Nora Pouillon - Owner-chef of Restaurant Nora
If it didn’t make her sound stately,which she isn’t, you could call Nora Pouillon the “grande dame” of Washington restaurants. She has been cooking in the capital since the time when good restaurants were scarce and the only source for unusual produce or ingredients were the health-food stores and ethnic groceries of Adams Morgan.
There isn’t a chef in town who hasn’t been influenced, knowingly or not, by Pouillon’s commitment to healthy food. Words like “seasonal” and “natural” have been in her vocabulary from the start of her career back in the late 1960s, when she catered and taught cooking from home.
Having arrived in Washington from her native Austria with her French journalist husband in 1965, Pouillon learned to cook by reading Elizabeth David’s books while her young family’s laundry went round in a friend’s washing machine. She turned professional in 1973, when the owners of the Tabard Inn asked her to launch their kitchen.
Her own Restaurant Nora opened in 1979, followed in 1986 by City Cafe, precursor to Asia Nora. To establish a regular supply of good produce back in the '80s, she persuaded a group of chefs to support a local farmer who was selling the wares of a small farmers’ cooperative from the back of his truck. Ten years ago, she was a moving force behind the launch of the capital’s first local-produceronly farmers market, in Dupont Circle.
Nora became the nation’s first certified organic restaurant in 1999. But Pouillon has always promoted organic produce. “In the beginning at Restaurant Nora, it didn’t matter to many of the diners. They didn’t make the connection between local and seasonal and taste. I had to explain what I am trying to do.”
She has always used the menu as a message board. Right at the top, readers are invited to join Slow Food USA, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to preserve traditional foods and customs. She lists produce in season and names her farmers. “If there is a campaign around a certain topic, such as fish that is nearly extinct, I note it on the menu so that the customers can learn.”
Her concern about sustainability and the use of chemicals in food has taken her way beyond her own kitchens.
She spoke in October at the Terra Madre forum of the Slow Food convention in Turin, Italy, on what she called “a health crisis of staggering proportions” in the United States: the “result of bad eating habits, easy access to poor quality food and obscene portion sizes.”
She consulted for Fresh Fields before it was Whole Foods, and now she’s talking with Gerber about producing a line in organic baby foods. She was a founding member of Chefs Collaborative, whose mission is to promote environmentally sustainable living, and a charter member of the Seafood Choices Alliance.
The other nutrition, conservation and educational organizations in which Pouillon is involved are too many to list. But her theme in everything is the same.
“There has to be more awareness of the dire state of nutrition and agriculture in this country. People can change it. You have to buy less food but more nutritional food — original food, not processed food. You don’t need half a pound of protein on a plate. In Asian cultures, protein is used as a flavoring.”
She is particularly troubled by the dearth of professional teaching on nutrition and portion control. “The Culinary Institute of America really could have an enormous impact on educating chefs about responsibility towards the health of this country. One of my sous chefs remarked recently that in his 20 years of cooking experience, he has never been asked to think about fat content, nutrition or balance.”
Pouillon is a great advertisement for healthy eating. Carrying extra pounds is a common liability of being a chef, but Pouillon is trim. She looks like she’s come from a fashion shoot. Every day begins with aerobics, dance or yoga. She’s an accomplished skier and tennis player. And her zeal in promoting her message probably burns the calories, too.
“Food in this country is too cheap. It’s taken for granted and not respected. People throw half of it away. I wish someone would give me the backing to start a healthy organic fast-food chain. I think it could prove you can eat healthy and affordable food. Maybe not a 99-cent hamburger,” Pouillon conceded.
“You eat one cup a year of chemicals if you eat conventional food. At least 30 percent of pesticides are cancer-causing. The government doesn’t take a stand. It allows pesticides. It has to be sued. It will come to that, like with tobacco companies.
“We have to tell people, even if you have no money, buy a natural chicken at Whole Foods. Buy loads of vegetables with it, make a salad and you have a great meal. Instead of being for two people, you have stretched it for four.”
Pouillon reminds her elder daughter — one of two with restaurant partner Steven Damato — of this trick when she calls from college to the family home on Reservoir Road to say she can’t afford to eat as her mother would like her to.
Restaurant Nora (202-462-5143; http://www.noras.com) is located at 2132 Florida Ave. NW. Main courses cost $27 to $35.
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