Joe Palma - Chef de Cuisine of The Westend Bistro
Joe Palma’s recipe for getting a good culinary training is simple. “Find the best possible people you can work for and shut up.”
This became the Chef de Cuisine of the Westend Bistro’s game-plan once he’d discovered a passion for food. He earned money as a line cook while studying for degrees in Economics and Philosophy at the College of Charleston, working for renowned Charleston chef Frank Lee at his bistro, Slightly North of Broad.
“He asked me, do you know how to make steaks. I told him I’d worked in a restaurant in high school. I said, I can’t tell you I know ABC, but I can tell you I’ll work my tail off to learn it.”
Lee taught him his way on the line and his way round a kitchen. As a result, Palma believes a formal culinary school education can be a hindrance, sending a novice cook into a kitchen filled with preconceived ideas of how the work should be carried out.
When he graduated, Palma went to work in a bank. After all, he had a degree in Economics. His took his pleasure rowing, spending all his free time on the water. When he left banking for the restaurant world, he says he was rowing 45 hours in a kitchen, in terms of the energy the new work required. In 2003, he decided to move up to Washington. He found work at Citronelle, and expected to carry on his rowing training on the Potomac. “I really enjoyed three hours in the morning and two hours personal time in the gym. But you can’t do that rowing when you’re working 10 hours a day in a kitchen.”
He had to choose. And rowing wasn’t going to pay the rent. So with great sadness he dropped it and focused on his work with Michel Richard, forming an enjoyable relationship that continues, he says, to this day. Then followed some weeks at Galileo before it closed. Where to go next? “I could see no point in parking myself at a sub par restaurant.”
Frank Lee came up with a suggestion. He had worked in Charleston in the 1980s with Yannick Cam of Washington’s Le Paradou. He’ll make you into a cook, Lee told Palma, who became the restaurant’s sous chef from 2004-5. It was tough going to begin with, Palma says. “To be honest with you, the first few months it was nine-to-midnight five days a week. And with him, when I asked him how am I doing, he’d say everything was wrong.” This despite Palma’s having come with his experience at Citronelle.
Once he’d covered the prime bases in Washington, Palma decided he should head to New York. Cam called up Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert on his behalf. “I felt my weak point was fish,” says Palma. “I needed to bring up my knowledge about seafood. So I thought, I might as well go to Le Bernardin. It’s the best at that.” So began his relationship with Eric Ripert. He was “real warm”, once making the young cook and his team stay on at his house in the Hamptons and enjoy the beach after they’d gone up to prepare a dinner for Ripert’s friends.
After a year and a half working his way through every station, Ripert sent Palma back to Washington as Chef de Cuisine at the Westend Bistro. Palma has noticed a distinct change in Washington dining habits since he was last in the capital. “We’re selling sweetbreads. I wouldn’t have been able to do that two years ago.”
Ripert visits every six weeks or so and they keep in touch once a week. Palma is determined to keep to a high standard in the kitchen and is not shy about making changes when he feels it necessary. He wasn’t happy with the way striped bass was being handled. He’s says his staff is terrific and good at keeping focused. But he told them, “Listen, I don’t feel were doing a nice job with it. We are a bistro with 3 Michelin stars. There are ways to do this. There’s a perception that bistro food is casual. But you have to treat it with respect. It doesn’t have to be inelegant.”
The bistro format makes a change from his years of high cuisine. It allows him take fine ingredients and treat them well without doing too much to them.
What it doesn’t allow him is any free time at present to get back into rowing.
The Westend Bistro is located at 1190 22nd St NW, (202 974 4900; westendbistrodc.com). Main courses cost from $16 to $34.
This became the Chef de Cuisine of the Westend Bistro’s game-plan once he’d discovered a passion for food. He earned money as a line cook while studying for degrees in Economics and Philosophy at the College of Charleston, working for renowned Charleston chef Frank Lee at his bistro, Slightly North of Broad.
“He asked me, do you know how to make steaks. I told him I’d worked in a restaurant in high school. I said, I can’t tell you I know ABC, but I can tell you I’ll work my tail off to learn it.”
Lee taught him his way on the line and his way round a kitchen. As a result, Palma believes a formal culinary school education can be a hindrance, sending a novice cook into a kitchen filled with preconceived ideas of how the work should be carried out.
When he graduated, Palma went to work in a bank. After all, he had a degree in Economics. His took his pleasure rowing, spending all his free time on the water. When he left banking for the restaurant world, he says he was rowing 45 hours in a kitchen, in terms of the energy the new work required. In 2003, he decided to move up to Washington. He found work at Citronelle, and expected to carry on his rowing training on the Potomac. “I really enjoyed three hours in the morning and two hours personal time in the gym. But you can’t do that rowing when you’re working 10 hours a day in a kitchen.”
He had to choose. And rowing wasn’t going to pay the rent. So with great sadness he dropped it and focused on his work with Michel Richard, forming an enjoyable relationship that continues, he says, to this day. Then followed some weeks at Galileo before it closed. Where to go next? “I could see no point in parking myself at a sub par restaurant.”
Frank Lee came up with a suggestion. He had worked in Charleston in the 1980s with Yannick Cam of Washington’s Le Paradou. He’ll make you into a cook, Lee told Palma, who became the restaurant’s sous chef from 2004-5. It was tough going to begin with, Palma says. “To be honest with you, the first few months it was nine-to-midnight five days a week. And with him, when I asked him how am I doing, he’d say everything was wrong.” This despite Palma’s having come with his experience at Citronelle.
Once he’d covered the prime bases in Washington, Palma decided he should head to New York. Cam called up Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert on his behalf. “I felt my weak point was fish,” says Palma. “I needed to bring up my knowledge about seafood. So I thought, I might as well go to Le Bernardin. It’s the best at that.” So began his relationship with Eric Ripert. He was “real warm”, once making the young cook and his team stay on at his house in the Hamptons and enjoy the beach after they’d gone up to prepare a dinner for Ripert’s friends.
After a year and a half working his way through every station, Ripert sent Palma back to Washington as Chef de Cuisine at the Westend Bistro. Palma has noticed a distinct change in Washington dining habits since he was last in the capital. “We’re selling sweetbreads. I wouldn’t have been able to do that two years ago.”
Ripert visits every six weeks or so and they keep in touch once a week. Palma is determined to keep to a high standard in the kitchen and is not shy about making changes when he feels it necessary. He wasn’t happy with the way striped bass was being handled. He’s says his staff is terrific and good at keeping focused. But he told them, “Listen, I don’t feel were doing a nice job with it. We are a bistro with 3 Michelin stars. There are ways to do this. There’s a perception that bistro food is casual. But you have to treat it with respect. It doesn’t have to be inelegant.”
The bistro format makes a change from his years of high cuisine. It allows him take fine ingredients and treat them well without doing too much to them.
What it doesn’t allow him is any free time at present to get back into rowing.
The Westend Bistro is located at 1190 22nd St NW, (202 974 4900; westendbistrodc.com). Main courses cost from $16 to $34.
Posted on Wednesday 17th December 2008 in
Chefs
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