Down with Ship,” or “Restaurant Owner Found in Yummy Rubble.” All in all, just another day in the restaurant business, I suppose.

2010: A Spice Odyssey

2010-01-17T10:36:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: Think of this brief blog as one of those tall, fancy Lucite peppermills stuffed with multicolored grains of piper nigrum, and think of your brain as the dish that will receive a muted distillation of all these different individual piques. But don't think of the following thoughts as anything spice related. So, my apologies for the misleading title. I just wanted to be the first to come up with the obvious culinary headline we'll be seeing in newsprint for the rest of the year....

Indeed, a new year is upon us, and optimism is on the rise. You can see it in the faces of our nightly guests at Black Trumpet, and--in turn--on the faces of our staff. You can sense it in the tone of dialogue, the gestures of strangers. And, of course, you can see it on our nightly wine sales reports. Granted, this last may be one of the least appreciated of our country's economic indicators. So, if Ben Bernanke is browsing the web and comes across this blog, I hope he'll rethink the metrics and formulae used to gauge the depth of the nation's debt-induced doo-doo by looking at what people are drinking. Denise and I have performed a rudimentary autopsy of high-end wine consumption in the last year, and the results are fascinating.

The cause of death of the pricey wine bottle is obvious, and admittedly there have been sporadic signs of life amid the mourning, but for the most part, value has been the key to wine sales in 2009. What is most interesting to note is that the void in wine sales has been filled by stronger medicine. It seems that, in the second half of 2009, our 80-proof offerings provided significantly more comfort to guests than in previous second halves, although wine still accounts for double the sales of beer and liquor combined. So, while liquor has increased, and wine has ebbed slightly, recent months have shown a noteworthy reversal, leading us to believe that household discretionary income tides are turning.

Perhaps the best indicator of all is a new slot on our by-the-glass list. Since early December, we have featured a truly spectacular wine, available for $24 a glass. First, it was Freemark Abbey, a renowned Napa cabernet from the winemaker's favorite vintage. Now it is Wellington Vineyard's Victory, a stellar Bordeaux blend. This latter is fairly small production, so we'll be moving on in February to another big boy. We introduced higher end glass wines that folks might balk at by the bottle to give everyone of every means a chance to experience some great wines. With that, let me raise an imaginary glass and issue a hearty "welcome back," to high-end wines and the people who (are able to) enjoy them.

If BT liquor has surged over the holidays, it might have something to do with our crack team of mixologists. I feel strongly that our current list of specialty cocktails--which our mixmistress Jody concocted (I can only be credited, or scorned, for naming them)--is without a doubt the best line-up we've had at Black Trumpet. The Lava Lamp is a virtually interactive champagne cocktail that is so mesmerizing to watch one might forget to drink it. The Anti-Occident is my personal favorite, with green tea ginger ale and citrus muddled with gin. And there's the Quincy Alexander, Denise's fave, with quince-infused brandy and cream. Yum!

Two weeks ago, we closed the restaurant for two days so our staff could convene for our annual Holiday Getaway. Dexter's Inn in Sunapee played host for one long, wild night flanked by two days of winter recreation at Mt. Sunapee. Meals were prepared, memories were constructed (and, in some cases, erased), and a good time was had by all. Thank you to the cherished regular customer who sent us on our way to Sunapee with a colossal jug of Patron Silver!

Our restaurant, our staff and our family appear to have weathered what we're now calling the Great Recession, and the world's economic bleeding may well have been staunched by the ligatures of time more than any reactionary policy measures. These things are cyclical--however gratuitous, unnecessary and greed-induced this last deep valley may appear in retrospect--and we are all prone to the natural binging and purging of elements we do not fully understand. One thing, though, that pervades our community organelle in the greater organism of human experience, is the need we have for each other. I hope that, with the evolution of palm-held technology and social media and voice-activated everything, we will retain the obsolescent social medium called conversation. Our wine bar is the kind of venue where conversation still reigns, where ideas exchange, revolutions begin, and friends and lovers forge their bonds.

Stay tuned....more meandering musings to come...

WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE

2009-11-03T12:26:00.001-05:00

I realize this sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky, Pollyanna and Jiminy Cricket of me, but it is a rewarding feeling to get what you wish for. Moreso even when what you get gives birth to something greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s precisely what the recent Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner did for me; a small-scale recurring dream came to life in a very big way, with real people and delicious food and everything, all for a great cause.

For those readers out of our email loop, here’s a brief synopsis of what went down at Berry Hill Farm in Stratham on October 11th:

Having always wanted to host a formal dinner in a barn where local farmers were celebrated for their hard work, I have been frustrated in years past by my lack of time for planning. This last year proved different, as two nationwide organizations with talented planners and experienced administrators came to the fore, converging on our Seacoast area to raise money for a good farm-related cause.

It was late last winter when Leigh from Chefs Collaborative and I started talking about the RAFT Grow Out project, which—at the time—lacked a name and an event. Leigh was looking to make our area one of three New England regions selected to unite farmers and chefs behind the cause of reintroducing native heirloom crops whose future looked anything but bright. Drawing on Gary Nabham's agricultural treatise, Renewing America's Food Traditions, Melissa, Leigh and the others at CC wanted to stimulate growth (and consumer awareness) of regional crops.

In March, Black Trumpet hosted a meeting of farmers and chefs interested in the Grow Out, and Chefs Collaborative distributed seeds to the farmers to grow. Chefs committed to buying the fruits of these plants, and for a moment in time, we had a roomful of committed growers and chefs talking about how to improve the existing farm-to-table system in our area. We could have talked through the night, and many of our frustrations remain, but the cohesion and camaraderie established that day has endured for many of us, and several chefs absent that day have already approached me about being involved next year.

As the spring rolled wet and cold into what should have been summer, Jenny and Michelle at Slow Food USA--a wonderful organization that had done harvest dinners in our area in the past--joined the team and, by June, we had an action plan, a name and a cause to rally behind. The Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner was then assigned to a new hire at Chefs Collaborative, a woman with whom I would soon be speaking on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. Anne Obelnicki: she of the inner city Detroit upbringing and high-profile culinary 'dishternship' at Inn at Little Washington, she who lived in a tent on an organic farm for a season, bearer of numerous degrees and tireless traveler. Anne would become the linchpin of the Barn Dinner planning process.

So it was that Chefs Collaborative and Slow Food took my somewhat ethereal notion of a barn dinner and turned it into a tangible, fun-filled fundraiser that will likely become—yessiree!—an annual event.

On Sunday, October 11th, 2009, the event volunteers (over forty of them!) seemed to descend from the antique rafters of Caroline Robinson's five-story barn. They arrived as early as 9 AM, and they cleaned, decorated, prepped, greeted, poured, cooked, served, cleaned again, washed dishes, and saw to every detail that a formal dinner requires. It seemed like there was little guidance, and that every volunteer knew exactly what to do. Six chefs and their teams prepared incredible food, and all eighty-four guests in attendance (especially the farmers) seemed to appreciate that the imperiled ingredients for each course were locally grown and prepared with much love and forethought.

Even the weather cooperated. Just before guests arrived, I watched my two children, swaying in the amber afternoon light, on rope swings that hung from an ancient tree in front of the barn. They were not unaware of the idyll they represented, and when I asked Eleanor why they had been swinging for so long, she replied, "I would have gotten down sooner, but everybody wanted to take pictures of us."
Self-awareness, I think, is a tremendous strength in a child. Humility will come later.

Taking a tip from my daughter, I can acknowledge that the event was a huge success, dreamlike in its perfect cadence and enhanced by the periodic power outages that cast temporary darkness on the scene. Humility for me came the next day, when I went back to the barn in a state of post-partem depression, to recover some leave-behinds, and I thanked and congratulated resident farmers Josh and Jean, who toiled above and beyond anyone's expectations to prepare and maintain the venue, and then I drove away, solemn and wistful, the first annual Heirloom Barn Dinner filed away as a memory.

As I drove, the refrain in my head came from the famed quipster Theodore Roosevelt. It was a quote I had used in my toast at the Barn Dinner, and its simplicity is still resonating with me today: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

View all the photos online: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blacktrumpet/sets/72157622590696146/

A Call to Farms: Chef's Day Off

2009-08-22T12:37:00.008-04:00

It seems only right that the “Summer of 2009” arrived a month or so behind schedule. This year has been a heap of crap for the most part, what with the relentless, torrential one-two punch of weather and fiscal woes. For us Malletts, it has been a great year for evaluation, Small Business Management 101, and family-oriented stuff that no one really wants to read about. Despite the six-week-long biblical deluge that spanned most of June and July, we have seen periodic suggestions that things might be improving nanofilamentally (not a word, blog cops); we have seen emerging evidence that there is a flickering candle somewhere at the far end of the half-collapsed mine shaft we call 2009. I argue that, for all of the wounded and downtrodden, for all the huddled masses seeking jobs and hope, no one has felt the crush quite like farmers.

