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Podcast Summary: This Is TASTE - Episode 255: Cal Peternell
Episode Overview In this episode of *This Is TASTE*, hosts Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard engage in an insightful conversation with Cal Peternell, the former head chef of the renowned Bay Area restaurant Chez Panisse, and with Nasim Alikhani, the chef and cookbook author behind Brooklyn's Iranian restaurant, Sofreh. The episode explores their culinary journeys, experiences, and the intricacies of their respective careers.
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Key Themes and Discussions
Cal Peternell's Journey
- Background and Career:
- Former head chef at Chez Panisse for over 20 years.
- Author of *Twelve Recipes* and *A Recipe for Cooking*; recent book is *Burnt Toast and Other Disasters*.
- Transitioned from the West Coast to the East Coast, sharing anecdotes from his time at Chez Panisse, including its impact on American cuisine.
- Culinary Philosophy:
- Emphasized the importance of a daily printed menu to adapt to seasonal and available ingredients.
- Discussed the joy in cooking and teaching others, highlighting his experience with interns and culinary students.
- Reflected on the essence of California cuisine, especially the farm-to-table movement pioneered at Chez Panisse.
- Memorable Experiences:
- Recollections of working in the restaurant industry in New York during the mid-80s.
- Stories from the kitchen, including interactions with celebrity patrons and the challenges of running a busy kitchen.
Chez Panisse's Legacy
- Cultural Impact:
- Recognized as one of America's most important restaurants, influencing chefs and restaurants nationwide.
- Discussed the significance of sourcing local produce and maintaining relationships with local farmers.
- Influential Alumni:
- Names like Samin Nosrat and Tamar Adler were mentioned as notable chefs who emerged from Chez Panisse.
- Acknowledged the restaurant's role in shaping contemporary American culinary culture.
The Discussion on Food Trends
- “Figs on a Plate” Incident:
- Discussion of a controversial moment in the food community involving David Chang, reflecting on expectations of chefs and the evolution of restaurant dining.
- Current Culinary Landscape:
- Transition to Cal’s new life in New Jersey and his interest in establishing a new culinary community there.
- Challenges faced by chefs today in adapting to local markets and seasonal ingredients.
Nasim Alikhani's Culinary Philosophy
- Background:
- Opened Sofreh at the age of 59, emphasizing her late start in the restaurant industry and her previous career in printing.
- Discussed the importance of familial influence in culinary practices, especially within Iranian culture.
- Cultural Significance:
- Focused on the importance of balance in flavors, particularly the interplay of sweet and sour in Persian cuisine.
- The role of women in Iranian cooking and how they maintain cultural identity through food.
- Future Projects:
- Mentioned plans for a Sofreh Cafe and the importance of documenting and sharing the essence of Iranian food culture through her upcoming cookbook.
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Key Takeaways
- Culinary Influence: Both chefs highlight the significant cultural and personal influences that shape their cooking styles and restaurant philosophies.
- Personal Stories: The narratives shared by Cal and Nasim illustrate how culinary art is intertwined with life experiences, community, and personal growth.
- Community and Connection: Emphasis on the importance of building a community around food, whether through cooking, dining experiences, or culinary education.
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Conclusion This episode provides a rich tapestry of culinary history, personal anecdotes, and philosophical musings about food and culture. Both Cal Peternell and Nasim Alikhani offer unique perspectives that inspire and educate listeners on the nuances of cooking, community, and the continuous evolution of culinary practices.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. And that was one of the things I said, you know, print the menu every day. Just that simple thing is a huge thing because you're not like forced into serving something that isn't the way you want it to be. If it's not the way you want it to be, you just take it off the menu.
0:52This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.
0:59Cal Peternell was the head chef of legendary Bay Area restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, for over 20 years, where he served celebrity patrons and trained a new generation of chefs. He's the New York Times bestselling author of 12 Recipes and the author of a recent book, Almonds, Anchovies, and Pancetta. On this episode, we hear some good Chez Panisse stories and about Cal's recent move to the East Coast. We also talk about his cookbook career and what's next. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kyle Peternell.
1:38I wanted to have you on. We were reviving at the Brooklyn Book Festival, you and I on a panel. And I was like, I don't know you. I just, like, know of you. And I know your work and your cookbooks and 12 Recipes, Burnt Toast. But I didn't know you. You're a cool dude. I like this. Thanks. Yeah, that was a fun panel, too. It was great. In the pouring rain, do you remember? It was just absolutely pouring. We were supposed to do it outside with a big tent in front of Borough Hall. It's like the greatest backdrop. They gave us the big stage, and then we got shoved in another room. Yeah, great to talk about books with kind of a full room.
2:09Yeah. But let's talk about you. Now, you attended SVA before you were in the food world, And I wanted to get a sense of New York City food when you're a student at SVA. What was that like? It was like pea soup and french fries at the diner. What year are we talking? We're talking 80, mid-80s. Pea soup at the time. I mean, mid-80s New York is like, and to like around Giuliani, it's like absolutely coveted right now by like millennials and Gen Z. It was amazing. I lived in the East Village on 9th between B and C, which was a different world then. Tompkins Square Park was, you know, sort of a no-go zone sometimes at night.
2:56And there was – the galleries were all popping up in the East Village and there was cool bars. And I was broke like students are. And, yeah, I ate at the diners. I would get soup and French fries. I'd go over to Mamoun's, but it's not really the neighborhood, you know. Yeah, yeah. slices. Was Lucy's open then, eh? I don't think so. Probably, probably that's more like, like late nineties. Yeah. Um, was there like any meal? Cause I, I'm, I'm setting this up because you were a visual artist. You were in art school. You weren't a chef and you ended up being a chef, but there's, was there a food memory from that era that you just like sticks with you?
3:36Well, I was working in restaurants, uh, but as a front of the house, I was a waiter or, um, bartender. So I, you know, I was like picking up on the food that was happening in the restaurants where I was working as a waiter and then, you know, going home and trying to sort of recreate some of those things or talking to the chefs and asking them, you know, about the dishes and stuff, which sometimes worked and some chefs just didn't want to talk to the waiters. were these places like no-name places or were they were they pretty cool like were they worth mentioning um i worked at this place called meridies it was on um 7th avenue south right where grove street comes in it's like this wedge of a space yeah it's still there it became uh fudruckers for a while yeah and now i last time i went by it was not anything blast from the past It's Fuddruckers.
