Sommelier Chris Hoel is bidding adieu to his native St. Louis. An e-mail I got from him this morning says he’s accepted a job at The French Laundry, the preeminent chef Thomas Keller’s Yountville, California restaurant. Hoel is/was one of only two advanced sommeliers (certified by the Court of Masters Sommeliers) in St. Louis. I chronicled his attempt to become a master sommelier in last year’s cover story, “The Wine Master.”
Today Food & Wine magazine named Gerard Craft, executive chef and co-owner of Benton Park restaurant Niche, one of its ten "Best New Chefs" for 2008. Craft is the first St. Louis-based chef to receive the honor, which began in 1988. Previous winners include such noted chefs as Daniel Boulud (Daniel), Thomas Keller (The French Laundry and Per Se) and Tom Colicchio (the restaurant Craft and co-host of Top Chef).
Jennifer Silverberg
Craft learned the news a month ago. "I thought one of the other chefs was playing a joke on me," he told me this afternoon on the phone from New York City, where tonight he and the other winners will attend a party in their honor.
The magazine swore Craft to secrecy, which he admits was difficult: "I have a big mouth."
While the news did remain a secret, obsessive observers of the St. Louis dining scene might have suspected that the stars were aligning for Craft. Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin dined at Niche a few months ago and mentioned the restaurant in the "Where I'm Coming From" sidebar to her editor's letter in the magazine's February 2008 issue.
On the eve of the announcement, Food & Wine's Web site offered clues to the identities of this year's "Best New Chefs." One of the clues set alarm bells ringing in anyone familiar with Craft's career before he moved to St. Louis:
Two of this year's BNCs have cooked—and might still be cooking—in an unexpected city on the west coast (okay, Salt Lake City).
(Craft worked at the Salt Lake City restaurants Bistro Toujours and the Metropolitan.)
When I spoke with Craft this afternoon, he was exceptionally modest, saying that his staff at Niche "were the ones who got [the award] for me."
"I consider myself to be extremely lucky," he says. "There are so many [chefs] better than me. They all deserve to be recognized. Hopefully, this will give a boost to the St. Louis dining scene."
Josh Galliano, chef de cuisine at An American Place, agrees: "It's awesome for St. Louis."
Galliano believes the award will let Craft and Niche represent St. Louis' contemporary dining scene to the rest of the nation. "People can look beyond the St. Louis specialties," he says. "There’s nothing bad about that heritage, but we're in a new [restaurant] industry."
Among Craft's fellow winners are several chefs who have already received national attention. New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni recently ranked Tim Cushman's Boston restaurant O Ya and Jeremy Fox's Napa Valley restaurant (and yoga studio) Ubuntu #1 and #2 in a countdown of the 10 best new restaurants in America outside of New York City.
Michael Psilakis, chef of the New York City restaurants Anthos, Kefi and Mia Dona, was named "Chef of the Year" for 2007 by Esquire magazine's well-known food critic John Mariani.
The other winners are Jim Burke of James in Philadephia, Koren Grieveson of Avec in Chicago, Ethan Stowell of Union in Seattle, Giuseppe Tentori of Boka in Chicago, Eric Warnstedt of Hen of the Wood in Waterbury (Vermont) and Sue Zemanick of Gautreau’s in New Orleans.
Craft and the other chefs will appear on the cover of Food & Wine's July 2008 issue. If tradition holds, there will be a profile of and a recipe from each chef in the issue. Coincidentally, Mathew Rice, pastry chef at Niche and the adjoining Veruca bakeshop, will have a recipe featured in the magazine's June issue.
Correction: The original post incorrectly identified Mathew Rice as the owner of Veruca. Our apologies.
All this week Gut Check is celebrating the end of 2007 with the first annual Year-End Bonanza! I'm counting down my ten favorite dishes of the year -- and the absolute, no holds barred worst. We're revealing the nominees for the inaugural Gut Check Thing of the Year award. And of course there's plenty of the usual Gut Check goodness.
If you've never visited the RFT food blog -- or you haven't stopped by in a while -- now is the perfect time to get caught up.