My friends in the restaurant industry--few in number but widespread in geography, experience and business-type—are all in the same lifeboat, a vessel which is taking on a lot of water but miraculously not sinking. We chefs are a resilient bunch, accustomed to cuts, burns, violence, anxiety, palpitations, muscle pain and—worst of all—ego-stomping criticism. So it is no surprise that, in this epoch of econoclimatic stress disorder we continue to endure, my friends have sought out supplementary income and contingency plans, some of them consulting, others taking on prep work or catering or—let’s face it—whatever it takes to pay the bills. Still, their grievances can’t measure up to the farmers who have faced months of nonstop rain, wildly fluctuating temperatures, blight, and—in some cases—total crop loss.

I am not writing this blog to whine on my own or anyone else’s behalf, as reflexive and therapeutic as that is for me, but rather to describe my one day off, a relatively cloudless and hot Tuesday in August. I am no Joyce, alas, or even a Leo Bloom for that matter, but I thought this day-in-a-life was worth capturing for those readers who imagine a chef’s “day off” to be something more glamorous. Here goes…

THE PLAN

Although I admit that it was my idea, I can’t say that I remember any moment of epiphany, cognition or decision that led to The Plan. My daughter Eleanor has wanted to expand our humble country home into a full-fledged farm for some time now, and her parents have dissuaded the idea with a number of excuses that have not even begun to take purchase in her slick, obdurate and fast-moving train of thought. I applaud her tenacity, and I confess to running out of defenses against her argument. “Just two goats, Daddy, That’s all I ask” The Plan came about as a last ditch effort to put all the childish arguments to rest, to once and for all quell Eleanor’s desire to convert our placid woodlot to a full-on Waltons-type situation. Once she saw the tremendous work ethic required to maintain farm animals, I predicted, she would come to the shocking realization that farm life was too rugged for a child. She would return to a normal girl’s world of books, dolls and knitting, a safe and uneventful haven free of heavy machinery and poop.

Of course, The Plan—hereafter referred to as “Farm Day”--was doomed to backfire from the get-go. I proceeded anyway, in part because I too harbor visions of a small farm on our property (as long as someone other than I milks, slops, shovels, herds and otherwise cares for the menagerie). Seemingly ignorant to this eventuality, I doggedly forged ahead with Farm Day, the idea of which involved getting up with the sun and piling in the car to the nearest working dairy farm, where our groggy kids would witness the laborious process of milking and then be utterly disgusted by a stableful of pig plop.

FARM DAY: 5:30 AM

I have a cheap alarm clock that possesses its own agenda. If you set it, for example, to awaken at 5:30 AM, it will begin its immutable beeping crescendo at that hour and then, after being squelched with a smack to one of three unlabeled buttons on the top, will revisit the cacophony every ten minutes for a span of time I have yet to ascertain because my solution after three or four reminders is to unplug the mechanical demon and curse myself awake.

So it was on August 4th, a Tuesday, my day of rest. So it also was, incidentally, on Wednesday, August 5th, Thursday, August 6th, and so on ads infinitum and nauseam.
On this special day, however, I managed to rally with a forced smile, as my excited children responded to their “call to farms” efficiently and without complaint, much to my amazement and chagrin.

Even Denise, after working a long double the day before, miraculously rose to the occasion and donned farmwear before the clock struck 6:00. At 6, after hurried efforts at a road breakfast, we scrambled out into the sunrise with no clear agenda and an almost palpable excitement.

Brookford Farm in Rollinsford is a friendly place, the kind of farm where we felt comfortable popping in unannounced as the sun crested over the Salmon Falls River, the cool grey light turning blue and warm in visible gradients before our eyes. Luke was there, corralling the cows into the concrete-and-steel sixpen built for high-octane milking. Certain hefty and headstrong heifers required full-body tackles and smacks to the haunches, which we watched with delight, offering help with the full knowledge that we had no idea how or where to jump in. We were reduced to voyeurism, as Luke turned on the suction pump and hooked up the cows to plastic lactoreceptors, which piped the fresh, raw, warm milk to a vast cistern in the adjacent room.

For those unfamiliar with Luke and Caterina Mahoneys’ arrangement, the youthful and happy farming couple lease the farm from an exceptionally benevolent and hard-working woman named Mrs. Aikens. Mrs. Aikens has owned the land and the structures on it for time immemorial, but Luke and Caterina have been farming there for the last few years. The operation has burgeoned in that time to thirty or so head of cattle, countless chickens, and a phalanx of hogs.

Luke seemed pleasantly surprised, but ultimately unfazed, by our arrival. We parted ways after the second load of bessies filled the pens. He apologized for his tacit nature, yet he volunteered plenty of farm hospitality and wisdom, and demonstrated the kind of efficiency only an expert can.

6:30 AM
We moseyed over to the pig poke for slop time, and we were treated to a glorious feast of grains and groans. The pigsty looked and smelled just like a pigsty, which I was certain the kids would find repugnant beyond words. Naturally, The Plan--like all well-laid plans--had been destined to backfire, so I was not totally shocked to see my children walking right up to the sty and patting putrid (albeit incredibly cute) pig noses without holding their own noses even once. In fact, I moved on from the stench trench well before it even crossed the kids’ minds. Eventually, we all toured the grounds of Brookford Farm, including the free-range mobile poultry unit on the hill across the street, where all kinds of oviparous fowl played around a vehicle that was half wagon, half funhouse. Happy chickens, as we know, lay the most delicious eggs. (Since our fisher friend came and raided our henhouse at home, leaving a horror scene behind, we have only Trumpet left, a coppery black sexlink that only occasionally drops an egg.)

7:00 AM
One of the best examples of how hard work and good soil are all you need to produce giant, delicious vegetables is Peter Allen’s plot in Mrs. Aiken’s field adjacent to Brookford Farm. This adjunct operation, sublet by the Mahoneys, has allowed Peter Allen, from whom I have sourced chickens for the Black Trumpet menu for a couple of years, to raise crops for a CSA that has helped finance some of his poultry costs. There is a lot of mutual backscratching that happens between farmers, just as we chefs share resources, including local pigs, purveyors and even staff. It ‘s the Hillarian village model working as it was intended.

A walk through Peter Allen’s crops, which span the length of two football fields laid out end-to-end, is like a walk through a dwarf rain forest. Rows of dinosaur kale seemed aptly named as my children disappeared among the enormous leaves. Collard greens and kohlrabi towered over plump cabbages and all manner of brassicas. Cows have grazed in these fields, Peter later explained, for decades, leaving their fecund deposits to fertilize the long-fallow meadow, thereby making it the perfect substrate for cultivating vegetables. We snagged a few fava beans for sampling (they were incredible!), and then went to meet Peter’s birds.

7:45 AM
After a jaunt back to the fields behind Brookford Farm, we met up with Peter himself to tour the undulating fields by the banks of the river where his chickens
enjoy one of the best views around. The cages designed by Peter are, like his philosophy, inspired by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia. Mr. Salatin has become an outspoken spokesman for the revolution. (I use the term revolution in its most literal sense here, meaning a return to the beginning, the way things were intended to be). Having authored many passionate treatises and mentored hundreds of poultry farmers around the country, Salatin has created a movement toward pasture-raised birds devoid of chemicals, artificial feed or cruel confinement.

Following the Salatin model, Allen’s birds graze on meadow grasses in wheeled, open-bottomed cages that allow ample room to move. When they have depleted the grass supply beneath the cages, they are moved a few feet along to a fresh patch. When the pesky mink and foxes leave them alone, the birds lead normal chicken lives. Following the aforementioned model, happy chickens make yummier poultry.

9:00 AM
I have had the distinct luxury of working with Gabe Balkus, an ambitious young man so like the 21-year-old me that he has been referred to as my Mini-me, for the entire lifespan of Black Trumpet. He has joined me on a few foraging outings, exhibiting the same geekish curiosity and eagerness that got him the job as garde manger and dishwasher, a post he has since served with total dedication and a mighty sunny countenance to boot. His role has evolved, but not as fast as either of us might wish. As assistant baker and pastry chef, he has shown great promise. When I invited him to join me for a speed-forage in the woods near my house, he accepted with the full knowledge that neither he nor I are what you would call “morning people.”

So, there he was, groggy but bighearted, at my house at 9:00 in the morning, trash bag in hand. We sprayed ourselves heavily with deet and ventured out with Moxie, our hyperactive Bernese mountain dog, into the bug-infested woods, where we found a few handfuls of chanterelles and various boletes over the span of an hour and a half. We were too early for black trumpets, but we split our winnings and parted ways.

10:30 AM, still Tuesday
So now the clock said mid-morning, but it felt like evening. If all days started at six, I could surely conquer the world while still having time for my job, family, house and gardens. A quick reality check reminds me that days can only start at six if they don’t end at one-thirty in the morning. Ambition is so dependent on insomnia.