4:31Yeah, right? Yeah. And it was kind of fancy, sort of goofy, kind of struggling a little bit. They were trying out different things. I remember there was a dessert that had like this swirl, like this creme fraiche or creme anglaise with like a raspberry coulis that then they like, you know, dragged a knife through. So it looked like this crazy pattern. Oh, yeah. That was like the birth of like deconstructed dessert. you know and you would you would bring out two plates one had the the the swirly on it and the other one had this little fruit tart and you'd put the swirly plate down first and then so they could see it yeah and then you would carefully uh put the tart on which was not easy because it would slide around but i remember this one guy i put down the um i put down the swirly plate and he was like i don't know if he's trying to show off for his friends or something and he was like, look at this amazing plate.
5:28Who makes this? And he turned it over to see the... Oh, no. And he was wearing the creme anglaise. All over him. It was kind of beautiful. But beautiful. It was interactive dining. We're building towards your 25-plus years running the kitchen in Chez Panisse and being influential in the field. But we're going back before you get into the professional kitchen. You're in Italy. Yeah. And you're there with your wife, an artist as well. and you start kind of messing around in the kitchen. Is that right? Yeah, I was, you know, I was poking my head again into kitchens. I wasn't working and we were both working as we were restoring frescoes in a private home, which was alternately exhilarating and fascinating and then deadly boring.
6:14Yeah. And, you know, we were just eating the great food that there was, the chickens from the rotisserie truck, learning how to work with, like, artichokes. I was going into—there was a restaurant near where we lived called Vipure, which was run by Cesare Caselli. Yeah, of course. The rosemary in the pocket. Exactly. Love Cesare. This was way back then, right, in the 80s, late 80s. Young man at that point. Uh-huh. And it was his parents' restaurant, and he was, like, the young chef there. And we would go – we would walk over there in the evening and to get – to buy wine because they would sell us wine.
6:51We couldn't really afford to eat there. But they would always give us a little snack and a really cold glass of Prosecco. And we would say hi to Cesare and poke our heads into the kitchen and look at how they're grilling their Bistecca Fiorentina and stuff. And so, you know, I just opened up to the idea of food and the way it's integrated into everyone's lives there. I kind of feel like in Italy at that time anyway, there's no – like to call someone a foodie would be just sort of redundant. Like everyone lived with food all the time. Yeah. I mean in America it was pre-foodie even. But like in Italy, of course, it was embedded in the culture at that point.
7:30Yeah. Chester, one of the nicest men in all of food. Such a nice guy and does this great work upstate now with, I think, with kids with disabilities. He does. He does. And it's a great reminder to email him to get him on the show because great, great guy. OK, so you you you end up in the Bay Area and you're at Shea and we could get into your history of how you found Shea Bernice. But from the jump, I want to know, like, is there like a favorite two or three year period you worked there out of the 25 years or plus that you worked there? Like the time when you're like, yeah, that was like when we were in our groove.
8:05Or maybe it was just a time when you were having the most fun. I think the – I mean I had fun throughout and made a lot of connections and learned a lot. But for a while I was the sous chef in the cafe. And, you know, the cafe is the upstairs sort of more casual place. But that was such a great gig. It's the gig that I think everybody wants who really loves to cook, and it was a 9 to 5-ish thing where I would run the prep kitchen and we would make all the food for, like, the braises and the soup and the things that needed to be made ahead, the raviolis and things like that for the cafe that evening.
8:53But it was just you weren't a line cook. It was like you were cooking with really passionate people in your really great home kitchen, getting ready for like the best dinner party, except it was for, you know, 50 people or 50 of each thing. But, yeah, those were really good days. And, you know, we had a pretty robust like internship program and people coming and staging. And so I was meeting new people and teaching people and learning from people. It was great. I bet. Now, of course, it all starts with Alice Waters. Yep. But it also is you for 25 years instilling this culture that has been well documented.
9:35But I want to know like high level. We look at Chez Panisse, Berkeley, California restaurant. We still to this day, it's one of our most important restaurants in America. Why? I think because, you know, I think what Alice did and inspired and other people to do who worked at Chez Panisse has been much sort of copied, right? And it's sort of hackneyed now, farm to table, has lost a lot of its potency. but back then we really were doing something that not a lot of other restaurants were doing and they were sort of coming on board but even now I think that they're still doing something really different from other places that are doing a sort of similar kind of cuisine they have a farm that grows pretty much just for them and that was before you know stone barns in that hole.
10:34Uh, and we, and, and because of where it is, I mean, you just had access to the, to really the best produce that I've seen anywhere. Uh, and, and that there was a passionate group of people who believed in, who got so excited when the first box of apricots came in or when we started getting nettles again from up in Bolinas. And because there was a connection to all those farms and we would visit them, people really believed in it. And they treated things with respect and sort of delight. And I'm sure and I hope it still happens. But it wasn't happening a lot, I think, before that. No. Is it the handwritten menu daily?
11:24Is it like the daily menu? I feel that's part of Shea's. Well, that's a big thing. And I remember going, I was just thinking about this because I was, I went to a slow food event and I was trying to remember when it was the Terra Madre. Have you ever gone to that in Torino? Big gathering, international gathering. And I was in a little breakout group and talking to these chefs from Kenya and they were trying to figure out how they worked in hotels and they were trying to figure out how to get more of the local produce in and to be more kind of nimble around that. And that was one of the things I said, you know, print the menu every day.
11:55That is just a – just that simple thing is a huge thing because if it turns out that the nettles don't show up, then you can just take that off the pizza. Or if, you know, you decide to – you're not like forced into serving something that isn't the way you want it to be. If it's not the way you want it to be, you just take it off the menu. It's also like a forced deadline for the day, right? Because like you have – like take me through your day when you're rolling in at what time and when does that menu actually get written? Sure. The menu – I would usually write the menu the night before but leave things open.
