Nathan Beauchamp - Chef of 1789
After a decade, a new face at 1789
Being a restaurant chef is like riding a carousel. It’s a few years in one kitchen, then some chef moves on and people change horses. To take over for a chef after a two- to three-year reign is par for the course. But to take the reins from a beloved and award-winning chef who has been in place for a decade is tough.
That’s the challenge Nathan Beauchamp accepted when he took over from Ris Lacoste
at 1789 Restaurant. It’s not that he didn’t have the cooking credentials. Only one year after graduating in 1995 from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., the
Chestertown, Md., native became a chef de cuisine at 21, launching Table of Contents, a now-defunct restaurant in Minneapolis.
Beauchamp spent four years working around New York, first at David Burke’s Park
Avenue Cafe, then at Aqua Grill in Greenwich Village.
Back in Washington in summer 1998, he put in lengthy stints at Jeffrey Buben’s restaurants Vidalia and Bistro Bis. Finally, he moved to Restaurant Eve in Alexandria in
2002 as chef de cuisine under its highly acclaimed executive chef, Cathal Armstrong.
Then at the beginning of this year he switched horses again, stepping into the formidable shoes of Ris Lacoste at 1789. In the decade under Lacoste, the dignified 44-year old Federal-row-house restaurant near the campus of Georgetown University had become a showcase for modern American cooking.
Beauchamp acknowledges that taking over the reins was hard. “Expectations were very high,” he said. “People expect the immediate action is that you are going to change it — or that it has to be as good, if not better, as soon as they walk through the door.”
The pressure of those apprehensions is in the “back of the mind, but I don’t want to focus on it,” he said. He thinks there’s only one course of action for someone in such a position: “Every day we have to get up and say, ‘We are going to try and do our best.’”
What he does want to focus on is taking classic American food and working out how best it can change and evolve under a chef’s hand and inspiration. The key, he said, is to respect the integrity of the dishes and the ingredients that make them up.
He is also interested in respecting traditions — including those of 1789, the sort of restaurant with a closet full of blazers for men who turn up without jackets. In his treatment of food, Chef Beauchamp nods to that local appreciation for tradition. His menu offers lamb and duck on a menu that, depending upon season, might also propose a stuffed leg of farm rabbit or a Lobster Cioppino.
He concedes that people in New York are “a little more adventurous in what they eat,” but he said Washingtonians are willing to try “new and fun things.” And in the last seven or eight years, horizons have broadened, he confirmed. It may be surprising to people who regard curious parts with a shudder that 1789 sells “a lot of sweetbreads. Offal goes down well” too, he said, adding that one of his suppliers keeps him stocked in eel.
“This large international community here, the Vietnamese and Thai communities, the Afghan and Ethiopian and the Latino populations — their foods have been put into fine dining, which broadens people’s taste,” he said.
The ingredient he is excited by at the moment is cardamom pod, a highly scented aromatic used in Indian cooking that’s versatile enough for use both with squashes and in custardy desserts. He respects what spices can bring to a dish.
As far as his own eating goes, when the weather starts to get cold, he looks forward to a steaming bowl of the highly aromatic Vietnamese noodle soup pho. Sometimes at the end of an 80- to 85-hour week, he’ll stop at Pho 75 on Wilson Boulevard on his way home to Old Town Alexandria. And he and his wife, who used to be in the food business, are fans of the Arlington restaurant Thai Square.
With Georgetown University’s campus just up the block from 1789, the school’s president, dean and other faculty members contribute to the crowd of regulars who fill the five dining rooms discreetly decked out with antiques and prints. And along with diners from the neighborhood, Beauchamp said the clientele includes new, young blood — many who look upon the restaurant not as a destination reserved for special occasions, but for a general evening out.
His customers are often aware, throwing him questions about humanely slaughtered cows and pigs and sustainability of seafood. He’s pleased to answer. “I’m not using cod. It’s heavily overfished. We need to let nature rebuild the oceans. And there are so many more restaurants than ever.”
Having built good contacts among local growers and farmers, Beauchamp is keen to make the most of his access to seasonal produce. He’s planning to launch new menus not four, but eight times a year. “There’ll be spring and late spring; summer and late summer; fall and late fall; then two menus for the two halves of winter.”
His dad would cheer at all this effort. When Beauchamp was young and he got into what he ruefully calls “a little bit of trouble,” his father made him work out his punishment. So he got a job in a restaurant. “I had to be there at 5 a.m., Saturdays and Sundays. Weekends were filled with work!” Now, by choice, his entire week is.
1789 Restaurant (202-965-1789; http://www.1789restaurant.com) is located at 1226 36th St. NW. Entrees cost $23 to $38.
This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo courtesy of Nathan Beauchamp