12:30 PM
After Denise built a delicious lunch comprised of mostly locally farmed produce, the kids and I hopped in the car and raced to Center Strafford, where we had a date to tour Nelson Farm with Anne Obelnicki of Chef’s Collaborative. I cannot say enough in this blog about Chef’s Collaborative, whose Boston office has built inestimable credibility and assembled an enormous cadre of supporters over the years. This year, Anne has come on board to give our area (the New Hampshire Seacoast and vicinity) support as we take our successful but underfinanced model of local, sustainable, quality farming to a higher, more visible level.

Like Anne, I was sad to find that she and the Malletts were the extent of the preorganized tour group. Sean and Sarah, the couple who work the Nelson Farm fields and produce a remarkable array of organic and sustainable produce in a smallish space, have also managed to raise an infant (often seen napping at Portsmouth Farmers’ Market), not an easy feat in the best of times, but in this economy, I salute them. When they are not raising a family and farming the land, they also manage to cater large functions out of a truck that Sean picked up a year ago, Thoughts of them take me back to cheffing with newborns, an exercise that should be reserved for the young or foolish or both.

The tour began with Cormac clambering on an antique tractor, which proved to be a great photo op, followed by a walking tour of the greenhouse and fields. Although the variety of crops succeeding in the suddenly torrid August heat would have impressed me enough, the fact that Sean powers the sizable greenhouse with used fry oil is truly heroic.

As we were leaving Nelson Farm, Sean pulled some fresh veggies from various plants and handed them to the kids. Eleanor and Cormac ate the greenhouse tomatoes like apples, right there on the spot, juices dribbling down their chins. I thanked Sean and Anne and headed home with the kids for a locally farmed dinner followed by a farmer’s early bedtime for all. When I asked Eleanor if she still wanted to have farm animals, she replied, “Ooooh, yeah, baby! More than ever.” Backfire accomplished.

EPILOGUE

Shortly after Farm Day, Eleanor plucked a few leaves of wood-sorrel from the periphery of our backyard and popped them in her mouth as a treat. “Eleanor,” I exclaimed, “we humans can’t eat clover like cows!” To wit, she replied, “Daddy, it’s not clover; it’s wood sorrel.” I stand corrected, my heart bursting with pride. Of course, sorrel and clover--both in abundance in our yard (not your plastic emerald Scott’s Lawngard kind of yard, obviously)—do make excellent fodder for domesticated ungulates, too. Maybe Eleanor will get her wish one day, maybe even in the not-too-distant future. If we ever do upgrade to dairy farming and animal husbandry, I now believe we (or at least the kids) have what it takes to maintain the herd.

Stay tuned for upcoming blogs:

Dining Criticism 101: A Former Critic’s Review of His Own Restaurant

The Autumn Harvest Barn Dinner

2009-03-14T09:22:00.001-04:00

AD AGRICOLA PER ASPERA

Thank gods (and Ceres, specifically) for spring, eh? As the icy white fist of winter finally loosens its grip on our blue-lipped world, we turn to Nature’s most welcome promise—that days will now warm and expand, granting our shivering skin a hint of the sun’s hot breath to come, and reintroducing the color green to March’s neutral palette. No matter your regard for New England winter, this spring is sure to bring to your face a mile-wide smile like no year in recent memory. If we can’t count on fiscal recovery right away, we at least have spring to look forward to, right? Right? So go stick your fingers in some cold loam and polish off your rusty trowels. In New England, one earns spring.

For my part, I have been busily dreaming of seeds, soil and sun since the opening days of ’09. I met with local farmers Garen and Josh in late January to discuss seed purchases for this coming summer, particularly as they pertain to our Black Trumpet menu. Every January, in exchange for feeding the farmers, I get their attention in one finite space for a finite moment to exchange ideas about what can be grown, harvested, cooked and eaten. It’s a necessary break for all three of us from shoveling snow and staring out into the frozen void.

So, as we sat down in the wine bar in the midst of Sunday Snowstorm number Seventeen of the winter, we three lads discussed potential crops, possible failures and shortcomings, strengths and weaknesses, and many other not-so-manly concessions and confessions. The two farmers learned about my quirky fondness for kohlrabi, scented geranium, agastache foeniculum, red-fleshed potatoes and purslane, among other oddities. And I learned from them about the difficulties of growing spring brassicas in a pesticide-free environment.

The cast of this tete-a-tete, excluding the narrator: Garen Heller, a local institution in his own right, has been working the land at Back River Farm in Dover since I have been in the business in Portsmouth (eleven years!). Josh Jennings, a clever and well-spoken organic cultivator, along with his adorable and equally articulate partner, Jean, are very hard-working farmers who have made a huge name for themselves and Meadow’s Mirth Farm on both the farmer’s market and direct-to-restaurant wholesale circuits. We agreed on a few things that each of the farmers already excel at, and Garen and Josh agreed to take on some new crops as well, if only to test the waters (using Black Trumpet patrons and farmer’s marketgoers as guinea pigs).

The next day, my own seed catalogs arrived in the mail. As anachronistic as it is to be looking at pictures of midsummer fruits in the bowels of January, I derive a very pleasurable dose of hope from those little mags. I remember getting pretty excited about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue when I was a teen. Now, perhaps sadly, pictures of heirloom Thelma Sanders squash have replaced those of Paulina Porizkova in a monokini as my harbingers of spring.

After browsing four or five catalogs over the course of a few days, I finally placed my annual order, this year using only High Mowing Seeds in Vermont. I like the grass-roots operation and the seed-saving imperative that separates High Mowing Seeds from the competition, and we all appreciate the importance of spending a few more cents for a packet of seeds that has been saved from the previous year’s crop and cared for without ever coming into contact with fertilizers, pesticides or any other artificial hazard, n’est-ce pas?

My Dad—and countless other observers—will look at my gardens again this year and say things like, “Why don’t you just kill the bugs that are choking your garden?” Or, “If you use this powder, your plants will produce twice as much fruit.” No, I won’t do it, I tell them, and I’ll happily have the most threadbare and sullen little raised beds in the county if that’s the price I have to pay for using organic practices. To look at me, you might not see hippie (thinning hair won’t allow it), but on the inside, I am constantly hugging the earth and all that it gives us, even at the cost of violating my softcore suburban punk-rock past.

I recently met with Jenny Isler, a local organic gardening guru and supervisor of our Strawbery Banke Community Garden. Black Trumpet has always had a bed at Strawbery Banke, and members of my kitchen crew have always volunteered to plant, weed, and maintain that bed. This year, Sous Chef Mike—a really great guy—and Rounds Cook Carrie—a really great gal, are taking control of the garden, in part because I wasn’t obsessive-compulsive enough last year to map the placement of every seed in the raised bed. So far, I’m taking the hostile takeover of the garden pretty well, but I do hope Mike and Carrie will let me weed periodically as a gesture of goodwill. Something Jenny said to me has been resonating since we sat down: economic sustainability is the linchpin of ecologic sustainability. In other words, if the goal is to construct a locally sustainable farm-to-chef connection, the price has got to be right, especially when the purse strings are tight.

As an endnote (I hate to say “appendix,” because a pinkie-sized vestigial organ uselessly occupying valuable human gut space does nothing to promote further inquiry), we recently hosted a really cool event at our restaurant. On Sunday, March 8, Chef’s Collaborative and Slow Food conducted a seed-saving symposium of seacoast chefs and growers (alliteration, meet sibilance). The idea of the event was to get farmers and chefs together to brainstorm a “grow out” of heirloom seeds native to the Northeast, many of which are in danger of being hybridized or eliminated altogether from the agricultural family tree. At the end of the meeting, each farmer received a grocery bag full of seeds for the grow out. What this means to the consumer is that, soon, the farmer’s markets and restaurants will be featuring Thelma Sanders squash, Boothby Blond cucumber and cranberry shelling beans.

My plea for this year (besides the one that cries for everyone to remember that eating out at small, independent restaurants supports communities and keeps restaurants around) is to ask everyone I know to put a New England heirloom seed or two in their garden, even if they don’t have a garden. What you grow is part of who we are. It’s kind of like “You are what you eat,” but it’s more like “You eat what you are.”

Oh, and by the way, Happy 2nd Birthday, Black Trumpet! Thank you to all who have helped us outlive the average American restaurant.

Calling for the End of EDS

2009-02-10T10:52:00.003-05:00

Notice: This will be my last blog dealing with economic matters. I promise.

It has only now dawned on me that my innocently self-indulgent blogging days are behind me. No longer is my wife my only prodder, my only barometer for letting me know when the time has arrived to post a new blog. Now an internal alarm starts nagging after a month goes by since the last entry. A twitch ensues. And then the guilt sets in. This condition is worsened by a new sign of life in the blogosphere: hounding blogfriends.

