Michael Symon's Live to Cook_ Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen - Michael Symon [4]
I remember eating at the bar one night after I’d finished my scribbling. I liked to rib Symon about how little sauce he used. I’d say, “Sorry, Michael, I just don’t like dry food.” And he’d say, “Yeah, but I sell more wine this way!” And he’d howl and keep cooking.
I ordered the brick-roasted chicken. He hadn’t used any sauce, it seemed, and he hadn’t used any stock. Half a roasted chicken stuffed with seared hen-of-the-woods mushrooms that came straight out of the broiler was placed on a mound of red potatoes sautéed with arugula, some cream, and some mustard. The “finish the dish in two pans or fewer” rule.
Michael threw some cooked red potatoes into a sauté pan, followed by a handful of arugula. The greens released some of their liquid. He then added a little cream to the pan, which helped to heat up the potatoes and sweeten the spicy greens, and a spoonful of mustard for acidity, balance. When the chicken came out of the broiler, he poured the creamy potato-arugula side dish onto a plate, set the chicken right on top of that, and let it rest there for a few minutes. As it rested, the chicken dropped its natural juices and mushroom juices over the potatoes and into the mustard cream, creating an extraordinary and complex sauce all on its own. It was a kind of self-saucing dish. No one had to toil over a classic stock or make a pan jus or even ladle sauce out of a nearby bain-marie. The dish was making its own sauce right there and all he needed was to squirt a few drops of balsamic to finish it. Ingenious. Try it yourself (see here). This is how he could turn tables four times on a Saturday night and not keep losing his line cooks.
Symon’s food isn’t simplistic; it is just simple and economical, the two main criteria for home cooking. Another reason his placement on Food & Wine’s 1998 best-new-chefs list was remarkable was the price point his restaurant had to hit. His market is a meat-and-potatoes crowd unwilling to pay New York City prices and suspicious of anyone trying to charge them. The nine other chefs on the Food & Wine list had white-tablecloth dining rooms serving expensive ingredients at high prices, the kind of ingredients that tend to impress foodie magazines but have a high food cost. These chefs had check averages that ranged from $70 to $150.
Hanging out at Lola early one evening, I saw a man and a woman, both dressed in fine business attire, approach the bar for an after-dinner drink. Bartender Frankie Ritz (now managing the Detroit restaurant—another reason for Symon’s success: he takes care of people and they stay with him), polishing a glass, with a ready smile asked, “How was your meal?” The man swirled his Cognac and said, “I had the halibut. It was out of this world. Most expensive thing on the menu. Nineteen ninety-five. ‘Gimme the most expensive thing on the menu.’ Nineteen ninety-five.” The man chuckled and shook his head. Evidently one of those New York City types we get around here every now and then.
Michael Symon knew his market and in 1998, he wouldn’t put an entrée on the menu for more than twenty dollars. Symon earned a best-new-chef award by doing thirty-dollar check averages per person. That’s what was amazing. He’d become one of the best chefs in the country by serving do-at-home food. Symon was so successful, when a developer needed an anchor for an entire street redevelopment project, he called on Michael. Michael shut down Lola to rebuild it on the new street in downtown Cleveland and reopened the original restaurant as Lolita.
I loved hanging out at the restaurant because it was so easy to be there, the atmosphere was so light. During the day, prep was casual and laughter was continual. When service