Tip #7 - Consider Whole Foods Market
If you are selling to specialty food retailers and independent grocers it is important to consider their primary value proposition to their customers:
a unique retail experience
If you can help your customers achieve this goal, they will value it.
Consider Whole Foods,
who has made achieving a unique retail experience systematic:
- Small Producers - Small producers have limited reach and market presence. Chances are, Whole Foods will be one of the only retailers carrying their products.
- Exclusive Products - If you have a good relationship with Whole Foods, expect them to ask you to develop an exclusive product for them.
- Unique Combination - Organic, Natural, International, etc. there selection is broad and diverse. Not to mention their prepared foods, juice stands, and other services.
- Private Label - Private label products (365) are only available in the stores that branded them.
- Local Products - There are many companies that have not or cannot distribute their products outside of a certain geographic range. Whole Foods is willing to work with them even if they only stock a single store.
- Local Producer Loan Program - If Whole Foods likes your products and wants you in more of their stores, you are a good candidate for a Local Producer Loan. When you use it to grow, Whole Foods will become your biggest buyer.
- Select Distributors - A distributor will usually sell to the store next door as well. Whole Foods realizes this and seeks products and distribution paths that are unavailable, difficult, or unexplored by other retailers.
- People - Whether they are Whole Foods employees or others giving tastings, Whole Foods knows the value of a personal approach.
- Ancillary Investments - By supporting local and worldwide communities, you feel differently about buying products at Whole Foods.
Most products by themselves are relatively unique, but there are many ways to increase uniqueness. Take Whole Foods' lessons and consider distribution, promotion, service, and more.
The most straightforward way to increase uniqueness is exclusivity, and remember, exclusivity does not need to be absolute. For example, you can offer local (within a 30 miles radius or zipcode) or temporal (6 months) exclusivity of your product . Exclusivity is a double-edged sword, but don't worry, if you have another buyer interested, you can leverage that demand to help you improve your relationship (better pricing, promotions, etc.).
Whole Foods understands its value proposition and so should you. There are many ways to help "create a unique retail experience", so make sure to emphasize the value of your uniqueness when you have the chance. Good luck!
If you have any insights to include, please contact me through www.komida.com. Thanks!
Tip #6 - Don't put all your eggs in one basket
Whether it is a distributor or a large retailer, be wary of letting any single relationship represent too much of your business. There are countless horror stories of businesses that failed when they lost a single account that represented the majority of their profits.
Ryan Montague from Gourmet Business Solutions, a forward thinking consultancy with fresh ideas on the specialty food industry, wrote the below article that includes Costco's position on being a supplier's biggest customer.
He makes the situation very clear in his post:
For example, I learned that Costco typically doesn’t like to sell to a business whose sales with Costco represent more than 20% of their overall business. The reason: Costco doesn’t want to be the “bad guy” if they drop a Costco-dependant line that could sink without their business from Costco. Just goes to show that all the corporate giants aren’t so cut-throat after-all (which is common when dealing with the larger food retailers and distributors).
http://blog.gourmetbusinesssolutions.com/2009/01/02/selling-food-to-club-stores-costco-sams-club-bjs/
Tip #5 - Sell through specialized online retailers
How would you describe your company and products?
What would you consider your strengths?
Chances are you can find an online store that sells products that fit your same description.
If you answered small, local/regional, artisanal, gourmet, or handmade, there are some new sites out there worth looking at.
New Online Food Marketplaces:
- Foodzie - www.Foodzie.com
- Foodoro - www.Foodoro.com
- Regional Best - www.RegionalBest.com
Use these sites to get your product in front of others, they sometimes have a lot more visitors than your website, so they can really help people find you.
Each of these companies has a slightly different emphasis, so browse their offerings and see which is most right for you.
I am happy to say that each of these companies shares a vision with komida: they are determined to help your business succeed.
If you would like to see your food marketplace added to the list, please contact me through www.komida.com.
Tip #4 - Take the NASFT course
There are few resources for understanding the specialty food industry, but one stands out, the NASFT course offered at every Fancy Food Show: The Basics - The Business of Specialty Foods.
http://www.specialtyfood.com/do/fancyFoodShow/EducationalPrograms
The NASFT is the resource for independent food manufacturers hoping to plug-in to the broker, distributor, and retailer networks. You might not plan on selling with brokers, through distributors, or at big-box markets, but this course is invaluable in helping you understand the industry and the marketplace, so you can be better prepared to guide your business to success.
Tip #3 - Co-brand promotional materials
One of the greatest fears of creating promotional materials is that the materials are only available or on display for a short time, and their costly expense will not prove warranted.
One creative solution we have found some of our clients using is to co-brand materials. By offering a portion of the area for promotional material to your wholesale partners, you give them reasons to keep your materials up and consider them their own. Try half a poster, the back of a brochure, or even their logo on a display case, there are opportunities for co-branding on every piece of promotional material you make.
Here are some of the benefits:
- Fewer replacements. The additional expense of customizing promotional materials will be offset by having to replace the materials less frequently.
- Sense of shared ownership. Since you are including your partner's branding on your materials, they will start treating them as though they own them as well.
- Relationship building. Co-branding is a great way to help make your relationship more personal and show your commitment to its success.
Tom with Key West Smoked Fish Company took this idea one step further, and instead of including custom content for each buyer, he was able to find a message that made sense to many. A beautiful photo, a game, trivia, etc. are all possibilities.
Don't be afraid to be creative, and use things like stickers to make co-branding easy and cost effective.
Tip #2 - Use your customer lists to get wholesale accounts
By keeping track of where your customers reside, you offer potential wholesale buyers another reason to carry your products: automatic customers.
In addition to giving a wholesale buyer the assurance that a product will "work" in their area, offer your customers something special as well. Promise your wholesale buyers that you will send an announcement (and maybe a coupon) to each customer that lives in their area announcing a product's availability at their store. This co-advertising is really valuable, and a potential buyer will see how you are willing to leverage your customer lists to help guarantee the success of the relationship.
Tip #1 - Sell your products everywhere
Some of komida's clients have stopped thinking of food markets as their only clients, and have been able to significantly increase their sales, even within a small geographic area! When you start thinking about your potential wholesale partners as all places that could sell your products, and not just traditional markets, you will be at an advantage!
Finding alternative channels such as wine shops, cigar bars, salons, clothing boutiques, car dealerships, and more can do wonders for your sales!
Here are some of the benefits:
- Limit your competition. If you are the only food product in the store, you are the only option a buyer has.
- Great promotion. By being one of the few products available, it is much easier to be in the spotlight.
- Leverage brand associations. If you are available at a luxury car dealership, it is easy to see how you will be considered a luxury brand.
- Be there for your customers. Where do your target customers shop? This could be a perfect place to offer your product to them.
- Diversify. With more channels, you will be able to adapt better to changes in the marketplace. A customer that shops less at one store may end up visiting another more frequently.
Business is personal
This blog started as a personal blog:
"A medium for sharing experience with food and eating among friends"
and you can see some of our archived posts below.
Thank you Monica, Mom, Bea, Amy, Simon, and Shota for your truly rewarding posts. I hope they are found by many.
Since 2007, komida has also been the name of my business, and I am excited that business is just as personal. As komida grows, the most rewarding part is the people I am fortunate to meet. The tagline, "Food is Personal", is meant to capture the critical truth, that in business as in life, the most important parts are the people and the relationships between them.
I am looking forward to all the relationships komida will bring, and look forward to sharing a new experience with these new friends.
komida is the name of my company
For all the love of food, I figured out a way to make the world a better place.
Check out my company komida.
Home-made aioli & vegetables
I went to the market behind behind Bastille today and made a fresh potato and red onion grill to be served with home-made aioli.