After a month or two passed without a posting, the phone calls and emails started. Friends observed that I haven’t been blogging, so am I ok? I tell them, yes, relax, everything is ok except the economy, which is only as awful and real as each of us wants it to be. Winter is snowball season, so Portsmouth’s typical winter downturn tends to snowball out of control when times are tough. I know ‘times are tough’ is a trite understatement. I know that, yet I feel that history is rich with basilisk hiccups that far outstink this one, so why should we be groaning louder than ever before? Maybe we’re not; maybe I’ve just never tried to run a small business that relies on discretionary income in a recession.

I admit to having marveled at the number of responses to my last blog (many of them fomented by my close friend, former boss, regular inspiration and talented chef Jeff Tenner), and I may have felt a little daunted about the idea of people not only reading, but commenting on my ramblings. So, on a few early morning and late night occasions in January, I sat down to write a new entry, and each time I froze. The freezing, if not the result of trepidation, can only be attributed—like every other anxiety right now—to this Dickensian winter of our discontent. Clearly, I must have pulled myself up by the clogstraps, because here I am writing about writing, so here goes…

I have decided to coin the term “econoclimatic distress syndrome,” or EDS, to this winter’s insulting one-two punch of moribund economy and excessively abusive weather.
Perhaps those of us currently suffering from EDS can get some tax relief or, better yet, a percentage of the new President’s Stimulus Package. I'd settle for a free set of winter wiper blades. Or, perhaps best of all, a year’s supply of prescription pain killers. (Speaking of Stimulus Package and pain killers, by the way, shame on anyone who hasn’t capitalized on our three-course, nineteen-dollar Stimulus Package, or on our veritable pharmacy of pain killers we call the Wine Bar. This gratuitous plug was brought to you by the same guy who cringes at self-promotion--a sign of the times.)

Here’s my econoclimatic snapshot of the last six months:
Credit—the great American promise—buckles. Clouds form overhead. Fuel prices skyrocket. People stay home and seethe. Temperatures plummet. Snow falls on seethers. The snowball is headed for the bridge of the economic nose. America’s middle class loses its savings. The snowball grows. Investors panic. Suddenly, the snowball effect has created an abominable snowman. Jobs disappear. Ice storm! Recession. More snow. More panic.

Pessimism and fear are unhealthy bedfellows, codependents on the verge of emotional implosion. This is the cycle we fall into now. We can sit around in a dim room counting our departed riches, subsequent losses and current debts, or we can begin to build the future. What are our individual and collective values as a society moving forward? How can we best pull ourselves out of this mess with the least amount of damage?

People have said to me, “Thank you for keeping your restaurant’s identity throughout this recession.” It’s not that I have calculated that too much, other than refusing to offer twofer coupons or buy cheaper goods. In fact, if anything, I want to dispel the identity many associate with Black Trumpet—that it is an expensive restaurant suited for special occasions. The second part is true, but not to the exclusion of the everyman or the everyday. Our wine bar, a former ship’s chandlery literally dripping with proletarian history, requires a certain amount of loyal, local occupancy in order to ensure its happiness. I know it’s weird to personify a room in a building, irrespective of the building’s history, but I can’t help feeling that way. It really talks to you. Even before that second glass of cabernet. Trust me. So, for the spirit of the building’s sake, I want to appeal to the masses right now and remind them that they can come to my restaurant, sit upstairs in the Wine Bar and sip a goblet of something they find delicious without spending much money.

Back in November, I began to worry seriously about this economy, everyone’s prospects for survival, and the state of the world in general. In December, I turned the other cheek, and then the other cheek got smacked around pretty good, too. So now, in 2009, I’m coming out swinging, with smiles tattooed on both hands, jaw clenched, and fists flying. I’m bracing for the blow, but I’m not going to stop fighting.

Hope is everywhere, thank God. It’s on the face of the man whose singular, principled ambition is to get our nation back on its feet. It’s in the eyes of my incredibly adaptive children who don’t ask why their providers eke out such a Spartan existence for them. It’s in the less frigid air that has begun to swirl down the Piscataqua and up onto the snowmelt of Ceres Street. It’s in the hearts of everyone who understands the cataclysm-catharsis cycle of society and nature as a whole. So please join me in summoning all the gods there are to look down on this crazy, shut-in winterland on the rocky western cusp of the Atlantic: recognize our toil, forgive us our greed, give us strength to crack open our shutters and let in the new air of spring, and give us renewed hope in this season of rebirth.

A few more concrete reasons for renewed hope:

A new Black Trumpet menu featuring lamb shanks and other almost-spring foodstuffs. Mmmm, lamb shanks…

My forthcoming blog about the real “first sign of spring”: the arrival of seed packets in the mail.

Congress’ approval of Obama’s massive spending package.

Our next wine dinner, sometime in April, featuring James Haller, chef of Blue Strawbery, back in the kitchen where he pioneered American cuisine in the seventies.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for eating. Hope to see you soon at 29 Ceres St.

Chef Rant, Black Friday, 2008

2008-12-01T17:51:00.001-05:00

Okay, I’m thankful for many things, but come on now….

Three occurrences have prompted this blog. And, yes, it has been too
long since my last confession. Sorry, blogreaders, but these tough
times have demanded more of us small business owners than ever
before. Writing continues to be a necessary outlet for me, and
though I usually resist the urge to pontificate or lash out, that
resistance is growing weaker by the day lately.

Perceived injustice has always fascinated me. Outrage comes more
easily for some people, and these people tend to have high ideals and
expectations of others. Many such souls may have felt shunned or
disenfranchised by the status quo for one reason or another. I have
been through periods of angst in my life and rebelled against
authorities and railed against policies I did not understand and done
dumb stuff I have later regretted. But I have always weighed my
perceptions of justice in a greater perspective. In school, essays
on comparative ethics by Bertrand Russell made me question whether
any one perception of justice or set of values is absolutely
correct. In one class, I remember a debate about cannibalism. Is it
right for our tribe (homeless Eurocentric Western Judao-Christian
soldiers) to intervene in another tribe’s ritual because we find it
wantonly barbaric? Was our great nation not built on this principle,
at the cost of uncountable native lives? How are the Mayflower
sailors, religious missionaries and Genghis Khan different?
Discuss. Meanwhile, I’m feeling a little outraged at the imbalance
of justice, unequal distribution of wealth, and mass confusion
befalling American holiday shoppers today.

Okay, here’s my beef. Three things happened on Black Friday that
should serve as mountainous neon billboards for all of us to see. A
WalMart employee on Long Island was trampled to death by surging
masses of rabid holiday shoppers. There was a lethal gunfight
between two shoppers in a California Toys-R-Us. And, virtually no
one walked the streets of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The third news item may seem less significant than the previous two,
and of course it is. But as a business owner in a normally
sustainable and relentlessly charming little seaside hamlet, I could
not help but mourn the loss of business in our town (and in my
restaurant, specifically). The day after Thanksgiving, whose
nickname “Black Friday” refers to the first day of the year retail
shops see a profit, should (and usually do) witness gay merrymaking,
public displays of generosity and Capra-esque messengers of holiday
cheer. What it should not witness is Box Store Campers and the
Storming of the Best Deal. I just coined a cool phrase; is anyone
still reading? Get it? Storming of the Best Deal. If you are out
there listening, let me know if you think this spontaneous turn of
phrase is as cool as I think it is. OK, enough. So, violence at
what cost and for what cause? Someone’s life for a limited edition
Wii or X-Box. Shameful.

Fear. We all feel it. We are surrounded by it. We are encouraged
to confront (and therefore augment) it. We wear it like a black
mantle and cower under it until the hobgoblins of worldwide economic
collapse go back in the closet of our imaginations.

There is a Malthusian argument to be made about all this burdensome
phobia going around. In these dire times, our excesses will be
trimmed, weaker competition will disappear, the strong will survive,
and we will emerge all the better for having suffered a little.
Surely that’s a painfully valid viewpoint, but it’s not very human
now, is it? And this being the season of compassion and giving, we
should probably put our selfish fears aside and get out there and
live a normal life.

All of this to say that we Black Trumpeters are pitching to you, the
general populace, a concept that I think makes sense. Every Sunday
through Thursday during December, we will extend our Flight Night
Tasting Menu concept but gear it more toward the soup and sandwich
crowd. Denise and I are constantly battling the perception that
Black Trumpet is an expensive restaurant, when in reality our prices
are reasonable, our portions generous, and the overall value
excellent. Our average menu item is $14 for Christmas’ sake.

Please take note that nowhere in this blog do I mention that a gift
certificate to Black Trumpet makes the perfect holiday gift. Which,
of course it does.

Until next time, eat local, buy local, be local. Your community
needs you just as much as you need it.

Happy holidays from all of us at Black Trumpet.

Hindsight is 40/40

2008-09-01T21:37:00.005-04:00

Where were we? Oh yes, the devious machinations of Denise's mind. I have been gently hounded by more than a few guests at Black Trumpet in recent weeks, some pleading for more details of the birthday getaway, some merely inquiring as to its outcome. For those few but devoted readers, I hereby give you the potentially anticlimactic details you seek:

The hour-and-a-half plane ride (on JetBlu of course, though I fancied it the last flight of the Concorde), smooth and snack-free, featured two notable occurrences.

