I have often contemplated what our mission is.  The first couple of years it was simple- whatever it takes; 100 hour weeks, no vacation, no pay… just keep your head down and keep going, hopefully everything will work out.  fortunately it did.  Some good reviews and a lot of regular customers made it so I could put more meaning into my work.  The obvious mission is- cook great food in a comfortable setting without any pretense.   For a number of years I have had a good feel for what our mission was, I just couldn’t summarize it into a concise sentence.

We have always been environmentally conscious; recycling, composting, building-out our current EVOO location to meet LEED gold certification etc.  Since our opening we have purchased from local farms.  All of the livestock we serve is humanely raised and local.   We make every effort to only serve sustainable seafood, serve only local beer, source as many top quality organic  / bio-dynamic wines as possible.  You can get some amazing ingredients year round from all over the globe.  However, we choose to get the most from our local producers as possible.  We make pickles and preserves throughout the summer to aid us in extending the local season annually.  I’m sure your getting the point, we try to do things right.

So it finally came to me- a summarized sentence of what our mission is:

To be a sustainable member of our community.

That’s it. To endure, even give back to our community with as little impact on the environment as possible.

Smoking our own hams bring us much more than ham (the meat).  The meat could end up in ham sandwiches, part of a pasta dish or even as a ham steak.  The skin makes a smoky gelatinous stock we often use in pigs skin risotto and soups.  We always place a pan directly under the smoker to collect the drippings (liquid bacon), which finds its way into vinaigrette, sauces and marinades.  The bones get used to make stocks and sauces.

However, the fat that surrounds the ham, often 1 1/2″ to 2″ thick is freaking amazing. Currently on our menu is Ham Fat-Potato Croquettes.  We take two parts diced ham fat and combine it with one part mashed potato, roll it into balls, bread ’em and then fry ’em. We’re serving them with mustard cream and last summer’s pickles.

Sometimes the best dishes come from the parts that either don’t get used or people are hesitant to try.  Ham fat- yum!

A few nights ago I had the pleasure of dining at EVOO with my 7-year-old son Shane.  Shane is an adventurous eater, willing to try to appreciate just about anything.  When we dine out he is likely to order the most esoteric items on the menu; crispy pig’s ears, snails, liver mousse etc.  Shit, he’s been slurping raw oysters since he was 2.  On occasion he has  been known to plop down on the couch, open a can of salt cured anchovies, pile them on crackers, with no other condiments and finish off the can.  I wish I could get some of my staff enjoy eating as much as he does.

People often say his broad palate is because he is my son and that we expose him to these foods, which is partially true.  Colleen, my wife, wouldn’t consider trying many of the foods that Shane eats.  Our 4-year-old daughter Caitlin, who has been exposed to the same foods, would happily enjoy a diet of bagels with cream cheese for breakfast and lunch, followed by macaroni and cheese for dinner every day.  She claims to like very few foods.  However, with some prodding she will try to enjoy most offerings.  But she lacks the gusto that Shane eats with.

Shane is a Cub Scout and we were doing a sleepover at the Boston Science Museum.  He asked if I knew any good restaurants near the science museum that we could go to before the sleepover.  Of course, I suggested EVOO.   He was thrilled to go, it had been quite some time since we last dined there.  I had recently been telling him  that I was thinking of him while I developed our new arctic char dish.  The dish is contains some of his favorite foods, arctic char, smoked arctic char (in a croquette with potatoes), Spanish white anchovies and wilted spinach (yes, he even likes spinach).  He decided that he was going to have that dish before we left the car.  I chose to have a chop from Paula the Mangalitsa  pig.  He also wanted to try the blood sausage.  I told him that I didn’t think we had enough time and that I will bring one home for him to try.

I love watching him eat.  He started in on his plate by putting  the Spanish white anchovies on the side of the plate stating “they’re my favorite, I want to save them for last”.  Then he peeled the skin off the char to eat that first.  He exclaimed “Wow, this is really good, it’s crispy and it’s juicy”.  He shut me down when I asked him to try it.  At home when I cook fish, the kids argue over the skin, I am lucky to get any of it.  So I had expected him to shut me down.  I was very happy to see him enjoying it as much as he did.