Salo and other things
Having just got back from the Ukraine, and knowing how much Sergio appreciates fat in general, I'd like to share with you one of my best fat experiences in a while. A quintessential part of Ukrainian food, "salo" the underskin fat cured in salt and paprika. What the #$#(@##! you may ask. But basically, it's tasty, buttery, nutty chips of lard that you can have with your garlic bread. The photo doesn't do it justice but it was dark in the restaurant. Salo is a heavenly condiment, the very soul of Ukranian cuisine. This sort of light, smooth lard is really hard to come by-- usually I just want to throw up after eating more than a good bite of solid fat. But Salo just kept tempting me with its zesty paprika shell and the deep flavor and slight saltiness. But I didn't have the guts to try it with chocolate... (actually it was unavailable, but even then). Marc (who's Jewish) was disgusted by the whole idea. But I found it delectable, and in the end ate the whole platter of it...
Sure I tried other Black Sea delicacies like grilled sturgeon. Ugly fuckers, but tasty. Like a meatier and more satisfying version of sting ray but just as light. The mussels sauteed in onion were quite good, but the fact that it was overpriced was no fun.
Had some really good borshch, another Ukrainian dish (often confused and thought to be Russian). With a little sour cream, it makes a hearty soup to survive the -40 degree winters in the north of the country. For green borshch, apparently I have to come back in springtime...
I tried other Russian foods like the Siberian dumplings with venison (really good--photo here)... but this actually just made me crave the Beijing jiaozi dumplings with a bit of soy sauce.
But for me, the impact of Ukrainian food really came with the eating of a tasty, smooth shred of salo...
Ode to Benton's Country Prosciutto
I hope that one day more of what I eat is made by people like Allan Benton.
His hams have the integrity of tradition, hard work, and persistence, and they taste as if god has intervined. Its hard to imagine Allan's dedication not translating into his product, but there is the "and then some magic happens" element with his prosciutto.
I have met Allan multiple times, he is always there, with a couple of long time employees at 2603 Hwy. 411 in Madisonville (South of Knoxville) Tennessee. Hams don't need to be attended to every day, but people do, and Allan is there for his customers and friends alike. He has given me a tour of his facilities every time (my trick is to bring a new person with me), and he always shares his work with amazing enthusiasm. As a person and food maker, he is unparalleled, and I am glad his hams are exceptional as well.
Cured with a dry rub of salt, black pepper, red pepper, and sugar, and aged for up to a year *THAT'S THE WHOLE RECIPE*, these prosciutto hams he is producing today are divine.
I recently got to share a leg with my family here in Miami (Benton's is a good reason to go back up to Tennessee, but they deliver - thank God!), and the response was overwhelming. My mother grew up in Barcelona, and our family friends that were with us for the opening are Spanish, and no one could believe that I could have gotten my hands on such a good Jamon Serrano. They were even more incredulous that it was domestic, and perplexed that it could possibly have come from Tennessee.
Allan probably doesn't know it, but he inspired my new business. He has an amazing persistence, and has survived as a small high integrity food manufacturer inspite of it being one of the most difficult professions. I want to make business easier for people that want to make food, and give people like Allan more time to spend with friends and hams, while helping guarantee that his company is making food for years to come.
Thank you Allan for being an inspiration as a person, as a producer of amazing food, and for fueling my passion for making food personal.
Grouper Skin
This weekend I had the chance to spear a huge Mangrove Snapper and a Grouper that made it look small. After kama maguro (grilled halved tuna heads - large) in Japan, I have been obsessed with grilled fatty fish heads, and have found grouper to be the best of our carribean fish for the dish.
I always thought salmon heads would be great, even though (embarassingly) I have never gotten a salmon head fresh enough to try, but the similarity to salmon got me thinking: what about the fattiness of the skin?
Everyone in Miami skins their grouper fillets, but I found them relatively easy to scale, and since I was grilling, I thought I would take a chance to see if the skin was exceptional.
It was divine. I had chosen to powder the fillets with ground fennel and salt, and adored the crisp fat during the multiple meals that glorious fish provided.
I don't know if we'll ever figure out how to do it systematically, like we did at Bea's graduation salmon BBQ in Washington, where mom, Bea, and I ate grilled salmon skin (whole fillet) after grilled salmon skin, as our friendly Americans stood shocked nearby (eating the inferior flesh), but I am looking forward to trying!
It has gotten to the point where I serve fillets to everyone else, and grilled heads, collar bones, rib cages, and now skin to myself. How long will it take for them to catch on?
I always thought salmon heads would be great, even though (embarassingly) I have never gotten a salmon head fresh enough to try, but the similarity to salmon got me thinking: what about the fattiness of the skin?
Everyone in Miami skins their grouper fillets, but I found them relatively easy to scale, and since I was grilling, I thought I would take a chance to see if the skin was exceptional.
It was divine. I had chosen to powder the fillets with ground fennel and salt, and adored the crisp fat during the multiple meals that glorious fish provided.
I don't know if we'll ever figure out how to do it systematically, like we did at Bea's graduation salmon BBQ in Washington, where mom, Bea, and I ate grilled salmon skin (whole fillet) after grilled salmon skin, as our friendly Americans stood shocked nearby (eating the inferior flesh), but I am looking forward to trying!
It has gotten to the point where I serve fillets to everyone else, and grilled heads, collar bones, rib cages, and now skin to myself. How long will it take for them to catch on?
Fatty
Meaghan just sent me a NYTimes article on fat - my favorite cross meat feature, and definitely the source of my grandfather's adage:
"anything that tastes good couldn't possibly be bad for you"
June 13, 2007
Critic’s Notebook
Fat, Glorious Fat, Moves to the Center of the Plate
By FRANK BRUNI
I’m not sure it’s possible to behave with much dignity around seven glistening pounds of pork butt, but on a recent night at Momofuku Ssam Bar, five friends and I weren’t even encouraged to try.
Servers didn’t bother to carve the mountain of meat. They didn’t give us any delicate way to do it, either. They just plopped it in the center of the table, handed out sets of tongs, left us to our own devices and let the pig scatter where it may.
It was an ugly scene, and it was a beautiful one. We lunged at the flesh. Tore at it. Yanked it toward ourselves in dripping, jagged hunks, sometimes ignoring the lettuce wraps on the side so we could stuff it straight into our mouths. We looked, I realized, like hyenas at an all-you-can-eat buffet on the veldt, and I wasn’t surprised to notice other diners staring at us.
But what I saw on their faces wasn’t disgust. It was envy. I’d venture that more than a few of them returned to Momofuku for their own pig-outs. The restaurant, after all, sells about two whole pork butts — a term that refers to part of the pig’s shoulder, not to its rump — every night.
These are times of bold temptation, as well as prompt surrender, for a carnivorous glutton in New York.
They’re porky times, fatty times, which is to say very good times indeed. Any new logo for the city could justifiably place the Big Apple in the mouth of a spit-roasted pig, and if the health commissioner were really on his toes, he’d draw up a sizable list of restaurants required to hand out pills of Lipitor instead of after-dinner mints.
The list would encompass more than steakhouses, which have multiplied exponentially over the last five years, because what’s lumbered into particular favor with culinary tastemakers and the food-savvy set isn’t just beef and isn’t just any old piece of meat.
It’s a piece of meat that’s extra-messy, like one of the fat-ringed slabs of lamb at Trestle on Tenth, which opened last year. Sometimes it’s a mammoth cut, sometimes just gooey nuggets of animal parts less conventionally appreciated or lyrically named than the tenderloin.
The menu at Momofuku, which also opened last year and seems to capture the culinary zeitgeist as well as any restaurant, has not only sweetbreads — the gateway offal — but also a veal head terrine that resembles a gelatinous amalgam of everything your mother ever told you to trim from a chop and shove to the side of your plate. That same description applies to a terrine of oxtail and pig’s foot at Trestle on Tenth.
Trestle and Momofuku would be high on the health commissioner’s list, but probably no higher than the new restaurant Resto, where some genius — and I am most certainly not being facetious — decided that deviled eggs aren’t sufficiently rich on their own. No, they need amplification, and of course they need meat, so they’re placed on rectangles of pork jowl. One more thing: these rectangles are deep-fried. At a certain point, I suppose, there’s no turning back.
