At The Pass with Chef Gordon Hamersley of Hamersley's Bistro: Rock n' Roll, Food Trends & Dinner Review

"Good food...was about more than merely eating." -Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires

 

Chef Gordon Hamersley at Movers and Shakers Event 2012

On one of the coldest nights thus far in 2013, I ventured out anticipating the warmth of Chef's conversation and kitchen magic at Hamersley's Bistro.

Chatting over a glass of bubbly was right up my alley.  Bartender Mark was a doll throughout the evening and conversing with Chef Gordon was like catching up with a wise, familiar friend.

Hamersley's Bistro first opened their doors in 1987 at a location across the street from the current property which opened in 1993.  Ever since, Hamersley's Bistro has been a culinary destination for  food lovers who enjoy classic, seasonally-based cuisine and is a favorite for pre-theatre and event goers heading to the Boston Center for the Arts.

As an elegant, intimate restaurant, Hamersley's Bistro boasts great service and upscale, yet homestyle French-American fare.  In warmer months (of which I've enjoyed a few), sitting on the patio lit by strings of tiny lights above head and over brush and iron fence is lovely.

At The Pass with Chef Gordon Hamersley:

DrFoodie:  Great to see you again Chef.  How were the holidays?

Chef Hamersley: Good.  We had a strong end to the year with holiday parties, people hanging out with coworkers and doing their thing, and finally the family gatherings.  We did host a ball on New Year’s.  I wrote a good menu, but New Year's is not always my favorite meal to cook. 

DrFoodie: Why is that?

Chef Hamersley:  There's lots of preparation and it’s expensive with lots of anticipation for that particular meal.  It always gives me the hebee jeebees trying to figure out what to do and how to do it, but once I'm up and running, it works out just fine.

DrFoodie: Being such a hands-on chef/owner, do you find time to cook at home for your family?

Chef Hamersley: At home, my cooking is pretty straight forward, but I’m not home very often.  I cook typical family meals.  Lots of the food here (at the restaurant) was created for Sunday dinners at our house.  I cook at home once or twice a week if I’m lucky.

DrFoodie:  Well that’s certainly more than I cook for sure!

Chef Hamersley: Let's put it this way- when I'm home and I'm hungry, I am the one that can do it fastest, so I'll cook and someone else washes the dishes.

DrFoodie: How did you get your start and how have you seen the restaurant scene change since?  You opened in 1987 correct?

Chef Hamersley: Yes.  We opened in '87, but I started cooking around '75.  I began as a dishwasher in a French restaurant in Cambridge.  I’d been doing other stuff like working with Rock 'n Roll bands, dragging equipment around. Life was good and I enjoyed it, but needed more of a steady income. 

I washed dishes for maybe six months to a year.  Then, it was the classic story, one day we were busy and one of the cooks didn’t show up and the chef yelled, "I need you to help me out!"  I took off the rubber apron and put on the white one and never looked back. 

At the beginning, I fell in love with restaurants.  It’s a bit like rock n roll…you’re putting on a show every night, the audience arrives, you’re doing your thing, but the good thing about the restaurant business is that you don’t have to pack your things up and drive to Philly.

To me it was a really cool team atmosphere and attracted a diverse and eclectic group of people.  To me, I found a job that I loved.  I loved the discipline, the history, and the physical aspect of it.

I worked in several restaurants in search of knowledge.

DrFoodie: What was it like working with Lydia Shire?  She's such a spitfire!

Chef Hamersley: Great!  I had just returned from France. She (Lydia) was the chef at the Bostonian Hotel and I came on as her Sous Chef.  She’s one of the best cooks I know, never afraid to do anything. I give the general managers at the Bostonian credit for hiring people and letting them do what they do best.  We did great things.

It was so popular that even the hotel's guests were not able get reservations.  I did that for 2 years and every time I thought about leaving to open my own place, Lydia would come up with another crazy scheme to try something else for another 6 months.

She remains a great friend and I am a huge fan!

DrFoodie: It’s interesting to see the relationships that are built within the restaurant industry.  The camaraderie is palpable.