We were sitting at one of the high tables that are directly in front of the cooking line.  Carlos, our long time cold line master was working the station that night, there was a new dish that he had not plated before.  So, since I was right there he asked me to show him how to plate it.  No problem, it was Pig’s head terrine (AKA head cheese) with pickled beef tongue salad.  Not surprisingly Shane wanted to try it.  He tried the pickled tongue first, liked it.  Saying  “it’s better than the last time I had it”, which was only a few weeks prior, we got some as part of a gift from the EVOO cooks.  Then he tried the head cheese.  After a few  “mmm that’s really good” we went back to our table to finish up so we could hurry off to be with a couple hundred other 7 and 8 year olds sleeping at the science museum.

Making our way to the car Shane proclaimed  “that cheese stuff is really good”…

The weather was a bit raw and we wanted to trek around the Upper East Side.  So we did something that I have never done in NYC, we took the subway.  I have visited NYC more than twenty times and for whatever reason, have never been on the subway.  Colleen and I visit other cities often and always use their public transportation systems.  I guess in NYC the places that we visit are not too far away from one another.  With the gridded, numbered streets it seems that everything is only a few blocks away.  And I have never waited more than a minute for a taxi.  Anyway we took the subway to the Upper East Side and walked aimlessly for at least two hours.  After a cup of coffee we trained it back to mid-town.

Today’s culinary adventures started at Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain.  We wanted to begin on the lighter side, so we just two had appetizers; Alaskan Salmon Crudo with lime juice, cilantro, scallians and blue corn tortilla crunch and we also had a Crab, Mango, Coconut Cocktail.  It was a nice way to start

Our next stop was Gordon Ramsey’s Maze in the London NYC Hotel.  We did not last long there.  It was all chrome and glitz, not our style.  Though the bathrooms were pretty cool.  One over priced glass of Chardonnay and we were off to Del Posto, another Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich establishment.  Opulent is the best word to describe it.  High ceilings, dark wood, muted toned walls, not-as-comfy-as-they-look banquettes, beautiful flowers, suit wearing servers made you feel as though taking out a second mortgage to dine there would be a good idea.  Once again not really our style.  I was not trying to impress Randy.  We stayed for a glass of wine and a couple of tidbits; some very elegant and tasty lobster-tobiko tea sandwiches and these creamy yet crunchy little mozzarella things.  And we were off.

Next stop,was only a few steps away, in the same building.  Colicchio and Sons.  Yet another Tom Colicchio restaurant, was more our style with lots of brick, high ceilings, funky light fixtures and floor to ceiling windows over looking the meatpacking district.  We sat at the bar order whipped lardo on toast with some tangy yet sweet relish that I have know idea what the orange-ish main ingredient was.  Dried apricots?  We also got a bowl of slightly too lemony grilled squid and octopus with beans and watercress.  We finished our food and beer and headed back to Greenich Village.

Momofoku Ssam Bar, One of David Chang’s restaurants was our next stop.  Jon one of EVOO’s former cooks (whom I have mentioned in earlier posts) is a cook here.  We wanted to have dinner there while he was cooking.  We ordered a bunch of stuff, some of my favorites were pork buns, apple kimchee, thin sliced beef tendon and almost too spicy rice cakes.

After dinner we walked about a block, went into a random bar figuring we would have  couple of beers and to catch up with Jon.  Sitting at the bar was another former EVOO cook, Nick.  Whats even more coincidental is that Nick happens to be working the same position as Jon is at another one of David Chang’s restaurants.  It was just one of those weird things.

More tipsy than we (at least I) desired to be, we headed back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. The morning was going to come too quickly…

In an effort to alleviate the effects of Sunday’s dinner we began our day with a long walk.  We walked from our hotel in Soho over to the Meatpacking District and up onto the High Line Park, an old elevated railroad that has been turned into a park.  It’s pretty cool.  After some coffee and continued walking we were ready for more food experiences.

The first stop was the Chelsea Market.  A quick stroll through, a couple of pastries and we were on our way.  It’s a bunch of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, cooking and food stores. An upscale Quincy Market.

Our intended next stop was the Union Square Green Market.  We had it in sight when we were sidetracked by lunch at The Union Square Bistro, a Danny Meyer restaurant that I had dined at a couple of times before.  We figured a couple of smaller dishes, then on to the market.  We ended up having a silky smooth well seasoned cauliflower soup.  Apple-beet salad.  A very pedestrian frito misto, that consisted of mostly not crisp enough squid served with a lackluster anchovy butter.  Lastly we had potato gnocchi with mushroom, if someone had tasted it, adjusted the acidity and seasoning, it could have been great.  Overall the experience was not bad, I just expected more.

