I missed a dish in here, a mussel shell filled with “blue mussel, hemp, pine buds, cream” – the diner is in danger of cutting themselves on the shell as you are instructed to eat direct from the shell, weakest dish of the night.

Overall this 1* restaurant punches above its weight, I had a fantastic meal, the highs were extremely high, but unfortunate lows let down the whole experience, one to watch though as if they improve consistency of dishes its definitely worth a 2nd star.

On my last Sunday at Blue Hill, After having spent the morning working in the bakery – a fantastic experience where I learnt so much in a short time, Chef Bastion surprised me with lunch in the bar to say thank you for the work that I had done. It was one of the most “sensical” meals that I have ever had, it fit the setting of Blue Hill perfectly, was delicious and thought provoking………

All set, nice to finally sit still and enjoy…….

The Fence, amazing simplicity of beautiful just harvested vegetables dressed highly in a simple vinaigrettes.

Lots of small plates for amuse

weeds from the garden and pesto.

pickles and pork sausage.

needle in haystack – cheese grissini

radish with fermented apple & poppy seeds (fresh from the pod) and icicle radish with brown butter and lemon confit

Raw baby Kohlrabi, apricot jam

tamale of veal, ramp leaves, pickled onion, quince and cranberry

Rye baked sweet potato,

Blue Hill Asparagus, cured blue fish, bagna cuda

Rhubarb and buckwheat tea

Prawn toast ( the bread a BH is phenomenal )

Celtuce, caviar, pinenuts and oyster foam

Shrimp on coals, Celtuce

Beet pizza, carrot sushi, livers & cocoa

tartlet of ramps, morels and fiddleheads

Bread with single udder butter

Bone marrow, sausage from a retired dairy cow, heart

parsnip steak aged in tallow, beet blood, creamed spinach & onion ring

Rhubarb, buttermilk, strawberry

Rye Baked rhubarb

Rhubarb Liquorice and chocolate bread with rhubarb jam

Tues 7th May

As a chef, when it comes to produce we search out the best, most delicious and the most sustainable produce that we can source – poultry as example, – we look for the best tasting product that we lay our hands on, usually this means Pasture-raised, or free range chickens that wander the farm, pecking up bugs, worms, grasses and delectable weeds in the sunshine. They are free to wander about in grassy fields as nature intended, allowed essentially to eat what they decide to eat. This “diet” means that the yolks are bright yellow-orange, the shells are hard, and the flavour exceptional.

This also means that these chickens raised for “processing” have a flavor unsurpassed by anything you can purchase at the store.  And you can be assured that no chemicals, antibiotics, or hormones were used to raise them. They live a “happy & stress free” life, so that they will perform better for the table, exactly what we as chefs look for in a product. Picture these happy chickens for a moment in you mind, now hold that thought………

As that chef who has spent the time to source that amazing chicken to prepare so that you may wow your guests with your culinary skills, think about its life as well, living in green pastures, in the sunshine, eating a mixed, healthy and varied diet, virtually living stress free so they have maximum flavour.

Now think about the way we have our kitchen teams spend their hours, of which there is generally too many a day, 12 – 15 hours, sometimes more – which sometimes cannot be helped I realise, its not a perfect world – working at a frenetic pace in a confined, hot space, artificially lit with florescent lighting, constant time constraints and pressure points. The constant threat of a verbal barrage if things go wrong, quickly eating left overs and off cuts as you go standing up, or if your lucky, sitting on a milk crate in the rubbish area…….

If that prized chicken were raise in similar condition, we wouldn’t except it, wouldn’t even consider using them if we saw conditions like these for our produce, but we put ourselves though it!

My question is Why? And what can change to make the average kitchen a better more sustainable place for those that work in them?

“In A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal consistency. That a person who experiences inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and so is motivated to try to reduce the cognitive dissonance occurring, to justify behaviour by changing parts or by adding new parts of the cognition causing the psychological dissonance, and by actively avoiding situations and information likely to increase the psychological discomfort.” (Wikipedia)

For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition).

I know of chefs who have heart attacks at a young age. In my own experience I have been hospitalist with chest pains in the past and suffered from depression & anxiety even though on paper it may have seemed like I was achieving goals,it didn’t feel that way, others that I know rely on alcohol or hard drugs to get them through, once again non sustainable for our future genratetions of chefs

As chefs, I think we all know that ours is hard game, every chef with more than a few years of experience can tell many stories of long hard days worked, countless days of pressure and torturous routine, but how do we change that for the future generations, the next young chefs coming though that need to learn a better way to treat themselves and their teams, to make kitchens more sustainable for the chefs, not just the produce?

So old school its cool again…….

Chez Panise is lauded for using the highest-quality food available, this entails sourcing food that is locally, organically, and sustainably grown. The menu is dictated by what is fresh and in season, a Kitchen meeting at 1.30pm each day essentially sets the menu for the evening, although they some idea of what they’d like to cook an publish this a week in advance – it is subject to change though as new ingredients turn up.. The restaurant has a network of farmers, ranchers, and dairies that produce and supply specifically for them the best produce of the season, which is then cooked fro scratch and served fresh, every day.

The Chez Panisse team are convinced that the best-tasting food is organically and locally grown and harvested in ways that are ecologically sound by people who are taking care of the land for future generations. The quest for such ingredients has always determined the restaurant’s cuisine. Since 1971, Chez Panisse has invited diners to partake of the immediacy and excitement of vegetables just out of the garden, fruit right off the branch, and fish straight out of the sea – and it shows in the shinning flavor of each ingredient.

The kitchen set up is very traditional, very old school, with a large central heart for cooking over wood………

(picture Curtsey of Wikipedia as no photography allowed)

Friday April 21st menu

Deep fried Aspragus with whipped ricotta, sage and range zest

Dungeness crab bisque with sorrel and paprika crutons

Wolfe Ranch Quail alla divola with mustard flower salsa, snap peas and faro with spring onions

(definatley the best quail that I have ever eaten!)

Chocolate sorbetto and mint parfait meringata

(proposed) Saturday 22^nd April

Local halibut tartare with cucumber and radish salad, black pepper flat bread and green coriander

Sheeps milk ricotta gnocchi with morel mushrooms, sweet peas and mint

Grilled Stemple creek ranch beef loin wit red wine sauce, asparagus, fava beans and fennel gratin

Bittersweet chocolate tartlet with hazelnut praline

So today is the first day of my Churchill journey, to research sustainable practices in high end kitchens, it a 9 week tour visiting and working in some of the most sustainable restaurants in the world, first stop Alice Waters, Chez Panise, San Francisco then onto Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York for two weeks. Over to Copenhagen next for stints at Relae and Amass before heading to the UK to meet with the Jamie Oliver Foundation and the Sustainable Restaurant Association to talk bringing their “Food Made Good” awards to Oz. Throw a UKharvest pop up using solely reclaimed foods and it adds up to be one EPIC trip!

Its not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the area, whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and short comings, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither knew victory or defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt 1910