Michael Santoro - chef de cuisine at Blue Duck Tavern
The resume of Michael Santoro, new chef de cuisine at The Blue Duck Tavern, reads like a guide to good restaurants around the world. He’s spent 6 months at The Fat Duck in England, Heston Blumenthal’s font of molecular gastronomy that vies regularly with Ferran Adria’s El Bulli for nomination as the world’s best restaurant. “I just wrote to their website. They’ve got a lot of staff they’re training.”
He’s worked with Tom Aiken, English bad-boy-but-brilliant chef, owner of the eponymous restaurant and also Tom’s Kitchen. The youngest chef in Britain to be awarded two Michelin stars, Aiken won them at Pied à Terre from which he was sacked for allegedly branding a trainee with a hot knife. “He was pretty rough on some of the guys, but he wasn’t rough on me.” And he’s been through the kitchens of the one-star Mugaritz Restaurant near San Sebastian, Spain. He’s worked at Mill’s Tavern in Providence, RI. He’s served as sous chef at the Michelin one-star Restaurant Gilt in New York. Before joining The Blue Duck Tavern he was chef de cuisine at Boqueria, a popular Spanish restaurant in Manhattan.
So where, with all this exposure to top food destinations, would Santoro eat if you gave him $500 and an airline ticket? He reflects, and says he’d probably spend it at Mill’s Tavern. “It was the first really good restaurant I worked in. I started at the basic level and went all the way to sous chef. There was a really good team there.”
Rhode Island was home to this Mansfield, Ohio-raised chef for several years. To his time at Mill’s Tavern add his culinary training at Johnson & Wales, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 2004. He’d started out in college studying computer science. But he was bored and broke. So he took a restaurant job and quickly found that this, not technology, suited his personality. He hadn't had much involvement with cooking before that. He’s from a large Italian family, with three sisters, but it was with his father he did any cooking activities. “I’d help him on the grill,” he grins. He began at the restaurant working the wood oven, cooling it down at the end of the night and coming in early the following morning to stoke it up again with logs to get the fire going.
At The Blue Duck Tavern he was happy to see there was a wood-burning oven. Then there was its open kitchen. “You can see right to the floor. Everything has to be cleaned.” What most impressed him was its extensive list of purveyors and farmers, mentioned on the menu wherever they’ve supplied an ingredient. “It took me aback how in depth they went in sources material, in finding best stuff U.S. has to offer.” He’d met many producers back in New York. Now he’s building his contacts down here. “I try to keep moving forward, finding specialty things. Ideally that would be within 100 miles. But if we had to keep to that, it would be a pretty limited menu.” He has an ambition to go to Alaska, get on the boats and experience sea fishing for himself.
Santoro finds his diners adventurous eaters for the most part, selling surprising dishes like calves’ liver and sweetbreads. He can move 20 orders a day of the bone marrow starter made famous by Fergus Henderson at St John’s in London, where he did a stage. Henderson, a self-taught cook, “had the best personality of any chef,” he remembers fondly. Santoro, too, likes to keep things simple, but done well. He poaches his marrow bone two minutes, cuts it lengthwise - not across like Henderson - then quickly roasts it.
He wishes there were more of an European approach to eating in the States, people prepared to sit down all night at a big table to have a good meal with family and friends. “You don’t see too much of that here.”
At home his wife cooks. At the moment, he doesn’t get too much time off. But if he did, he’d like to play golf. Or play music. Not an instrument - turntables. “I used to play a few clubs in New York, in Rhode Island. Now I‘m more solidly set in cooking. But if I was at a party? I’d be behind the turntables,” he laughs.
The Blue Duck Tavern is located in the Hyatt hotel, the corner of 24 & M Streets, NW (202 419 6755; blueducktavern.com). Main courses cost from $19 to $42.
He’s worked with Tom Aiken, English bad-boy-but-brilliant chef, owner of the eponymous restaurant and also Tom’s Kitchen. The youngest chef in Britain to be awarded two Michelin stars, Aiken won them at Pied à Terre from which he was sacked for allegedly branding a trainee with a hot knife. “He was pretty rough on some of the guys, but he wasn’t rough on me.” And he’s been through the kitchens of the one-star Mugaritz Restaurant near San Sebastian, Spain. He’s worked at Mill’s Tavern in Providence, RI. He’s served as sous chef at the Michelin one-star Restaurant Gilt in New York. Before joining The Blue Duck Tavern he was chef de cuisine at Boqueria, a popular Spanish restaurant in Manhattan.
So where, with all this exposure to top food destinations, would Santoro eat if you gave him $500 and an airline ticket? He reflects, and says he’d probably spend it at Mill’s Tavern. “It was the first really good restaurant I worked in. I started at the basic level and went all the way to sous chef. There was a really good team there.”
Rhode Island was home to this Mansfield, Ohio-raised chef for several years. To his time at Mill’s Tavern add his culinary training at Johnson & Wales, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 2004. He’d started out in college studying computer science. But he was bored and broke. So he took a restaurant job and quickly found that this, not technology, suited his personality. He hadn't had much involvement with cooking before that. He’s from a large Italian family, with three sisters, but it was with his father he did any cooking activities. “I’d help him on the grill,” he grins. He began at the restaurant working the wood oven, cooling it down at the end of the night and coming in early the following morning to stoke it up again with logs to get the fire going.
At The Blue Duck Tavern he was happy to see there was a wood-burning oven. Then there was its open kitchen. “You can see right to the floor. Everything has to be cleaned.” What most impressed him was its extensive list of purveyors and farmers, mentioned on the menu wherever they’ve supplied an ingredient. “It took me aback how in depth they went in sources material, in finding best stuff U.S. has to offer.” He’d met many producers back in New York. Now he’s building his contacts down here. “I try to keep moving forward, finding specialty things. Ideally that would be within 100 miles. But if we had to keep to that, it would be a pretty limited menu.” He has an ambition to go to Alaska, get on the boats and experience sea fishing for himself.
Santoro finds his diners adventurous eaters for the most part, selling surprising dishes like calves’ liver and sweetbreads. He can move 20 orders a day of the bone marrow starter made famous by Fergus Henderson at St John’s in London, where he did a stage. Henderson, a self-taught cook, “had the best personality of any chef,” he remembers fondly. Santoro, too, likes to keep things simple, but done well. He poaches his marrow bone two minutes, cuts it lengthwise - not across like Henderson - then quickly roasts it.
He wishes there were more of an European approach to eating in the States, people prepared to sit down all night at a big table to have a good meal with family and friends. “You don’t see too much of that here.”
At home his wife cooks. At the moment, he doesn’t get too much time off. But if he did, he’d like to play golf. Or play music. Not an instrument - turntables. “I used to play a few clubs in New York, in Rhode Island. Now I‘m more solidly set in cooking. But if I was at a party? I’d be behind the turntables,” he laughs.
The Blue Duck Tavern is located in the Hyatt hotel, the corner of 24 & M Streets, NW (202 419 6755; blueducktavern.com). Main courses cost from $19 to $42.
Posted on Wednesday 01st October 2008 in
Chefs
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