It’s as if decades of proliferating sushi and shrinking plates, of clean California cuisine and exhortations to graze, have fostered a robust (or is that rotund?) counterculture of chefs and diners eager to cut against the nutritional grain and straight into the bellies of beasts. In fact, bellies (most often pork, more recently lamb) are this counterculture’s LSD.
Its Timothy Leary might well be David Chang, the chef at Momofuku, where steamed buns are filled with strips of pork belly. Or maybe it’s Zak Pelaccio, the chef at the tellingly named restaurant Fatty Crab. One of its best-selling dishes, called the fatty duck, takes strips of a bird not exactly known for its leanness, dusts them with cornstarch and deep-fries them.
The “crispy pork” with pickled watermelon in a dish that Fatty Crab mockingly labels a salad amounts to cubes of fried pork belly, and the rest of the menu (pork ribs, small burgers doused with mayonnaise and aptly named fatty sliders) works a similarly clogged vein. During a recent lunch there with a dauntless friend, I was touched by the way our server — let’s call him Sisyphus — replenished the moist towelettes at our table over and over again. What we really needed him to do was put a dropcloth under us and, at meal’s end, hose us down.
Mr. Pelaccio’s appreciation of a fatty rib extends from pork to lamb, and at the restaurant 5 Ninth, from which he recently severed his ties, he occasionally served lamb ribs, the far reaches of which incorporated bits of lamb belly, he said.
He recalled in a recent telephone conversation that when 5 Ninth opened in the meatpacking district three years ago and he asked one of his suppliers about getting him this meat, he learned that the supplier “was selling his lamb ribs to a woman down the street to grind into dog food.”
Back then, Mr. Pelaccio said, no one much wanted them. “I could buy lamb ribs for a dollar a pound,” he said. “Now it’s $2.50.” Lamb ribs are definitely on the rise.
They’re a fixture at Resto, and that’s no accident: Resto’s executive chef, Ryan Skeen, worked for Mr. Pelaccio at 5 Ninth. And he’s a fellow cholesterol enthusiast, that’s for sure. In addition to putting pork jowl below deviled eggs, he grinds fatback into the restaurant’s burgers and combines pigs’ head meat with mayonnaise in sandwiches served on toasted brioche.
He told me on the phone recently that when he outlined his prospective menu for investors, they asked him if he might want to consider “some lighter dishes, like tuna tartare.”
He nixed that idea. “It wouldn’t be true to my nature,” he said. Lamb ribs, on the other hand, are. “I think the fat of lamb is an amazing flavor.”
So does the chef Seamus Mullen, who just put together a new menu for the Spanish restaurant Suba on the Lower East Side. One of the dishes on it is a lamb triptych including a square of fat-swaddled lamb belly that’s seared on a plancha.
“Fat’s great,” said Mr. Mullen, whose Suba menu also has pork belly — in two dishes. He added that more chefs and diners were coming to that conclusion and realizing that “a well-marbled rib-eye has a lot more flavor than a lean filet mignon.”
Indeed they are, and the prevalence of rib-eyes on menus around town demonstrates that even beyond Momofuku, Resto and the city’s most committed champions of advanced gluttony, there’s an embrace of less prissy, more vigorous eating.
There are other signs of this spirit as well. These days a New York restaurant is more likely to present an entree of Kobe or wagyu beef, which is synonymous with fattiness, than of bison, once touted and promoted for its relative leanness. If a fillet of fish isn’t showered with pork, then it’s wrapped in it, like the monkfish at Cafe Cluny or the sea bass “saltimbocca” at Insieme, both of which wear cloaks of prosciutto.
Meatballs are everywhere, sweetbreads are close behind, and I even detect inklings of a marrow surge, what with the continuing expansion of the Blue Ribbon family and the recent opening, in the Time Warner Center, of a new branch of Landmarc. The Blue Ribbon and Landmarc restaurants are big on marrow bones but don’t go as far as Craftsteak, which serves an appetizer of fried cubes of marrow.
Some of the restaurants in the gluttony brigade have been around a while and helped point the way. Take Prune, which the chef Gabrielle Hamilton opened in 1999, charting a brave and beloved course of battered, deep-fried sweetbreads sauced with bacon and butter; of marrow bones with sea salt; and of house-made lamb sausages.
All of these dishes have been on Ms. Hamilton’s menu from the start, when it was much more surprising for diners to encounter them and, she recalls, people struggled to describe the little restaurant’s big fare.
“I think it got called a lot of things, like a macho-eating menu,” she said, adding that she hastened to warn diners that “it could be gross if you have the sweetbreads and the bones and the chocolate cake. You eat one of those things.”
A year before Prune came Babbo, where the chef Mario Batali scattered organ meat across the menu and presaged the lardo pizza he would serve at Otto with lardo bruschetta, though he didn’t have the nerve to call it that. He told diners that the toasted bread was covered in prosciutto bianco, or white prosciutto, a nonsense term he coined to disguise the truth.
“I knew that they wouldn’t eat it if I just said, ‘This is the fat of a pig melted onto toast,’ ” Mr. Batali told me.
Now, however, “lardo is sought after, and it no longer raises people’s hackles,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “People finally realize that fat is truly delicious, particularly pork fat.”
The unabashed names of the restaurants that feed that creed support his assertion. In addition to Fatty Crab there are, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Pies ’n’ Thighs and Fette Sau, German for fat pig.
There’s also the Spotted Pig, a Greenwich Village gastropub in which Mr. Batali is an investor. The British chef April Bloomfield guides its kitchen, which turns out roasted pork sandwiches, hamburgers dripping with melted Roquefort and toast slathered with chicken liver. Like Mr. Pelaccio and Mr. Chang, Ms. Bloomfield is among the city’s most celebrated young chefs.
Fette Sau belongs to a posse of new barbecue joints, the spread of which, along with the growth in gastropubs, is yet another sign of these fleshy, flabby times. Even slightly older joints have raised the level of their game of late.
Last year Daisy May’s BBQ U.S.A., which opened in 2003, began serving not only whole pork butts but also whole pigs. They weigh 30 to 35 pounds, are meant to feed a dozen or so people and cost $480. Adam Perry Lang, the chef and co-owner of Daisy May’s, says that he sells at least two of them a night.
It’s some ritual. Before the platter of pig appeared before the group I’d assembled, a server set up two perpendicular wood braces to support it. They formed a cross, a reminder — as if we would need one — that something died for the deadly sin dearest to us.
That something was pretty much intact: snout pointed straight toward me, two little ears, four little hooves and a profoundly bronzed hide. The server carved into that skin and peeled away flaps of it, exposing a lustrous layer of fat and a deep reservoir of meat. The rest was up to us, a few sets of plastic tongs and some dull plastic knives.
“This really puts you in touch with your barbaric self,” said a woman in our group as she tugged at individual ribs along the pig’s midsection. Her fingers were slick with grease.
A man in the group flashed back to his two previous dinners. “I had suckling pig in Boston on Saturday,” he said. “I had a pork chop at ’Inoteca last night.”
He paused for a beat, then added: “It’s a lifestyle choice.”
So it is, and there’s a wicked, wonderful cluster of restaurants to support it.
A Glutton's Guide to New York
Craftsteak 85 10th Avenue (15th Street); (212) 400-6699 . Fried marrow.
DAISY MAY’S BBQ U.S.A., 623 11th Avenue (46th Street), (212) 977-1500 . Whole pork butt, whole pig.
FATTY CRAB 643 Hudson Street (Horatio Street); (212) 352-3590 or 3592. Fatty duck, pork belly and watermelon “salad,” pork ribs, fatty sliders.
MOMOFUKU SSAM BAR 207 Second Avenue (13th Street); (212) 254-3500 . Whole pork butt, steamed pork belly buns, sweetbreads, veal head terrine.
OTTO 1 Fifth Avenue (Eighth Street); (212) 995-9559 . Lardo pizza.
