» View from the inside of a failing kitchen
Samin Nosrat, sous chef at the Berkeley restaurant Eccolo (which has just closed down), tells what it’s like to try to serve local, organic food during the financial crisis:
We did fine for a long time - barely making it is considered fine in the restaurant business - but when the financial crisis hit last fall, we felt an immediate impact. We started to tighten things up; when one cook quit, we divided the extra work amongst the rest of us, shouldering more responsibility and working longer hours for the same pay. And though I’d always monitored food cost like a hawk, I redoubled my efforts to save money without compromising our commitment to sustainable foods.
I re-examined my purchases. Instead of 25-year-old balsamic vinegar, I bought 15-year-old stuff. We stopped buying whole pigs; we couldn’t break even on them because few customers were adventurous enough to order soppressata, zampone or porchetta di testa, dishes we made to use up every part of the animal.
But there were things we couldn’t let go of without compromising taste - extra-virgin olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano, for examples. If we skimped on these, our food would suffer. I started to feel stuck: The choice always seemed to be between flavor and expense, and ours was a kitchen motivated by taste. Things started to get tense with our accountants, because our priorities were clearly different.
…..One particularly emotional battle revolved around eggs. A few years ago, Alexis Koefoed of Soul Food Farm near Vacaville showed up with a carton of speckled eggs. After tasting her pastured, tawny-yolked eggs, we began buying them. But investors kept questioning: If we could get organic eggs for $3, why buy Soul Food Farm eggs for $5? They felt customers couldn’t taste the difference.
The next week, we served garlic broth garnished with a poached Soul Food Farm egg. Table after table raved. One woman was moved to tears - she said she hadn’t seen yolks so bright and rich since being on her grandparents’ farm in Taiwan.
But in the end, the reality was the profit-and-loss statement, and we had to let go of the eggs. I almost quit over that. One by one, all my purchasing habits were scrutinized: Why spend the time going to the farmers’ market? Why buy Hoffman Farm chickens when precut breasts are so much cheaper? Why buy fresh squid that you have to pay an employee to clean when you can get pre-cleaned frozen squid?
August 31, 2009, 10:20am Comments
