When I wrote about St. Louis Chef Gerard Craft
earlier this summer [“Finding a Niche in St. Louis” June 12], I
had no idea that it would be the first in a series. But when I opened the
invitation to this year’s Hope School Celebrity Chef Benefit and saw
its Celebrity Chef, I knew I’d be writing about another of Food and Wine magazine’s
2008 Best New Chefs.
I’d eaten at Boka, in Chicago’s Lincoln
Park neighborhood, before Giuseppe Tentori became its chef de cuisine 15 months ago.
I’d enjoyed it very much — both the food and the stylish
environment. Since Tentori had taken over the kitchen, however, I’d
been hearing that Boka’s food had gone from being excellent to
extraordinary, and it’s been high on my list of must-try restaurants.
The Hope School event provided the perfect excuse (not that I needed one)
to revisit Boka.
Boka is the creation of Springfield native Kevin
Boehm. (The name comes from the first two letters of his last name and his
business partner’s, Rob Katz.) I met with Boehm (pronounced
“Bame”), who will work alongside Tentori for the Sept. 13 Hope
School benefit, at their third and newest Chicago restaurant, Perennial.
“I knew when I was 10 that I wanted to open up
my own restaurant,” says Boehm. After graduating from Southeast High
School, however, not knowing how one learned the restaurant business and
lacking funding, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign as a pre-law major. After two years, Boehm realized that
pre-law wasn’t the way to achieve the goal he still cherished.
Boehm moved to Florida, waiting on tables and
“living in squalor.” He laughingly says, “For some
reason, I had the idea that fine dining was equated with warm
weather.” Eventually he opened his own six-table place in the small
village of Seaside (the sign at the town’s outskirts lists the
population as just over 2,000 “including cats and dogs”).
So did Boehm want to be a chef? “Not
really,” he says. “I cooked a little in the beginning —
there were only two of us in the place, and so I had to help out in the
kitchen when things were busy. But I’ve always primarily been
interested in restaurant management.”
When Boehm sold his tiny Florida restaurant, the
contract included a no-compete clause, and he returned to Springfield to
open his first full-scale restaurant, Indigo. “Springfield was a
great place to learn the restaurant business,” he says. The
experiences he gained in Springfield helped him achieve his “ultimate
dream” of opening a restaurant in Chicago. Boehm sold Indigo to his
friend Jeff Griswold (Indigo’s signature “Blue Dog”
murals, painted by Boehm’s mother, Dee, remain on the walls) and,
after a brief move to Nashville to open a restaurant with his friend and
mentor, well-known chef Scott Alderson, finally fulfilled his goal with the
opening of Boka seven years ago.
Boka has been a popular dining destination from its
inception, but Tentori’s arrival moved it into the very top echelon
of Chicago — and U.S. — restaurants.
It’s no wonder. Tentori is a native of Lodi,
located in Northern Italy’s Lombardy region. Speaking not a word of
English, Tentori moved to Chicago at the urging of Gabriel Viti,
who’d worked with the young chef when Viti came to Milan for an
internship. After a stint at Gabriel’s Restaurant, Tentori moved to Charlie
Trotter’s, eventually becoming chef de
cuisine, a position he held for nine and a
half years. Just the length of his tenure there is impressive: Trotter is
famously demanding — and infamously temperamental.
Boehm and Katz were familiar with Tentori’s
food (“His last years there, the menus were all his,” says
Boehm), and when they heard he was leaving Trotters, “we just
cold-called him.”
They were in luck. Tentori had offers from other
restaurants in the U.S., but wanted to remain in Chicago. It’s been
advantageous for the three — and for Chicago diners as well. Tentori
is not only at the helm of the Boka kitchen, but also is executive chef of
the brand new Perennial.
“Giuseppe thinks about food in a little
different way than anybody I’ve ever met,” says Boehm.
“When he starts out to create a dish, the first thing he does is pull
out a sketchbook and sketches the way he wants it to look. There are always
four or five influences on each plate, but he manages to pull them all
together.
“He says he makes ‘simple food,’
” Boehm chuckles, “but . . . ” his voice trails away and
he shrugs his shoulders and raises his eyebrows.
Interestingly, my server used almost exactly the same
words and gestures when describing the menu that evening. When the food
arrived I could only wonder, “If Tentori calls this simple, what does
he think elaborate food is?”
What was my favorite? It’s hard — no,
impossible — to say. I was fortunate to be given samples of many
things — what my server called the “Boka bombardment.”
