Welcome to Out of the Kitchen, our ongoing exploration of the relationships that build and sustain the food industry. This year, we’re traveling the country to look at how sustainability has become a rapidly growing movement within the food world. Chefs at the forefront of this trend are introducing their patrons to local farms, fresh ingredients, and innovative dishes while farmers are educating chefs and consumers about where their food comes from and what it takes to grow the food served. Their practices and personal customer approaches provide a bigger impact to the community at large, hoping to create a better and more sustainable future for all.
Stepping into the Bohemian House, a Czech-themed restaurant in Chicago's River North, is like walking into the Art Nouveau period. The walls are covered with Alphonse Mucha's elegantly languorous fin de siecle women, there's a whimsically eclectic dinner setting defying gravity, and in the handsome sitting room, you half expect to see monocled intellectuals and aristocrats discussing how the centuries-old traditions of Moravian peasants inspire modern political reforms.
Yet despite all the trappings of the past, the restaurant keeps a defiant eye on the future. Instead of coming on the usual platter of leaden potatoes, the schnitzel goes vertical, an open-faced sandwich that dips its toes in ham-hock stock and wears a brightly sunny fried egg as a hat. The Catalpa Grove pork-belly chop is strewn with color from the dill blossoms, marigold, and borage, over a mushroom-broccoli spaetzle, but its real daring comes when you dig in–the rich red glaze has an almost Asian balance of restrained sweetness and rich earthiness. The goulash isn't the thick stew you remember from the distant memories of your grandmother's winter cooking, but focused on the meat–melt-in-your-mouth chunks of meat, and blood sausage made with pig's blood and pork butchered right in the back. And the mildly spiced bratwurst sits as upright like a broad smile in a circle of Bavarian-style pretzel and camembert-Pilsner Urquell sauce. They're all unmistakably Central European, yet firmly rooted in the 21st-century mind of chef Jimmy Papadopoulos. Even more, the meat's as modern and American as you can get, sustainably farmed from Illinois family farms including Slagel Family Farm and Catalpa Grove Farm.
Sure, it's great to do one's part to help the globe stay greener a little longer, but the most important point in using sustainable meat is the flavor that comes through for the customers. Papadopoulos remembers learning that lesson from Thomas Keller's 1999 classic The French Laundry Cookbook. "I learned about the importance of high-quality ingredients, purveyors who are sustainable," he says. "You realize that, as a chef, you're only as good as the people you cook with. So why not bring the best and bring them to the table? You need to know the importance of your pigs and your cows and where they come from."
"Jimmy's pitch to us was sustainable food, and he's created this relationship with these farmers, building the restaurant around these foods," says Dan Powell, a partner in the restaurant. "The value in the dishes he creates with that sustainable food is worth a lot more than being able to take a couple pennies off the price if we went with commercially farmed meat."
"I could buy flavorless commodity from a crate in Iowa, or I can use a happy pig raised in Illinois that has gorgeous color and tastes great and smells great," Papadopoulos says.
Papadopoulos is a big presence in both the kitchen and the dining room–bright-eyed, bushy-bearded, and arms covered in sleeves of tattoos almost as pretty as the food he makes. But he insists that the best way to convince customers that sustainability makes for a better meal is with the soft sell. "We don't like to tout it. We're not stuffing it down people's throats. It's about buying things I know I enjoy. I just hope it resonates with people as much as it resonates with me."
He puts the finishing touches on a fleet of dishes–spooning on a rich Camembert sauce to a bratwurst made with 100-percent Catalpa Grove Berkshire pork. "There's no question heritage-breed hogs are tastier, as are animals raised with care, without antibiotics. The flavor of the meat is richer, the texture is different, the color's richer, and when you eat the fat, it's full, buttery, and sweet."
He cuts into the chicken schnitzel, carving out a wedge of pounded, breaded chicken breast oozing with rich yellow yolk. the chicken came from Slagel Family Farm, and the egg? The Slagel matriarch herself picked and washed it before it came over to Bohemian House. "JohnLouis Slagel's chicken is my favorite," Papadopoulos says. "The fat is almost golden, the meat is darker. It's just a really well-raised animal, and you can taste that in the final product."
The diners at Bohemian House seem to get the message as they slice into their hand-picked, hand-washed Slagel eggs, or portion out samples of porky sausage that was until the day before rooting around for acorns under the oak trees behind the house at Catalpa Grove. And, as if there needed to be any more proof, you can see the proselytizing take hold in front of your eyes: Sustainably raised pork, beef, chicken, and eggs just look, smell, and taste better. By the front door, Papadopoulos raises a schnitzel-laden fork to his mouth and takes a bite of juicy meat and glistening rich egg yolk. Nearby, a staff member leads a pair of gawking customers to a table. They're obviously intrigued: It looks delicious. Five minutes later, they've ordered the schnitzel.