Paul Pelt - Chef of the Tabard Inn

Tabard chef started by busing D.C. tables 

When Paul Pelt was 9, he took part in a piece of history that his father made him swear never to tell his mother. And, to this day the executive chef of the Tabard Inn still hasn’t.

It was August, 1968, and the family was living in Chicago. Pelt’s father’s best friend came over. “They were talking amongst  themselves,” Pelt says. “They said, ‘Let’s drive up the north side of Lincoln Park.’” What Pelt didn’t know was that thousands of students and anti-war activists had shown up at the Democratic Convention there to protest the party’s support of the war in Vietnam and its choice of Hubert Humphrey as its candidate.

“There were police with clubs and tear gas,” Pelt says. “We just kept moving. We’d start running in one direction and there’d be tear gas, so we’d go to another area, move somewhere else.”

His father was a huge influence on Pelt. He played his son all his favorite records — “anything Sam Cook, Beatles, Motown ... I liked it.” And you could argue his father got him into cooking. When his parents’ marriage broke up, Pelt and his father moved to Washington, to Capitol Hill. His father would cook, and Pelt would wash the dishes. “He really enjoyed cooking. He could take anything in the fridge — celery, chicken, leeks — make it taste good.” But eventually Pelt objected to his side of the arrangement. So in order to get out of the washing side and switch to making dinner, he had to learn to cook.

That led in high school to busing tables and doing prep work at neighborhood spots. When he was working a shift at a local pizzaand-beer joint one night, the chef didn’t show up, and the owner told Pelt to take over. “Basically he threatened me,” Pelt says with a grin, sitting at the Tabard Inn bar in black pants and shirt, his dreadlocks swinging. He went on to work at other restaurants around the capital until he arrived in 1992 at the Tabard Inn as a line cook first under Stacy Cosor, then David Craig. He stayed seven years.

“I learned technique from other people. And I started reading a lot.” He’s known as a passionate reader and collector of cookbooks, studying not just the recipes but also the culture and historical influence behind them. He practiced on the staff at Tabard Inn, cooking their daily meal for three years.

He’s been lucky, he says, in the chefs he’s cooked with, who went out of their way to help him. “Some chefs won’t teach you anything. They just want you to clean their fish. I’ve had some encourage me to cook, who’ve let me cook up things on the menu.”

When fellow Tabard Inn employee Rocky Scott left in 1999 to open Rocky’s Cafe in Adams Morgan, Pelt went with her as chef. The menu he created there reflected his interest in the foods of the Caribbean and Africa. When the restaurant closed, Pelt returned in 2005 to the Tabard, this time as executive sous chef. He brought with him his now-broadened experience of cuisines that focus on vibrant flavors. This spring he was made executive chef, and what he’s cooking now reflects influences not just from the African diaspora, but also from the spices and ingredients of South and East Asia.

His menu is packed with contemporary American dishes that he has given a twist with those bolder tastes. “I like well-seasoned food,” he explains. His fried calamari comes “gingered” and served with a spicy miso-mustard dressing. Grilled sardines are served with a tangy salsa verde. The salmon fillet is seared with a soy-sake glaze.

But coming even more to the fore is the influence of his grandparents' roots, who before they moved to Chicago, lived in the South. There’s tasso ham with the crab cake, rapini with the duck breast, and a seafood gumbo with a housemade andouille or creole sausage, or boudin blanc. Pelt also makes his own guanciale, the cured bacon from the meat of a pig’s cheek that’s impossible to buy in the United States except off the Internet but is essential for authenticity in several pasta dishes. Pelt uses it in his Fettucine alla Carbonara. And the pork rillettes, the country-style terrine and headcheese are his handmade creations, too.

As a restaurant servicing a hotel, Tabard gets regular customers who stay several times a year. Pelt says some of them call ahead and ask if a particular dish is going to be on the menu. If it isn’t, he’ll do his best to accommodate a request. At the time of the interview, he had just cooked a special order of fried oysters and grits.

He sometimes cooks at home in Northeast for the one out of three of his children still living there. He used to cook at home every day. But now he’s back too late for that, around 9 or 10 at night. “I’m trying to get out of the habit of making myself something then, and eat when it’s not so late.” Cooking is also a kind of hobby, he says.

As for time off, “I probably get about a day. But that’s not really free” with two teenagers in the house. If he does get time to himself, though, he spends it reading about food. He confesses a little sheepishly: “I have cookbooks all over the floor.”

The Tabard Inn (202-785-1277;tabardinn.com) is located at 1739 N St. NW. Main courses cost $21 to $30.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.