Chefs and diners alike have dishes they use to judge all restaurants
By LOUISA KASDON | October 30, 2006
Michael Schlow |
As I tucked in to the roast chicken at Hamersley’s Bistro recently, I chided myself for ordering it. Not because it wasn’t good (it was), but because almost every time I eat at Hamersley’s, after a little tug of war with myself for my lack of adventurousness, I wind up ordering the roast chicken. It’s stupid — the restaurant excels at everything, and I order the most pedestrian dish on the menu. But suddenly I got it: Hamersley’s roast chicken is my yardstick dish, the thing I use to judge every other bistro I visit. If a restaurant can produce a bird that’s as good as Gordon Hamersley’s, my internal food critic decides that it’s a pretty darn good place.I’m not the only one who does this. Some people use Caesar salad, some use onion rings, others use spaghetti with fresh clam sauce. I use roast chicken because it’s a dish I’ve eaten often enough to be completely judgmental about it. Chris Kimball, the founder and editor of Cook’s Illustrated, said something to me that I’ll never forget: he questioned why Americans are always cooking recipes that call for exotic spices. He wondered how many of us have eaten enough Indian food to know a good rogan jhosh from a mediocre one. But a pot roast? We’ve all eaten enough pot roasts to tell a good one from a lousy one. That’s our internal critic speaking, the voice that says, Hey, I’ve had this dish before, and this one tastes better than what my grandmother ever made.
I was curious to see if Boston’s best chefs also have dishes they order around town and around the globe to figure out if the people behind the swinging kitchen doors know how to cook. Often, the dish comes from a first fabulous experience. For Rialto chef Jody Adams, the quintessential Italian dish is the first one she ever ate in Italy as a teenager: fresh pasta with clams, garlic, tomatoes, and red-pepper flakes. “I’d never tasted anything that good before in my life,” she says. “It blew my mind and became my barometer. Now, I order it all the time because I love it. For me, a simple pasta dish like that is like a green salad. If a chef can screw up a simple green salad, they just aren’t paying attention.”
Summer Shack’s Jasper White agrees that our internal food critic is molded by our life experiences. “Good food or bad food is totally subjective — as it should be,” he says. But, he notes, “what we like might be how grandmother made something, or the first time we ate something. It’s hard for a restaurant to compete with a romantic notion from childhood.”
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