@benleventhal goes Norman Rockwell in Chefhampton.
“Among the wiry Brooklyn hipsters, Cointre stands out as a pompous, medieval butcher type, and is the one you want beside you when your house burns down and there is not a chair to sit on. Hidden behind an awe-inducing lion’s mane of wheat locks and a French accordion of a smile is his generous spirit and infinitely expressive mimicry and jest.
His cooking:
Simple, but misleading in its suggested modesty.
It isn’t ‘French cuisine’, it isn’t ethnic cooking and it certainly isn’t fusion. Antony does what he feels is best, borrowing ideas from around the globe in creating his own dishes rooted in a natural balance of flavors. His instincts are collaborative, allowing room for a lot of spontaneity and improvisation. He fetishizes on good quality products, which are seasonal, local and organic.
On wine:
A seeker of truth through wine-related enlightenment, Antony is a devotee to artisanal winemaking. Favoring the small producers who harvest and treat the fruit as has been done for centuries with minimal intervention. A truly amazing meal is always paired with a few of his personal selections.”
“Chris Muscarella would like to dispense with the preciousness around food and let people who dine together do what they want to do. For most of us, that is not golf clapping at the chef’s subtly magnificent use of kohlrabi foam, or arranging our whimsical wine glasses for the best Instagram angle. We’re there to enjoy each others’ company. The food, he says, should be a backdrop to the communal dining experience.
As Ricky Roma says in Glenngarry Glen Ross, “Great meals fade in reflection. Everything else gains.”
New York Times: At Kitchensurfing, Booking a Chef and a Story
Been a little quiet on the new project—there’s been a lot to figure out (which has been tremendous fun). But now we’re opening up a bit more:
“This spontaneous cultural and culinary encounter was brought about by Kitchensurfing, a start-up business trying to make it as easy to find a private chef online as it is to book a room or order a book. The dinner’s host arranged the meal by browsing Kitchensurfing’s database of profiled chefs, who range from slick, credentialed professionals with years of restaurant experience to self-taught cooks like Ms. Phlong.
Most of my favorite moments with good company involve sharing a meal in a home. Going out is for strangers.
Hurricane Sandy did a number on New York. While much of the city is returning to normal life, parts of the city are devastated.
At Kitchensurfing, we had an interesting week. But the best part of the week was being inspired by the chefs in our community. We got a call on Thursday from chefs that were headed to the Rockaways to prepare hot food for those in need. We sponsored them and we were shocked to hear the return report. We’ve decided to use our skills to help support our chefs that want to help.
In several communities around New York, people still don’t have power, and many are homeless. There’s emergency relief in place and it is not enough.
A hot meal is humanizing in a way that little else can be. There’s looting, people are afraid, it’s cold, and this week is bringing more bad weather. Kitchensurfing stands for a kind of grassroots hospitality and a belief that breaking bread with someone can right many wrongs. We’re jumping in to help with things that the internet is good at: connecting people together to share and pool resources.
Specifically:
Really starting to pull together a lot of pieces at Kitchensurfing—new features, the right data structure, and a f*ing exciting roadmap.
Borahm did some beautiful design work on our new listings pages.
“I gradually, bit by bit, took on a little bit more responsibility and landed a couple Head Chef positions, and Sous Chef positions. I went from working in a vegetarian restaurant in London to going and working in a castle cooking exclusively game meats.”
Angus Stephens, Kitchensurfing Interview
Most chefs have strange life stories—it’s why we like them so much. Angus has also managed to leave restaurant kitchens and become a peripatetic chef and surfer, with quite a set up in Costa Rica.
“What are American misconceptions about Indian cuisine?
The biggest misconception is the term “curry.” Everything is not a curry and there is nothing that is a ready-made curry. This is a term used by the British. Curry is brought about by marrying a number of spices together to make a sauce or gravy base. It takes hours. If more Americans and diners worldwide were able to taste and understand the role of properly treated spice in Indian cuisine, I think they would quickly grow to appreciate true Indian food.”
Chef Walter D’Rozario - Kitchensurfing Interview
Chef D’Rozario is a gentleman, a sweetheart, and one of the few Michelin-starred Indian chefs in the world. He’s going to be teaching a class with us at Kitchensurfing on Off-Menu Indian food—exploring the spices and flavor profiles of a few regions—this Thursday in Gowanus, Brooklyn at our HQ (there will also be wine). If you’d like to join us as my guest, I’m happy to invite two tumblr peeps. Just message me through tumblr or drop a line at hello@kitchensurfing.
The Kitchensurfing team holding it down as we prepared Thanksgiving in June for some of our chefs.
Stay tuned for Christmas in July.
Food is culture and one of the amazing things about participating in food culture through our work at Kitchensurfing is getting a front-row seat to how that culture is changing around the world.
One of the things we’re starting to see a lot of is extremely talented chefs that learn classical technique, work in a fancy restaurant for a bit, but ultimately want to take their craft and apply it to traditional food that is near and dear to them. In Berlin, we were connected to a pop up restaurant with revolving chefs that is based on exactly that. Mother’s Mother is run by Kavita Meelu and here’s how she described it:
Mother’s Mother is a dinner club that celebrates Mother’s and Grandmother’s food from around the world. Every meal is created by a new chef and pays hommage to one single Mother.
Zeina Talhouni was the Mother’s Mother chef for the Kitchensurfing team in Berlin. Zeina grew up in the UK, became a high-powered lawyer working in Tokyo, and decided to leave the corporate world for culinary school in Paris. She’s in a rotation at a 3-star Michelin restaurant, but for her Mother’s Mother dinner, she paid homage to her Jordanian grandmother by re-imagining classic dishes and lightening them up. It was delicious, it wasn’t precious, it was the future.
