POSTED: Friday, October 24, 2008, 5:06 PM
Jesse Kimball, executive chef of the Memphis Taproom, Port Fishington's premier beer bar (2331 E. Cumberland St., 215-425-4460), fills us in on why he loves punk rock and fine dining equally, the secret of good fish 'n' chips and how he snagged a sweet job where tasting from all of the taps is a requirement.
STATS
Age: 36
Hometown: Born in Worcester, Mass.; grew up in central Maine
Years in the Biz: About 10 on and off since 1986
Signature Dish or Recipe: Roasted Tomato Bisque with Grilled Cheese Crouton (check out the recipe after the Q&A!)
Meal Ticket: You were at Lacroix and Matyson prior to the opening of Memphis Taproom. Why did you want to move away from fine dining type of cuisine to head up
the kitchen of a beer bar?
Jesse Kimball: Because I love beer. When I was
working in hotels on the Maine Coast in the late '80s, brewpubs were
starting to become established ... the supermarkets and gas stations
started carrying craft brews. My life was all about punk rock and
skateboarding and independent film, so of course I drank these beers
rather than the Coors Lights that the 21-year-old frat guys — who were
buying me the beer — were drinking. Now I love all beer.
I never had the money to eat in fine dining restaurants, and I hate
wearing suits, but I love good food, so I've always searched out the
"best-kept secret" kind of places: the low-brow restaurants where you
can tell the food is prepared with love using the best ingredients.
When I was given the opportunity to open one of these special places, I
dropped everything else and jumped on it. I worked in fine dining
restaurants to learn and I eat at them to continue leaning, but I'm
often more comfortable eating at a good bar.
MT: Did you cook with beer before you worked at Memphis?
JK: Absolutely! I also cooked with hops, barley and malt before I worked
there, and I'm a home brewer. I gave Brendan [Hartranft, co-owner of
Memphis Taproom] a six-pack of a 12-month-aged strong ale I brewed for
Christmas a few years ago, and I think it helped me get the chef gig.
One time at Matyson, I was making fish and chips for the staff and
really impressed the chef, Matt Spector. Instead of using the ginger
ale we had on the line for doing tempura, I used my last can of Bud. This was beer-battered fish — how could I skimp on that crucial
ingredient? At Lacroix, we would spend a lot of our time coming up with
dishes for the multi-course Chef's Table dinners. One of the cooks was
also a good home brewer and had made several beers in the kitchen and
we'd cook with those, or give them as accompanying "shots." Once, we
paired some seared foie gras with homemade jelly donuts and his oatmeal
stout — fine dining, McKenzie Brothers style. Another time, we gave it
with a deconstructed "burger and a beer" dish.
MT: What is your favorite style of beer, or certain brew you always return to — for both drinking and cooking?
JK: The
beer program at the Memphis Taproom is very important to the bar's
mission, so the entire staff is educated about beer, especially the
draft list. So of course, I make it my business to sample every beer
that runs through those taps. That way, I know what food will pair well
with the beers. During the day when I'm cooking, braising meat or
making a sauce, I'll browse the taps to see what will best serve my
purpose. Do I need something sweet, bitter, something that tastes
roasted, something herbal, something that tastes like caramel or citrus?
For the beer-battered stuff, I stay pretty neutral. For the King Rarebit
[sandwich], I always use [Theakston's] Old Peculier. When I'm browsing the taps for a drink, I
tend to like pilsners, bitters and IPAs, especially Lagunitas. Certain
beers I always return to for drinking are the ones in my refrigerator
at home, which tend to be cans of Natty Bo and Black Labels or bottles
of Spaten or Singha.
MT: What do you cook for yourself at home? Or do you usually order takeout?