First, the details of our secretive dinner plans were unfolded with methodical iciness by the ice queen herself. We were to dine at Blue Hill. Not Momufoku. Not Per Se. Not any of the other obvious choices of spectacular food spectacles in New York. But Blue Hill. How could this be, I wondered? The name--unethnic, unpretentious, unheard of--evoked more mystery in its simplicity than the manifold and multihued veils of Sheherazade. Sort of like Black Trumpet, I suppose. It turns out, that was the point.

The second thing that happened on the plane was a seemingly random but not insignificant moment of foreshadowing: the balding head of a familiar male figure occupied the paperback-sized flatscreen on the seat in front of me. In a sit-down one-on-one interview with a New York Times editor, Michael Pollan gesticulated and opined on issues probably near and dear to me. Because I hadn't sprung for the cheap headphones, I had no idea what the talking heads were talking about. I really admire Michael Pollan. That's an understatement.

Allow me an explanatory digression here. Fifteen-plus years ago, Michael Pollan wrote a few essays and reports in the New York Times that made me cut clippings, something I swore I'd never do based on overexposure to parental newspaper scraps as a child. Since then, Mr. Pollan has written at least two books every human being should read. Botany of Desire, published I think in the mid-Nineties, takes a fascinating and well-researched look at four plants that have changed the world. It's a great and awakening read on its own; I recommend it to everyone. But his most recent effort, The Omnivore's Dilemma, is a must-read not only for its entertainment and literary value, but also for the timely and imperative message it wields, thankfully without a moral-heavy hand. It asks questions I have often pondered, and proposes some interesting methods of addressing these questions. The questions themselves are too heady for me to address in a silly chef's blog, but I hope people try to glean a few good ideas from Mr. Pollan, who has obviously put more thought into where food comes from and how we as Americans view the meaning of what we are eating than anyone we are ever likely to meet. End of digression.

So, after landing, shuttling by subway to the bottom of Manhattan Island, and surfacing with our bags somewhere on or near Canal Street, I--feeling completely oversaturated by surprises--ascended the escalator in the best-kept secret of all New York hotels to find Denise's sister, Cheryl, and her husband, Alan, hiding in the lobby behind newspapers. NOTE: this final surprise may not seem to all readers like the ideal twist in a surprise fortieth birthday party, but I need to make it known that my South Carolinian sister- and brother-in-law are the best dining companions you could ever ask for. They moan and gesticulate over bites of food. They laugh and cheer and fist-pound and celebrate food at the highest level of human appreciation. Alan, being of good Irish storytelling stock, spins a fine filthy yarn to boot, while Cheryl exudes the joie de vivre of a smitten American lass in the greasy grasp of her first Parisian lover. A little graphic, but it's true.

Being too early to check in, we hit the streets in search of Singaporean cuisine, of course. On the plane, Denise had mentioned that our first meal was up for grabs, unplanned, my choice. So I had picked Singapore, a challenge that could only be met by New York and Singapore itself. Five or six blocks into Chinatown, after walking and letting our hunger build to a man-size pique, I spotted a place called Singapore Cafe or Cafe Singapore, I can't remember. We ate a lot at around 2:00, many plates of incredible food, paired with Tiger Lager, Singapore's underappreciated contribution to the world of beer. The usual Indonesian suspects--fish cakes and satay--made an appearance at our table, but two stand-outs were the spicy strips of inexplicably bouncy and crispy squid and the dry curry-rubbed beef dish we ended with. Everything was perfect, and we all agreed it was an auspicious start to our eating our way through the Big Apple.

After walking off lunch, we shopped and napped and prepared for the next round, The Monday Room, my choice for a between-meals meal with lots of good wine. The Monday Room is an L-shaped dark little bar tucked behind the host stand of one of NYC's trendier restaurants, Public. Backstory: Denise and I had strolled down Elizabeth Street on a trip to the city just before we opened Black Trumpet and discovered a Renaissance of restaurants that reminded us of our little brick block on Ceres Street. Public was one of those restaurants.

In The Monday Room, we were treated to profound wine knowledge, our server being more versed in wine than most sommeliers. We ate some wonderful food, not least of which were the fresh chopped radishes with sea salt that arrived shortly after we did. Denise opted for the Premium Flight of white wines, which culminated with a Pouilly-Fuisse that knocked her socks off. I enjoyed a manzanilla sherry with snail ravioli followed by foie gras and numerous wines which were all delivered with a story, presumably true. Our very good friend Jay, a sousaphone-playing, hula-hooping lawyer, joined us to enrich our experience even further.

We barely had time to do a quick change at the hotel, sip a bottle of wine Cheryl and Alan had brought, and get out to make our 10PM reservations at Blue Hill.

Perhaps as a sort of shot in the arm, Denise had chosen a place in New York, the indisputable cultural capital of the New World, that most closely resembled (both in philosophy and in appearance) our own humble bistro in Portsmouth. On the plane from Portland, as I read the printed material she had downloaded, I learned of a chef named Dan Barber who attempts to source all his ingredients from his own farm just upstate from the city. I learned of a guy who has achieved something that many of us chefs only dream of.

We arrived on time at Blue Hill to find a bottle of sparkling wine from Long Island waiting for us. Evidently, Denise's exhortations that the surprises were done bore no resemblance to the truth. It turns out that Tom and Scott, great friends and owners of Lindbergh's Crossing, had bought the bottle as a surprise of their own. Tricky devils, those two. Meanwhile, we were informed, our staff--headed by Julian, our wine steward and resident good guy--had pitched in for a bottle of wine and, upon learning that they were trumped by Tom and Scott, opted to put their contribution toward our meal. Incredibly sweet and thoughtful.

So, we sat down and were treated to a truly wonderful server who asked our permission to remove the menus from our table. "Chef Barber," she explained, was "in the kitchen and would like to cook" for us. So away went the menus. Shortly afterward, we forfeited our wine list as well, effectively putting the sometimes-awkward ordering process entirely in the hands of the chef and the delightfully conversant and upbeat wine steward. The latter walked us through a few of her pilgrimages to wine regions, many of which resulted in unusual bottles on her list. We were impressed and at times wowwed with her selections.

As far as the food goes, suffice to say Chef Barber celebrates the purity of seasonal ingredients like few (if any) chefs whose food I've eaten. Our first bite, multicolored and textured tiny heirloom tomatoes impaled on nails and warmed with a hint of salt, was the very essence of tomato. We moved on to fresh-shucked lima beans in a pork stock reduction that I will dream about for a long time. Turkey, cooked sous-vide, was unlike any turkey I've tasted. Every flavor was buoyed by the very essence of itself--I don't know how else to put it. We chefs can get bogged down in technique, sometimes relegating the vitality and complexity of a single fresh ingredient to the background. Shame on us for that, and good for Chef Barber understanding the full profile of each product he works with.

Somewhere in the middle of our meal, I looked at the table next to us and noticed the muted talking head from our plane ride. Michael Pollan and what appeared to be his family were enjoying a meal much like the one the chef had prepared for us. I mused about how my idolatry had evolved in twenty years. Here I am, sitting down to my fortieth birthday dinner, gazing in adulation at a tall, bespectacled man with a mortician's build and pallor. No Robert Plant or Harrison Ford, this Michael Pollan, but as good a hero as a man at forty can have, I'd argue.

After the meal, we thanked the chef and walked out into the night many blocks back to our hotel. The next day, we sipped espresso in Little Italy, took in an exhibit of human corpses where the Fulton Fish Market used to be, and then lunched at Balthazar, still the institution it deserves to be.

On the way out of town, we picked up our poodle-in-law from doggy day care, packed into the minivan and headed back to our New England world, but not before stopping to pick up some bagels for the kitchen crew.

This is how I spent the forty hours of my fortieth birthday. I am incredibly lucky to have such a wickedly clever wife. Thanks to all who contributed their own skills of deception to this process.

40 hours for 40 years

2008-08-08T23:59:00.004-04:00

I am posting this blog for those readers who know my wife, Denise. They know her as a funny, sweet, trustworthy, understanding, patient and wise individual--the type of person you might confide in or leave your children with for no apparent reason. She is beguiling and beaming and beautiful...blah blah blah.

What people don't realize is that she is also capable of conniving, duplicitous deceit. She can lie to her husband with an apathetic shrug and con an entire restaurant staff into complicity with her nefarious schemes. Oh yes, she may wear a veil of sweetness, but beneath it lies a wicked visage of trickery.

Here's how I recently came to be the weak and wobbly pawn in her masterful, crafty endgame.

Last week, I innocently agreed to cook some salmon for an event to raise awareness of the Tongass Refuge in Alaska and its delicious denizens. When I reported to Denise my plans, she replied, "Nope. You have to cancel." After a brief, futile argument, I realized that she was up to something, and that I should not meddle in areas I do not fully understand. Of course, the back of my mind was whispering to me that I had a 40th birthday coming up, and that I especially shouldn't meddle for fear that I wouldn't live to see that birthday.

