F&W Taps Miller, Shields for Best New Chefs 2010

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

(Image: Melany Bundy Mullens)

Last night, Food& Wine named its Best New Chefs for 2010–a culinary who’s who which includes Trummer’s on Main toque Clayton Miller (above left) and Town House chef John Shields (above right).

Other local BNC alumni include Cathal Armstrong (2006) and Dale Reitzer (1999).

We’ve trumpeted the epicurean daring of Miller and Shields (and the wisdom of their respective restaurants for bringing them aboard) in the pages of our magazine, and are glad to see our national peers honor the exemplary cooking taking place around the Commonwealth.

Congrats chefs! Enjoy your trip to Aspen!

–Warren

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Sign O’ The Tines

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Old Dominion Fosters Culinary Vanguard

By Warren Rojas / Photography by James Kim

Our goal is to put this area on the culinary map,” Cuisine Solutions co-founder Stanislas Vilgrain insisted during a tour of the sprawling Alexandria campus. “There is a lot of good food here. There’s a lot of culinary talent. So we need to push it, push it, push it.”

A noble goal, to be sure.

But one that we believe is already taking place—albeit, perhaps a bit too subtly.

While all the food-obsessed glossies and cheflebrity-worshipping blogs continue to bicker about the latest “it” dining destination, our region has become home to a burgeoning class of culinary innovators determined to steer the next epicurean revolution in lieu of getting caught in a more trendy wake.

From the commercial (Windows Catering) to the countrified (Town House), these kitchen leaders are laying claim to the future of cooking, one mind-blowing meal at a time.

And in the process, they’re making Virginia a must-add to all those “must-watch” lists regularly bandied about by hospitality insiders.

Leading the Charge
During a lecture earlier this spring, celebrated restaurateur José Andrés made no bones about fingering Ferran Adrià—the prophetic toque whose applied-sciences approach to cooking helped raise elBulli to its transcendental dining mecca status—as the man most responsible for shaking modern dining to its very core.

“Without him, cooking wouldn’t be the same,” Andrés assured an auditorium full of captivated food devotees.

Fellow panelist and wd-50 founder Wylie Dufresne quickly piled on the Adrià bandwagon, suggesting that a chance meal at elBulli essentially ruined classical cuisine for him forever.

“What really struck me was that someone had taken the traditional dining blueprint and smashed it in such a beautiful way,” Dufresne shared, adding that the “flavors were very familiar … [but] I experienced them in terms and textures that I didn’t have a reference for. It made me want to know, how are they producing this food?”

That sense of wonderment flows directly from Adrià’s fervent exploration of cuisine as psychological marker—a philosophical pursuit by which every dish sparks a culinary dialogue between chef, guest and all our most intimate faculties (senses, memories, emotions).

In his 2008 book “A Day at elBulli,” Adrià lays bare his criteria for carving out a place in culinary history:

“You can talk about following a recipe; following a recipe and adding a few touches of your own; inventing a new receipt of your own; or inventing a new cooking technique or language,” he suggests. “Each of these can be creative, but the last one represents the highest level of creativity, and this is the level that elBulli strives to attain.”

The fervent desire to constantly challenge the fine-dining status quo has led to the development of elBulli’s meticulously chronicled “gene” trials.

“A useful starting point for the creation of a new dish is a detailed and careful study of each product, during which all its qualities are considered, including its shape, texture, proportion, flavor, density, response to different cooking techniques and so on,” Adrià explains in his book.

These exhaustive food studies provide elBulli’s chefs with elementary knowledge of past and present ingredients, while laying a foundation for future flights of gastronomic fancy.

More importantly, they help elBulli’s brightest minds better envision the bedazzlement potential of every morsel that passes through their hands.

While Adrià was busy mining the mysteries of mind-food connections, Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and French chemist Hervé This (considered by many to be the founding fathers of the technologically intensive food handling movement) coined the term “molecular gastronomy” (introduced in 1988) to describe their research into the mechanics of cooking.

Most working chefs who’ve used food science to further their art decry the MG tag, placing themselves instead in the avant garde, cucina nueva or progressive cooking camps.

Andrés is one such MG denier.