PRUNE 54 East First Street (First Avenue); (212) 677-6221 . Sweetbreads, marrow bones, lamb sausage.
RESTO, 111 East 29th Street; (212) 685-5585 . Deviled eggs on pork jowl, burger with fatback, pig’s head sandwiches, lamb ribs.
The Spotted Pig 314 West 11th Street (Greenwich Street); (212) 620-0393 . Cubano pork sandwich, burger with Roquefort, chicken liver toast.
SUBA 109 Ludlow Street (Delancey Street); (212) 982-5714 . Lamb belly.
TRESTLE ON TENTH 242 10th Avenue (24th Street); (212) 645-5659 . Saddle of lamb, oxtail and pig’s foot terrine.
"anything that tastes good couldn't possibly be bad for you"
June 13, 2007
Critic’s Notebook
Fat, Glorious Fat, Moves to the Center of the Plate
By FRANK BRUNI
I’m not sure it’s possible to behave with much dignity around seven glistening pounds of pork butt, but on a recent night at Momofuku Ssam Bar, five friends and I weren’t even encouraged to try.
Servers didn’t bother to carve the mountain of meat. They didn’t give us any delicate way to do it, either. They just plopped it in the center of the table, handed out sets of tongs, left us to our own devices and let the pig scatter where it may.
It was an ugly scene, and it was a beautiful one. We lunged at the flesh. Tore at it. Yanked it toward ourselves in dripping, jagged hunks, sometimes ignoring the lettuce wraps on the side so we could stuff it straight into our mouths. We looked, I realized, like hyenas at an all-you-can-eat buffet on the veldt, and I wasn’t surprised to notice other diners staring at us.
But what I saw on their faces wasn’t disgust. It was envy. I’d venture that more than a few of them returned to Momofuku for their own pig-outs. The restaurant, after all, sells about two whole pork butts — a term that refers to part of the pig’s shoulder, not to its rump — every night.
These are times of bold temptation, as well as prompt surrender, for a carnivorous glutton in New York.
They’re porky times, fatty times, which is to say very good times indeed. Any new logo for the city could justifiably place the Big Apple in the mouth of a spit-roasted pig, and if the health commissioner were really on his toes, he’d draw up a sizable list of restaurants required to hand out pills of Lipitor instead of after-dinner mints.
The list would encompass more than steakhouses, which have multiplied exponentially over the last five years, because what’s lumbered into particular favor with culinary tastemakers and the food-savvy set isn’t just beef and isn’t just any old piece of meat.
It’s a piece of meat that’s extra-messy, like one of the fat-ringed slabs of lamb at Trestle on Tenth, which opened last year. Sometimes it’s a mammoth cut, sometimes just gooey nuggets of animal parts less conventionally appreciated or lyrically named than the tenderloin.
The menu at Momofuku, which also opened last year and seems to capture the culinary zeitgeist as well as any restaurant, has not only sweetbreads — the gateway offal — but also a veal head terrine that resembles a gelatinous amalgam of everything your mother ever told you to trim from a chop and shove to the side of your plate. That same description applies to a terrine of oxtail and pig’s foot at Trestle on Tenth.
Trestle and Momofuku would be high on the health commissioner’s list, but probably no higher than the new restaurant Resto, where some genius — and I am most certainly not being facetious — decided that deviled eggs aren’t sufficiently rich on their own. No, they need amplification, and of course they need meat, so they’re placed on rectangles of pork jowl. One more thing: these rectangles are deep-fried. At a certain point, I suppose, there’s no turning back.
It’s as if decades of proliferating sushi and shrinking plates, of clean California cuisine and exhortations to graze, have fostered a robust (or is that rotund?) counterculture of chefs and diners eager to cut against the nutritional grain and straight into the bellies of beasts. In fact, bellies (most often pork, more recently lamb) are this counterculture’s LSD.
Its Timothy Leary might well be David Chang, the chef at Momofuku, where steamed buns are filled with strips of pork belly. Or maybe it’s Zak Pelaccio, the chef at the tellingly named restaurant Fatty Crab. One of its best-selling dishes, called the fatty duck, takes strips of a bird not exactly known for its leanness, dusts them with cornstarch and deep-fries them.
The “crispy pork” with pickled watermelon in a dish that Fatty Crab mockingly labels a salad amounts to cubes of fried pork belly, and the rest of the menu (pork ribs, small burgers doused with mayonnaise and aptly named fatty sliders) works a similarly clogged vein. During a recent lunch there with a dauntless friend, I was touched by the way our server — let’s call him Sisyphus — replenished the moist towelettes at our table over and over again. What we really needed him to do was put a dropcloth under us and, at meal’s end, hose us down.
Mr. Pelaccio’s appreciation of a fatty rib extends from pork to lamb, and at the restaurant 5 Ninth, from which he recently severed his ties, he occasionally served lamb ribs, the far reaches of which incorporated bits of lamb belly, he said.
He recalled in a recent telephone conversation that when 5 Ninth opened in the meatpacking district three years ago and he asked one of his suppliers about getting him this meat, he learned that the supplier “was selling his lamb ribs to a woman down the street to grind into dog food.”
Back then, Mr. Pelaccio said, no one much wanted them. “I could buy lamb ribs for a dollar a pound,” he said. “Now it’s $2.50.” Lamb ribs are definitely on the rise.
They’re a fixture at Resto, and that’s no accident: Resto’s executive chef, Ryan Skeen, worked for Mr. Pelaccio at 5 Ninth. And he’s a fellow cholesterol enthusiast, that’s for sure. In addition to putting pork jowl below deviled eggs, he grinds fatback into the restaurant’s burgers and combines pigs’ head meat with mayonnaise in sandwiches served on toasted brioche.
He told me on the phone recently that when he outlined his prospective menu for investors, they asked him if he might want to consider “some lighter dishes, like tuna tartare.”
He nixed that idea. “It wouldn’t be true to my nature,” he said. Lamb ribs, on the other hand, are. “I think the fat of lamb is an amazing flavor.”
So does the chef Seamus Mullen, who just put together a new menu for the Spanish restaurant Suba on the Lower East Side. One of the dishes on it is a lamb triptych including a square of fat-swaddled lamb belly that’s seared on a plancha.
“Fat’s great,” said Mr. Mullen, whose Suba menu also has pork belly — in two dishes. He added that more chefs and diners were coming to that conclusion and realizing that “a well-marbled rib-eye has a lot more flavor than a lean filet mignon.”
Indeed they are, and the prevalence of rib-eyes on menus around town demonstrates that even beyond Momofuku, Resto and the city’s most committed champions of advanced gluttony, there’s an embrace of less prissy, more vigorous eating.
There are other signs of this spirit as well. These days a New York restaurant is more likely to present an entree of Kobe or wagyu beef, which is synonymous with fattiness, than of bison, once touted and promoted for its relative leanness. If a fillet of fish isn’t showered with pork, then it’s wrapped in it, like the monkfish at Cafe Cluny or the sea bass “saltimbocca” at Insieme, both of which wear cloaks of prosciutto.
Meatballs are everywhere, sweetbreads are close behind, and I even detect inklings of a marrow surge, what with the continuing expansion of the Blue Ribbon family and the recent opening, in the Time Warner Center, of a new branch of Landmarc. The Blue Ribbon and Landmarc restaurants are big on marrow bones but don’t go as far as Craftsteak, which serves an appetizer of fried cubes of marrow.
Some of the restaurants in the gluttony brigade have been around a while and helped point the way. Take Prune, which the chef Gabrielle Hamilton opened in 1999, charting a brave and beloved course of battered, deep-fried sweetbreads sauced with bacon and butter; of marrow bones with sea salt; and of house-made lamb sausages.
All of these dishes have been on Ms. Hamilton’s menu from the start, when it was much more surprising for diners to encounter them and, she recalls, people struggled to describe the little restaurant’s big fare.