Chef Hamersley: Boston is small and we are on our 3^rd generation since the food revolution began in the early 80s and now people who were Sous Chefs in restaurants then, have now owned their restaurants for a while.  Now their Sous Chefs are taking off and doing the same.  Success begets success.  We’re all pretty close and support each other.  Especially within the neighborhoods.  Here, in the South End, if we happen to be full, we will suggest each others' restaurants.  We promote each other.

DrFoodie: So it’s not as cut throat as food television would have us believe?

Chef Hamersley: No.  Food tv is for entertainment.  It's not about reality.

DrFoodie: Would you every do it?

Chef Hamersley: No.  It’s not for me.  Food competitions have been going on in France since the 1700s with various Dukes and Lords that would compete with one another and there were competitions in Paris with the best cooks in the world.  It’s not how I think about food.  I don’t think food should be judged that way.  Food to me should take its rightful place around the table with everything else.  There are only two kinds of food:  good food and bad food.  It doesn’t matter how expensive it is, how wacky the recipe or the ingredients.  I don’t think that anyone should have to go home when some judge, without credentials, decides she doesn’t like their food.

It’s not for me.  I like doing what I do.

DrFoodie: Which upcoming trends are you excited about?  Any trends you would like to see buried forever?

Chef Hamersley: Promoting the simplicity of cooking seasonally and locally, has been going on in America for 25 years and it’s good to see media and money behind the movement now.  Whether you call in farm-to-table or nose-to-tail, cooks are doing what they are supposed to do.

Cooks are the ultimate economists and those who are doing things right are buying close to hand, buying foods that are as fresh as they can be.  They are cooking things are that are in-season.  In a day and age when I can get ingredients from New Zealand and South America, like raspberries from Chile for example, we try to maintain seasons in our kitchen.  This generation has redefined it in a way that is really great.  So where my generation began, the new generation has taken it and made it something even bigger and greater.  

I'm  not a huge fan of the food science movement.  I like food to look the way it’s supposed to.  I can take it or leave it.  I think in the hands of the right people it’s cool and fascinating to see and to eat, but I have no desire to cook that way.  I don’t have the desire to turn a squash into a jelly or a sorbet.  I like the idea of it more than I like eating it.  So I’m fine if that goes by the wayside.

DrFoodie: As a diner,  I think it (molecular gastronomy) is more of an experience than a lifestyle.

Chef Hamersley:  Without innovation we don’t have anything.  But every generation is going to embrace a certain movement and that movement is going to create change. Probably 90 percent of it will get thrown away and the 10 percent that is left is really worth keeping and will get folded into the next generation of food ideas.

Think back to when some French chef decided to fold beaten egg whites into a cake batter (a method of lightening the batter).  Well, that was radical!  That was a food science idea that changed the way bakers bake forever and still is in use.  So some of that stuff will stay, but most will fade.

DrFoodie:  What are your thoughts about the food truck movement?

Chef Hamersley:  I like it.  I actually had this idea before we opened back in 1987.  I said to my wife:  "What do you think about getting a vehicle, roll out the awning, setting up plastic chairs and tables, and cooking the best food customers ever had, and then picking it all up and driving away?"
I have a whole business plan for it from back in the early 80s.  It’s basic street food.  The great thing about food is it doesn’t matter how it’s served, good food is good food.  I love the food truck scene.  Whether on the streets on Mexico City or Singapore, it's traditional.  Food trucks are an extension of that tradition. 

Would I do it?  No.  I have my hands full here, but it is a cool idea.  I love the creativity people are putting into it, that American cities are embracing them, city planners are working with them on placement, and that health departments are working with them on keeping them safe.

It was an absolute pleasure sitting down with Gordon.  I learned everything from how the South End has changed from cooks having to grow their own herbs and mushrooms and order spices from New York to the demographic changes in the neighborhood over many decades.  We discussed some of his favorite local eateries, included B&G Oysters, The Butchershop, and Toro and cooking techniques such a sous vide and his participation in cooking demonstrations at Formaggio’s Kitchen.  Gordon also described how he wrote his cookbook: "Bistro Cooking at Home" (2003). He describes it as a celebration of the first 20 years of recipes used at Hamersley’s Bistro.  On making it more user friendly than most cookbooks where chefs are showing off fancy techniques, Gordon says: "I took the attitude of imagining someone standing next to me while I explain the recipe and anticipated questions or problems.  There aren’t ingredients listed that you can’t find in a supermarket."  
You can find Bistro Cooking at Home, here.