Turns out, I did the right thing by delegating--at the last minute, sadly--the salmon event to our server/host/day manager (and talented food writer and erstwhile chef) Paula. To have missed the surprise birthday of a lifetime for the admittedly sad salmon situation would have been a pity indeed.

On Thursday morning, the rooster crowed extra early and Denise and I were off (I knew at this point that we were going somewhere and that I wouldn't return until late Friday night.) We hopped in our car and took a northerly tack, leading me to believe that my wife had planned an overnight trip to Ogunquit or Portland, perhaps even Rockland. But then why were we up at the crack of dawn, slamming coffee and scurrying about to leave by 7:15? We pulled into a parking lot at the Wells train and bus terminal only to find my father waiting with some luggage in an unmarked van. (Alright, it was his forest green minivan, but "unmarked" lends the story a little intrigue, eh?)

We drove past Ogunquit and Kennebunk, my groggy but sincere line of questioning meeting only crooked deception as we flew by two possible destinations. As we pulled into the Portland jetport, I began to expand my range of possible destinations to include JetBlue's repertoire--which in my fertile imagination included Napa Valley, Bali, Paris and Marrakesh. Denise had been hounding me for months about making her a top ten list of restaurants I'd like to eat at. ...chapter 2 coming soon (I have to smoke some fish right now!)

Why I Took Your Favorite Dish Off the Menu

2008-05-07T12:40:00.001-04:00

Before you get mad at me, let me say a few things.

Complacency is bad. I truly believe that. Routine numbs us, mind and body; it narrows the aperture of our experiential lens, shutting out light we need to guide and feed us. Complacency is a UV-reflecting gray bubble of protection we build around ourselves, yet most accidents happen at home, near home, on the job, or in our cars. Those are the venues of routine, right? So be safe, for your own sake, and break with routine. Here are thirteen lucky suggestions from me, the chef-owner, family-guy, and thrillseeker emeritus:

1. Go to Paris for the weekend. If the Euro is too strong, which it is, go to Quebec City or Montreal.
2. Splurge on one great meal you will never forget.
3. Drive an hour in the direction of your choice. Get out of the car. Do something there. Drive back. (If you’re in the Seacoast area, avoid a due east heading.)
4. Spend twenty dollars more on a bottle of wine than you usually do. Taste the difference.
5. Go to a church service of a religion you do not believe in.
6. Visit that place you’ve always wondered about.
7. Volunteer at a nursing home, hospital or prison.
8. Ride your bike to work one day.
9. Plant seeds and water them. When they grow up, give your friends the fruits of your labor.
10. Learn a new language. Speak it badly, but speak it.
11. Go for a walk in a “bad” part of town. Bring your cell phone, if you’re scared.
12. Try the food you most dislike again, just in case you don’t dislike it anymore.
13. Sky dive, scuba dive, race cars, climb mountains, explore caves, dance, sing and educate yourself.

No school can do these things for us. No job can provide access to all these avenues of experience. We have to access them ourselves. So do it, as they say at Nike.

In the end, we should come back to what is important to us, but to experience the most out of life should be the fundamental desire of everyone. Obviously, it is not. So, adventurers unite. Preferably at Black Trumpet. Our new Spring Menu is coming soon!

Sorry for the diatribe. The above philosophy guides menu-making for me. Seasons bring new weather, new crops, and—for me—new ideas. Some past ideas that have pleased a great many people have already resurfaced at Black Trumpet. Over time, others will evanesce and reappear when their season calls for them. But with my unquenchable thirst for knowledge, my biological predilection for change, and our customers’ collective response to menu changes we have undergone thus far, I will continue to lure leery traditionalists with new dishes, get them hooked, and then remove them, not out of malice, but out of respect for ingredients and the seasons where they belong.

So, when faced with a dish coming off the menu--like the famous radicchio salad, for example--may I boldly suggest that, rather than mourn its loss, you might try a new dish. Broader horizons make bigger sunsets. Oooh, bumper sticker! Bumper sticker!

See you soon,

Evan

P.S. – We just took our first vacation as restaurant owners—Denise and I with our dynamic offspring duo—to the southernmost tip of the East Coast. The Everglades and Florida Keys were wonderful, but the best part of our trip was that our kitchen—under the leadership of Sous Chef Mike Piergrossi—and our dining room—headed up as always by lovely Lennie Blace Holt—ran as well without us as it did with us. We are very proud parents to return and find our one-year-old well cared for. Thanks again to all our staff for being so incredibly dedicated and caring.

Spring Blog 08: Let them eat rhubarb!

2008-03-21T12:42:00.000-04:00

I recently had a conversation with Lauren, who has brought to our Black Trumpet kitchen her own docile demeanor and gorgeous culinary stylings, about the antsiness we chefs get at this time of year. Around here, Spring is a fat promise of green things to come. Mud notwithstanding, the world reemerges from beneath its snowy veil with colors unseen since November. Yet, here in the Seacoast area, Spring’s local bounty won’t result in ramps, fiddleheads and rhubarb for another month at least. The fiddleheads, nettles and greengage plums featured on our refreshing new Spring menu are coming from far afield, unfortunately. But soon, these items—along with ramps, morel mushrooms and early radishes—will push through the frosty New England mud and fulfill the promise of Spring.

In this little hamlet, where callus-handed, hardy fisherfolk once laid the foundation for our cozy village, Spring often enters with a whimper. Last year, on our opening night at Black Trumpet, it came with a blizzard. The neighborhood die-hards who still support us showed up in force. This year, in tune with Puxatawny Phil’s forecast, Spring enters with harsh winds, freezing temps and plenty of residual snow (in our yard at home, a quinzee on our deck is currently housing the 75-pound lamb we will serve to staff and their families on Easter Sunday). I like that Black Trumpet was born during the week of the Spring Equinox. I like that the anniversary of that day will always coincide with the season we associate with rebirth. That’s what I want the kitchen to be about, too: rebirth of creative ideas, rebirth of dormant ingredients, emergent seedlings in cold loam.

Speaking of cold loam, our current menu offers an arugula and dandelion salad in place of the usual Back River Farm greens. For six weeks out of every year, Garen over at the farm takes a little hiatus between crops to order, organize, cultivate and sow his fields and greenhouses. He does most of this with just his own two hands. Around the time of the Super Bowl, he and I go through catalogues and pick out ingredients for late Spring, Summer and Autumn menus. If the crops are successful, everyone benefits—not just our guests in the restaurant, but farmer’s market patrons and Enoteca customers as well. Garen grows beautiful food, and the community has begun to recognize his efforts, which is fantastic. Later this spring, Garen will be bringing me his “little head lettuces,” a mixture this year of deer tongue and dragon’s ear. Maybe we’ll call it the Tongue’n’Ear Salad. Or maybe not. Either way, we always miss Garen’s gorgeous greens when he’s between crops, and we look forward to the produce that lies ahead.

As for my own garden and our restaurant community garden at Strawbery Banke, I am growing extremely anxious to get my hands in unfrozen earth. We will be divvying up the weeding detail at the community garden again among our BT staff, but this year, I’ve invited the front of the house to participate as well. Christine, our bright and shining new star behind the bar, will hopefully contribute some of her landscaping expertise. The organic and heirloom seeds are in the mail. All we need now are a few dozen more degrees Fahrenheit.

In my conversation with Lauren, one of us (I can’t remember which one) said, “I’m sick of root vegetables.” My daughter Eleanor has sworn off snow. Berwick, where we live, has seen 112 inches of snow this year. Winter has had its way with us, and we are over it, ready for Spring like never before. Let them plant seeds! Let them eat rhubarb!

Your dedicated chef and friend,

Evan

PORTUGUESE WINE DINNER

2008-02-18T17:37:00.001-05:00

Calling all foodies!

Our upcoming Portuguese Wine Dinner features some great labels from the once overlooked corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Typecast for its phenomenal dessert wines, Portugal also makes some great table wines that have only recently landed on our shores. A few of them have popped up on Julian’s wine list in the last year and have consistently won kudos from wine cognoscenti. We are lucky to be featuring the wines of Portugal, imported by Augusto Gabriel of Signature Imports, on Wednesday, February 27th.

Since we are targeting a food-rich region of the world for this dinner, and following the adage that the best wine pairings are those that feature foods and wines from the same region, I have decided to utilize Portuguese ingredients, techniques and recipes to help uncover some of the less heralded dishes.

We have all heard of, and probably enjoyed, Portuguese sweet bread (anadama), fisherman’s stew, and even kale and bean soup. But most American palates aren’t as aware of Portugal’s unique obsession with salt cod, or its deep appreciation for pork and lamb. Or its literary contribution to the world via Nobel-winning author Jose Saramago. But I digress.

Although not a particularly large country, Portugal has tremendous geographic diversity, making for a colorful palette of wine varietals. Also, such varietals as Tinto Roriz and Touriga Nacional cannot be found in any other wine growing region of the world.

