Results tagged “blackcod”

Cesar Ramirez, the 36 year-old chef at Bar Blanc, doesn’t want to be called a chef. Taking a cue from his mentor David Bouley , he prefers the term craftsman, and insists that his food speaks for itself. Ramirez doesn’t waste a lot of bandwidth talking up his game, bragging about how often and how hard he hits the Greenmarket. In a time when it is not uncommon for chefs to spend their days with a battery of personal assistants riding in taxis from television appearances to book signings, Ramirez seems to spend a lot of time in his kitchen. Last week, he took a few minutes before service at the six month-old restaurant to talk about his menu and his style of cooking.

Montreal-based food writer Taras Grescoe thinks something fishy is up with the global seafood economy. From pollutants to piracy, preservatives to Patagonian toothfish, Grescoe surveys the state of our collective waterways in his new book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, which combines some literal seabed muckraking with a fascinating travelogue. Each chapter follows a specific fish down the food chain from net to dinner plate; the book is a sort of aquatic The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Grescoe emerges with a clear breakdown of the issues, and a guide for sourcing seafood with an emphasis on sustainability.

A veteran of Nobu and Ruby Foo’s, Chris Cheung was hired 5 months ago to replace Patricia Yeo at Monkey Bar, the red satin and black lacquer midtown institution known primarily for its, well, monkey theme. In an effort to reemphasize the food quotient of the restaurant, the 38 year-old chef maintains an inventory of global tastes and reassembles them using the template of traditional Chinese food: The curly fries, for example, that come with the burger are made with taro, and the burger itself is served on a bao bun made in-house. The result is not fusion, or an eclectic cook-by-numbers approach to food; Cheung seems to spend a lot of time thinking about ingredients, so the food at Monkey Bar isn’t really served with anything added for dramatic effect, and the plate presentations are relatively uncomplicated. Cheung calls his style “Evolutionary Chinese Cooking.”