He has spun the knowledge gleaned during his years at elBulli (he arrived at the restaurant in 1988 and quickly came under Adrià’s wing) into a cottage industry encompassing award-winning restaurants, numerous cookbooks and a travel/cooking show.

His most daring local property continues to be minibar, arguably the most sought after six seats in the D.C.-Metro diningverse (guests must reserve at least one month in advance, and the coveted slots tend to evaporate in mere minutes).

The carefully choreographed dishes run the gamut from shiso-wrapped eel nestled in a bed of cotton candy to doppelganger “eggs” cobbled together from parmesan suspensions and quail yolks.

The spectacle of it all is certainly a key component of the minibar experience. But Andrés maintains that “ultimately good food is good food.”

“It needs to satisfy not just your brain but your palate and your stomach too,” he says. “It is visceral.”

Andrés points to a marriage of cotton candy and foie gras—“The texture, the lightness … People were very struck by it,” he comments—as a favored creation. But he steadfastly declines to tag any minibar projects as abject failures.

“I don’t really see anything as is a mistake. They are just ideas that require more work,” he states of the ever-evolving minibar carte.

Pasquale Ingenito, a former Andrés aide-cum-Windows Catering corporate executive chef, is a little more forthcoming about the travails of bringing to market many of the Space Age indulgences local chowhounds so desperately crave.

As head of Windows’ nascent molecular gastronomy program, Ingenito and chef de cuisine Jose Picazo oversee the mass production of everything from the now-infamous liquid olive—concentrated Kalamata olive juice bound by seaweed-based alginates; the shimmering bauble showers the palate in briny confusion—to whatever custom texture or taste their clients might desire.

“We play with the stuff,” Ingenito says of his staff’s standing orders to figure out new ways to coax everyday ingredients into behaving in decidedly unnatural ways. “You get to start looking and thinking of cuisine in a different way. It’s very exciting cuisine.”

Picazo explains that gambits like the liquid olive boil down to having one’s way with surface tension. “All we do is transform textures,” he says, quickly noting that said manipulation requires “millimetric precision.”

Whereas assorted foams and flavored “airs” are pretty much industry standards today, Ingenito says labor-intensive dishes like custom caviars (the manmade globes tend to harden quickly, so timing is of the essence) are what now make food-savvy mouths water.

Although Windows Catering executive vice president Andrew Gerstel perceives the D.C.-Metro area to be “a fairly conservative town, gastronomically speaking,” he says a cadre of their largely corporate clientele is actively seeking out more exotic entertaining options.

“Corporate clients … are more likely to take risks or to opt for a menu item that is not as recognizable and will provide a memorable experience,” Gerstel suggests, citing that temptations like their strawberry tuna (cubes of sesame-studded ahi embraced by zesty wasabi, jammy strawberry gelee and concentrated balsamic vinegar) vanish from serving trays with alarming regularity.

New Kids on the Block
Though they set up shop at opposite ends of Virginia’s 300-plus-mile stretch of Interstate 81, it didn’t take long for progressive toques Tarver King, John Shields and Karen Urie to become fast friends.

King returned to the Commonwealth last fall to take command of the kitchen at Middleburg’s Goodstone Inn. But he’d already heard rumblings of the culinary metanoia underway at Chilhowie’s Town House while still working in South Carolina.

So, while a winter renovation loomed large, King and his co-workers braved the elements—an unexpected blizzard turned the already grueling drive into a 20-plus-hour roundtrip ordeal—to see what all the fuss was about.

Seventeen magical courses later, King left convinced Town House was already a powerhouse to be reckoned with.

“As far as local places go, that’s the spot,” King gushes.

Shields and Urie are no strangers to such high praise, having honed their skills at the elbows of hospitality giants like Alinea founder Grant Achatz and restaurateur Charlie Trotter.

In fact, the newlywed couple (Shields and Urie tied the knot this June) were in line to take the reins at Trotter’s Las Vegas property when they elected to strike out on their own.

Having been offered creative carte blanche by Town House owners Kyra and Tom Bishop, Shields and Urie left the Windy City to breathe new life into the then-traditional chophouse.

“We like a challenge,” Urie says of the seemingly counterintuitive decision to turn their backs on the target-rich Vegas strip for ghost town-like Chilhowie.

