To the Bone

by Paul Liebrandt

  It was also about this time that I began experimenting with the techniques being popularized by Ferran Adrià at El Bulli and by chefs who had worked for him, a new school that was moving away from Frenchified food and into a brave new world all their own. In particular, I was blown away by Albert Adrià’s pastry book and the incredible effects on display there such as his use of flavor and texture within the realm of pastry, which broke from the French norm, treating desserts more like savory than sweet dishes with components such as caramelized avocado and bacon-caramel. The methods these chefs used are referred to worldwide by what I’ve come to think of as “the M word”: molecular. It’s a word I’ve come to detest because it sounds so scientific and unsensual. I much prefer the term modernist cuisine, although personally I refer to what I do as simply “open” cuisine, in that I’m open to new ideas, new techniques, and to melding them with the classics in my own way.

  To be honest, I’m loathe to discuss this aspect of my food, because I think it pulls focus from what ought to be front and center: the flavor and the emotional impact. Suffice it to say that it was about this time that I began to experiment with such methods as spherifications and foams, and that much of my early experiments were bloody disasters, requiring me to hit the books and the kitchen and deepen my understanding.

  Aspects of my personality were, in many ways, as underdeveloped as some of my food, and I had my missteps with the media. One night, Jimmy told me the editor of People magazine was in the house. As a prank, I donned a T-shirt that said “fucking fuck” across the chest and walked through the dining room to greet her. What was I thinking? Was it a rock ’n’ roll gesture? A bid for some kind of bad boy street cred? I honestly don’t know. I was twenty-four and that was that. I could also be a bit short with interviewers, a hostile witness if you will, no doubt trying to achieve an effect like the one Marco often did in his younger days. But times were different, and in the era of the media-darling chef in New York City, everybody was playing much nicer than that. As a result, I created an image for myself that’s taken years to shake.

  But things turned the following summer. When the restaurant experienced the normal downturn that almost every big-city establishment experiences in the dog days, anxiety set in among the management. Even the slightest dip in revenue incited a knee-jerk reaction. It was suggested to me that I shift gears and add “blue plate specials” to the menu, such as spaghetti and meatballs for the whole table to share.

  I was incredulous. Spaghetti and meatballs? Served family style? Alongside the kind of food that was earning us rave reviews as one of the restaurants of the moment and that had been filling the place right up until Memorial Day? I refused.

  And so began a long, hot summer between me and Jimmy, a summer in which I constantly trumpeted the need to keep integrity in “my kitchen” and he pointedly reminded me that it wasn’t my kitchen, it was “the restaurant’s kitchen.” Technically, he was right, of course, but isn’t the whole point of being a chef to have a personality, to be your own person, and cook your own food? I hate to validate the stereotypical image of a chef, but don’t people expect that in restaurants of a certain caliber? Isn’t that the whole point?

  This cold war continued for a few months until, shortly before the September 11 terrorist attacks, the inevitable conclusion came, and I was sent off on a mandatory vacation. Knowing full well what was coming, I made my move, giving my notice after just more than a year, and moving on, a peripatetic cook once again.

  Within five months, Atlas closed. Although things didn’t end well there, I will always remember it as the place where I first became a real chef and the world first noticed me.

  Sayori

  This is a twisted way of eating sushi, with sea-salt-flavored cotton candy in place of the rice. The fish here, sayori (Japanese needlefish), is like a stealth submarine: fast, sleek, and undetectable. For the first part of this dish, we very gently nape the fillet with a chilled tofu crème seasoned with myöga (Japanese ginger) and lime confit, and finish it with nasturtium leaves. To produce the second part of the dish, we deep-fry the bone until it is completely crisp, wrap the belly around it, and season it with fresh wasabi. The belly is then placed inside a cocoon of sea-salt cotton candy, adorned with tiny pansy leaves and ice lettuce. To further the playfulness of this dish, we encourage our guests to eat it with their fingers.

  A PAUSE FOR REFRESHMENT

  2001–2002

  The economic walloping that was inflicted on New York City after the September 11 attacks spared nobody, and the restaurant industry was hit as hard as any, perhaps more so than many. None of the factors that induce people to go out for a fine-dining experience were in effect. People were unhappy, people were scared, people were angry, and people were broke.

  My problems didn’t amount to anything in that context, but I needed to keep working and to survive, so my next job was, incongruously, as chef of Papillon, a West Village bistro. It wasn’t a place for me to expand my horizons. Instead, it was the chef equivalent of a successful actor returning to, say, Off Broadway, to his roots. Papillon was a chance for me to just cook, without pushing the envelope as I had at Atlas.

  It turned out to be a sometimes enjoyable experience. The owners were good guys and gave me a bit more license than the ones back at Le Gans, although keeping within the necessarily restricted boundaries of a midlevel eatery. In the end, it was an opportunity to focus on craft and technique and get back to my base, to regain my bearings after my whirlwind first few years in New York. I still remember many of the dishes there rather fondly, such as Sea Bass with Bay Leaf Butter, Barbecued Lentils, Sunchoke Puree, and a bone-in côte de boeuf for two that was rubbed with garlic, roasted in hay (a long-forgotten but very traditional cooking method), and served with oyster mushrooms and green mango.