12:35And then, you know, I'd roll in at like, I don't know, 7. There would be somebody who had already been there for about half an hour. There was an entry-level position that we called the gar manger there, which is sort of receiving and putting things away and making staff meal, making stocks, things like that. And then they would give me a list of what was left over and what's in the walk-ins. And I would look at my list of what's coming in and plug those things in. And, you know, I love to do puzzles. I do crossword puzzles all the time. Yeah. And we had this like template and it was like a puzzle, you know, everything had to fit into its square.
13:17There was four entrees. There was two pizzas. There was four salads. You didn't want to repeat ingredients too much. I loved putting that puzzle together, knowing that like we have this and we're getting this and we have a little of that delicious thing left over, that braised beef that we can chop it up and mix it with some butter and herbs and make it into the ravioli filling for tonight. Ravioli is like the perfect vehicle for like leftover proteins. when you can do anything with it. So let's be clear. You're rolling at 7 a.m. What time did you leave the night before? 7. Yeah, it was a 12-hour thing.
13:48But part of Alice's genius that kept people like me around for 22 years was I would just do three of those days a week. So I had a co-chef. So I would do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 12-hour days. But then Thursday was kind of a flexible day, just kind of handing off information to my co-chef. I'd have Friday and Saturday off Peace out weekend go surfing And then Sunday Another flexible day and if you needed You could kind of be like hey can I phone it in on that Day that's on the cusp So I can have a three day weekend If you could arrange Things right me and my co-chef Russell Moore for a while Of course yeah Author of ours as well Camino right Camino book yeah Is that right Camino right Yeah, that's right.
14:37Camino Restaurant, Allison and Russell. RIP, man. What a cool restaurant that was. I know. Dope restaurant. Wow. Right? All the way he would cook on fire. I mean, the space. That was like a football field. Yeah. And then they had the big hearth there. Huge hearth and all the little trivets and little pots he'd have going. Love that spot. And things spinning on strings. What's up with Russell Moore? Amazing. What's he going to see these days? I just saw him. He came out to Jersey to celebrate my birthday. I turned 60 in February. Oh, wow. Cool. Russ and Allison came out. And I'm going to see him next week.
15:09He's actually going to pick me up from the airport, and we're going to go see We're the Best. I guess it's a punk coming-of-age movie. Okay. And then Get Dumplings. Oh, cool. He and his wife Allison, after they closed Camino, they opened the kebabery. It was a much more casual counter service place that served different kebabs and lots of great salads. And they kept that going, and they moved it to a new location. and now they've closed that down, sold that business, and they're making vinegar. They make delicious red and rosé vinegar, and I think they're looking what's next. Awesome. I will be following those guys because I love that.
15:49So back to you and Chez Panisse. When you're working there, I mean, there's lots of folks that came out of that kitchen that you were running who have written cookbooks, some of them bigger than others, who have been on television. I mean, some of our – so – and I got to ask, like, just drop some names because for our listeners, we got to, like, build this more. I mean, Shippenese is like the – it's the absolute center of food in America for years and years. Yeah, it really was. And the diaspora is huge. Yeah, huge. Yeah, there's Samin Nosrat, of course. It starts with Samin Nosrat, of course.
16:24Amazing teacher and cook. I'm going tonight to Tamar Adler's party, you're going to that party? I was invited and I cannot make it unfortunately I love Tamar Adler Me too, so her new book The Everlasting Meal Cookbook just came out and she's talking tonight with another Chez Panisse alum Andy Baraghani and I mean the list is enormous Those are definitely some writers Those are some of the young stars. Those are some of the young stars. If you read United States of Arugula, you can get some of the old stars. That book rules. I don't know if you've read that. I have, yeah. Jonathan Waxman down here.
17:08Great guy. Great restaurant. That's the old school right there. There's one of the old school guys. And Gilbert Pilgrim, who has Zuni Restaurant in San Francisco. And, you know, David Tanis, who wrote for The Times for years. So many great people. Yeah, it's a real who's who, and I feel like we could definitely do like a family tree and taste at one point. That'd be fun. Were you around during that David Chang spat with Alice? The fig on a plate thing? Yeah, like tell me about that. Yeah, I couldn't really understand what that was, what was the point of that, honestly. I mean, if you've been to Chez Panisse and ordered the peach that you can order for dessert, you know, if you didn't like that, then I don't know.
17:57There's something – maybe you don't really like food that much or something. I mean a perfectly beautifully ripe peach. I don't know that we ever did the figs on a plate, which was his – To recap, David Chang and others in the New York City food community kind of rallied around this idea that, you know, Shea and some of these Berkeley and Bay Area restaurants and maybe even L.A. who have the great weather and the produce were just serving figs on a plate. Right. And, you know, I guess I'll push back a little bit and just say that, you know, having just moved to – I live in New Jersey now. after 30 years in the Bay Area, I could see how you might be kind of bitter about how you can't get stuff that's as beautiful as you can in California.
18:43And like, sure, you got to put a bunch of butter on those figs and roast them with, I don't know, sugar. Brown sugar, yeah. Yeah, I think when you do a February on the East Coast, and his comment was before Instagram, but you're like looking at the restaurants on the West Coast, you're like, man, the citrusy's in the boat. That was just sour figs. Sour figs. One more question about Shay. Do you talk to Alice? How's she doing? Yeah, I just was out there. I saw her. We had a drink in December. She's doing good. You know, it's been a hard year. We've lost a lot of people from the Femme Panisse, as she calls it, a couple of great friends who worked there for years.
19:26and then a couple of dear friends of hers, David Lance Goins, who's an artist and illustrator and did lots of the posters, the beautiful Chez Panisse posters for years, and then Tom Luddy. I don't know if you know. No. He's a film guy. They actually honored him at the Oscars at the end. You know, they have the In Memoriam section. Yeah. There's a picture of him. He started the Telluride Film Festival and was a big part of the Pacific Film Archive. Was he a customer, a guest? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So he's like one of your regulars. All the time. And so was David Goins. And I don't know if you know the author, Griel Marcus, who's written quite a lot about Bob Dylan and rock and roll.
