Jeff Buben - Owner-chef of Vidalia
Don’t underrate D.C., Vidalia chef says
For Jeffrey Buben, starting to cook came about “by virtue of going to vocational school.”
The owner and chef of Vidalia and Bistro Bis was pushed by school leaders toward a future in welding. Happily for his present clientele, he didn’t follow their advice.
“Going through high school I happened to work as a dishwasher.” So when selecting a focus at school, “I chose restaurants.” It was a three-year program, and it made him a better student, he says. It also made him want to go to the Culinary Institute of America when he graduated.
That led to work in several prestigious New York restaurants. “Probably the most influential in terms of growth and a chef who took on a real mentorship was Le Cygne,” Buben says. While in the Big Apple, he married Sallie, who was a teacher and is now a partner in their restaurants. With some reluctance, she came up from her native North Carolina to join him.
“She said, ‘If this is where you have to be, I will come. But I don’t want to live here forever.’ Living in New York was kind of terrible. The city was not a place to raise a family. But I didn’t want to go to North Carolina. There was nothing going on there.”
So they agreed to settle on somewhere in the middle. That is how, in 1984, they arrived in Washington. They’ve been here ever since, with Buben working in the kitchens of Nicolas in the Mayflower Hotel, La Bagatelle on K Street, and the Four Seasons in Georgetown. In 1986, he became chef of the Occidental restaurant, which he left in 1993 to open Vidalia.
Their three children — Sarah, who’s 25, Alex, a junior in college, Mac, a junior in high school — two dogs and two cats were all brought up in the family home in Fairfax, Va.
“Sallie gets all the credit for them growing up,” Buben says. “She still does it all. Having someone who takes care of that and having that person as your partner is a double bonus.” He had to spend all his spare time training the staff. Now that the children are grown, Sallie uses her training in software consulting and personnel recruitment on behalf of the restaurant.
Buben thinks Washington as a food city has been saddled with a poor reputation it doesn’t deserve. “New York in the ‘70s was in the same boat. If you really look, for me the food revolution started not in New York, but on the West Coast. They were more interested in nouvelle cuisine.” (This was the late 1970s cooking method that turned away from heavy use of cream and butter, and created sauces by concentrating the flavors in fresh produce.) The cooking in New York “was much more traditional American,” Buben says.
But politics always overshadow Washington’s culinary scene, he says. On the other hand, the capital is filled with people with broad international tastes who take what is happening in the kitchens around town very seriously.
He is well-placed to observe their sophistication. Bistro Bis, which he and Sallie opened in 1998, has classic French bistro dishes on the menu, with ingredients like snails, mussels and sweetbreads. And while Buben describes Vidalia’s food as regional American cuisine with a subtle Southern influence (its Shrimp and Grits dish is worth crossing the country for), he can sell as much calf’s liver and sweetbreads there as he can at Bistro Bis. “I don’t think there is any less adventurous eating here than anywhere else.”
His personal passion, though, is less for offal and curious cuts than for fish. Some years ago, his wife arranged a surprise ocean fishing trip with his fish supplier for his birthday, and he was hooked.
“I find it so fascinating — the whole relationship between cooking and fish, which is our last wild resource. I like to learn about the biology of it, and how the system works — the migration process, the spawning process.” The whole issue of sustainability, he says, “I find very interesting: from economics to politics, what goes into it.”
On his way from his house in to work, he has charted a course that takes him past all of the different farmers markets that are open each day. “I go to farmers markets five days a week. I’ve been doing that since the day we opened.”
These days, he is conscious he doesn’t have the patience he used to with his young chefs. “They get culture shock. They get crushed!” he says of those coming in right out of school. “It’s a lot different than it used to be. Those days are gone.” But the staff he has had alongside him for years, “They so get it. They implement it. We get right to it. Their success is my success.”
At this point, he says, the question of what to do next can pop up. Another restaurant? “Part of me wants to do something. Part of me says, ‘Why? You are always, constantly, trying to reinvent what you are doing.’ But there’s already a lot going on. Opening another restaurant is like deciding to have another kid!”
Vidalia (202-659-1990; http://www.vidaliadc.com) is located at 1990 M St. NW. Main courses cost $27 to $33. Bistro Bis (202-661-2700; http://www.vidaliadc.com/bistro) is located at 15 E St. NW. Main courses cost $22.50 to $31.50.
This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.