The fringe benefits, however, appear to have soundly allayed any potential relocation jitters.

“The foraging out there is fantastic,” Shields states, noting that locals often stroll up to the restaurant with fresh morels, pristine berries and flowering herbs in tow (a mobile farmers market delivered right to their doorstep).

Urie stresses they don’t necessarily limit themselves to local purveyors. “First and foremost, we’re all about flavor and quality,” she says of their shopping ideals, though they have forged relationships with many local farmers and Appalachian Sustainable Development.

And while valley living has certainly broadened their culinary repertoire—“It’s made our cooking more organic,” Shields readily admits—Urie says their overarching mission remains unchanged: weaving together the types of savory-sweet combinations, used to dramatic effect by chefs across the culinary spectrum, that revive primordial food memories.

She lists childhood favorites like pork sausages doused with maple syrup or sweet potatoes matted down with baked marshmallows as the cognitive forbearers of today’s caramelization-prone proteins.

“We’re not doing this for the sake of being different or weird,” she insists. “It’s about [finding] a balance.”

Bishop concedes that the night-to-day menu change has alienated some locals. To wit, she notes that some early clients bristled at the sight of a hand-carved steak sans de rigueur baked potato. But she’s now getting reservations several months in advance, and the uptick in out-of-town traffic helped jumpstart the renovated two-bedroom inn they’d been dreaming about for years (tentatively scheduled to open by late summer).

Shields says he knows of at least one Tennessee farmer who drives two hours each way to dine with them, and recounted visits by Internet-savvy food scouts from as far away as San Diego and Toronto. The New York Times also recently paid a visit.

Meanwhile, Shields and Urie have twice (so far) driven up to Goodstone to feast upon King’s homegrown gastronomy.

King split the previous prix-fixe format into a “traditions” side (a la carte offerings) and mercurial tasting menu—a nod and a wink to preconceived notions of what constitutes a proper meal.

“That’s kind of our way of answering the question of which way cooking is going,” King offers.

His kitchen crew’s rule of thumb for recipe creation?

“Every dish has fat, acid and texture,” he shares. “You want to work with aromas, sights, sounds.”

That basic structure can yield dizzying results, including a sensational coconut milk “burst” ensconced in fragrant carrot-curry soup decorated with puffed rice or a dough-free tuna on rye perpetrated by cubed crudo, rye emulsion and homemade salt and vinegar chips (spot on).

“Every course does something theatrical. It’s really quite the rollercoaster ride,” King suggests.

That sense of showmanship is expected to manifest itself in a pair of very special dinners in the works at Goodstone for later this fall.

The most exclusive engagement will likely be an Oct. 4 dinner during which King, Shields and Urie will join forces to blow the socks off just shy of three dozen guests. The menu remained fluid at press time, but King said patrons should expect an autumnal feast.

Meanwhile, King says he is also mulling a progressive dinner to be spread across the bucolic Goodstone campus (fish course by the water, vegetable number in the garden, etc.).

Why Cook at All?
“The future of cooking is reheating something somebody else made,” Richard Keys, Cuisine Solutions’ vice president of sales, brazenly predicts. “You won’t need chefs anymore. We are the chef.”

Corporate bluster aside, Cuisine Solutions has managed to take sous-vide from cooking novelty to near-necessity within the past two decades.

Co-founder Vilgrain first learned about the vacuum-sealed, temperature-regulated practice from pioneering biochemist Bruno Goussalt.

“I took his first course and I fell in love with it,” Vilgrain says of the career-redefining experience.

Shortly thereafter, he began recruiting others.

“We made it almost like a cult, because you had to believe,” Vilgrain says of the early days, recounting that “we had to do a lot of teaching/evangelizing … [because] no one wanted their food coming out of a plastic bag.”

The then-Vie de France exec convinced Goussalt as well as compatriots Jean-Pierre Guillaud and Gerard Bertholon (all still active within the Cuisine Solutions organization) to jump down the sous-vide rabbit hole with him—with the express understanding that if their pre-packaged cooking vision faltered, their offices would revert to a commissary for the existing restaurant group.