20:08And he lost a daughter tragically recently. So it's been kind of hard. I'm going to actually be out there next week and I hope to see Alice and, you know, give her a hug. Give her a hug. I'm sorry to hear that. That's tough to hear about the loss of your friends and the faithful. I mean it is a bit of a community. Thanks. It was a great, great friend, great personality, the wine buyer, a guy named Jonathan Waters who was a wonderful man. And we lost him last year as well. You moved out. You moved to the East Coast. Yeah. You moved to Jersey. You just referenced that. You living on a farm in New Jersey?
20:48Yeah, I'm living not on a farm, although I grew up on a farm in New Jersey. New Jersey. You grew up on a farm. And it's close to where I moved to, which is sort of a coincidence, which absolutely is a coincidence. I didn't move back there because I'm from there. We live like in a little house on a dirt road. Yeah. We live like in the country. Yeah. We have a stream that runs right by our house, which kind of froze a couple times this winter, which was exciting. It's beautiful, but it is, I certainly do miss my East Bay community. You know, 30 years, you get pretty deep roots and lots of dear friends and also raising kids there.
21:26You know, we have three kids. So that kind of really sinks your roots in. And it's been amazing to, you know, like I said, I'm going there next week and I've been texting my friends. I'm coming and they haven't forgotten me and they're all still wanting. Great feeling when your friends don't forget you. Right? Yeah. And they still are like, we're having dinner. You know, there's dinner parties already in works. but it does make me realize what I left behind and and I'm trying to take it as inspiration to build a new community here yeah uh and it takes a long time and it's it's a little harder when you don't have like say kids in school because it's that's kind of a yeah a way to meet people uh but I'm finding new ways and uh I'm being more intentional about it which feels kind of funny yeah some days I feel like I'm like, you know, a first grader on the on the playground saying like, will you be my friend?
22:19Making friends. I'm in my 40s. You're just turned 60. I moved to a new community as well. And the Catskills or the Hudson Valley. And I feel similar. Like you have to be super intentional about meeting people. And it's challenging, which is good, maybe that you're intentional about it. I think so. I think it's good. Now, what about grocery shopping? Like a big culture shock for you to go to the grocery store, to go to the ShopRite now that you have to find all your groceries. Well, the ShopRite is actually on the higher end of the options. No shade on the ShopRite. Yeah, but when you can't even find a ShopRite.
22:50Well, luckily, you know, we arrived in the summer and it's probably like this in the Hudson Valley. there's like at the end of everyone's driveway, there's a little farm stand on a box thing with amazing tomatoes and zucchinis and cucumbers and eggplant. So we absolutely took advantage of that. We bought all our eggs and everything from those kind of stands. And then we did find there's Phillips Farm that I think comes into the green market. And they have a farm store that's quite close to us. So we pretty much have eaten everything. All the produce we eat comes from Phillips Farms. Shout out to them.
23:29Great place, great produce. But now, you know, they don't have anything. Yeah. There's no year-round farmer's markets in this area. No, there's one now that's nearby that's every other Sunday. And you know, what Phillips is down to like celery roots, carrots, onions, and they sell other produce, but it's not stuff they grow. So how do you adjust? How do you, as a, as a cook, and you're probably cooking a lot of food too, because there aren't a ton of restaurants by, by you. Right. Absolutely. I'm cooking all the time. Um, I'm adjusting in the way people do. I use a little, people do here. I use a little more butter maybe than I used to.
24:06Uh, I'm sending away to get the olive oil that I need. Um, and. Are you a fat gold guy? Uh, no, I'm using, um, on the regular, I use the California olive ranch yeah that's the one i use up at the grocery store just for sauteing yep and then a friend hooked me up with a bottle of um i can't remember the name of it but it was really good for you know salads yeah yeah um you know one thing that's exciting where we are and everywhere in america is that there's so many little breweries making great beer right so every town Every city has like a brewery and people can make it happen. And it's not the same obviously for wine because everywhere is not a great wine growing place.
24:56And also wine takes a bigger capital and time investment. So we found some great places to go get beers that are local that are great. And we can find our way to celebrate the local producers that way. Yeah. I think the craft brewing on the East Coast in like our little pocket that we live in is fantastic. It's like some of the best in the country. Yeah. It's wonderful beers. Let's talk about 12 recipes. I think this book that you read, we can talk about Burnt Toast as well, but 12 recipes, it's a cool idea. You wrote a book about 12 foundational recipes. It was for your son, your daughter. It was for my oldest kid, Hop, who was leaving, you know, getting ready to kind of move out.
25:40I don't think it was when they were going to college, but it was like the year after the second year. And they were like, hey, this summer, can we go through the recipes that we love to cook at home? Not the restaurant stuff, just the home stuff that we love, pasta, roasted chicken, salad, stuff like that. And we did. And they went off and they started calling me like, what temperature am I supposed to put the oven on again? And I was like, you know, I'm going to write this. I was glad they were cooking and I was glad they were calling me. Uh-huh. But I was like, I'm just going to make you a little cookbook just from me to you, and we can share it with your siblings too.
26:19It was that simple. Yeah. It was like that. I just like 12 recipes where you can kind of put things together in different ways and make meals because I just – I wanted them to be able to cook and feed themselves well, you know? Yeah. And so I started to write it, and I thought, you know, other people are going to need this book as well. and it became, I got an agent and I, and I, I got a deal. But as I wrote the book, it was really helpful to remember, to constantly remind myself that that's the voice I want the book to be in is, is a dad who is encouraging their kid to cook for themselves, knowing that their kid has a limited budget.
26:59They have a little galley kitchen. They have, they probably or shopping at like the bodega. So don't worry about all that. You can still cook. Like sure, if you have a like crappy pan or you have an electric stove or it's fine. Like you can try to, you know, find better stuff as you go forward, but don't let it stop you from cooking now. It's a book that my friend Daniel Holzman and co-author of Food IQ, it's his favorite book. Your book. Like we talked, when we were writing Food IQ, we would go back to 12 recipes. and just be like, this is like a style, a vibe, a model that we, so I love your book.
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27:37It's great. Thank you. And that one was also fun for me to write because it allowed me to, food is like a mnemonic device for me. And it triggered memories and little stories. And I tried to include those in the introductions. Burnt Toast is more about essays, right? And like kind of more of like thoughts on, describe yourself because I'm having trouble describing it myself. Well, you know, Burnt Toast is the fourth book. And so by the time I got to that book, I was moving towards wanting to write more stories. Yeah, exactly. And so I just thought, you know, I'm just going to go for it in this book and I'm going to write the stories I want to write.
