Perfect In Paris
January 10, 2007 - The Santa Fe New Mexican
PARIS—Bill Buford’s book, Heat, features a Dante-quoting Tuscan butcher. The new Parisian equivalent is Daniel Rose, an American-born chef with a penchant for Euclid who has unintentionally found himself at the leading edge of restaurants in the City of Light.
A one-time Santa Fean, Rose officially slid open the front door of his 16-seat restaurant, Spring, on Oct. 17, 2006, and the praise has been nonstop ever since.
A recent four-course tasting menu provides big clues to Rose’s success:
- Pumpkin soup with marinated foie gras
- Swordfish salad with a Guatemalan lime, cucumber, chorizo and pineapple sauce
- Roast pigeon, celery root with spinach, yellow carrots
- Poached pears “Belle Helene” (his mom’s name is Helen)
Rose, 29, traces much of his success back to what he learned in two years of school in Santa Fe. Instead of launching into a tale about a culinary school, however, he describes his first day of school at St. John’s College when his tutor, Nancy D. Buchenauer, drew a giant line across the blackboard.
“This is a piece of a line the size of the universe,” she began. Rose then switches references to Euclid to continue the lesson: “A point is that which has no part. A line is breadthless length.”
It could come across as heavy stuff, but Rose is clearly into it. Over the course of the day in the kitchen, he said, he is continually reminded of what he learned in Santa Fe.
While chopping pigeons—which come in a box with separate bags for their heads, hearts and gizzards—he remembered a song he used to memorize passages from Euclid, whose structures, Rose said, could apply to cooking. Homer comes up so frequently, he added, that it’s as though he is still studying the classics.
Substituting simplicity
What Rose seems to have pulled most from his studies is a culinary and personal philosophy that revolves around simplicity—a bit of a prerequisite since he works alone in the kitchen.
“In France, it’s about technique. It’s about making canette,” he said, stressing the baby duck at the end of the sentence in a way that placed the emphasis on bringing the product to its highest possible point—not using it as a sort of building block to create something else.
A chef once told him, Rose said, “The more you manipulate something, the worse it will be,” adding, “For me, it’s gotta be right the first time.”
What stands out most about eating at Spring is an almost-primal link between the product and the diner’s perception of it. “Damn,” you think, “that’s good fish”—or “This pigeon is perfectly cooked.”
Using the philosophy he was introduced to at St. John’s, Rose has accidentally found himself at the forefront of Paris’ burgeoning gastro-bistro movement, one that retains the focus on food of Michelin-starred restaurants by offering three or four constantly changing seasonal choices for each course but trades table linen and stuffy settings for a convivial atmosphere.
A few years ago, a handful of chefs dropped the traditional idea of creating a Michelin-rated restaurant and traded what was seen as elaborate food in a stuffy setting for well-crafted, seasonal meals in a genial setting at a much more affordable price. These chefs are now getting so much attention that the usually immutable Guide Michelin may be changing the way it looks at food.
Around town, a couple of chefs like Rose have gone one step further, offering three or four courses with no choice—you get what’s in season and what the chef feels like making on a given day.
“Somewhere, I’ve touched on something that was missing in Paris,” Rose said with a touch of irony. “I didn’t mean to; it just happened.”
Commitment to technique
Providence also helped Rose’s rise. His first restaurant job in France landed him with chef Jean-Luc Hourre in Brittany. A Meilleur Ouvrier de France—or “MOF” as they’re more commonly known—Hourre is one of the finest culinary artisans in the country.
Hourre, whom Rose describes as a “real gentleman,” took the American under his wing. “He said, ‘Stay here and I’ll teach you what you need to know,’ ” Rose said.
“I learned the commitment to discipline and tradition—the epitome of never cutting corners,” Rose recalled. “If a plate isn’t hot enough,” before putting a meal on it, “you make it hot enough.”
Hourre’s commitment to technique and simplicity rang true with Rose.
“He would walk in with an armful of artichokes in the morning and say, ‘You need to learn how to cook these,’ ” Rose said.
So he did.
American roots, French approach
Watching Rose work, there seemed to be a thousand little things like this he’s picked up along the way. He’s constantly tasting everything, making sure what he’s working on for that night’s dinner service tastes as good as it can.
“Here,” he said, placing a heavy metal spoon with pigeon jus he’s spiked with a wild pepper, a hit of honey and “a little bit of coffee” under my nose. It’s so hot, I singe my lips on the edge of the spoon, but it’s so good, I burn them again five seconds later.
He’s constantly smelling things, too. Everything from his pigeons to his knives, which, he explained, could have a bit of soap on them that could ruin a dish.
You quickly get the sense that there’s no room for error chez Rose. I ask if he’s had any catastrophes since opening and he looks at me as if I’ve missed the point.
“Those go in here,” he said, making a wide-eyed gesture toward the sink. “Plus, there’s no way you can serve something that’s iffy.”
Rose also makes use of an impressively long list of suppliers ranging from the gigantic Rungis food market outside of Paris to an in-town Japanese restaurant supplier to “five or six” separate butchers.
“One guy’s beef cheeks are good and another’s aren’t,” Rose said with a shrug. “Who knows why?”
Although his approach to cooking is definitely French, a few subtle indications of Rose’s American roots that show up around the restaurant include a beautiful tangerine-colored KitchenAid mixer and an iPod that shuffles through anything from Nina Simone to the Grateful Dead to “C is for Cookie.”
Though Rose enjoys the occasional experiment, he’s far more focused on the quality of the outcome. He pulled out a mold full of frog-leg pte, took a bite and frowned. “This’ll never see a plate,” he sighed.
“It’s the product, how you cook it and how you season it,” he said before adding—almost as an afterthought—“and then whatever you add after that.”
Rose even applies his “simplicity” philosophy to himself. “In the end, I have to enjoy myself,” he said.
Judging from the popularity of his restaurant, it’s a philosophy Parisian diners are enjoying too.