“I think it got called a lot of things, like a macho-eating menu,” she said, adding that she hastened to warn diners that “it could be gross if you have the sweetbreads and the bones and the chocolate cake. You eat one of those things.”
A year before Prune came Babbo, where the chef Mario Batali scattered organ meat across the menu and presaged the lardo pizza he would serve at Otto with lardo bruschetta, though he didn’t have the nerve to call it that. He told diners that the toasted bread was covered in prosciutto bianco, or white prosciutto, a nonsense term he coined to disguise the truth.
“I knew that they wouldn’t eat it if I just said, ‘This is the fat of a pig melted onto toast,’ ” Mr. Batali told me.
Now, however, “lardo is sought after, and it no longer raises people’s hackles,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “People finally realize that fat is truly delicious, particularly pork fat.”
The unabashed names of the restaurants that feed that creed support his assertion. In addition to Fatty Crab there are, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Pies ’n’ Thighs and Fette Sau, German for fat pig.
There’s also the Spotted Pig, a Greenwich Village gastropub in which Mr. Batali is an investor. The British chef April Bloomfield guides its kitchen, which turns out roasted pork sandwiches, hamburgers dripping with melted Roquefort and toast slathered with chicken liver. Like Mr. Pelaccio and Mr. Chang, Ms. Bloomfield is among the city’s most celebrated young chefs.
Fette Sau belongs to a posse of new barbecue joints, the spread of which, along with the growth in gastropubs, is yet another sign of these fleshy, flabby times. Even slightly older joints have raised the level of their game of late.
Last year Daisy May’s BBQ U.S.A., which opened in 2003, began serving not only whole pork butts but also whole pigs. They weigh 30 to 35 pounds, are meant to feed a dozen or so people and cost $480. Adam Perry Lang, the chef and co-owner of Daisy May’s, says that he sells at least two of them a night.
It’s some ritual. Before the platter of pig appeared before the group I’d assembled, a server set up two perpendicular wood braces to support it. They formed a cross, a reminder — as if we would need one — that something died for the deadly sin dearest to us.
That something was pretty much intact: snout pointed straight toward me, two little ears, four little hooves and a profoundly bronzed hide. The server carved into that skin and peeled away flaps of it, exposing a lustrous layer of fat and a deep reservoir of meat. The rest was up to us, a few sets of plastic tongs and some dull plastic knives.
“This really puts you in touch with your barbaric self,” said a woman in our group as she tugged at individual ribs along the pig’s midsection. Her fingers were slick with grease.
A man in the group flashed back to his two previous dinners. “I had suckling pig in Boston on Saturday,” he said. “I had a pork chop at ’Inoteca last night.”
He paused for a beat, then added: “It’s a lifestyle choice.”
So it is, and there’s a wicked, wonderful cluster of restaurants to support it.
A Glutton's Guide to New York
Craftsteak 85 10th Avenue (15th Street); (212) 400-6699 . Fried marrow.
DAISY MAY’S BBQ U.S.A., 623 11th Avenue (46th Street), (212) 977-1500 . Whole pork butt, whole pig.
FATTY CRAB 643 Hudson Street (Horatio Street); (212) 352-3590 or 3592. Fatty duck, pork belly and watermelon “salad,” pork ribs, fatty sliders.
MOMOFUKU SSAM BAR 207 Second Avenue (13th Street); (212) 254-3500 . Whole pork butt, steamed pork belly buns, sweetbreads, veal head terrine.
OTTO 1 Fifth Avenue (Eighth Street); (212) 995-9559 . Lardo pizza.
PRUNE 54 East First Street (First Avenue); (212) 677-6221 . Sweetbreads, marrow bones, lamb sausage.
RESTO, 111 East 29th Street; (212) 685-5585 . Deviled eggs on pork jowl, burger with fatback, pig’s head sandwiches, lamb ribs.
The Spotted Pig 314 West 11th Street (Greenwich Street); (212) 620-0393 . Cubano pork sandwich, burger with Roquefort, chicken liver toast.
SUBA 109 Ludlow Street (Delancey Street); (212) 982-5714 . Lamb belly.
TRESTLE ON TENTH 242 10th Avenue (24th Street); (212) 645-5659 . Saddle of lamb, oxtail and pig’s foot terrine.
Miami Medley
It has always amazed me how difficult it seems it is to find fresh fish in Miami. Surrounded by water, filled with fisherman, and relatively civilized, there are few places in Miami that we trust for good fish.
If you were to ask me yesterday, I would say the only consistent option is Garcia's Seafood on the Miami river, 398 Northwest North River Drive, Miami, FL 33128, where everytime I go, I promise myself I will return soon.
My father is obsessed with another fish market restaurant, Don Camaron, 501 NW 37th Ave, Miami, FL 33125, and even though I was impressed with the market selection (even though it was not all of the first quality), I find the food hit or miss.
Those were the only places I could recommend...until today.
When I asked longtime friend Tatiana where to eat a few months ago, and she unabashedly promoted her favorite fish place, Medley Restaurant, 7441 NW 72nd Ave, I knew that it was a must see, and today over great conversation I confirmed why.
Even though it looks like a standard fried food warehouse district dive, this particular place is full of smiles and warmth, and as I would soon find out, great fish.
Casual and no-nonsense, instead of bread, you receive palm-sized pieces of fresh fried fish, just made, and served with a Cuban-sized portion of tartar sauce. Hot and tender, I couldn't imagine a better salvation to my world class hunger and craving for fish.
Once I had calmed my body, I was prepared to enjoy the rest of the meal. I ordered their special fish soup (which I order obsessively everywhere I go), and Tatiana and I both chose the fresh catch grouper (they also had tilapia and dolphin) a la plancha, but she added tostones bien aplastados to hers, while I thought a side of lettuce and tomato would complement mine.
The fish soup lacked intensity, but I quickly got over it when I received a beautiful fillet of grouper topped with some sauteed onions.
The fish was delicate, perfectly cooked, and had fantastic structure. There was a crispy "skin" that seemed the result of an exquisitely executed pan fry, and it was served hot enough that I couldn't stop eating it.
Eyeing Tatiana's plate sized pair of tostones, I knew I had to try them, and Tatiana gracefully let me have one. Two-handing the disk like a hamburger, I knew after the first bite that I would have a hard time eating inferior tostones for a while. It had a thin crisp exterior that seemed to crack as each bite met a soft sweet first quality platano taste inside. An amazing cooking job given that the tostone was less than half a centimeter thick.
In the end, I was most impressed by the care and success of the cooks, as it seemed they did a fantastic job complementing the first rate fresh fish and fabulous platanos I ate today. Not bad for a casual lunch!
Thank you Tatiana for the wonderful conversation and a first rate introduction!
If you were to ask me yesterday, I would say the only consistent option is Garcia's Seafood on the Miami river, 398 Northwest North River Drive, Miami, FL 33128, where everytime I go, I promise myself I will return soon.
My father is obsessed with another fish market restaurant, Don Camaron, 501 NW 37th Ave, Miami, FL 33125, and even though I was impressed with the market selection (even though it was not all of the first quality), I find the food hit or miss.
Those were the only places I could recommend...until today.
When I asked longtime friend Tatiana where to eat a few months ago, and she unabashedly promoted her favorite fish place, Medley Restaurant, 7441 NW 72nd Ave, I knew that it was a must see, and today over great conversation I confirmed why.
Even though it looks like a standard fried food warehouse district dive, this particular place is full of smiles and warmth, and as I would soon find out, great fish.
Casual and no-nonsense, instead of bread, you receive palm-sized pieces of fresh fried fish, just made, and served with a Cuban-sized portion of tartar sauce. Hot and tender, I couldn't imagine a better salvation to my world class hunger and craving for fish.
Once I had calmed my body, I was prepared to enjoy the rest of the meal. I ordered their special fish soup (which I order obsessively everywhere I go), and Tatiana and I both chose the fresh catch grouper (they also had tilapia and dolphin) a la plancha, but she added tostones bien aplastados to hers, while I thought a side of lettuce and tomato would complement mine.