28:21And they'll all tie into food because doesn't everything tie into food really on some level? Yeah. And I came about the concept, though, for that book because, you know, I did live in this charmed life of access to incredible food in the Bay Area and working at Chez Panisse. But sometimes I would leave that little paradise. And then you had to kind of learn to cook again, you know. And one time I was visiting my folks in South Carolina and, you know, I always cook for them and they said, what do you want to cook? And I said, you know, my thing is I go to the market and I see what's beautiful. Yeah, of course.
29:05You said that so many times, like, you know, on microphones. Yeah. It's part of your – yeah. And they were like, uh-huh. But, you know, what happens if you go to the market and there's nothing that's really that beautiful and inspiring? and um the the answer part of the answer is you're not going to the right market and you can dig and dig and find grow some stuff and you can find better stuff but what if you just have to make do with what you've got there and or what if you made a mistake like you you burnt it or you overcooked the pasta or the rice or someone else made a mistake like they raised this beautiful chicken but then they sealed it up in this plastic thing and it's been sitting in there for a long time and now it's like you know it's not bad yeah uh the the working title of the book was bad food good i know and and you said in the panel and like that's great i thought that was good too but my publisher was like now that people are gonna think it's rotten food um fair enough but you can sell it though anyways you get a good title yeah i had my doubts about the title so i was willing to like move on yeah of course i actually liked the title that it came up with so yeah that book came out of that like what if you need to you need to fix it and sometimes you need to fix something that isn't food related with food like you need to apologize or you need to celebrate or something and the right food can help you out with that too so you're in Jersey you're looking at the kind of landscape do you ever get that itch about opening a restaurant thinking about that Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have more than an itch.
30:47Breaking some news here. Let's go. So, you know, the reason we moved out to New Jersey is because my wife, the artist Kathleen Henderson, has worked for years with folks with developmental disabilities, helping them make art and find the art that's in them that they need to make. She did that at Creative Growth in Oakland for 10 years. And then we found someone who wanted to invest in a new studio like that here in Frenchtown, New Jersey. And so we went. We decided to go for it. The timing was right. Our youngest kid was going off to college. And the support was in place. So we moved there. And she and our oldest kid, Hop, and Hop's girlfriend, Lydia, opened Studio Route 29 in Frenchtown.
31:40It's an amazing space. It's a family business too. It's a family business and people can come and make films, make paintings, make textile works. And there's a youth program and it's amazing and it's funded for now. But we need more funding sources. and a local, actually the person that's funding that project bought an inn, the Frenchtown Inn, right in Frenchtown, which is a block away from her project, which is Art Yard, which is like an art incubation and theater space. And she thought, you know, it'd be great to have a really great restaurant right by my galleries and theater for after the performance or before the performance.
32:26And so she bought it and – but she didn't want to run it and she didn't have anybody to run it. She asked me a couple times and I said no. I was going to say like maybe when they hired your wife and there was like – maybe that was in the back of their head. Well, it kind of went the other way. Actually, they first wanted me to run the Frenchtown Inn. We came out to look at it. That was the first recruitment email. Got it. My wife and I came out to look at it. I was like, you know, I'm burnt out on restaurants right now. I can't really do it. But meanwhile, my wife started talking to Jill and they cooked up this other plan.
33:00And that plan came to fruition and I came along. She asked me a couple more times, do you want to run the restaurant? I was like, not ready. But in December, we cooked up a new plan that's not in, you know, set in concrete yet, but it's looking good. And that is that the restaurant will – I'll open the restaurant. I'll run the menu and I'll sort of be the spirit of the place. And we'll get people to help with the things that I'm not so good at, business stuff. All the profits will go to Studio Route 29. That's wonderful. So it's sort of like running as a nonprofit. Nonprofit restaurants, which there's a few in the country that are quite successful.
33:43And there can be like interaction with – obviously we'll display the artwork of the artist at Studio Route 29. Upstairs, there's not rooms to stay in, but they're still there. And so we're going to make a gallery out of one of those. And we'll be doing events around the artist at Studio Route 29. So I was finally wooed. Love that. We're hoping for late summer. Late summer. There you go. So how old is the inn? Does it have like an old history? It's like 1830. Yeah. It's gone through several iterations. It's exciting. It did at some point, you know, have rooms and people stayed there, even lived there.
34:28They used to call it, there was three in the town and there's only two left because the one in the middle burnt down in a fire, you know, 100 years ago or something. But they were called the upper, the middle and the lower. And the French down end is the lower. It's right by the river. And are you going to keep the name or is that to be determined? Yeah, that's TBD. TBD. more questions late summer opening not bad like you know produce is pretty popping in that area and like labor day yeah but you probably know how it is like you shoot for late summer oh yeah you shoot for late summer and you're like barely doing holiday parties for friends and family no that's true have you been up to stissing house in the hudson valley no but i want to go you know tomorrow's doing an event there uh no i've heard great things terrific claire uh claire's an amazing chef and and uh that place is an old inn as well so she has a restaurant here king and jupiter so she has two restaurants here and her partners but um yeah no i need to go up and check it out because yeah so what is in your mind now you're thinking menu development you know what like i know nothing's set in stone but like what would you want to open with um dishes wise you know i'm taking some inspiration certainly from the che panice cafe yeah um obviously and from my own short-lived restaurant.
35:41I had a restaurant for a minute that before that thing, the pandemic, came along and crushed it. That was called The Lead. Small menu,
35:55you know, again, you know, printed definitely in-house so that we're very nimble. I'm really looking forward to making, starting relationships with all the local farmers and producers of beer. There's distillers. There's even some wine that I I haven't tried yet, but we'll see. Shout out Jersey Wine. I'm sure it's pretty good. Yeah. There's certainly lots of growers. You know, produce forward, Mediterranean menu that's fun. And we have a big bar, so it's going to be bar focused as well. And, you know, I'm going to try and keep the prices at a place where it's not like the special event place that you just go once a year.