After just one year in business, Vilgrain says they shed all the Vie de France baggage in order to focus full-time on sous-vide.

Vilgrain says the earliest adopters of their uniform-cooking technology turned out be hotel chains and commercial airlines. Soon enough, the U.S. military and other government agencies took notice of the bulk foodstuffs produced for maximum portability.

As orders rose and the client list swelled, the Alexandria facility expanded. Today, the flagship plant spans roughly 65,000 square feet, with satellite operations cropping up around the globe (includes production facilities in Norway, France, Brazil, Chile and the U.S.).

Vilgrain calculates that the Alexandria plant produces approximately 200,000 to 300,000 pounds of food per week (15 to 20 percent of which is exported abroad) and employs around 200 people, working seven days a week. At full production, he estimates the Cuisine Solutions network pumps out around 800,000 to 1 million pounds of food every four weeks, or approximately 12 to 14 million pounds of product each year.

And they’re not stopping there.

Vilgrain says they’ve already drawn up the plans for an even bigger new headquarters—an expansion wish he hopes they’ll soon realize, preferably right here in Northern Virginia.

In terms of day-today operations, staff are brought in each morning at 11:30 a.m. to taste finished products from the previous day for quality assurance purposes and to broaden their collective palate.

“It’s not enough to measure. People need to taste the product,” Vilgrain wisely calculates.

Their products are as varied as they are technologically advanced.

Assorted proteins can be customized to look/feel/taste anyway you want them—camouflaging equipment includes pre-searing, searing and flash grilling machines—even though all the vacuum-sealed materials are actually “cooked” in meticulously calibrated water tanks (maintained at between 135 and 170 F).

Basic pastas and risottos prove to be anything but, obliging staff to mix up huge vats of predetermined separate from the prescribed grain. The two are ultimately combined (with the help of CO2) by firing the aforementioned starch (held in a spinning container not unlike a cement mixer) through a stream of the corresponding sauce as part of a process dubbed “enrobing.” According to Vilgrain, the high-velocity mixing provides “up to 80 percent” saucing coverage on the now-flavor-wrapped grain.

Once all the elements—sauces, mains, sides—for a “dish” have been methodically assembled, the individual packets are nominally “pre-cooked” (safeguards against immediate boiling upon entering the aforementioned water tanks) then flash chilled (Cuisine Solutions recirculates the cold water into the cooking tanks for maximum efficiency) before the final freezing process takes place.

The cooking process varies from 20 minutes (generic sauces) to 72 hours (meltingly tender beef short ribs).

In the end, every Cuisine Solutions product is basically fork-ready straight from the pouch.

“We are an extension of that which they cannot execute consistently,” Keys boasts of their restaurant-quality cuisine.

As such, Vilgrain says the company has only been too happy to have Goussalt work with established chefs, culinary academies or generally food-curious organizations, citing education about sous-vide as the heart of their business model.

To date, Goussault has helped gather dozens of world-renowned chefs into the sous-vide fold, including: Thomas Keller (who rains plaudits upon Cuisine Solutions in his sous-vide tome, “Under Pressure”), Joël Robuchon, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, Alain Ducasse, Charlie Trotter and Heston Blumenthal, to name just a few.

“We tried to get to the best chefs first,” Vilgrain says of their ongoing instructional outreach. “And we’ve gotten them all.”

Meanwhile, local culinarians hoping to take the sous-vide plunge will have to wait until a proposed training facility comes online in late 2010.

Which is not to say, Cuisine Solutions doesn’t take as much as it gives.

Vilgrain heaped praise on local toque Michel Richard—“People don’t realize how innovative he is,” Vilgrain crows—for helping the company crack a particularly vexing dessert nut.

According to Vilgrain, Richard’s institutional knowledge of the pastry arts proved invaluable in finally perfecting a collapse-resistant soufflé (inflated puff stands strong for over 10 minutes)—a breakthrough the company views as “game-changing.”

“Nobody is doing soufflés,” he says of their year-plus accomplishment in the making. “And that’s exactly what we like to do.”