The fish soup lacked intensity, but I quickly got over it when I received a beautiful fillet of grouper topped with some sauteed onions.
The fish was delicate, perfectly cooked, and had fantastic structure. There was a crispy "skin" that seemed the result of an exquisitely executed pan fry, and it was served hot enough that I couldn't stop eating it.
Eyeing Tatiana's plate sized pair of tostones, I knew I had to try them, and Tatiana gracefully let me have one. Two-handing the disk like a hamburger, I knew after the first bite that I would have a hard time eating inferior tostones for a while. It had a thin crisp exterior that seemed to crack as each bite met a soft sweet first quality platano taste inside. An amazing cooking job given that the tostone was less than half a centimeter thick.
In the end, I was most impressed by the care and success of the cooks, as it seemed they did a fantastic job complementing the first rate fresh fish and fabulous platanos I ate today. Not bad for a casual lunch!
Thank you Tatiana for the wonderful conversation and a first rate introduction!
Truffle Oil
I have always been skeptical of truffle oil, as I feel some chefs cheat with it, masking any defects or deficiencies in their dishes with the all encompassing truffle bouquet splash, but it turns out that we should also question its origins.
Truffle oil is synthetic. Not coming from an original source, I think it is unfair to promote it as a premium product, and I find the way it is presented in many U.S. restaurants disingenuous.
This article appeared in the NYTimes a few weeks ago while I was in Paris, and because I couldn't stop thinking about it, I have included it here.
Incidentally, what other tricks do chefs use to mask deficiencies and defects? Japan taught me to be skeptical of the sashimi served on a slice of lemon, I have also seen citrus juice in a Korean raw beef steak tartar look alike, and I know there are others. We really should be more aware of these signs, as they usually flag an inferior product.
From the May 16, 2007 NY Times
De Gustibus
Hocus-Pocus, and a Beaker of Truffles
By DANIEL PATTERSON
A TRUFFLE by any other name may smell as sweet, but what if that name is 2,4-dithiapentane? All across the country, in restaurants great and small, the “truffle” flavor advertised on menus is increasingly being supplied by truffle oil. What those menus don’t say is that, unlike real truffles, the aroma of truffle oil is not born in the earth. Most commercial truffle oils are concocted by mixing olive oil with one or more compounds like 2,4-dithiapentane (the most prominent of the hundreds of aromatic molecules that make the flavor of white truffles so exciting) that have been created in a laboratory; their one-dimensional flavor is also changing common understanding of how a truffle should taste.
When I discovered truffle oil as a chef in the late 1990’s, I was thrilled. So much flavor, so little expense. I suppose I could have given some thought to how an ingredient that cost $60 an ounce or more could be captured so expressively in an oil that sold for a dollar an ounce. I might have wondered why the price of the oils didn’t fluctuate along with the price of real truffles; why the oils of white and black truffles cost the same, when white truffles themselves were more than twice as expensive as black; or why the quality of oils didn’t vary from year to year like the natural ingredients. But I didn’t. Instead I happily used truffle oil for several years (even, embarrassingly, recommending it in a cookbook), until finally a friend cornered me at a farmers’ market to explain what I had should have known all along. I glumly pulled all my truffle oil from the restaurant shelves and traded it to a restaurant down the street for some local olive oil.
That truffle oil is chemically enhanced is not news. It has been common knowledge among most chefs for some time, and in 2003 Jeffrey Steingarten wrote an article in Vogue about the artificiality of the oils that by all rights should have shorn the industry of its “natural” fig leaf. Instead, the use of truffle oil continued apace. The question is, Why are so many chefs at all price points — who wouldn’t dream of using vanillin instead of vanilla bean and who source their organic baby vegetables and humanely raised meats with exquisite care — using a synthetic flavoring agent?
Part of the answer is that, even now, you will find chefs who are surprised to hear that truffle oil does not actually come from real truffles. “I thought that it was made from dried bits and pieces of truffles steeped in olive oil,” said Vincent Nargi of Cafe Cluny in Manhattan, which made me put down my pen and scratch my head. The flavor of real truffles, especially black, is evanescent, difficult to capture in an oil under the best of circumstances.
But, much as I did for years, chefs want to believe. Stories of sightings of natural truffle oil abound, like a gourmand’s answer to the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. One chef told me in an excited, slightly conspiratorial tone that Jing Tio of Le Sanctuaire in Santa Monica, Calif., who sells high-quality specialty ingredients to chefs, mixed his own oil to order.
This seemed unlikely. When I asked Mr. Tio, he gave me a funny look. “Natural?” he said, rolling his eyes. “Nooo ...”
Truffle companies are secretive, and speaking to their representatives does little to illuminate their production techniques. I was told by Federico Balestra at Sabatino Tartufi that its oil is now “100 percent organic,” made from dried truffles and other ingredients with flavors “similar to truffle.” Vittorio Giordano of Urbani Tartufi called its manufacturing method, though conducted in a laboratory, a “natural process.” He described the essence that his company uses as “something from the truffle that is not the truffle.”
Whereas once truffles were hallmarks of local cooking — black in France and white in Italy — the globalization of cuisine has led to worldwide demand for an ingredient whose output continues to decline. As with some highly collectible wines, the virulent combination of high value and scarcity have created an environment ripe for fraudulent behavior. French agencies conduct chemical analyses of black truffles to ensure that they are not inferior Chinese or Spanish truffles soaked in truffle oil or juice. White truffles from other areas of Italy have been known to show up at the Alba market, summer truffles passed off as winter. But when it comes to the oil, chefs are helping to perpetuate the fraud. Why?
Call it the LVMH-ization of cooking. Truffles have become a luxury brand, one that connotes a way of life as much as a style of cooking. “Chefs use truffle oil because it’s easy to add a gloss of glamour with it — and because it helps sell dishes,” S. Irene Virbila, chief restaurant critic of The Los Angeles Times, said in an e-mail message.
Although the scent of a truffle just dug can be one of the most profound gustatory experiences of the Western world, it’s one that not many people in this country have had on truffles’ native soil. Once there were only a few expensive and exclusive restaurants that recreated that experience, which only select customers could afford. Truffle oil has simultaneously democratized and cheapened the truffle experience, creating a knockoff that goes by the same name.
The competitiveness of the restaurant scene has a lot to do with this trend. What most people know of truffles is truffle “aroma,” which has helped shape their expectations of what they’re paying for — and how much they should have to pay to get it. “Price is definitely a factor,” said Shea Gallante of Cru in Manhattan, who uses black truffle oil to reinforce the flavor of real black truffles in a midwinter pasta dish. “If I didn’t use the two drops of oil I would have to add another 8 to 10 grams of truffle,” he said, making the dish too expensive for his clientele. Many chefs agree that the quality of truffles in this country has fallen in recent years, added to the fact that every minute a truffle spends out of the ground enervates its flavor. The increased scrutiny of imported goods hasn’t helped; prolonged stays in customs might be keeping the country safe from exploding fungi, but it’s not doing much for the truffle’s aromatic intensity.
And Americans, as many were quick to note, like big flavors. “People expect the slap in the face of truffle oil,” said Jonathan Gold, the restaurant critic for LA Weekly. “They have lost their taste for subtlety; they want bigger than life flavors that are amped up with aromatics. That’s American cooking at the moment.” Many chefs are turning to truffle oil as a way to get truffle aromas that, as many chefs put it, “jump off the plate,” often dressing real truffles in the oil before sending them to the table to heighten their effect. It raises the question, What will happen when there is a synthetic heirloom tomato scent or an imitation ripe peach flavor? Are we moving toward an era of fake food?
Probably not. Truffle oil seems unique in this regard. Most chefs I spoke with said they were undisturbed by its artificiality, although they are quite concerned with its “proper” usage, which chiefly comes down to restraint: less, in this case, is more. This is curious, considering that the same chefs will say in the next breath that the best way to use real truffles is in profusion. Some call truffle oil “authentic” only when used in conjunction with real truffles, while others maintain that they like it for what it is, something altogether different.