You can also find a list of Chef's favorite local food producers and resources on the restaurant's website section entitle "Food for Thought".

Chef retired to the kitchen where he sent out a number of delicious dishes:

Terrine of Smoked Salmon, Trout and Mussels with
     Horseradish Aïoli, Winter Greens and Brioche Toasts 

This delicate smoked, briny fish terrine was served with peppery winter greens and crunchy red cabbage and balanced by spicy, creamy horseradish aioli.

We then travel into the land of curry.  A silky, rich curried butternut squash soup (not photographed)  shocked me with its layered flavor and texture profile.  Sure, soup usually is just soup.  But a cup of this is worth celebrating.  Sweet, smooth squash was accented with curry spices, topped with course ground pepper and satin creme fraiche.  I couldn't get enough!

We then shift to the Mediterranean with cumin-spiced lamb meatballs served with Romesco sauce, mint, and crunchy toasted almonds followed by a heat-packing chickpea cake infused with coriander and fiery red chilies.  The perfect tzatziki sauce couldn't tame the spice, but went well with the acidity of red wine vinegar pickled cauliflower and red current salad.

Chickpea cake

After starting the first course with the Desiderio Jeio Brut Prosecco Mark shifted me over to Neyers Vineyards (Napa Valley) Chardonnay 304, a  medium bodied, un-oaked chardonnay.  I later learned that "304" refers to the food quality grade of stainless steel tanks in which the wine is prepared and reflects the high levels of both nickel and chromium used in their (the tanks) production.  It paired well with the aforementioned appetizers and the next couple of entrees. 

The next couple of seafood dishes were absolutely lovely.  

A warm, colorful dish, the tender, pan-roasted, in-shell lobster tail half was pillowed atop tender, sweet, butternut risotto and encircled by caramelized thymus sweetbreads and lobster morsels all served over saffron.  

Pan-roasted, in-shell lobster tail

Swordfish

Swordfish with Roasted Cauliflower and Pickled Fennel Salad     

The hearty, skillet-cooked swordfish was served with roasted cauliflower and pickled, shaved fennel and celery salad with plump red currant.  I particularly enjoyed the earthy, sweet flavor of black truffle-laced port wine sauce. 

The swordfish was followed by the crispy duck confit with frisée, charred pineapple, candied hazelnuts in a brandy sauce.

Mark paired these last two dishes nicely with Cantina Zaccagnini Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva, one of my favorite medium-bodied reds with peppery, red currant, soft creamy notes that complemented the sauce on both of the last two entrees quite well.  It certainly would have paired nicely with the final dish, but alas, after such an enormous and gratifying meal, I was forced to send word to the kitchen that I couldn't possibly eat another bite.  Thus,  I will have to return for the brilliant grilled loin of New Zealand venison with gorgonzola, dried cranberry and toasted hazelnut bread pudding with port and juniper essence!  Sounds like a dream!

I was, however, able to take a few bites of the sorbet trio with biscotti.  The grapefruit sorbet was a fantastic finale. 

Having enjoyed the wine selections of Mark, the bartender.  I decided to stick around for a nightcap.  Mark showcased a couple of his magnificent original cocktails:

 The Grapefruit Gimlet was surprisingly refreshing and well-balanced.  Simple in it's composition- made with Ketel One vodka (a favorite of mine), grapefruit juice, and champagne- it was a cocktail that's capable of persisting through the seasons.  As a golden-hued, bubbly drink served up in a cocktail glass, I can see it being equally as refreshing on a hot summer's day on the patio as it was on this chilling evening at the bar.

The Irish Honey was a lovely gingery drink made Michael Collins Irish whiskey, Bärenjäger honey liqueur, sour mix, and a Gosling ginger beer topper.

Hamersley's Bistro
553 Tremont Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116

www.hamersleysbistro.com

Read my previous review of Hamersley's, here.

Disclosure:  This meal was provided gratis by Hamersley's Bistro