Keys mapped out ambitious plans to inject sous-vide even further into the mainstream consciousness, hawking their new Cuisine Delight line (“This is not calorie-counting food. It’s low fat, healthy food,” he proposes), under-development flavored bar foams (coming soon to a cocktail near you) and even mobile sous-vide vendors as ready-in-a-flash dining alternatives for a busy world.

Plus, they’ve got that whole slow-food thing going for them.

“We are the epitome of the slow-cooking movement,” Keys muses. “It’s all about time and temperature.”

A Flavorful Future
The real question is: Does a cooking style requiring chefs to keep their pantries stocked with esoteric hydrocolloids (industrial thickening agents), volatile chemicals (you can’t just cart liquid nitrogen home from the office for off-the-cuff experimentation) and mis en place-altering power tools have the staying power to survive?

Our local talents seemed optimistic.

King predicts progressive cooking will become an integral part of culinary academia. “I see it being part of the curriculum in cooking schools,” he prognosticates. “It’s really the word on a lot of people’s tongues.”

Shields suggests that, in time, media interest will wane and Johnny Come Lately chefs will likely migrate to the next cooking fad. But he remains confident that visionaries like Achatz, Adrià and Blumenthal will continue adapting their craft ad infinitum—a pioneering spirit Shields expects to defy categorization.

Andrés is more pragmatic, estimating that, if nothing else, “we’ve become more learned as cooks.”

“You may say that these are fads. But the knowledge that’s behind these dishes will endure,” he forecasts.

Andrés encourages anyone interested in staying ahead of the cooking curve to remain open to new experiences while remembering to honor the very culinary orthodoxy they hope to overthrow.

“Master the traditional before you try the new stuff,” he counsels, warning that “You can’t deconstruct a paella if you don’t know what a proper paella tastes like.”

Urie resoundingly agrees, noting that, at least early on, culinary appreciation is all about total immersion. “There’s not a social life. You just put your head down, and you work and you read and you eat,” she recalls.

King still considers himself a student, stressing that he remains committed to learning at every opportunity. “I try to go stage [cooking for free in highly-respected kitchens] as much as I can,” he volunteers, ticking off Alinea and the Fat Duck as trek-worthy proving grounds.

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Goodstone Inn & Estate
36205 Snake Hill Road, Middleburg; 540-687-4645; www.goodstone.com
Average entree: over $31 ($$$$). Open for dinner, Wednesday through Sunday.

“I couldn’t even remember what you said was in that, but it was delicious,” a deliriously satisfied diner admitted to her server after polishing off another of the painstakingly crafted flavor puzzles put forward by Goodstone’s corps of sensory goosing toques.

Executive chef Tarver King (last seen at South Carolina’s much-lauded Woodlands Inn) leads a culinary brain trust that includes fellow gastronauts: Nathan Shapiro (Inn at Little Washington), Steve Forte (Woodlands Inn), Sheree McDowell (Woodlands Inn) and Leslie Cooksey (Blackberry Farm).

Add in the encyclopedic wine knowledge of food and beverage manager Neal Wavra—a soft-spoken grape hound who doesn’t bore you with dusty viticultural lore so much as spin yarns about the unsung producers behind each glass of handcrafted bliss he pours—and you’ve got a culinary super group that lives to rock patrons’ worlds.

The kitchen applies far-out thinking to locally raised foodstuffs, a progressive cooking program that often yields eyebrow-raising reinterpretations as beautiful as they are delicious.

A deep-fried risotto ball puts the taste buds on high alert, courtesy of a bracing vinegar wash (arreverdici, regular arancini). Toasty yeast rolls are escorted by smoked sea salt and artisan spreads (wakame-laced butter displayed an anchovy-like bite; whipped lardo was a frothy delight).

“Glad we could awaken the palate for you,” one server interjected as the dining room buzzed up with gasps and squeals.

Whole radishes—their ruddy roots creeping across the plate—trade the garden for the company of a disarmingly refreshing white vinegar sorbet, grated egg yolk, candied miso (a crunchy-gummy delight) and pistachio dust. Salsify gets smoked and brown sugar-cured before spending time with pleasing smears of liquefied Medjool dates and a taut vinegar-miso reduction.

