Robin Dutt shares his experiences tasting the different famed restaurants from a road trip across the Northern United States. Follow him as he explores his taste buds and tries over 50 restaurants to gain a new perspective on being a responsible cook.
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I was broken. It was just that simple. I had just returned from a month in the Antarctic, which was my worst cooking contract to date. Long hours and cramped conditions combined with the most mentally taxing chef I had to ever work under to make me miserable.
Luckily, I got an opportunity to cut the contract short and save my sanity. Unluckily, that opportunity was a family issue that required me to come home – my dad needed a quadruple bypass surgery. Right out of one emotional frying pan and into another.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t take on another contract because of familial responsibilities, not that I even wanted to get back into the kitchen. There was a window that I needed to fill while I waited for my father to go under the knife. I decided to get myself out of my rut and re-discover what I loved about food.
Alinea, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Chicago and one of the best in the world, lit the cooking spark in me years ago, so I decided to go back there where it all started. Rather than go straight from my hometown of Toronto to get to Chicago, though, I decided to eat my way through a more scenic route: Montreal, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago and then Detroit. 55 different eating establishments later, I returned to Toronto with a new outlook on cooking, ready to get back into the kitchen with these lessons in mind:
Keep on Evolving
In Boston, I was excited to go to No. 9 Park, the flagship restaurant of Barbara Lynch, one of the most respected female chefs in America. They featured one of the top tasting menus in the country. A tasting menu is a meal of anywhere from 5 to 20 small dishes that allows the chef to showcase their skill and passion. It’s an amazing form of culinary masturbation and I was excited to see it.
Unfortunately, I was left unimpressed. The dishes, although tight, felt stale. The climax of the meal was a duo of beef – braised and steak – with mashed potatoes and spinach. Though it was technically precise, it wasn’t imaginative. I was left with the sense that No. 9 Park wasn’t at its best.
A fellow chef recommended that I check out Craigie’s On Main, where they were running a tasting menu that was creative and exciting. It featured a trio of veal – braised rib, house-made sausage and loin – over top of spaetzle and rapini. While the components were similar to No. 9 Park – protein, starch and veg – there was more thought and more flavour in what Craigie’s was offering.
Discovering chefs pushing the envelope continued when I went to Philadelphia and had egg chawanmushi with white truffles at Serpico. It was heavenly.
These experiences showed me that there are no limits on how good or how much better food can be and that truly excites me.
—
Read more about Robin’s journey in Part Two.
Robin Dutt shares his experiences tasting the different famed restaurants from a road trip across the Northern United States. Follow him as he explores his taste buds and tries over 50 restaurants to gain a new perspective on being a responsible cook.
---
I was broken. It was just that simple. I had just returned from a month in the Antarctic, which was my worst cooking contract to date. Long hours and cramped conditions combined with the most mentally taxing chef I had to ever work under to make me miserable.
Luckily, I got an opportunity to cut the contract short and save my sanity. Unluckily, that opportunity was a family issue that required me to come home - my dad needed a quadruple bypass surgery. Right out of one emotional frying pan and into another.
I didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't take on another contract because of familial responsibilities, not that I even wanted to get back into the kitchen. There was a window that I needed to fill while I waited for my father to go under the knife. I decided to get myself out of my rut and re-discover what I loved about food.
Alinea, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Chicago and one of the best in the world, lit the cooking spark in me years ago, so I decided to go back there where it all started. Rather than go straight from my hometown of Toronto to get to Chicago, though, I decided to eat my way through a more scenic route: Montreal, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago and then Detroit. 55 different eating establishments later, I returned to Toronto with a new outlook on cooking, ready to get back into the kitchen with these lessons in mind:
Keep on Evolving
In Boston, I was excited to go to No. 9 Park, the flagship restaurant of Barbara Lynch, one of the most respected female chefs in America. They featured one of the top tasting menus in the country. A tasting menu is a meal of anywhere from 5 to 20 small dishes that allows the chef to showcase their skill and passion. It's an amazing form of culinary masturbation and I was excited to see it.
Unfortunately, I was left unimpressed. The dishes, although tight, felt stale. The climax of the meal was a duo of beef - braised and steak - with mashed potatoes and spinach. Though it was technically precise, it wasn't imaginative. I was left with the sense that No. 9 Park wasn't at its best.
A fellow chef recommended that I check out Craigie's On Main, where they were running a tasting menu that was creative and exciting. It featured a trio of veal - braised rib, house-made sausage and loin - over top of spaetzle and rapini. While the components were similar to No. 9 Park - protein, starch and veg - there was more thought and more flavour in what Craigie's was offering.
Discovering chefs pushing the envelope continued when I went to Philadelphia and had egg chawanmushi with white truffles at Serpico. It was heavenly.
These experiences showed me that there are no limits on how good or how much better food can be and that truly excites me.
---
Read more about Robin’s journey in Part Two.