The Green Market was as expected, not too busy, full of storage apples, winter squash, cabbage and greenhouse greens (sounds like the EVOO menu).

We headed over to Mario Batali’s and Joe Bastianich’s Eataly, their house of worship to everything Italian.  It was pretty cool, at first I had a little bit of sensory overload.  It’s several restaurants, a book store and a market all wrapped into one large space.  We walked around checking out the different menus, watching a woman make perfect looking agnoletti at a painfully slow pace.  We decided to have a chacuterie-cheese board and a glass of wine.  It was really good and quite reasonably priced.

With the need of more walking we moved on.  Times Square.  Wow, what trip that place is.  We didn’t last too long there, our quest for more food kept us moving.

We ended up at The Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station.  It’s worth going there just to have an excuse to walk around inside Grand Central Station.  The architecture, the hustle and bustle are a sight to see.  The Oyster Bar is another one of those places that I have been to before and always look forward to returning.  It hasn’t changed, a wide selection of oysters and good draught beer. We enjoyed both.

Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain’s brassiere was next.  Just a glass of wine at the bar.  We happened to walk by and had to go in. I was pretty full and knew that there was still more food to be consumed.  It seemed like a nice place.  Not at all adventurous, just well prepared basic french food.

We continued on to Gramercy Park area, not sure if we would end up at Gramercy Tavern or Craft.  It ended up being neither.  Both seamed a little too uptight for what we were looking for.  We ended up at craftbar Tom Colicchio’s bustling restaurant around the corner from Craft.  We had smoked pigs head terrine, duck hearts and chicken wings.  Overall it was good, even Randy liked it.

It was once again time to walk.  I had already eating way more than any one person should on any given day.   And, we still had 10:45pm dinner reservations at Mario Batali’s flagship restaurant  Babbo.   I had been looking forward to dining there since 1998 when they were named by Bon Appetit Magazine (in the same article as EVOO), one of the best new restaurants in America.

Boy was I disappointed.  It all began with the music, AC/DC being played at levels that I haven’t listened to since college.  After a while you become accustomed to either not speaking or yelling to be heard.  We were seated in a back corner near the kitchen entrance not a great seat, but that’s OK.  The problem was that the seat cushions were worn out.  Randy said “I’m sitting in a hole”.  It only got worse from there.  The music went from too loud old school rock to some Alice in Chains wanna be’s.

We were obviously one of the last, if not the last table to be sat.  One of the consequences of this is that the staff is hovering to get your order.  Within our first ten minutes we had no less than five table visits from at least three different staff members.  We ordered food and with the help of the sommelier chose a bottle of wine from their imposing fifteen plus page all Italian wine list.  Prices  on the list ranged from fifty-ish dollars to several thousand dollars.

The food started arriving, my hopes were temporarily lifted, seared pigs foot terrine was by far the best dish of the meal.  I plan on trying to emulate it.  Cockles were served  in a delicious spiced tomato broth, the problem was that they were sandy and overcooked. Grilled octopus was good, a little salt and a squeeze of lemon would have gone a long way to making it great.

Around the time we were served our next course the music got re-markedly better.  They blared Wilco’s Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot in its entirety.  I wish the food improved as the music did.  Squid ink pasta with rock shrimp and sausage, consisted of under-cooked pasta, over-cooked shrimp and so much sausage that the it overpowered the other flavors and made it greasy.  The other pasta dish we ordered was lamb brain ravioli.  It fared better than the other, though it lacked seasoning and could have had more brains in the ravioli, which tasted mostly like ricotta.

Our main course was next grilled whole branzino was good, slightly overcooked and some course salt would have helped.  The other main course was a disappointment of epic proportions  braised beef.  The beef itself was cooked to the correct doneness, but lacked the meaty richness that  I was expecting, no seasoning, no love!  The polenta served with it, oh my, the only thing I can think of a is that the cook ran out of the good stuff and made some “on the fly” with just water.  It sucked!  There was a vegetable salad served on top of the short rib.  I remember nothing of it.

On to dessert. The Velvet underground is now blaring, good music, too loud. We an apple croustada and a date-walnut cake. With the exception of the croustada pastry (soggy) they weren’t bad, not memorable either.