The locavore movement meets the prehistoric equivalent of slow cooking in a custom steak creation composed of hand-carved slabs of Goodstone beef—the 265-acre estate is currently home to cattle, lamb, swine and Rhode Island red chickens. King says they’re working on adding ducks and rabbits to the fold—flash-seared atop oven-baked creek rocks. According to staff, the hot stone-as-meal-finisher concept was sparked by a conversation with local winemaker Chris Pearmund about the cooking habits of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori. A tip of the hat to all those involved in bringing the sizzling spectacle to fruition, as few meals are its equal in terms of execution (the velvety meat arrives wrapped in malted steak sauce and escorted by pickled carrots, whipped potatoes and mustard greens fried till just shy of crackling) and entertainment (the ardent hiss as each steak is introduced to the radiating stones quickly fades into a shallow sigh as meat and heat come to terms).

Desserts often reside much lower on the mercury scale but want not for creativity, as evidenced by an Amarula Cream-infused stunner topped with passion fruit caviar (sunburst orange beads of reconditioned roe are tangy-sweet and wonderfully tantalizing) and air-puffed chocolate crisps (divine).

minibar
405 Eighth St., N.W., Washington, D.C.; 202-393-0812; www.cafeatlantico.com/miniBar/miniBar.htm
Average entree: over $31 ($$$$). Open for dinner, Tuesday through Sunday.

What do a toaster oven, a 1970s cotton candy machine, surgical-grade forceps, snack-size bags of Fritos and fog-spewing canisters of liquid nitrogen all have in common?

They are the industrial lode being spun into epicurean gold at the modern-day alchemist’s table known as minibar.

At work in the ultimate open kitchen, minibar toques channel equal parts James Beard and P.T. Barnum.

The gastronomic gurus seem determined to educate as they captivate, reveling most the moments when cherished seasonal ingredients (“green” almonds, seafood curio) or convention-smashing deconstructions (the stir-to-assemble New England clam chowder, an inside-out Philly cheesesteak) transform an expectant patron’s visage into a wide-eyed mask of shock and awe.

“I love to see the look … that moment of wow!” owner/founder Jose Andrés shares.

And getting there is all part of the fun.

“I’m done guessing. I can’t even get the basic ones,” one flabbergasted diner griped after being duped by camouflaged chicken. “NASA food!” another ejaculated as the multi-course extravaganza (circa 30, one- or two-bite courses) unfolds.

minibar’s current crop of culinary tacticians include: José Andrés (restaurateur), Ruben Garcia (Think Food Group creative director), Katsuya Fukushima (TFG head of culinary special projects), Terri Cutrino (Café Atlantico executive chef) and dedicated minibar chefs Lyndon Doka, Ryan Moore and Brad Race.

The pioneering toques express no reservations about discussing their groundbreaking techniques—short of giving away the carefully calculated cooking formulas, of course—and seem only too happy to dart across the globe from dish to dish.

“We’re not really bound by any specific style of cuisine,” Doka says of their come-one, come-all cooking approach.

The carbonated mojito reveals an engineering marvel that encapsulates the mint-spiked refresher in a semi-permeable membrane that allows CO2 in but keeps the Caribbeanesque tonic firmly in place. A snazzy cone of bulging salmon roe (a sea burst in each iridescent egg) topped with a crispy tile of cream cheese blasts traditional bagels and lox out of the water.

Flash-frozen almond milk is fashioned into a makeshift bowl and filled with smoky-tangy blue cheese shavings, all of which melds into a dairy-releasing deluge once introduced to the naturally warm tongue.

The hand of man encroaches on Helios’ domain via a transmutative salad of tomato puree that’s been spherified and desiccated to mimic the powerfully concentrated flavors of traditional sun-dried tomatoes; oddly enough, the chemically produced proxy tastes more like tomato than any from-the-vine specimen I’ve ever tried, while a surrounding lake of Greek yogurt brings the dish full circle.

Overlapping flashes of coconut sorbet, granulated peanuts, fiery cayenne and aromatic basil convince the mind it’s just another plate of pad Thai, even as your eyes and taste buds work to connect the dots between the ingenuously arranged dessert.

Solidified honey and yogurt powders are heaped atop one another and pseudo-activated by a squirt of olive oil—it takes a moment for your flavor receptors to catch on, but the expressive powders do their respective bases justice—meshing everything into a Jetsonian sweet that’s not to be missed.