Under the impression that the restaurant offered a limited food menu as late as 1 a.m., we awarded Terrene "Best Late Night Dining" in this year's edition of Best of St. Louis. In fact, Terrene's kitchen is open no later than 11 p.m. We still love 'em, though -- and we stand by our "Best Outdoor Dining" pick!
This weekend you can attend the Taste of St. Louis downtown. At Gut Check you can get a taste of St. Louis every single day. What were this week's flavors?
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We told Ron Popeil where he could stick his rotisserie chicken.
Who among us has not harbored the occasional romantic and/or sexual yearning for a teacher? Teachers have power. Power is sexy. More to the point, some teachers are attractive -- hot, even. They didn't include that red-pepper rating on RateMyProfessors.com for nothing.
This is not to say that the recent Hardee's and Carl's Jr. TV ad for the Patty Melt Thickburger could be mistaken for a tribute to the noble profession of teaching. In the ad, a group of teenage boys, inspired by the sight of their hot blond teacher's backside, begin rapping a parody of Sir Mix-A-Lot's immortal "BabyGotBack":
"In anatomy class, you got a butt-minus...I like flat buns, flaaat buns!"
Overcome, the teacher begins to dance and writhe atop her desk, whereupon men age 18 to 34, the ad's target audience, presumably say to themselves, "Gee, I could really go for a patty melt right now."
"I can't see how anyone could look at it not see a parody of a 'Hot for Teacher' video from the Eighties," says Hardee's Jeff Mochal, PR manager for the St. Louis-based company.
Maybe members of the Tennessee Education Association aren't fans of Van Halen, either. Soon after a few of them caught the ad during a break in an airing of a Tennessee Titans game, they began to protest and demand that the ad be taken off the air.
"The ad makes the classroom look like a joke," says Cheryl Umberger, a communications consultant at the TEA. "The teacher is not taken seriously, nor are the students. Teachers do not get up on their desks the way the supposed teacher does in the ad. The way she's portrayed makes it difficult, especially for young teachers, to establish the appropriate discipline and class behavior with high school students."
Mochal says the ad was never meant to cause any trouble. "I Like Flat Buns," sans teacher, first aired as a radio spot four months ago and proved so popular -- Mochal actually fielded requests for a ringtone -- that the company decided to create the TV version, which hit the airwaves August 28. Really, what better way is there to harness the back-to-school spirit and illustrate flat buns at the same time? The ads were scheduled to air only after 10 p.m., by which time most earnest young scholars should be finishing up their homework and heading off to bed.
Nonetheless, the controversy sizzled. More groups, most notably the American Family Association, began posting the YouTube clip on their Web sites and urging their members to write to their local TV stations and CKE Restaurants, Hardee's and Carl's Jr.'s California-based parent company, in protest. The media picked up the story, and last week impressionable schoolchildren could watch it on Good Morning America.
"The media showed it ten times more than we did," says Mochal. "It must have increased the ad value 100 times."
It is hard to say at this point, however, how much it boosted patty-melt sales.
CKE was puzzled by the violence of the reaction, Mochal says, but as the ad was not meant to shock or offend (unlike the one with Paris Hilton), the company retooled the commercial and cut out the teacher.
Alas, St. Louis television viewers will be spared those poorly rapping white kids. The ad went off the air last weekend. Hardee's has already moved on to its next promotion, the Hawaiian Chicken Sandwich. Sensitive Hawaiians take note: the new commercials debut October 1.
Also in this week's issue: Malcolm dreams of anchovies in sauce gribiche, while Kristie enjoys a glass of Penfolds Thomas Hyland Shiraz at a curiously quiet mall.
Also in this week's issue: Malcom tries to keep down smoked catfish, while Kristie wonders whether hot sake will soothe the pain of pulled wisdom teeth.
Also in this week's issue: Malcom tries to keep down Promise Activ Peach SuperShots (and his cholesterol), while Kristie sips Glen Ellen merlot and tries to keep straight who's who at the barricade.