JK: I love cooking at home, and one of the reasons I love cooking at home
so much is because I love food shopping. A perfect day is having Dim
Sum or Oregon Diner for breakfast, then hitting the Vietnamese or
Mexican supermarkets on Washington Ave. or the West Indian/Caribbean
grocery stores and Pakistani markets in West Philly, and taking the
exotic items home and smoking them in my backyard open pit or braising
them in Dutch ovens. Braised or smoked chicken legs or pork shoulders
show up on my dining room table quite often, or for a treat, nice thick
steaks seared in a cast-iron skillet, with baked potatoes or steamed
shellfish — blue crabs, stone crabs, clams or lobsters, with plenty of
melted butter and cold beers. Takeout in West Philly, where I live, is a
crapshoot of bulletproof glass Chinese takeaways and Muslim pizza
joints. I generally stick to the spots where the pepperoni is made from
pigs.
MT: Memphis co-owner Leigh Maida described you once as "fine dining
background combined with a punk-rock style." How right on is that?
JK: That's because I garnish all my food with safety pins and razor
blades! That's a good observation. Punk rock has been a big part of
my life, and I cook from the heart, so of course it shows up in the
plates we're putting out at the Memphis Taproom. There are refined
gestures taken from the fine dining world, but also punk-rock urgency — a raw energy to the food. The kitchen is staffed by a bunch of punk
rockers, so we're listening to Radio Birdman, Negative Approach,
Gorilla Biscuits or Converge while we're cooking. What I really love
about punk rock is the stripped-down raw beauty of it, and that is what
I also love about fine dining. Just as the Stooges and the Ramones
ripped apart rock 'n' roll to its three-chord roots and reinvented it,
chefs like Alain Ducasse, Marco Pierre White and Ferran Adria broke
the classics down to good ingredients and reconstructed them using new
techniques — simple yet artistic, extravagant and over the top. Haute
cuisine and punk rock have both long been pronounced dead, but as we
move forward, I'll certainly acknowledge them as my roots.
ROASTED TOMATO BISQUE w/ GRILLED CHEESE CROUTON
(Jesse Kimball, Executive Chef, Memphis Taproom)
In the restaurant we use lots of tomatoes this time of year. We get them from a farm out in Lancaster County that only delivers once a week, so we’ll always order some extra. I roast the tomatoes — heirlooms, beefsteaks, plums, whatever we have — and turn them into a bisque. A popular garnish for the soup is a grilled cheese crouton, a bite-size round grilled cheese floating in the bowl. This is how you could make it at home.
ROASTED TOMATO BISQUE
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Take 3 tomatoes, cut them in half and lay them on a cookie sheet skin side down. Drizzle them with 1/4 cup olive oil or so. Then generously season them with sea salt, sugar and freshly ground black pepper. Lay a few sprigs of parsley and thyme, say 5 or 6 each, over them and put in the oven to roast. While they are roasting, get 2 Vidalia onions, a carrot, 2 celery ribs and 3 garlic cloves and uniformly and finely chop them all up. Also measure out 5 tablespoons of butter, 3 tablespoons of flour, 2 cups of stock or water, 2 cups of tomato juice, 1/2 cup of heavy cream and a couple tablespoons of bourbon or other booze to spike the soup.
When the tomatoes give off a nice smell and are dried out a bit (about an hour or so), take them out of the oven and throw away the herbs. Now you're ready to make the soup. Heat your pan and sweat your onions, carrots, celery, and garlic in 3 tablespoons of the butter. Make sure to season them with a little salt and pepper. When they are soft, sprinkle your flour over them and stir until it is incorporated and begins to toast. Add your stock, tomato juice and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Purée the soup and pass through a fine-mesh strainer. Put back onto the stove and fold in your heavy cream and bourbon, then whisk in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Garnish with grilled cheese croutons.
GRILLED CHEESE CROUTON
Lay a piece of plastic wrap on your counter. Butter a piece of bread (Pepperidge Farm white sandwich loaf is a good choice) and lay it butter side down on the wrap. Put a slice of cheese on top, and cut rounds with a biscuit cutter. Heat up your pan and toast your bread butter side down. When it is golden brown, float it on your soup, cheese side down.
