Blue Duck Tavern’s reality-style kitchen

Brian McBride runs the most easy-to-covet restaurant kitchen in the capital. With its pale-wood shelving filled with matching glass jars of preserved summer produce, concealed downlighting and wide island counters at which the cooks quietly work, it’s contemporary rustic meets Architectural Digest. And it’s wide open to view.

In the show kitchens of other Washington restaurants, the messy preparation activity is hidden by high counter backs or confined to the rear of the work space. But diners at the Blue Duck Tavern, where McBride is executive chef, can see right into the exposed kitchen and watch every single move.

“The staff has to look like it’s effortless, not run around throwing pots and pans,” he says.

This high visibility means the kitchen must adhere to strict rules. First of all, the messy prep work is executed long before the very earliest diners make their way to their tables and stored tidily in cool design containers.

“You can see the organization and the equipment. You can see how clean you have to keep everything, how neat,” McBride points out.

He even has to control staff posture and how they dress. And right now he is going so far as to contemplate equipping each of the staff members with blue mugs for their drinks to match the finish of the massive Molteni oven he had hand-built to order. This would be, in McBride’s words, “easy on the eyes” of the diners.

He’s so anxious not to distract them that he’s had the infrared bulbs of food warmers — under which plates wait briefly until collected by the wait staff — hidden out of sight under the top shelf of the waiters’ station.

McBride worked with New York architect Tony Chi on the design of his cutting-edge kitchen before he designed its menu. Part of a multimillion-dollar facelift of the Park Hyatt Washington hotel, it replaces the award-winning Melrose. As chef at the Melrose from 1987, “I have been in the business a long time and I’ve never had an open kitchen,” he says.

So he took himself off to Asia to investigate the possibilities. The way he enthuses about his experiences in Singapore and Tokyo, you’d think he was a small boy talking about a shopping trip to FAO Schwarz.

“The Mezza9!” he exclaims, referring to the restaurant in the Grand Hyatt in Singapore. “It has nine different open kitchens in one concept! Nine different cuisines in one place — 240 seats! All the fish are live in tanks!” He takes a sip of chamomile tea to compose himself. Even when he’s expressing passion, he’s a restrained speaker, pushing his wire spectacles up his nose almost as a gesture of keeping himself in check.

In Tokyo he worked with wood-burning ovens, which he loved. And he ate at a restaurant that served exclusively raw chicken, which he didn’t. But he did admire that it and others were “using products in time-honored traditional ways. It was so beautiful in Tokyo to eat — the simplicity of the cooking products, all so pristine.”

He’s come back even more determined to focus on his own cooking products. “I kept in mind the fact that what I wanted to do in this restaurant was to make ingredients more important.” He leaves them as pure as possible, without using disguising sauces and the culinary trickery that takes the attention from the purity of the product. This means his chefs’ skills have to be top-ofthe- line. “Technique has to be perfect because all you are goingto do is slice [your central ingredient] and put it on the plate.”

McBride was determined to “get back to the basics, buy only from farmers, buy only what is in season.” The Blue Duck Tavern’s menu has a separate column alongside every dish that credits each producer in capital letters. “It could become a never-ending contacts book,” he says with a grin. This ambition makes cooking more challenging during the winter months. “I can’t use green beans, only root vegetables.” But his customers’ response ever since the June 2006 opening has been positive. He finds them in sympathy with his aims and says he bumps into quite a few of them at area farmers markets.

But he thinks he’s only touching the tip of what could be achieved in his kitchen. He talks of going back to the drawing board, encouraging a kitchen staff he describes as very committed to their craft to further the use of traditional techniques and products. Even now, nothing goes to waste.

“A pig? We use everything,” he says. Pork is his favorite meat to cook. He recently stuffed an 18-pound shoat (a weaned baby pig) for his chef’s table. And he loves to make traditional Eastern European dry sausages, flavored with paprika and mustard seeds. “After a week, it smells like kielbasa — that’s kinda cool.”

He may not find it easy to sell some of the offal meats that are standard offerings on a European menu. But the liver will go into a terrine. Unmentionables that may not inspire the less-informed eater will disappear into his bratwurst and salami sausages. And he finds diners at the chef’s table are ready to try other assorted curious parts.

Special reservations at the increasingly popular chefs’ tables around town give diners an even more personal connection to the kitchen and the action. But they must put themselves in the hands of the chef in terms of what they will be served. Recently, as part of his special menu, he served stuffed veal breasts rolled into galantines.

While some of his clients may prefer to stick to the straight and narrow, the same can’t be said of his 6- and 8-year-old daughters. “The last year and a half, we’ve probably eaten every holiday meal in the restaurant. Miranda [the elder] pretty much tries everything.” The restaurant meals are not just because Dad has been stuck at work making sure the new operation is a success, but also because the family lives in Oak Hill, Va., “And there’s no place to eat there.”

The Blue Duck Tavern (202-419-6755; http://www.blueducktavern.com) is located in the Park Hyatt
Washington, 1201 24th St. NW). Main courses cost $21 to $26.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.

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