Soppressata, lardo, porchetta, oh my!

To hear Chef Robert Weland talk about his passion, you might think he was referring to operatic notations.

“Coppa,” he says, eyes wide. “Soppressata, lardo, porchetta.”

But he’s talking salamis and charcuterie — specifically, the ones he has made and hung in the dark, deep below the floor of his Penn Quarter restaurant, Poste.

Weland is crafting these complex Italian meats for serving this fall and winter, a process he learned by reading and repetition — get the temperature or the humidity levels of the hanging room wrong, and mold would ruin them all. "It’s really hard, but fun,” he says.

In fact, the chef finds pleasure in taking a hands-on approach with many of his ingredients. In the summer, Weland uses the wide terrace outside the restaurant to grow most of the herbs the kitchen uses, as well as heirloom tomatoes, which go warmed from the sun to the plate. He hosts a weekly Market to Market dinner, taking small groups on a tour of the Penn Quarter Farmer's Market then cooks a 5-course meal with the produce at a chef's table in the garden. He also spit roasts a variety of meats and fish over hickory wood on the courtyard grill that he serves on the days of the week he's not hosting his Market dinners. In the spring and fall, he goes out to visit one or two of the farmers in the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative, which along with the local growers at the 8th Street farmers' market, supplies his produce, to pay his respects. “It’s important to thank them,” he says. He finds the efforts pay off.

“The dining movement is changing,” Weland says. “People want to know where things come from. I make it a point to mention farmers. I am pretty proud of the connections. It’s worth telling people.”

The importance of locally grown produce and humanely raised meats to the taste of a dish is a lesson he has learned over and over.

One teacher was Pierre Orsi, of the eponymous restaurant in Lyon. The two-Michelin-starred chef had been invited to cook a gala dinner at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City, where Weland was working fresh out of cooking school. “After he left, I wrote him a letter asking if I could come and work for him,” he says.

In France, Weland was exhilarated by the profusion of farmers markets and kitchen gardens. “I came to appreciate the sense of place and the inspiration you can get from the flavors of locally grown and supplied goods.”

Also in Lyon, at Paul Bocuse’s restaurant, he watched the chef considered one of the finest cooks of the 20th century “work his magic.” Bocuse has always stressed the importance of fresh ingredients of the highest quality, using them in a light cuisine that
emphasizes flavor.

But neither Bocuse nor Orsi was Weland’s first tutor to hold this belief. Weland’s grandfather, who lived in Toms River, N.J., had a garden in the back of his house where he grew most of the vegetables for the household’s needs. He also cooked them. “My grandmother was really sick when I was little. So my grandfather took care of that cooking,” says Weland, who watched and learned and caught the bug.

Fresh from high school, he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America. An externship while still a cooking student was spent at The Trellis Restaurant in Williamsburg, Va., where awardwinning Chef Marcel Desaulniers was emphatic about the importance of sourcing fresh ingredients.

Weland went straight from graduation to the Ritz-Carlton in New York. After the company granted him his yearlong sabbatical in France, it moved him to Philadelphia, where he worked as first cook to Michelin-starred chef Philippe Reininger. From there, he returned to New York to a series of restaurants, the last of which was Guastavino’s, Sir Terence Conran’s bustling 300-seat brasserie under the Queensboro Bridge.

In 2004, his wife was tempted down to Washington with a job at the State Department. Weland came, too, arriving just at the time that the boutique Hotel Monaco in the historic Tariff Building was looking for an executive for its brasserie, Post.

"My goal is to get the neighborhood going," Weland Says. "People are moving into condos down here, and I think they value what I am trying o do" - which is to express all the lessons he has absorbed about quality and freshness to date, particularly those from France, he says. He would like all diners to be aware of the importance of what goes into dishes.

"The French have been like that all along — utilizing seasons, sourcing locally, paying attention to ingredients, to freshness. American chefs are doing a fantastic job right now. And some people are getting it. But not everyone.”

Why the difference? “For the French, it’s a way of life. They grow up like that. We grew up with Campbell’s soup. I like Campbell’s soup,” he hastens to add. But it has its place.

Weland lives by his credo of fresh ingredients wherever possible. He and his wife have   little garden in the back of their Capitol Hill house. “It’s small. But every year there’s a little more progression,” he says.

His gardening, based on heirloom varieties wherever possible, could be said to mirror his cooking philosophy. “I like to focus on the product, treat it with respect, call it a day, not make it fancy. There’s something to be said for that.”

Poste Moderne Brasserie, 202-783-6060, is located at 555 8th St. NW.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Courtesy of Poste Moderne Brasserie. 

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