I had wanted to go to this restaurant for many years and have the utmost respect for Mario all that he has accomplished is amazing.  He is always great to watch on Iron Chef, the food that he produced in those short hour-long programs was always impressive. I have and use several of his cookbooks.  I understand that restaurants have bad nights, It happens to us.  Given the price and the expectations it was far and away one the worst restaurant experiences that I have ever had. With my high expectations and the three hundred plus dollars the dinner costed, it should have been a lot better.

I wanted to post about our trip, not bitch about the experience. But I can’t get over how disappointing Babbo was.  If we get a bad comment or letter it can ruin my day.  We look for any trends in our customers comments and use them to evaluate our performance. I hope they do the same.

Taste, adjust, don’t forget the love.

I am off to try more of the city’s offerings.

Took Amtrak and arrived just in time to watch the Patriots game.  Randy is not really a football fan, so he had to suffer through the first couple of hours in NY, finding the right bar, which took three attempts.  The first bar Firefly, was too in your face with projection TV’s covering every wall and really lame food and a barely adequate beer selection.  We left at half time.  Across the street to what appeared as a promising Irish bar Gatsby’s, the only thing great about it was the urinal puck stench…?  We left immedietaly in search out another place.  Within a couple of blocks Randy eyed Toby’s Public House.  Toby’s was not what I think of in a Public House, it was a brick oven pizzeria with a decent beer selection 2 flat screens TV’s with the Patriots beating some Texan butt on them.   Jon and Chloe two former EVOO employees met up with us there and we talked about all the places that we, in no way will have the time or belly capacity to try while we are in NY.  It was nice to catch up with them.

At Toby’s with Chloe and Jon

We left Jon and Chloe at Toby’s and hurried off to our Dinner reservation at Blue Hill.  It was awesome.  Chloe had called in advance telling them that we were hot-shot chefs from Boston (she exaggerated).  We were surprised that they knew who we were. I made a reservation on line with no indication that we were chefs.  We were very well taken care of.  Champagne to start followed by a chefs tasting menu consisting of 12ish items.  I don’t want to call them courses as many of them were little tidbits.  I am not even going to try to describe all 12 “courses”.  I will mention some of the highlights; an espresso cup full of meaty, smoky sunchoke soup, caper and parsley studded venison tartar, a mushroom-mung bean-pistachio thing (it had the consistency of  loose risotto) and a sous vide farm egg with beautiful smoked-cured pork.  It was an awesome succession of dishes, truly a great experience. Randy got a tour of the kitchen and after dinner we spoke with the chef de cuisine.  The service was precise and very friendly.  The host was particularly gracious, she supplied us with even more ideas of places that we will never have the time to try.

Well enough of this blogging, I need to stuff my face.

Tomorrow, Randy and I are off to New York City for a food adventure. So far we have reservations at Dan Barber’s restaurant Blue Hill, Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo and David Chang’s Momofuku, where one of EVOO’s former cooks, John Short is working. We will fill our days with food oriented excursions to places like Eataly, Union Square Greenmarket and J.B. Prince restaurant equipment store. I am sure we will check out many other restaurants; an appitizer or two at several different places each day. I can feel my gut expanding as write this. 

One of the great things about our bar is that you have so many menu choices.  You can order from the EVOO menu, Za menu or the chalkboard menu which includes an extensive list of homemade charcuterie, local artisanal cheeses and “other stuff”.  All these choices together are only available at the bar.  When dining in either EVOO or Za those are the menus that are available to you.  However, at the bar you can have pizza from Za and our famous Chinese box from EVOO, or anything else that is available from either restaurant.

I want to say more about our chalkboard menu. It features homemade charcuterie that we lovingly produced from those beautiful farm animals provided to us from local livestock farmers. New England dairy farmers provide us with our wide selection of artisanal cheeses. Some of the typical “other stuff” items are spiced pecans, marinated olives, Pete and Randy’s pickles, homemade french fries with homemade ketchup and habanero-cornbread coleslaw. All of the chalkboard Items (with the exclusion of our chicken sausage sandwich) are only $5 each or 5 for $20. It is not uncommon for people to come in and share some chalkboard items with a glass or two of wine.

The food should not get all of the glory, especially at the bar. The bar staff comes up with some great seasonally inspired mixed drinks. We offer 8 local beers on tap, more local beers in cans and bottles (if you want beer with fillers, adjunct ingredients and no flavor, you will have to go elsewhere) and an eclectic wine list put together by our resident wine geek, Dan.

A reader asked me for a more appetizing photo of the blood sausage. So, here it is…

Tonight we served it with white bean-carrot salad, pickled ramps and sweet garlic syrup.