Town House
132 E. Main St., Chilhowie; 276-646-8787; www.townhouseva.com
Average entree: $21 to $30 ($$$). Open for dinner, Tuesday through Saturday.

The town of Chilhowie has lain dormant for so long, most of the surrounding billboards and travel literature direct visitors to the professional speedway a good 30 miles away on the other side of the Tennessee border.

But if Chicago transplants John Shields and Karen Urie have their way, all roads will eventually lead to the culinary temple they are erecting within the four walls locals—and a growing community of online admirers—know as Town House.

Co-owner Kyra Bishop and her husband opened the family-run restaurant in 2002, originally launching as an upscale chophouse. But Bishop says they desperately yearned to share their passion for progressive dining—“whenever we traveled, that is the type of food we would find,” she says of their globe-spanning jaunts—with patrons.

When the opportunity for change presented itself in late 2007, the Bishops went searching for like-minded chefs able to sate their hunger for gastronomic self-actualization. Right around that time, chefs John Shields (savory) and Karen Urie (sweet) happened to be looking around for the career path less traveled (he’d been at Alinea since 2005; she’d spent the better half of the decade at Charlie Trotter’s)—a happy coincidence that’s already paying critical dividends for everyone involved.

As co-executive chefs, Shields and Urie excised lunch from the agenda and reshaped the Town House program into a multi-tiered, tasting menu-style format (a la carte options are provided as well). Meanwhile, sommelier Charlie Berg (lured from the Troutdale Dining Room in neighboring Bristol, Tenn.) has been tasked with building a beverage catalog versatile enough to stand up to whatever whimsical creation the kitchen might spit out (like the lavender-infused milk conjured up to complement a Urie specialty).

My guess is Berg stays plenty busy.

A teaser of gourmet “cookies” binds olive oil jam, shaved parmesan (strips of airy cheese blow salty whispers into the culinary conversation) and lemon confit. “I wish I could just have a plate of those,” one companion commented when tasked with plotting an actual meal.

One is almost tempted to leave undisturbed an intricate web of diced asparagus, razor clams, grapefruit, brown butter and wisps of pulled honey (taffy-like clover basically dissolves on contact). But the real crime is that the dish disappears so quickly (so many interesting flavors, so few bites).

Wood-infused caviar (smack of smoke and salt) is zapped by an undercurrent of green curry, only to be doused by the sweet forgiveness of pineapple foam (carries the dish).

Roast lamb needs little assistance (the mouthwatering protein cooked to fork-shreddable perfection), yet receives it in spades from an astonishing ramp marmalade (lavishes each bite with licorice-like sweetness) and toasted cereals.

A fanciful selection of faux “truffles” summons cryogenically altered teardrops of solidified buttermilk (dairy bit player hereby elevated to lead role status) rolled in pistachio, meringue-like peppermint flanked by pure cocoa powder pebbles and a double chocolate number that seemed to openly mock conventional cutlery (but dissolved sublimely).

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Toques of Tomorrow

	Grant Achatz Alinea Chicago, IL 312-867-0110		Ferran Adria elBulli Spain
	Richard Blais Home/Flip Burger Boutique Atlanta, GA		Heston Blumenthal The Fat Duck United Kingdom
	Homaru Cantu Moto Chicago, IL 312-491-0058		Wylie Dufresne wd-50 New York, NY 212-477-2900
	Pierre Gagnaire Pierre Gagnaire France		Thomas Keller The French Laundry Yountville, CA 707-944-2380
	Michel Richard Citronelle Washington, D.C. 202-625-2150

Courtesy of Lara Kastner/Alineabook.com (Achatz); Courtesy of Maribel Ruiz de Erenchun (Adria); Courtesy of Heidi Geldhauser/The Renolds Group (Blais); Courtesy of The Fat Duck (Heston Blumenthal); Courtesy of Moto Restaurant (Cantu); Courtesy of Joyce George (Dufresne); Courtesy of Jacques Gavard (Gagnaire); Courtesy of Deborah Jones (Keller); Courtesy of Michel Richard (Michel Richard)

(August 2009)

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