Fine dining goes local

I thought I would be taking a hit when I went to cook at a fine dining restaurant. I thought that since I was taking this leap into this line of work, that the amount of local, organic, and heirloom produce would be slim, if any at all. Fine dining is about the exotic, the unknown, the aw and the showmanship of ingredients. It’s about lobster, fois gras, oysters, caviar, and exotic fruits.

And while yes, the restaurant I work for does import 1,000 dollars of caviar a week, 55 lobsters every 6 days, and 14 pounds of fois gras a week, we make the effort to buy from local farmers whenever we can.

Just the other day farmers, or I should say “foragers”, came into the restaurant’s back door selling us fresh picked morel mushrooms. I will never forget the amount of morels we had to clean and sort through that week. For the four weeks that morel mushrooms are in season, middle Virginia becomes a beacon for these fungi and mushroom foragers. A belt with a mesh net attached, the forager sets up into the forest looking near trees and cool dark areas for large honeycombed triangular mushrooms that sell at Dean & Deluca for 35 dollars a pound. Here, we offer the foragers 28 bucks a pound and they pocket all of it. We write them a check and give it right to them for the time and skill they spent getting these priceless, exotic mushrooms that will be served on the breakfast and dinner menu in omelets and in napoleons.

You won’t see fresh local morels at Citronelle or Cityzen. And if you do, chances are they are imported or dried. Who knew fine dining could impress a locavore.

A note from the world of fine dining

It's truly amazing the length cooks and chefs will go to make things "perfect".

A baby carrot grown in Ohio is peeled and then scrubbed with sand paper and thrown through a pencil sharpener to remove any impurities and scratches or dents.

These little touches are what make the difference between a restaurant with three stars and one with four. It's looking at food with a different and more abstract eye. And to tell you the truth, it's both impressive and crazy that these people for who have created these well known restaurants around the country are dissecting a basic ingredient.

Learning to think outside the box is proving to be harder than I thought.