36:41Yeah, I mean with a 501c3 status too, you probably have ability to maybe keep the prices at a good level. And also, of course, you've got the – it's more of a statement when you dine with you. Yeah, we probably won't actually get the 501c3 status because that is really an onerous task. I know because my wife just did it and she's got it. So that's good. But the story to tell is that the profits are going to support these artists. And that's going to be a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. Cal, we asked all guests in the Taste podcast to create a cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time, meaning you have no deadline, or the burden of budget, meaning you have all the money in the world to execute this book.
37:27What would that be? I think it would be this dream that I've had for a while of a cookbook. It came to me while I was writing Burnt Toast because I have a chapter in there called Hacking Packages. And a combination of that and seeing the folks that my wife works with, people with autism or downs or other kind of disabilities, uh i i would love to be a part of a cookbook that um you know packaged food is important for people with uh limited abilities to cook and so is the microwave um so i would love a project that is is um the audience is folks with disabilities but as you know i'm as a person who doesn't have a disability i don't really think i'm the one to write that but i could be the one to facilitate that.
38:22And I have access to people through my wife's projects and through, I always did lots of work with Creative Growth back in Oakland to bring those people in. And I think it could be a helpful cookbook, but also really beautiful and fun and spirited. I would love to do it. And I've gotten some interest from some friends in publishing, so maybe that'll happen one day. Maybe that one day will happen. And you're working on some fiction too. Yeah, I'm also writing a novel. Yeah. And it's kind of a – people tell me to describe it and I've been saying it's sort of a queer culinary melodrama. Yeah, right on.
39:05It sounds like something that like maybe the Bears producers could pick up and – Yeah, there you go. You know, make it – If you're listening out there. You know. Oh, yeah, they certainly are. Yeah. Cal Peternell, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast. What a pleasure. Thank you, Matt.
39:27Asim Alkani, welcome to the Taste Podcast. Thank you so much for having me here. Last time I saw you, you were working in your restaurant and I was dining and we were all having a great time and it was busy. Yeah, it is busy every night. I mean, you have been in the scene for a while. I want to get into your story. You opened the restaurant, Sofret, when you were 59 years old and you've been running it and you have many projects, including a new cookbook. Let me ask you about the state of the restaurant reservation in New York. Just had a guest on just now. We were talking about how he was frustrated by not being able to book at restaurants.
40:00And I was kind of like, well, you know, you got to look on the other side. There's like a real supply and demand issue and restaurants are having staffing issues. How do you handle it when you have 700 people on your waiting list? I try not to look at it. It gets me anxious. But at the same time, many of these notify lists doesn't mean much, especially for us. We are in Brooklyn. People really want to come to Sofrae and they really want to make a reservation and come. But at the end of the day, if Resi notifies them for something which is around the corner in Manhattan or somewhere, they definitely take because this is what notify means.
40:38They give you like five minutes to take it. We've all been there. I mean, listeners, we've all noticed. Resi Notify. You literally had 700 people on the list last night. Not last night. Over weekend, we had 700, no, but about 400, yes. Last night's number was 400. Wow. So, I mean, to our listeners who are frustrated that they can't get into great restaurants like Sofrey, how do you respond to that? They get very annoyed. And sometimes they write very angry emails that, you know, especially our community, Iranians, we are not used to making reservations. Yeah. So our manager does a good job. He has a very kind note.
41:17He explains that we are a small restaurant, 60 seats. And with the best scenario, getting everything on time is 120. And it just, that's the reality. It's a finite space. Do you wish you opened a bigger place? No, no. The size is perfect. I love that. It's intimate. And when the weather is better, it's not going to be secret anymore. But the front patio, we don't offer it on reservation. So our neighbors know that there is availability. They come. If the kitchen can accommodate, because kitchen is also small and cannot accommodate 200 people. If the kitchen can take it, we have seats in front, which is very pretty.
41:59And this is when it becomes a real neighborhood joint, which I intended to be a neighborhood spot, not a destination restaurant. Yeah. It's nice when you have both. and you can accommodate both. It's kind of a tightrope wire act. Exactly, yeah. You mentioned the cuisine is Iranian or Persian and you write in the introduction to your book about what the difference is in terms of the timeline. And I love this beautiful writing in the book. What in your terms is the flavor profile of Iranian Persian cuisine? It's a tough question, I realize, but I think you're up for answering it. Yeah, if I just have to pick one, There are a lot of, but I would go straight to sour.
42:42Yes. The sour note that is so distinctively Persian, and we all crave so much for it. Right now it's the season. It's a season for fresh plums. They are sour. And we even put more salt on them. Or fresh almonds. Again, they are kind of tart and sour. And when it's summer, it's sour cherry season. I'm a little upset because they started genetically doing something to them that they are not so sour anymore. And it's really annoying. The cherries. The cherries. In Iran, they're still quite sour. So sour is the prime note of our cuisine. But there's another also level, and a little bit underneath, is sweet and sour.
43:25Which is, the only I've seen it, we have a culinary term for it. It's called malas. It doesn't exist, to my knowledge, in any other culinary literature I have read, which is when you say this is malas, means it's a perfect balance of sweet and sour. It's just the perfect balance. And I describe it in my food, in my book, about the few dishes that you have to get to that perfect balance of sweet and sour. And that's also objective. I love that term malas. molasses i mean i think about coffee in that term is why i love coffee it's like that when you have that perfect sweetness and sour note of a coffee or anybody's cooked any kind of um you know i'm lemonade making lemonade you think about that balance and and i you really opened my mind just by talking to you because of that balance of sweet and sour is there a dish that you create at sofray that you feel is the balance yeah all my dishes i go for i go for bad not all my dishes But at Sofra, I have like a beef stew, which is sour and sour note all the way to the highest point possible.
44:36But then there is a dish also, the duck fesunjun, I call it, which is the pomegranate walnut duck sauce we have. That is a perfect balance of sweet and sour for me. It's just like it's a tartness of a pomegranate, but it's not enough for me. So sometimes I even add lemon juice. In Iran, we have different grades of pomegranate molasses from wild ones that are super sour to the local like normal pomegranates that are themselves. Pomegranates are perfectly balanced when you have like a well ripened, ready pomegranate itself is perfect balance of sweet and sour. So, yeah, for now, I can also my tahini date salad in the book is another example of a perfect balance of sweet and sour.
