This Week in the Mercury
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Food This Week’s Mercury Last Supper: The Curious Case of Chez Panisse, Chef Jehnee Rains, and the Cash & Carry Salmon
Posted by Patrick Alan Coleman on Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 2:01 PM
First I’d like to point out that I’m introducing my new catch phrase in this week’s column. (After all, how the hell am I going to get my own Food Network/Travel Channel Show without a catch phrase?) Have you spotted it yet? You have? Fan-fucking-tastic!™ I plan to use it only for good, and only when it really matters, and never facetiously.
It’s no wonder, really, the first place to benefit from my new catch phrase is the Northeast Alberta crêperie Suzette. Their Chocolat crêpe blew my mind. It put me into tunnel vision mode—that special place during a meal when, for a time, the entirety of your sensory experience if dominated by what’s happening between your plate and your gullet. I disappeared down the flavor hole, only to emerge breathless and dazed. Good stuff.
This quality is not a surprise considering Jehnee Rains once worked at Alice Water’s penultimate farm to table restaurant Chez Panisse. Less impressive, but still up there in the “Huh. Neat.” department, Rains is also an alumni of the Bruce Carey empire (Saucebox, Bluehour, etc.).
I had this resume in mind while eating one her fantastic smoked salmon crêpes. Where did she get the salmon, I wondered? Likely based on that Chez Panisse experience, I imagined Rains taking a long road trip to the coast where she would walk onto a dock and haggle with a fisherman about their latest wild caught salmon haul. After purchasing the perfect fish, she’d smoke it herself, or take it to a local smoker who'd do the job using only indigenous (yet sustainable) wood, in a smoker built by hand from post-consumer materials.
No dice. The fish was from restaurant supply chain Cash & Carry. I didn’t think it was important to mention in the column because it did not affect the quality, or my enjoyment of the dish. Also, Rains was up-front with where the fish was sourced. She obviously felt it was up to her standards, and I’m willing to trust her. I might add that though the salmon was store bought, it was also wild caught, though not necessarily local.
And that brings me to this week’s food question, Blogtownies. Do you care where a chef sources their ingredients as long as the food tastes good? Do you think time and cost can ever trump sustainable and local? Should I have put this information in the column?
Fire at will.
1
I have no shame at all in trying to be an incredibly good cook using cheap ingredients, since I'm a food stamp recipient/college student and everything, but part of me feels that there's little point in dining out for something that I can make just as good, if not better, at home. For example, since I don't have access to a grill, I can't really do all the yummy summertime bbq stuff at home so I'll eat it when I go out. The same thing sort of goes with the quality/source of the ingredients. I try to buy sustainable/local if it's economically feasible to do so (although often times it isn't), but if I go out somewhere and I'm paying out the ass for ingredients that are readily available to me, then it's not worth it. This reminds me of a couple food carts I used to frequent pretty often before I figured out that much of their foods were purchased at Safeway or Winco. True, it was still delicious and I have no problems continuing to give them business, but part of me feels like the chef or cook has or should have some sort of special connection to farms, butchers, fishermen, etc. that I don't have and thus have some access to things I don't.
I don't think the information's necessary to put in the column although it is impressive when, for example, someone could take some cheap pork from Winco and turn it into awesome carnitas. There's a lot of people in Portland who get really hung up and anal about the whole sustainable/local bullshit so maybe for the sake of your readers you'd want that there, but ultimately (again, personally speaking) it's all about being able to have something you can't make yourself and having it at a decent price.
2
3
While it might not affect your enjoyment of the dish, the source might affect others' ability to even consider ordering the dish, so I'd say that's useful information to include.
4
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