Fruit Pies

Today I had to bake a pie. I had to. I had no choice. The first thing I ever cooked for a group of others was a pie. I fed it to the staff. Thinking back I haven't heard any comments.
My grandfather loved pie, no cake, no cookies, pie. "Don't screw around now Emily, I want pie for my birthday and you know it" My mother bakes a pretty okay pie ( in all actuality I think her pie is the best, but I cannot admit this). Grandpa really enjoyed the fact that my mother liked to bake, and bring it over to his house for him, and my uncles ( grandma does not bake. Or cook anymore at all for that matter, she eats a lot of raw food, sort of like a raw-ist, but not really at all) He figured out the perfect way to make her bring more, get her to compete, with me ( she is one of the most competitive people you will ever meet, almost as competitive as yours truly!) So of course we had bake offs, never at the same time. On all occasions we were told that there was inconclusive evidence and we must try again. Grandpa was a sneak, but he sure got to eat a lot of pie.
Just a side bar, there was always an extra for my daddy, and sometimes the occasional for an uncle or two. :)

Working Sleepy

In every restaurant you see a lot of tired eyes, heavy feet, and the occasional bed head. Every person has a reason why they subject their bodies to daily abuse, and in our case stairs. The average person wouldn't work over fifty hours in a week and would probably have something to say if they were expected to move tables after midnight on a Wednesday. I am not saying this to be a martyr I am saying this because I love my job, and I know many others, some sitting in this office with me that feel the same.
We cook and serve others because it's special to take care, of friends, of family, of strangers. There is a reward to making others feel good, satisfied and fulfilled. It is a sentiment found in all people in the hospitality industry. We are trusted with a persons evening, their memories, and most of all their bodies. Food should be magical, something you touch, you smell, not something that gets the job done. Of course we all spend nights eating microwave popcorn or Ramen noodles. I have heard KFC come out of some staff members mouths. But I hope the world will remember how good it feels to eat something good, really good. So we can always have some one to take care of.

Agricole Rum

This summer's rum tasting was way better than last year's. Last year about 15 people came, this year we sold out the Jewel-box bar with more than thirty people, a couple of them last minute walk-ins. The line up of rums was better too. Last year we sampled rums from all over the world but this year we decided to concentrate on Martinique rums. These rums are classified A.O.C. Martinique and controlled by the same organ of the French Government that assures the quality of wines from Champagne to Provence. We had on board Ben Jones, distiller at Clement and J.M., both equally recognized houses in Martinique. Ben knows how to work the crowd and by the end of the night we had a group of happy people, which is why we do what we do.
The tasting started with a shooter of orange sorbet and Clement Shrubb Orange Liqueur as an amuse-bouche. Emily, once again saved my life and made the sorbet with almost no notice.
The format after that was the same as last year, four small plates paired with 2 rum cocktails and two rums neat. The first cocktail was made with Clement Premiere Canne, their silver rum. I mixed it with honey, cucumber and lemon juice, which made for a fresh and light cocktail with the great aromatics of the rum and the cucumber inviting a taste of the peppery rum, and the zesty swing of lemon juice and dark wildflower honey. We paired it with Steve's house-cured salmon with cucumber, cherries braised in honey and creme fraiche.
Next, was time for the Clement V.S.O.P. to shine on its own, we served some ice on the side, just in case. This rum, though very light, is a serious sipping spirit. The ageing process calms down the rum's original spice and start to give way to earthier aromas, still very complex. Just like the rum, Steve trusted excellent asparagus to very little tweaking, just enough to transcend it from excellent to perfect: some sesame seeds over Yuzu emulsion.
The next rum to be featured was J.M. Blanc, J.M's equivalent of Clement's Premmiere Canne. The main difference is that J.M.Blanc is not watered down to 80 proof as most other rums and it has a real kick to it. I decided not to neutralize it's kick but to play off of it, so I simply mixed it with my house-made ginger beer that most people have already tasted. If you haven't, here's still time to get your dark-and-stormy with dignity (dark-and-stormies are like white pants: the hip factor expires at the end of Labor Day weekend). Anyway, that cocktail was really sharp, a high summer cocktail and we paired with some raw Ahi, caramelized bananas and a clove spread that played nicely with the clove tones of the ginger beer.
It seemed like it couldn't get any better, but lo and behold, it did. J.M. 1997. That's right, a single vintage rum. Even cognacs don't usually come in single vintages (with a few great exceptions, of course) so you can imagine how exciting it was to be able to close the tasting with a spirit that may redeem rums for ever from the curse of Cuba-Libres. Emily's nutmeg flan with pineapple caramel was excellent, light and creamy.
We had our friends from Receita-de-Samba playing bossa-nova in the Monday Club after the tasting and most people stayed around the bar for another round or two. I couldn't decide between a dark-and-stormy and a caipirinha so I ended up having both. Ben Jones lingered with friends over some J.M. 1997 while the band played Gilberto and Jobim tunes. That night, for a few of us, Cambridge was somewhere between Fort-de-France and Rio de Janeiro.