45:26I feel you've just said something the pomegranates in the Middle East are different than the ones we're going to get in the States. There's different varieties and just like a freshness. Yeah. You started the restaurant at 59. Before that, you had a successful career. You ran your own business, a printing business. And I'd just like to get a sense, what was that trajectory like, run doing a printing business and then deciding to open a restaurant? But there was a 25-year gap between this. Okay, okay. I had the print business. My background is law. I studied law. Then I studied sociology. Then marketing research.
46:07So I have basically a lot of moving around. So it started at printing. Printing was a making money venture. I was manager at a print shop. He saw that I was very good at it. There was an offer to have my own business. A young entrepreneur. I was only 28. I grabbed the opportunity and I opened my own business. I did well. I work hard, you know, but my heart wasn't in it. Like I couldn't finish fast enough the day's work. So I run home and cook our dinner. I was at that time, I got also married. And or every night as we were eating our dinner, in my mind, in a slow cooker, I was preparing our tomorrow's dinner.
46:51Yeah. The night after dinner. So it was very clear that I won't last in that printing situation. Food was more driving you every day. Food, every day. And around the time, after eight years, I kind of was in a situation that I could sell the business. And I was thinking I'm going to open a little cafe in East Village. Back then, my budget and my mindset was a cafe. That's all I could think of. And I was living in East Village at that time. Where at? 7th Street and Avenue A. I lived at 132. Yeah. 132 East 7th above Niagara. I was there for three years. Yeah. 7A, I was living above the 7A, the iconic restaurant.
47:29We were across the street from each other. What years were you there? From 1987 to 95. Yeah. Wow. At that time. Beautiful time to be in the East. Amazing time to be there. Yeah. And so I was ready in my mind, looking at some shops, thinking about menu, that I found out I was pregnant with twins and closed the chapter. Yeah. And I became a stay-at-home mom until Sofra opened. Until Sofra opened and your kids were a little older? Much older. This Sofra was supposed to be a project when they go to college. They went to college. They came out of college, graduated, and Sofra still wasn't opening. My gosh.
48:11It really, everything took so much longer. But I never lost hope or perspective or love for what I am doing right now. Did you know what you were getting into when you decided to open Sofrey? No, no, no. I'm glad you didn't lie because I feel like anyone would. No, no, I had no idea. People often ask me, is it like harder than you thought? I'm like much harder than I ever envisioned, but also much more gratifying that I have ever envisioned. So if I look back to that young Nassim, I would do it all over again. I love that. I hear that. I mean, the gratitude. When you work like one of these long days, as you said on a Tuesday, you get to go home and you're like, man, I really worked.
48:54Yeah, but then there's also Epsom salt and all that stuff. So then you take care of the feet and then you go and do it again because it's so amazing. You write in the book how women set the tone in the household, in an Iranian household. What does that mean? And particularly, how does that mean in reference to the food? In a patriarchal society like Iran and most cultures, actually, even here to some extent, you would see the men everywhere. They are the ones who sign contracts. They run the money, all of that. But then when you scratch the surface, you go inside, or at least the family, the woman I grew up with.
49:40My grandmother had to just look at my grandfather and he would not continue his sentence. And I always wondered what kind of power that she hold, like what is she doing? She managed the home. She managed the tone of the house. She welcomed the guests. She managed the money, the economy of the home. My grandparents didn't have a whole lot of money, but they were all fed. We were all fed well. There were always like plenty on a table. And that was your grandmother's doing? All my grandmothers. Like one of them was a symbol, a humble farmer, and she would just not stopping from 5 a.m. making bread to like her yogurt.
50:22That's why I'm doing I'm making bread every day in her honor. And it's in the book. Just the men are absolutely necessary. You respect them. You make sure that they are respected in front of especially other men. But when it comes to the direction of the house, women are the queen of the house. And also in terms of cooking, these women have kept our culture. And not only Iran, look at across the globe, women in the famine, in the times of war, in the times of difficulty. Who keeps the glue? They are, exactly. They are the one that keep the cultures thriving and sustaining and moving forward. So, yeah.
51:07Masim, those are great, beautiful thoughts. I appreciate you sharing. And I'd like to know when you get, let's talk about the book because, you know, the recipe list is like the foundation of a book. And I wonder how you came up with that selection of recipes. Was it restaurant recipes or was it from your family and your background? How do you decide what to put in the book? I thought of I had so much more. I had to like get rid of so much. There's second books. There's third books. There's more books. Yeah, but I had so much. First of all, I had to go how, why I sectioned the book like that. By what I think is the most important thing.
51:48Bread. Yeah. Rice. Dairy. If you look at the sections, it goes like that. Because not we always don't want to have like fancy food. When I go home sometimes, like at 11 o 'clock at night, I have fabulous yogurt and a fabulous bread. And dinner is, that is dinner. Or a plain white rice and you put, add a little bit of yogurt. And that's a meal. But so that's how I decided to even section the book. And then when it comes to what goes in every section, I there is a section called Osh. It's a new concept for a non-Persian audience. It's essentially is a thick soup of a ton of stuff. It's one bowl that feeds the family.
52:35There are at least 40 Oshes that I know of. I don't have a recipe of all of them. I haven't cooked all of them, but I definitely know of 40 to 45, I think even 45, that I know of. How do I choose these ashes? How do I represent this? I serve one at sofre, asheshdeh, that is noodle stew with a lot of vegetables. It's a complete meal. If you eat that, it nourishes you. What's the thickening agent in ashesh? How does that work exactly? It's the slow cooking, kind of onions and garlic, and also whey. So it's whey. So these dishes, are these mostly vegetarian? They can be also non-vegetarian. There are Oshes that they have meat addition, but the beauty of them, you take away the meat.
53:22And I do often, I don't want to eat so much, consume so much meat, especially red meat. But the flavor is so packed full with herbs and beans and whey. Or some of them are made with pomegranate molasses. Some of them are made with sour grape extract. The list goes on and on. And you eat it with rice and pita or rice and bread? No, no. By itself is a complete meal. That's cool. They all have everything you need from the protein comes from the beans. The vitamins, the nutrients come from all the vegetables. and there is a thickening, always an agent, either a noodle or a rice or a bulgur or something.