A first course of sweetbreads and exotic mushrooms
came with a tiny cake of soba noodles and a Moroccan spiced barbeque sauce
made — I think — with apricots. A gorgeous duck and portabella
terrine wrapped in chard leaves was the centerpiece of a still life,
garnished with a salsify purée and tiny shelled quail eggs nestled
upright in mounds of black amaranth, their yolks still liquid. A sweet corn
soup, velvety yet light because it was made without any dairy, sported
crawfish tortellini shaped like wrapped candies. A roasted heirloom tomato
petal came with chips of coppa ham, dried olives and buffalo ricotta, and
tiny pearls of basil gelée. There were more — but you get the
picture. And that was just for starters!
The two entrées I sampled were equally
innovative, delicious, and beautifully presented. First came trout, crispy
on the outside, with a prawn and potato “brandade” purée
sandwiched between the two filets with a shellfish and saffron foam
emulsion. Next was roasted pork belly with a ginger-prune sauce and Israeli
couscous. A trio of delectable sides showed up on the table, most notably a
scrumptious “Mac and Cheese” with edamame flavored with truffle
essence.
I didn’t think I could manage dessert, but when
pastry chef Elizabeth Dahl’s chocolate eggplant terrine (yes,
eggplant) garnished with bitter orange sorbet appeared, along with tiny
buckwheat yeast cake with buckwheat honey ice cream, blueberries and a
sorrel sauce, I had to try them. Like everything else at Boka, they were
gorgeous, distinctive, delicious, and different. Dahl is featured in this
month’s Food and Wine magazine.
I’m glad Boehm told me about Tentori’s
sketchbook. Because I was looking for it, it was obvious. Tentori’s
success is due to far more than his ability to compose pretty presentations
or utilize unusual ingredients. There are lots of terminally trendy chefs
who throw whatever ingredients are “in” at the moment on a
plate and call themselves “cutting edge.” It takes someone with
Tentori’s skill to take disparate elements that have visually appeal,
textural contrast, and delicious flavors and create a harmonious whole that
is greater than the sum of its parts.
As for Boehm, he’s clearly reveling in the
fulfillment of his lifelong dream: “I’m doing exactly what I
want to do,” he says.
Boka Restaurant, 1729 N. Halstead St., Chicago
312-337-6070, www.bokachicago.com
For information about Hope School’s 14th annual Celebrity
Chef benefit, call 217-585-5437.
Contact Julianne Glatz at realcuisine.jg@gmail.com
Food and Wine asks
the winners to submit recipes for their Best New Chef issue that are
accesible for home cooks. Tentori’s quinoa salad fulfills that
requirement: it’s quick to make, and even though it’s not as
elaborate as the “simple” dishes on his menu, the salad
contains the pleasing variety of tastes and textures that is a hallmark of
Tentori’s cooking style.
GUISEPPE TENTORI’S
QUINOA SALAD with PICKLED RADISHES and FETA
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
4 medium radishes, very thinly sliced
1/2 pound thin green beans
1 cup quinoa*, rinsed
1 large English (burpless) cucumber —
halved lengthwise, seeded, and cut into ?(one fourth) inch dice
3 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 ounces Greek feta cheese, thinly sliced
In a small saucepan, bring the red wine vinegar to a
simmer with the sugar. Remove from the heat and add the radish slices. Let
stand until cool, about one hour.
Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, bring 1 3/4 cups of
water to a boil. Add the quinoa, cover, and simmer over low heat until all
of the water has been absorbed, about 12 minutes. Uncover and let stand
until cool, about 10 minutes.
In a medium bowl, toss the cucumber with ? 1/2
tablespoon of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Drain the
radishes and add them to the quinoa along with the beans, cucumber, and
feta. Toss well and serve.
The quinoa salad can be made and refrigerated for up
to three hours ahead. Serves 6
*About quinoa: Quinoa
has been eaten for more than 5,000 years in the Andes mountains in South
America. The Incas called it the “mother grain.” Technically,
quinoa is not a grain, but the seed of a plant that’s related to
spinach, beets, and chard.
The United Nations designates quinoa as a
“super-crop” because is a complete protein, with all nine
essential amino acids as well as other beneficial minerals. Quinoa has only
been grown and eaten outside its native habitat since the 1980s, when it
began being raised commercially in Canada and Colorado.
Quinoa has an outside coating, saponin, that protects
the seeds from birds and the high-altitude sun. It has an unpleasantly
soapy taste, that is easily rinsed away. Quinoa is usually pre-rinsed
before being sold, but it’s a good idea to give it another good rinse
before cooking to wash away any residue. Run under water until no soapy
bubbles remain.
Quinoa is available locally at Food Fantasies and
some supermarkets..
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2008.
