Welcome toOut 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.
Jason Weiner greets the tall guy with the cooler with a mixture of anticipation and wariness.
"What have you brought me today, Sean?" he asks, standing up and making his way over.
It's the middle of the afternoon, so Weiner's Bridgehampton, New York, restaurant, Almond is still setting up for dinner service, and the two men have the dining room to themselves. Sean Barrett, the founder of Dock to Dish, a Montauk-based community-supported fishery, pops open the lid of his wheeled cooler and invites the chef to take a look.
Almond is a member of Dock to Dish, which subscribes to a supply-based, not a demand-based, system. Members pay ahead for a year's worth of fish, but they can't dictate what those fish are. They trust Dock to Dish's fishermen to bring them the best that's available from their catch of the day. It's a philosophy that puts less strain on dangerously overfished species like tuna and swordfish, and encourages the public to open up their minds and stomachs to so-called "trash fish," those less attractive fish that make for great eating but are difficult for fishmongers to sell and thus often go to waste. But it also poses a challenge to a chef who's got to figure out what to write on his menu in the midst of all his other duties. It demands nerve, flexibility, and creativity.
"During the summer, when we're doing 300 covers in our little kitchen, and Sean's dropping the fish on me Wednesday morning, I'll text him mid-morning and ask him, 'Dude, what are we getting today?'" Weiner says later. "And he'll text me, 'Something fresh.' It's a high-wire act."
The catch of the day this time? Skate, a cartilage-filled ray whose skin tends to reek of ammonia and slough off mucous when handled by a novice, but is delicate and mild in the hands of a knowledgeable chef. Weiner takes two wing-shaped fillets into the kitchen. He's already been working on two fishburger patties, his variation of a recipe Eric Ripert whipped up for Dock to Dish that's one-fifth yellowfin tuna, the rest made by running scraps of the trash fish skate, dogfish, and tilefish through a grinder. Two heartily mottled buns from Dan Barber's oven sit nearby.
When he heard about the Dock to Dish philosophy, Weiner was immediately on board. After all, when he was earning his chops at restaurants in San Francisco, he came to appreciate the value of getting his ingredients directly from the source.
"I got used to people bringing abalone to our back door, or some random mushroom guy wearing waders with dirt to the elbows bringing us the chanterelles we were using that night," he says. "We don't know where our fish is coming from anymore. Something can be called Montauk swordfish even if swordfish season has been done for six months. It might've been caught in Montauk, but then it's been sold, frozen, changed hands, flown overseas a half a dozen times, and then ends up at Montauk dock again. Coming up with a dish and then getting the product is such a backward way of doing it."
Weiner begins laying out and seasoning the fillets while his sous chef prepares a roasted-cauliflower mash.
Almond had already been using sustainable local sources for most of the rest of its food when Weiner met Barrett three or four years ago. In the summer, Weiner stops by farms on the way into work from his home in Easthampton, and he'll take the excess off their hands, writing up menus that take advantage of his bounty. His wheat and beans and dry goods come from CSA-oriented Amber Waves Farms, in Amagansett. His chicken, eggs, and honey come from a woman on the North Fork, Browders Birds; his cheese from the man who raises the cows that provide his beef, Mecox Bay Dairy in Bridgehampton; his fruit and cider from Milkpail, also in Bridgehampton.
"It's about small-town here. My daughter goes to school with the sons and daughters of the people I'm buying from," he says. "We end up printing a new menu four or five times a week, but that's fun."
Weiner fires up the range and melts butter in a pan. In goes a fillet.
Being sustainable with fish means that Weiner has to work with what he gets, and has to make the most of what he has. Which suits Weiner's nose-to-tail sensibilities just fine.
"Sean's not cheap, but it's a story to tell and the product is great," Weiner says. "It's forced us to use the tuna spine jelly, and use collars and use cheeks. It's easy when Sean's dropping tuna or scallops on us, but when it's something like sea robin, or skate, or porgy–that's when you have to start wrapping the dish in things more familiar. If I'm getting sea robin, I throw some Brussels sprouts and bacon on the dish; it's another way to get people to take the plunge."
But sometimes "trash" fish leads to pure genius.
"Butterfish–these little shiny fish I'd never seen until last summer, with skin so thick you can't use it. It's something people just don't eat," Weiner says. "It ended up being the perfect fish-and-chips fish. And once you have a fish you can make into something as user-friendly as fish and chips, it really works for us. It's totally underutilized, and it's the veal breast of the sea." It was a hit–his customers loved it, and sea robin proved itself to their tastebuds, a tasty stand-in for fish and chips' traditional but dangerously overfished cod.
Weiner's finished plating his dishes and is ready to send them out to the dining room to be photographed and eaten: the fishburger with housemade sriracha and bread-and-butter pickles, savoy cabbage slaw and arugula from Amagansett's Quail Hill Farms; pan-roasted skate wing with mayo made from oysters and Sagaponack farmer and food writer Marilee Foster's cauliflower, atop roasted cauliflower mash; and skate wing with celery root and clam chowder with Mecox Bay house-smoked bacon and Quail Hill Farms leeks.
"'Sustainability' has of course become a kind of buzzword to the point that it's in danger of losing its meaning," Weiner says. "But when I put something tangible and delicious in front of my customers, it crystallizes the idea for folks. I can say, 'That piece of yellowfin tuna didn't just come from some nameless, faceless, supply chain. It was caught yesterday by Chris Burger onboard the F/V Defiant. That leek on your plate? I watched Jennifer Pike in Sagaponack pull it out of the ground this morning.' Eating is a multifaceted experiences–all senses are used. When the ingredients have a story behind them, they literally taste better."
You can lecture your customers all night long, he says, but nothing sells the idea of sustainability, using local sources that make a minimal impact on the world, better than a delicious meal.
"We're finally in a period where it's not about the chef anymore, it's about the ingredients, and it's the farmers' and fishermen's names on the bottom of the menu," Weiner says. "For me, it's about getting the ingredients in front of me and trying not to mess up what nature's given me."