53:59Why is rice so important to Iranian cuisine? To be honest, I don't know. I wish I knew, but rice wasn't so important. Bread was the main stable of the country up until Iran became very rich in terms of Iran was a fertile land and bread was the stable. That's why in every city, in every village, we have the local bread bakery and the local particular local bread or breads, variation of it. Breads you eat is semi-sweet for the morning. Breads you eat with your ash or whatever. But then as the country got richer and the population grew, rice became more prominent. Rice used to be a court dish. That's why our rices are so elaborate.
54:48They're not just white rice. They're like so many variations. Multi-grain rices, lots of different vegetables and herbs in the rices. Yeah. So many. I love this chapter. It's beautiful. Yeah. It's great. It's so many. And again, rices, I also, I could have put another 30 special rices, but they are very elaborate because they were court and party or wedding or special events. But now rice is still is like one of the cheap grains. So it's becoming even more prominent. It's interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, it's a cool history and the transition from, well, there's obviously still very much a bread culture, but the more rice dishes and you have a huge chapter there.
55:30But the funny thing is that although it's the new generation, it's a lot of rice, but the older generation, my grandfather, who's no longer alive, he always had a side of bread next to his rice plate. and he would make a little like almost like a spoon and picked up his rice with the bread. God love that, man. God love that, man. That is the best thing, rice and bread. Come on. Yeah. We get shamed into not loving rice and bread as American culture and American culture. Yeah, so rice and bread, yeah. Double starch. Speaking of rice, when I dined, I had the little mini tadig with the fried pita, the fried bread with it.
56:06Wow. Yeah. Love that dish. How did you conceive that as the chef? How did you think of that through like doing a baby tadig? Tadig, I think of this grand gesture. But in the restaurant format, you're doing a small version. Necessity. Yeah. Necessity. It's like when, yeah, the necessity. I do not like to make fake tadig. You can make fake tadig. I've seen lots of recipes. You can make fake tadig. To me, everything has to be as is. and then when it's only little, makes it even more special because you only just have a tiny little thing and you savor it more. Imagine if I had given you a big platter of that greasy pita bread.
56:48I would have been happy. Yes, but at the end, your stomach wouldn't be. No, you're right. And at the end of the day, the next day, you wouldn't feel it as something that delicate and special. I didn't think about all of that. I just simply have a certain size of a pan, pot, And I have a certain number of the people, and I want to see how I can stretch. And usually by 8.30, 8.45, we run out. And so many angry Iranians come early. I'm sorry, I won't do fake Tadic. I just don't. How do your Iranian customers think about your restaurant? I've asked this for Korean chefs. I've asked this for Chinese chefs.
57:28I've asked this for German chefs. Yeah. Very good now. We have a reputation. We are almost like the Disneyland version of like they come and it's like, especially I'm there. Yeah. Photo. You work the room and love it. It's a beautiful thing. I love it. I just, I really, truly enjoy. And they come to meet me and I would love to greet them. In the beginning, I was apprehensive about Iranian women of my age because I know how difficult I am. and God helped me like encounter others. And to my surprise, they were the ones who welcomed me and what I do. It's slightly different what I do with what they do.
58:11But they also understand the depth of flavors. And at the end of the day, they saw that I give everything I have and I know. And I think it was extremely well received by them. Once you get the approval of Iranian mothers, you are good to go. I've heard this from other cultures and other chefs, yeah. Future projects. You're working on some things. Yeah. I have to imagine. Yeah. What's the official line? There is a Sofre Cafe coming out. I heard. Sometime, hopefully, God helps New York City. They should help us a little bit more. I think, you mean with permitting, getting gas? Yeah, with permitting, gas.
58:50It's awful. It's awful. So hopefully as soon as they let us go, we are ready to go. DOB stuff or is it with gas? It's so many things. from the construction site to the, anyway. Is it near Sofrain, Prospect Heights? Yeah, it's very close. It's just literally across the street. Nice. That is for sure is coming up. And also the book. I'm excited to do pop-ups and to do demos. I love to share my food with a larger audience. So that's a full-time job too. Oh, you're getting busy here with the book and it's beautiful. I'll link to it in the show notes. We asked all Guests and Tastes podcasts if you could write a cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time, meaning you have no deadline, or the burden of budget, meaning you have all the money in the world to write this book, Nassim, what would that book be?
59:37I know you just have written a book too, so this is a challenging question. I would have taken a year off of everything I do here, and I would go with a couple of teams to really support me and travel to every nooks and cronies of Iran and gather. I already have a lot, but I really don't think, I think I just scratched the surface and collect all these ancient recipes, food. But then it's not just that. I would hire the most talented creative director and photographer to truly document it. Many people have done things like that, but it's always because of the budget, because of the, it's been shortchanged.
1:00:20So you want a full year to travel through Iran with your team. Yeah. I hope that happens. I hope so, too. How we can make that work. Yeah, that would be amazing. Naseem Alkani, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast. Thank you so much, really. Thank you. It was lovely.
1:00:38This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com. and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.
From the publisher
Cal Peternell was the head chef of legendary Bay Area restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, for over 20 years, where he served celebrity patrons and trained a new generation of chefs. He’s the New York Times best-selling author of Twelve Recipes and A Recipe for Cooking. His most recent book is the revealing and erudite Burnt Toast and Other Disasters. On this episode, we hear some good Chez Panisse stories, and we talk about Cal’s move to the East Coast. We also discuss his cookbook career—and his interpretation of that “figs on a plate” incident from a few years back.
Also on the show we have a fascinating conversation with Nasim Alikhani, the chef and cookbook author behind Brooklyn’s mega-popular Iranian restaurant, Sofreh. You should check out her new book.
More From Cal Peternell and Nasim Alikhani:
Celery, Radishes, and Anchovy Butter [official]
A Berkeley Chef Feeds the Homeless [LA Times]
Olives With Citrus Zests and Fried Herbs [Washington Post]
Nasim Alikhani Is Leaving Her Mark [Eater]
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