So go to Portugal for a night! Join us on Wednesday, Feb. 27.

Obrigado,

Evan

OUR FIRST ANNUAL HOLIDAY GETAWAY

2008-01-27T15:34:00.000-05:00

Generally speaking, I don’t stop moving long enough to appreciate what a good thing I have. Part of me fears that, if I stop moving, everything will stop moving. It’s part of the only-child syndrome, I suppose, this egocentric belief that so much—my business, my family, my daily kitchen deadline, global climate change--depends on me. To my thinking, hard work isn’t supposed to pay off until later in life. But every once in a while, I take a break from the hard work, and a ray of light breaches the mask of blood, sweat and tears, granting me a peaceful perspective of the world around me. Just such a moment recently occurred, so I thought I’d share it with what few loyal blogreaders I have.

Our Black Trumpet staff—a great amalgam of hard-working, lovable young folks—earned a special holiday treat in this, our first year of business. By answering myriad questions about the change of ownership, by proverbially hand-holding when Lindbergh’s patrons felt betrayed, by smiling through requests for outmoded but much-adored “classics” from the bygone era, by volunteering their time to help pound nails or paint trim, and by sticking with us through this time of change, our beloved staff deserved more than a simple house party or restaurant dinner. Working on the suggestions of two avid winter sportsmen on the kitchen crew, I put together a mid-week “weekend getaway” to North Conway. So, on the first day of this year, the morning after our hugely successful, dual New Year’s Eve wine dinners, we all carpooled northward on the Spaulding Turnpike as snow piled up to the tune of an inch an hour.

We arrived at the Red Jacket Mountain View Resort just in time for a shuttle to Mount Cranmore, where we embarked on our first exercise in the two-day fiesta: an hour of tubing down the well-groomed Cranmore Tubing Hill. Normally crowded, the hill on New Year’s Day had relatively few other tubers (not the botanical kind), so we enjoyed many runs down the hill before the sun’s descent.

After a brief sojourn to the base lodge pub for soul-warming toddies, we found ourselves embroiled in a snow battle that ended promptly when the shuttle arrived to return us to the lodge. The Red Jacket Resort has a few townhouses on premises that proved ideal for accommodating our crew. Four adjacent units housed all twenty-four participants, providing a two-day home base for recreation of all kinds.

Upon our return from the mountain, we were treated to lasagna by Lauren, one of the best home cooks we have in our so-called “professional” kitchen. It was, beyond a doubt, the finest tasting lasagna I have ever eaten. It was so good, in fact, that many townhouse dwellers enjoyed the leftovers for breakfast the next day. Denise, my always lovely and adoring wife, wondered aloud if I might learn a thing or two about making lasagna from Lauren. The implications of her statement are too ego-damaging to dwell on in these paragraphs, Suffice to say, I won’t be opening a traditional Italian restaurant anytime soon.

After a group dinner cleanup, we walked en masse through the continuing snowfall to the main hotel, where a video arcade room kept us busy for a long while. Denise dominated the air hockey table, her Canadian heritage showing itself in every lunge of her wrist. Rebecca and Christy dueled on the footpads of a game called Dance Dance Revolution. Casey held his own, as it were, on DDR while Monica showed a particularly violent talent for street shooting and hunting games, leading to speculation that she may have come to us through the witness relocation program, and that Monica is not her real name at all.

NOTE: Monica and Casey have since moved on to new careers. We expect them both back in the building, albeit on the other side of the bar, soon. Meanwhile, Christine and Rebecca have added to the Jon, Christy and Julian barstaff, tipping the balance in favor of females for the first time. As expert and beloved and Monica and Casey are, we are so excited about Christine—an experienced, professional bartender with a photography career on the side—and Rebecca—another spirited (pun intended) bar veteran with a decorative design background.

Back at The Red Jacket, the late night party (unfortunately captured by some nimble camera work on the part of Jon Plaza) included dancing, the usual party merriment and more lasagna. It was during this phase of the overnight extravaganza that I realized what a uniquely beautiful situation we have. At the party, as I looked around at a little townhouse living room crammed with our staff, I realized that our employees are friends, each with their own quirks and stories to tell, but essentially one cohesive unit committed to a cause we all believe in. It’s so incredibly satisfying to see our group operating as a living thing away from the living thing—the restaurant—that gives our passions a mutual context. I don’t know any other business, much less restaurant, that can boast such a crew.

Each of us at Black Trumpet operates on a bizarre urge to make people happy at all costs. It is in us. None of us tolerates a lax work ethic in anyone else because we don’t tolerate it in ourselves. But that will never stop us from enjoying our own lives. That combination is a rare and beautiful thing in this business. Denise and I are so lucky to have these guys aboard.

Thank you to our staff for continuing to bring a sense of pride to our daily routine. It shows. We adore you all.

ANATOMY OF A WINE DINNER, SET TO MUSIC

2007-11-30T11:27:00.000-05:00

At Black Trumpet, we have put on three wine dinners and one beer and game dinner. In the olden days, Scott O’Connor and I collaborated on countless Lindbergh’s Crossing wine dinners. On November 7th at Black Trumpet, Scott returned (with some great organic and biodynamic wines) to a full house of old friends and wine dinner regulars of yore. The event, a departure from the structure of many past wine dinners, served primarily as a festive reunion for old friends who love fun food and hard-to-find wines. Scott and Tom’s return was clearly the focus of the event. As a bonus, the food and wines were quite well received also. So many guests at the most recent wine dinner asked me about the process I go through in pairing wine with food, I thought I’d use the blog to post some thoughts on the way our preparations work.

First, the concept. We pick a theme. Or a theme picks us. In other words, some impulse appears on the radar pointing me in the direction of a region, a varietal, a concept or a specific winemaker. Then, I find out if the wines are available in the state. If they are not—which is far too often the case (a later, more controversial blog will address the complications and frustrations of selling wine in the state of NH)—it’s back to the drawing board. If they are available, Julian—our daffy, dutiful and diligent wine guy—talks to distributors and arranges for individual bottles to be dropped off for tasting. I taste, usually with Julian and sometimes with a wine rep, and then the real thought process begins.

This is the scary part, because it offers some insight into the very greyest part of my grey matter. For example, here’s a non-sequitur digression coming at you for no reason:

I used to write songs. Not very good songs, but songs nonetheless. It was a form of creative expression, an outlet for the part of my brain that now gives itself entirely to menu making. Being a writer, I am prone to analogize, so it should come as no surprise that I have found a connection between songwriting and wine pairing.

For me, there are two ways to write a song. In the first scenario, music comes first. It could come from an instrument I am playing. It could come from another song I hear. It can even come out of the air itself. I wrote a bunch of songs when I was commuting on foot in Washington, DC back in my early twenties. The rhythm of my footfalls were the only structure I needed. I had a Walkman, as I recall, but I never really liked the way it cut me off from the world around me. So I would literally write songs as I walked, forming verse and then chorus, or vice versa, revising as I went on my merry way. You can picture the looks on the faces of those people I passed on the sidewalk. Eccentricity, I still contend, will one day be the new normalcy. Until then, I can only hope for the pity of strangers.

The second songwriting scenario is the lyrical approach. Words come from a separate muse (the Greeks had Erato in charge of lyrics and Euterpe in charge of music, as I recall), one that doesn’t heed meter sometimes. When words are more important, they can squeeze their own music from affricatives, plosives and glottals that make our language so complex (and sometimes vulgar). The rest is easy; just ask Bob Dylan.

Obviously, this analogy can parlay into a number of artforms and disciplines. Some poets are slaves to structure, obsessed with fitting ideas into sestinas and sonnets, while others let the words make the meter and the music. A single poet can, in fact, successfully embrace both approaches—those of Erato and Euterpe--in his career. Wallace Stevens might be a good example.

To make a long analogy short, wine is the music and food the lyric in this pairing process. Composing a menu can either begin with the words (ingredients) or the music (wine), and the results will vary depending on which comes first.

Back to the narrative.

So I’ve now got wine in my mouth, and I’m writing notes furiously, describing with words the indescribable complexities of aroma, flavor and finish. I am putting words to the music, body and soul of the wines. There is no question that this process is subjective. My palate, far from perfect, has its own leanings and longings. I have to keep these in check when tasting wine (and food, for that matter) because, at the wine dinner, our dining room will not be filled with clones of me. I end up with a page—no matter how many wines I’m tasting, it’s almost always one page—of tasting notes. The wines are then left open for an hour, and then a day, to let them open up. At these intervals, I go back to taste again, in hopes of detecting any other nuances, hidden notes, flourishes, etc. I write more words. At this juncture, I have a half-decent idea at least of the order in which I want the wines to be presented. This, too, can be rearranged as late as the day of the event. I also have a jumble of cuneiform runes and scratches in as many as four different inks on a crumpled page that has traveled with me in pockets, on clipboards, in notebooks. The proteins usually come first. For example, the young petit verdot has the kind of acidity and weight that call for a bird, probably a little bird, maybe partridge. Must find partridge! (This is only a simulation.) I edit as inspiration strikes. I think—always, always—about what ingredients are seasonal and appropriate with each wine, and soon a dish comes together.