  Despite offerings like these, and what I considered an overall successful effort, the unfortunate truth is that all anybody remembers of Papillon are two dinners we prepared late in 2001—“sensory meals” in which we attempted to look at the effect of all the senses on the dining experience. My pastry chef cooked up the idea, and I went along with it, although I always knew we were playing with fire. (It wasn’t something that grew organically out of my own background and predilections, and that’s never the right road for a chef.)

  That’s not to say the dinners were without value. Some of the exercises we performed were intellectually and gastronomically interesting. For example, we served a loin of veal that was sliced paper thin, like a carpaccio. The slices were layered, pressed into a block, and frozen, then sliced like a steak and served with a spicy cilantro ketchup. The veal melted in the mouth, and, though raw, the chill made it taste like a piece of roasted veal. We blindfolded diners and had them rub silk and sandpaper between their fingers, then eat a langoustine tartare to confound their senses (many perceived a nonexistent crunch in the dish because of the sandpaper on their fingertips). Other elements of the evenings had no such intellectual value: we would abruptly march diners into a smoke-filled back room, then return them to their table to disrupt their sense of environment.

  Does that sound silly? It was. I can’t simply plead “youth” on this one, but it was a valuable lesson. I can now honestly say that this was the only time in my career as a chef that I did something that simply felt wrong, that wasn’t me. I realized that there are two sides to being known in a place like New York City: it’s not just earning a reputation that matters; you also have to nurture and protect it.

  And yet, at the same time, there was a silver lining. The considerable press the evenings attracted were much-needed evidence for the caseworkers charged with evaluating my visa status and who would rule as to whether or not I deserved a green card in the highly scrutinized post-9/11 immigration environment. Those bureaucrats might not have been “foodies,” but anybody with the tome of clippings I presented to them, they figured, must have some worth.

  WILD ALASKAN KING SALMON There were two preparations of sa
lmon I served at Papillon: one featuring the salmon confit, with white rhubarb and a red curry sauce made from the salmon bones; the other a ballotine of salmon belly with a chutney that’s a play on piccalilli with broccoli instead of cauliflower. The recipe for Red Curry Jus provides the delicious curry sauce from the former, also a perfect accompaniment to black cod.

  I was especially gratified that once those dinners had faded into the past, Papillon received a two-star review from William Grimes in the New York Times. (It was a step down from Atlas’s three stars, but that was largely due to the more casual setting.) “If you believe in cuisine as an expressive language, then you have to applaud, or at least admire,” he wrote of my menu. “Mr. Liebrandt is a big talent working, for the moment at least, on a small stage. He needs a bigger show.”

  There was another silver lining to my time at Papillon, and it was altogether surreal at the time. Sally Rowe, a documentary filmmaker whom I’d met while at Atlas (she was married to my wine director there), asked if she could begin trailing me for a film she had in mind. I agreed to work with her, and she and a small crew began making periodic visits to my kitchen and dining room, as well as to my apartment—even following me up and down the street as I walked to and from work.

  It wasn’t as glamorous as it might sound because of the sad state of my career. If I were going to choose a time to have a camera crew track my life, it wouldn’t have been at that particular moment, but it was flattering nonetheless and a welcome counterbalance to the hardened atmosphere of the kitchen. Once in a while, Sally would interview me on camera, and, while this is a word that I would rarely use, it was a therapeutic exercise, a chance for me to open up and explore my feelings about where I was and what I wanted. Along the same lines, the mere presence of a camera cannot help but make one more self-aware of everything, from how you treat others to how you go about your day and, on a larger scale, whether you are getting closer to or further from your personal and professional goals.

  She also captured moments—many of them—that anybody would have preferred to leave in the past, like girlfriends who were now part of posterity. There were fixed, Big-Brother-is-watching cameras in the kitchen that my crew and I totally forgot about. The camera captured me going mental, berating and even hurling plates and pans at my cooks, then blaming them for my behavior. “Look what you made me do!” I screamed at one especially memorable moment. Fortunately, none of the worst bits made their way into the finished film. (As it turned out, Sally and her crew would follow me on and off for about nine and a half years, resulting in the film A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt. Even had the film never seen the light of day, it was a welcome addition to my life and something that helped me understand myself better.)

  Despite Grimes’s positive write-up, after about a year at Papillon, the owners—bowing to the financial pressures of the time—decided to change the concept into a more neighborhood-friendly eatery, with traditional bistro fare such as croque monsieurs and their American counterparts, most notably a hamburger that became our best seller. I went along for a few months, then decided that I just couldn’t muster the necessary enthusiasm to stay in the job. I helped secure a new chef, stayed on to train him, then went on my way.

  Having gone nonstop in professional kitchens for about a decade, I decided a break was in order. I spent two years working as a private chef to a few high-profile clients, including Lord Rothschild and HRH Prince Andrew in 2003 and 2004. I also took the time to travel, visiting Spain, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Africa, finally getting to some of the places I’d imagined visiting as a child, when I envisioned a life in the military—only now, I was largely motivated by culinary interests. It was an eye-opening time. Having been professionally reared in an environment where workaholism was prized above all else, I quickly realized that intellectual and gustatory stimulation had great value as well. I stored up inspiration from restaurants and museums, from architecture and natural wonders, and came back to New York with my horizons broadened and an itch to put it all to work in new dishes.