“I used to use white truffle oil a lot, but now I only use a little bit in my liquid black truffle ravioli,” Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago told me. “It adds a little more perfume, a slightly different flavor. I cut my teeth cooking at the French Laundry, and when we were using truffles there was always a bottle close by. But after I was on my own for a while I started to ask myself why I was using it, and I didn’t have a good answer. It doesn’t even taste like truffle.”
Chris L’Hommedieu, chef de cuisine at Michael Mina in San Francisco, used truffle oils during his tenure as chef de cuisine at Per Se in New York, although he said he never developed a taste for them. But when asked how much of his aversion to truffle oil was due to its artificiality, he told me: “One hundred percent. I learned that from Jean-Louis.”
Mr. L’Hommedieu’s recollection involved the late chef Jean-Louis Palladin, with whom he worked at Palladin, a Manhattan restaurant that is now closed. Returning from a trip out of town, Mr. Palladin was enraged to walk into the kitchen and find that in his absence bottles of truffle oil had cropped up everywhere. Grabbing two of them, he called the staff out to the alley behind the restaurant where the garbage was held. He hurled the oil at the side of the building, smashing the glass bottles against the wall. “It’s full of chemicals,” he screamed at his confused and frightened staff members, who scrambled back to the kitchen through the gathering scent of truffle oil mingled with the fetid air of the alley. “No more!”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Daniel Patterson is the chef and owner of Coi, a restaurant in San Francisco. With this column, De Gustibus returns to The New York Times as an occasional forum for various writers to employ opinion, argument or provocation in reflections on food or drink.
Truffle oil is synthetic. Not coming from an original source, I think it is unfair to promote it as a premium product, and I find the way it is presented in many U.S. restaurants disingenuous.
This article appeared in the NYTimes a few weeks ago while I was in Paris, and because I couldn't stop thinking about it, I have included it here.
Incidentally, what other tricks do chefs use to mask deficiencies and defects? Japan taught me to be skeptical of the sashimi served on a slice of lemon, I have also seen citrus juice in a Korean raw beef steak tartar look alike, and I know there are others. We really should be more aware of these signs, as they usually flag an inferior product.
From the May 16, 2007 NY Times
De Gustibus
Hocus-Pocus, and a Beaker of Truffles
By DANIEL PATTERSON
A TRUFFLE by any other name may smell as sweet, but what if that name is 2,4-dithiapentane? All across the country, in restaurants great and small, the “truffle” flavor advertised on menus is increasingly being supplied by truffle oil. What those menus don’t say is that, unlike real truffles, the aroma of truffle oil is not born in the earth. Most commercial truffle oils are concocted by mixing olive oil with one or more compounds like 2,4-dithiapentane (the most prominent of the hundreds of aromatic molecules that make the flavor of white truffles so exciting) that have been created in a laboratory; their one-dimensional flavor is also changing common understanding of how a truffle should taste.
When I discovered truffle oil as a chef in the late 1990’s, I was thrilled. So much flavor, so little expense. I suppose I could have given some thought to how an ingredient that cost $60 an ounce or more could be captured so expressively in an oil that sold for a dollar an ounce. I might have wondered why the price of the oils didn’t fluctuate along with the price of real truffles; why the oils of white and black truffles cost the same, when white truffles themselves were more than twice as expensive as black; or why the quality of oils didn’t vary from year to year like the natural ingredients. But I didn’t. Instead I happily used truffle oil for several years (even, embarrassingly, recommending it in a cookbook), until finally a friend cornered me at a farmers’ market to explain what I had should have known all along. I glumly pulled all my truffle oil from the restaurant shelves and traded it to a restaurant down the street for some local olive oil.
That truffle oil is chemically enhanced is not news. It has been common knowledge among most chefs for some time, and in 2003 Jeffrey Steingarten wrote an article in Vogue about the artificiality of the oils that by all rights should have shorn the industry of its “natural” fig leaf. Instead, the use of truffle oil continued apace. The question is, Why are so many chefs at all price points — who wouldn’t dream of using vanillin instead of vanilla bean and who source their organic baby vegetables and humanely raised meats with exquisite care — using a synthetic flavoring agent?
Part of the answer is that, even now, you will find chefs who are surprised to hear that truffle oil does not actually come from real truffles. “I thought that it was made from dried bits and pieces of truffles steeped in olive oil,” said Vincent Nargi of Cafe Cluny in Manhattan, which made me put down my pen and scratch my head. The flavor of real truffles, especially black, is evanescent, difficult to capture in an oil under the best of circumstances.
But, much as I did for years, chefs want to believe. Stories of sightings of natural truffle oil abound, like a gourmand’s answer to the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. One chef told me in an excited, slightly conspiratorial tone that Jing Tio of Le Sanctuaire in Santa Monica, Calif., who sells high-quality specialty ingredients to chefs, mixed his own oil to order.
This seemed unlikely. When I asked Mr. Tio, he gave me a funny look. “Natural?” he said, rolling his eyes. “Nooo ...”
Truffle companies are secretive, and speaking to their representatives does little to illuminate their production techniques. I was told by Federico Balestra at Sabatino Tartufi that its oil is now “100 percent organic,” made from dried truffles and other ingredients with flavors “similar to truffle.” Vittorio Giordano of Urbani Tartufi called its manufacturing method, though conducted in a laboratory, a “natural process.” He described the essence that his company uses as “something from the truffle that is not the truffle.”
Whereas once truffles were hallmarks of local cooking — black in France and white in Italy — the globalization of cuisine has led to worldwide demand for an ingredient whose output continues to decline. As with some highly collectible wines, the virulent combination of high value and scarcity have created an environment ripe for fraudulent behavior. French agencies conduct chemical analyses of black truffles to ensure that they are not inferior Chinese or Spanish truffles soaked in truffle oil or juice. White truffles from other areas of Italy have been known to show up at the Alba market, summer truffles passed off as winter. But when it comes to the oil, chefs are helping to perpetuate the fraud. Why?
Call it the LVMH-ization of cooking. Truffles have become a luxury brand, one that connotes a way of life as much as a style of cooking. “Chefs use truffle oil because it’s easy to add a gloss of glamour with it — and because it helps sell dishes,” S. Irene Virbila, chief restaurant critic of The Los Angeles Times, said in an e-mail message.
Although the scent of a truffle just dug can be one of the most profound gustatory experiences of the Western world, it’s one that not many people in this country have had on truffles’ native soil. Once there were only a few expensive and exclusive restaurants that recreated that experience, which only select customers could afford. Truffle oil has simultaneously democratized and cheapened the truffle experience, creating a knockoff that goes by the same name.
The competitiveness of the restaurant scene has a lot to do with this trend. What most people know of truffles is truffle “aroma,” which has helped shape their expectations of what they’re paying for — and how much they should have to pay to get it. “Price is definitely a factor,” said Shea Gallante of Cru in Manhattan, who uses black truffle oil to reinforce the flavor of real black truffles in a midwinter pasta dish. “If I didn’t use the two drops of oil I would have to add another 8 to 10 grams of truffle,” he said, making the dish too expensive for his clientele. Many chefs agree that the quality of truffles in this country has fallen in recent years, added to the fact that every minute a truffle spends out of the ground enervates its flavor. The increased scrutiny of imported goods hasn’t helped; prolonged stays in customs might be keeping the country safe from exploding fungi, but it’s not doing much for the truffle’s aromatic intensity.
And Americans, as many were quick to note, like big flavors. “People expect the slap in the face of truffle oil,” said Jonathan Gold, the restaurant critic for LA Weekly. “They have lost their taste for subtlety; they want bigger than life flavors that are amped up with aromatics. That’s American cooking at the moment.” Many chefs are turning to truffle oil as a way to get truffle aromas that, as many chefs put it, “jump off the plate,” often dressing real truffles in the oil before sending them to the table to heighten their effect. It raises the question, What will happen when there is a synthetic heirloom tomato scent or an imitation ripe peach flavor? Are we moving toward an era of fake food?