Recently, Julian headed to Portland with our friend Mark to scope out some high profile wines from France that were being introduced to New Hampshire. His assignment was to come back with some big little wines that could be featured at our next wine dinner in January. He tasted twelve and selected six or seven with Mark’s help. Next step, I will taste these contenders and formulate a theme for the event.

Some Changes at Black Trumpet

2007-10-20T22:20:00.000-04:00

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT, sort of

My talented, wise and beautiful wife, Denise, has made a big step in her career by opting to phase out a job that has meant a lot to her over the last five-plus years. IW Financial, a values-based investing research firm in Portland, has offered Denise a challenging work environment on the cutting edge of both technology and investment worlds since our return from Mexico in 2003. She will be phasing out that chapter in her career so she can focus on the restaurant more closely, in turn giving our beloved staff more centralized leadership. This change arrives as one of our most valuable players departs: Sarah is ending her tenure as Operations Manager after getting us on our feet these last few months. We will miss her dearly and wish her well in her endeavors. Casey, too, who has been a hard-working smiling face on the floor and behind the bar, will be stepping down from his role as General Manager. He will continue to work behind the bar while he seeks alternate routes during the day. As sad as these departures are for us and our team, we are all looking forward to having Denise around more.

October

2007-10-05T11:19:00.000-04:00

Time for an update on our Black Trumpet goings-on:

MUSHROOMS

Mushrooms have been plentiful despite the lack of rain. Carrie, a line cook and assistant pastry chef, has expressed interest in seeking out mushrooms with me for a while. Last weekend, Carrie and I hiked into the woods around my house and came up with some beautiful boletes, a few hedgehogs and a big surprise--matsutakes!! Matsutakes are a hard-to-find wild mushroom that grows under certain conifers in damp, mossy woods. The New Yorker (or was it the Sunday Times mag?) recently published an article about the intense competition for matsutake harvesting in the Pacific Northwest. A great, must-read article that was more about immigration than mushrooms, it discussed a group of Korean migrant workers who were trumping the embittered local mushroom hunters by finding caches of matsutakes at nighttime.

If the rainlessness continues, of course, our supplies of local wild mushrooms will end prematurely, forcing me to buy all the mushrooms for our menu from nationwide distributors. There's no sport in that, but at least I won't have to wear my blaze bandanna and whistle loudly to notify hunters of my presence in the woods.

COOKBOOK

The wheels beneath the cookbook project are finally moving, now that the first phase of our opening is complete, systems are in place and running smoothly, and staff roles have jelled. I spent a few hours last week with James Haller, founding chef of the famous Blue Strawbery and co-author of the forthcoming cookbook. I brought some smoked pork to his house, which we heated up on his beautiful cookstove, and he made his favorite chocolate flan for dessert. We discussed the cookbook project, and he read a personal introduction he had written. It seems as though the scope of the book is still unknown. We are waiting for a publisher to take interest in the project, which would then give us a concrete deadline and motivate us to give the book a structure. Until then, we are still in the ideation phase of the project. So, if you or someone you know would like to publish a really great cookbook that spans thirty-seven years of cooking in three successful restaurants at the same address, please let us know so we can get more motivated.

More updates soon....

Evan

2007-09-02T18:42:00.000-04:00

Greetings Friends

Here we are at the six-month mark at Black Trumpet, and our excitement continues unabated. Summer wears on all of us in this seasonal seaside hamlet of Portsmouth. We have to share our beaches, shops and restaurants with the rest of the world, and articles in nationwide publications continue to herald Portsmouth as an "undiscovered gem." Pedestrians pack the streets, slowing the already-congested car traffic. This summer, one out-of-town visitor cursed loudly at Denise for driving down Ceres Street, yelling, "Hey lady! It's a one-way!" Even newcomers to town realize that our little alleyway of a street is two-way, and that--because no single individual can own a public thoroughfare--a modicum of manners is required to negotiate the narrows.

Just when you think the July/August heat and humidity have moved in to stay, the first cool breeze of September refreshes our hard-working bodies and minds, promising a return to the village we know and love. We fall into a slower paced routine and recuperate before the holiday season sets in. Familiar faces unseen since June emerge, seemingly from the woodwork in our winebar. These are the locals who have built our reputation and stood the test of time with us under three different names. Of course, the faces change, but their importance to our village remains constant.

September, alas, is also a time of evanescence. Leaves being to wither and fall. We will harvest our last garden vegetables in September. Perhaps most importantly, we will pluck countless pounds of delectable edible mushrooms from the earth and put them on plates in every form imaginable (except ice cream).

Already this year, I have harvested--with help from my daughter--the following species, whose names are almost as rich as their flavors:

Purple-gilled Laccaria

Hedgehog mushroom

Horn-of-plenty

Fragrant Black Trumpet

Chicken-fat Suillus

5 Boletes, including Kings

Chanterelle

Trumpet Royale

Chicken Mushroom

White Coral

Lobster Mushroom

We will return to our rigorous once-a-month wine dinners (beginning with a first-of-its-kind "Beer and Game Dinner" in early October. Keep an eye on our website (or subscribe to our email newsletter) for dates.

We wish a peaceful September to you all,

Evan Mallett

29 Ceres Street - looking back, moving ahead

2007-07-20T22:03:00.000-04:00

Four months have now passed (in the blink of an eye, it seems), and Denise and I continue to feel rewarded by the community’s response to Black Trumpet. There is no question that we have worked hard (with tons of help from our inherited Lindbergh’s staff) to make this transition as smooth as possible. We remain sensitive to the needs of the “old guard,” but the changes to menu and décor have gone over very big indeed. Feedback continues to be resoundingly positive, despite the anxiety and trepidation of many.

It has been interesting to note that for everyone who has inquired, “What happened to Lindbergh’s?” there is someone else who steps in to ask, “Did this used to be Blue Strawbery?”

Many newcomers to town don’t fully grasp the significance of Blue Strawbery’s impact in the space we now call home. James Haller’s incredible vision survived a thoroughly baffled town planning board (which predated the Chamber of Commerce), an initial public reception that bordered on hostile and twenty-six ensuring years of restauranting through changing times.

Buddy Haller (his preferred nickname) should be vaunted in the company of America’s culinary heroes; he was innovating dishes and wowing customers with local product (there wasn’t any non-local product to speak of then) at the same time Alice Waters and Jasper White were getting national attention for similar efforts.

Chef Haller and I have begun work on a cookbook that will span the 36-year history of 29 Ceres Street, including the prolific 7-year period of Chef Jeff Tenner’s recipes at Lindbergh’s Crossing. The book – currently seeking a publisher – promises to be a monumental tribute and fascinating study as well.

Signing off for now,
Evan

Our First Month

2007-04-15T18:01:00.000-04:00

Hello and thank you to all Black Trumpet fans, friends and patrons!

Denise and I are overwhelmed that so many Lindbergh's regulars, joined by a thrilling number of new faces, have dined with us during our first month of business. For those of you who haven't had a chance to stop in for a cocktail, dessert or full meal, we look forward to your first visit. Here's a taste of what has transpired since March 1st.....

March 1:
After closing with Tom and Scott, Denise and I hurried back to the restaurant where we plotted our course for the next two weeks and celebrated the change with a glass of wine by the window, at the very same table where we decided to move to Portsmouth after our wedding in 1998.

March 2 through 16:
Gregg Duke, master carpenter (and former Lindbergh's sous chef), began demolition on the morning of the 2nd. Every kitchen employee volunteered to help with that portion of the transition. What is it about us kitchenfolk and propensity for fire, knives and sledgehammers?

On the 4th, Josh and Lauren, the incredibly capable and friendly pair of artists who run The Green Foundry in Eliot, raised and unveiled the heavy wood and cast bronze sign they created to a round of cheers from the cast, crew and support team of Black Trumpet. For my part, I smashed a really small bottle of bubbly against the brick doorframe--twice--without hurting anyone.

Over the course of twelve days, Gregg knuckled down on a tight deadline and rebuilt the entryway, among lots of other heroic work. He was assisted by Josh (another former Lindbergh's and Ciento chef) and his lovely partner Michelle (former owner of Saucy Grace, up the street).

Friends and family joined our crew of dedicated local craftsmen and workers to demolish walls, tear up rugs, remove old appliances and deep-clean everything remaining. Paul Laliberte and John Durante, both longtime Lindbergh's servers and Home Depot regulars, offered their construction help. Good friends, including many who work at other Portsmouth restaurants, contributed to our impossible dream of completing the "refreshing" project in two weeks.

On a dark and stormy night, literally seconds after hanging the last framed menu in the stairwell, we opened our doors to a brave crowd of weather-defying diehards. We thank you all