  When I was ready to get back to work in a restaurant, it took awhile to get started again after two years away. I might have been off the radar and out of the papers and food blogs for a bit, but I was a known chef in New York City, and there are few more fascinating times in life for such an organism than that spent in pursuit of the next restaurant. I wish I could tell you how many meetings I had with how many investors, for how many concepts—but now, years later, they all blur together into one long string of meals and drinks dates, coffees and site tours, business plans and audition menus. If every promise of imminent financing, lease signing, financial projections, and anticipated timing expressed to me during those years had come to fruition, I would be the most prolific and successful chef in all of New York City, perhaps in the world.

  But every single one of the deals dangled before me went up in smoke. Would-be partners disappeared, never to be heard from again or with only parting meetings to let me down easy. Or another chef would swoop in and replace me in the business plan. This is nothing unusual in the restaurant business, which draws impresarios and would-be impresarios who dream big and often are well-meaning, but, where the money is concerned, are just as often either pathologically optimistic or downright delusional.

  It was a soul-crushing period, my own version of Groundhog Day, an endless loop that, no matter how I came at it, dropped me back in the same place when I woke up the next morning.

  GOING FOR BROKE

  2005–2006

  Finally, in 2005, everything fell into place and I was hired to be the opening chef of Gilt, in the former home of Sirio Maccioni’s legendary restaurant Le Cirque in the New York Palace Hotel. The hotel was once owned by Harry Helmsley and operated by his wife, the notorious “Queen of Mean” Leona, but had recently been purchased by Prince Jefri, the brother of the Sultan of Brunei. The space, still under renovation when I first saw it, was surely going to be spectacular, with dishes that were to be paraded down a grand staircase from the kitchen to the dining room. It was going to build on the luxe trappings of Le Cirque, with the most elegant and expensive serveware, furniture, and artwork.

  It was a setting that screamed out for fine dining and seemed the perfect place for me to make my return to that world. I was especially attracted to the project because the owners conveyed a desire to do something different from the traditional hotel restaurant. Having recently witnessed the decline of Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria, as well as other comparable high-end establishments, the owners wanted to compete with the top three- and four-star freestanding restaurants in town. To that end, they had enlisted Patrick Jouin, the designer responsible for, among other successes, Alain Ducasse’s restaurant at the Plaza Athénée in Paris.

  It seemed like an ideal scenario, but I was thrown a curveball after signing on to the project. Those same owners, seeking to hedge their bets, told me that they wanted to also serve what they referred to as “bistro food,” by which they meant a menu of familiar hotel fare that might induce affluent Upper East Siders to dine there several times a week (never mind that we were not technically on the Upper East Side). In short, they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too.

  Whereas in my younger years, I had to defend myself against the sabotage of fellow line cooks, the challenge at this stage of my career was to engage successfully with owners. I realized that there simply isn’t room for two visions in one restaurant. But after close to two years of being out of a restaurant, I offered to meet them in the middle, with a menu divided into two cuisines, “Classic” and “Modern” (as we titled them on the physical document)—the former satisfying their desires, the latter satisfying mine.

  The Classic dishes, as I presented them, would include, say, Dover sole with pommes soufflé and brown butter vinaigrette, rib eye for two with a cocotte of spring baby vegetables, and oysters on the half shell with caviar. The truth was, I was so eager to begin truly expressing myself again that, as I en
visioned them, even the Classic dishes would be etched in my evolving style. For example, the oysters would be either served with lemon foam on top and a Comté cheese cracker on the side, or set in a gelée made of their own juices, topped with a quenelle of caviar, and accompanied by a spicy pecan brioche.

  My pitch was accepted. I was hired and brought on some of my old boys, including Tom Rice—a crack team that brought a lot of different energies and experience to the table. I hit the jackpot when I called Francis Derby, who had worked for me at Atlas, asking him if he wanted to come on board. He brought with him a group of talented cooks who had been stagiaires together at Mugaritz in Spain: Amador Acosta, Johnny Mac, and Michael Santoro, as well as Juan Leon, who had worked at El Bulli. We were a great team and, to this day, remain good friends in close contact.

  I proceeded to go to town on the Modern menu. There were so many ideas pent up in my brain, ideas I didn’t even realize I had, ideas that were waiting patiently by the phone until The Food rang them up again. The passion and intensity with which I attacked that kitchen surprised me. I went for broke, pouring as much of myself and my amassed techniques as I could into each and every menu offering, especially with courses comprising a multitude of plates and preparations. I introduced dishes and concepts that remain with me to this day, such as first courses named for the season and presented as an array of small preparations and variations. “Flavors of Winter,” for example, included roasted sweetbreads with blood orange, and a thimbleful of sea urchin suspended atop a chilled cucumber gelée. I also continued a pattern begun at Atlas with that array of tomato compositions, offering six preparations of langoustines as a first course.