Probably not. Truffle oil seems unique in this regard. Most chefs I spoke with said they were undisturbed by its artificiality, although they are quite concerned with its “proper” usage, which chiefly comes down to restraint: less, in this case, is more. This is curious, considering that the same chefs will say in the next breath that the best way to use real truffles is in profusion. Some call truffle oil “authentic” only when used in conjunction with real truffles, while others maintain that they like it for what it is, something altogether different.
“I used to use white truffle oil a lot, but now I only use a little bit in my liquid black truffle ravioli,” Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago told me. “It adds a little more perfume, a slightly different flavor. I cut my teeth cooking at the French Laundry, and when we were using truffles there was always a bottle close by. But after I was on my own for a while I started to ask myself why I was using it, and I didn’t have a good answer. It doesn’t even taste like truffle.”
Chris L’Hommedieu, chef de cuisine at Michael Mina in San Francisco, used truffle oils during his tenure as chef de cuisine at Per Se in New York, although he said he never developed a taste for them. But when asked how much of his aversion to truffle oil was due to its artificiality, he told me: “One hundred percent. I learned that from Jean-Louis.”
Mr. L’Hommedieu’s recollection involved the late chef Jean-Louis Palladin, with whom he worked at Palladin, a Manhattan restaurant that is now closed. Returning from a trip out of town, Mr. Palladin was enraged to walk into the kitchen and find that in his absence bottles of truffle oil had cropped up everywhere. Grabbing two of them, he called the staff out to the alley behind the restaurant where the garbage was held. He hurled the oil at the side of the building, smashing the glass bottles against the wall. “It’s full of chemicals,” he screamed at his confused and frightened staff members, who scrambled back to the kitchen through the gathering scent of truffle oil mingled with the fetid air of the alley. “No more!”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Daniel Patterson is the chef and owner of Coi, a restaurant in San Francisco. With this column, De Gustibus returns to The New York Times as an occasional forum for various writers to employ opinion, argument or provocation in reflections on food or drink.
Best Restaurants in the World
I am tired of seeing lists of the best restaurants in the world without a single Japanese restaurant. These reviewers need to be crucified, and the Japanese need to be condemned for making it nearly impossible for a non-Japanese to eat at the best restaurants in Japan.
Last night's S.pellegrini awards are an embarassment to the reviewers, and should be an embarassment to the Japanese.
I happen to be into food and speak Japanese, but what other things are the Japanese preventing the Japanese-illiterate world from enjoying?
Last night's S.pellegrini awards are an embarassment to the reviewers, and should be an embarassment to the Japanese.
I happen to be into food and speak Japanese, but what other things are the Japanese preventing the Japanese-illiterate world from enjoying?
NY Pizza
I sat down the other night with two self professed NYC pizza experts, Josh and James, and they shared their favorites.
Josh:
Grimaldi's Pizzeria
www.grimaldis.com
19 Old Fulton St. under the Brooklyn Bridge
718.858.4300
**best pepperoni ever**
Patsy's Pizzeria
http://www.patsyspizzeriany.com/
corporate, but the best. Original store (118th St.) not as good as the rest.
James:
Koronet Pizza
2848 Broadway @ W110th Street
212-222-1566
Columbia Pizza Joint. Giant slices.
and a Joe's
either Joe's Pizza
51 Essex St, New York, 10002
(212) 777-3545
or Rocket Joe's Pizza
61 Delancey St, New York, 10002
(212) 334-5900
Thank you James and Josh for sampling countless pies that aren't worth it to bring us the best.
Josh:
Grimaldi's Pizzeria
www.grimaldis.com
19 Old Fulton St. under the Brooklyn Bridge
718.858.4300
**best pepperoni ever**
Patsy's Pizzeria
http://www.patsyspizzeriany.com/
corporate, but the best. Original store (118th St.) not as good as the rest.
James:
Koronet Pizza
2848 Broadway @ W110th Street
212-222-1566
Columbia Pizza Joint. Giant slices.
and a Joe's
either Joe's Pizza
51 Essex St, New York, 10002
(212) 777-3545
or Rocket Joe's Pizza
61 Delancey St, New York, 10002
(212) 334-5900
Thank you James and Josh for sampling countless pies that aren't worth it to bring us the best.
Fraina-Chrench Baguettes and World Trade
This one made me laugh on China's official web portal gov.cn - I mean, have the French sold out or are they just being smart? French hope Chinese will fall for baguette | |||
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| To many Chinese, Paris conjures up not only tourist attractions such as the Eiffel Tower and Arc of Triumph, but also the French art de vivre a blonde in high- heeled shoes walking elegantly along a street covered by yellow leaves, with a bag of baguettes in her arm. Well, you might see a similar scene in the streets of Beijing and Shanghai in a few years. France is promoting the French bread-baking techniques in China, as a measure to crack open China's wheat market. "We want to export to China not only our high-quality wheat but also the unique bread-baking techniques of France," said Jean-Jacques Vorimore, president of France Export Cereals (FEC). "Those are our 'double advantages' compared with other wheat exporters." Vorimore made the remarks at the 10th Sino-French seminar on French wheat held on Wednesday in Xiamen, Fujian Province. FEC is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 by the Cerealiers de France in order to promote French grain worldwide. A highlight of this year's seminar is the detailed introduction on French-baking techniques of baguette and sour dough bread using French wheat flour. The speakers include Gerard Brochoire, head of the National Baking and Pastry-making Institute, the most famous baking school of France, and baking experts from Lesaffre Group, a world-leading yeast producer. France, the European Union's largest grain exporter, has been vying to become a long-term, regular wheat exporter to China. It signed its first wheat export contract with China in almost a decade in 2004. The 700,000 tons of wheat, worth US$100 million, was purchased by China National Cereals, Oils & Foodstuffs Imp & Exp Corp (COFCO) and had been shipped to China by the middle of last year. Last April, China signed a letter of intent to import another 500,000 tons of French wheat when former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin visited Beijing. "We hope to sign the formal contract as soon as possible," Vorimore said. But Yang Hong, general manager of the wheat department of COFCO, said it is unlikely for COFCO to sign another contract with France immediately given the rising wheat output in China. "China is delicately balancing its wheat supply and demand," Yang said. "The government, which has been trying hard to increase farmers' income, would not like to see the wheat price dropping sharply." COFCO is a government-designated grain-buying agent and handles 90 per cent of wheat exports to China. Private trading companies and mills apply for quotas on the remaining 10 per cent. Although the final figure of wheat output in 2005 has not been officially released, the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Agriculture estimate that China produced 97.5 million tons of wheat last year, a 6 per cent rise year-on-year. The Chinese Government issued a series of policies to encourage farmers' enthusiasm for growing wheat since the end of 2003 in a bid to increase the nation's wheat output. Major policies include direct subsidies to farmers on purchasing seeds and machines and the abolition of agricultural tax. China's wheat output rose 5.2 per cent in 2004, which ended four consecutive years of decline in wheat output. "But given China's low per capita farm land and water resources, we still need to import high-quality wheat in which China is not competitive. That is conducive to seeking a sustainable way of growth," Yang said. The United States and Canada are China's major sources of high protein hard wheat, and China imports low-protein soft wheat from Australia. "If French wheat wants to get a regular share of the Chinese market, it must be very-price competitive, and the Chinese mills must know how to use French wheat to develop products that the market welcomes," Yang said. FEC donated 300 tons of French wheat to a mill in Guangdong Province in 2004 and another 400 tons to a mill in Xiamen last year. French and Chinese technicians conducted tests at the mills to adapt French wheat to special requirements for making Chinese food. "The tests showed that French wheat flour, when blended with Chinese flour, can make very good Chinese noodles and Southern-style Chinese steamed bread," Lin Jiangtao, one of the technicians and lecturer at Henan University of Technology, said when releasing the test results at the seminar. |
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