Name that drink

People love polyjuice and butterbeer. I don't know if that's how polyjuice is spelled but at this point, it doesn't matter. Harry Potter happened in Harvard Square and now it's over. What I mean is we had a huge festival in the square with three Harry Potter themed bands playing in Harvard Yard, which made a usually steady summer night in the square turn into complete madness. Marci can tell you more about the event than I could since she was the organizer, besides I only read one of the books and she is a real enthusiast.
What I did notice was that at least one person from every table in the restaurant ordered polyjuice or butterbeer. At the bar too, people were taking pictures of their polyjuice. Some of the people who couldn't get at table or a seat at the bar came in just to buy butterbeer to go, which I sold by the quart!
That made me think that one could spend more time thinking what to name a cocktail than actually experimenting with ingredients and it wouldn't affect the overall satisfaction of the person who ordered it. It's a scary thought. We're at the peak of the new golden age of cocktails and in the early 90's the names of new drinks slowly started to turn back into grown-up's stuff. During the three previous decades, the names of cocktails revealed the overall relaxed attitude about mixology, which at times can be refreshing but in the 70's it turned into, you know, disco. And the names of the cocktails were relaxed too, Sex On The Beach is from that era and it's a relatively mild one. I couldn't publish most of those names in this blog.
This leads me to our program at the restaurant. The list I inherited from Lolly Mason had a few pre-disco classics, like the Side-Car and El Presidente, and a few original creations. Lolly's most famous drink, the "Jackie O" is still on our list and is one of the prettiest cocktails I've ever made. When the effervescense of the freshly shaken drink meets champagne, I want to take pictures.
The current list is made-up of original drinks only. That means a lot of naming happens when we change the list, most of it good. Brooklyn Haze is a variation of the Brooklyn cocktail, with the addition of hazelnut liqueur. I think it's a pretty good name; Reiser (our wine director) named it. The Aprile, a Meditarranean concoction of Aperol, Grapefruit and Rosemary was named after my friend April Watchel (Aprile means April in Italian).
Another less fortunate cocktail named after a living person was the Momma Sonia, named after Frank Queris' (the drink's co-creator) mom. The drink was good and we had a good story behind the name but it didn't take off so I pulled it from the list. If you like the classic Bronx cocktail, order a Momma Sonia next time you come in.
I just started working on the drinks for the Fall '07 list and that means some of the more summery drinks will have to come off the list. The Aprile will come off as will the Paulista, named after the natives of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Misty Kalkofen of Green Street has a drink called Carioca on her list, named after the natives of Rio de Janeiro, which I like a lot, by the way. The Lolita will stay as it has become the Monday Club Bar's signature cocktail. The house-made strawberry liqueur and champagne combination is all that the name implies...
By the way, a local newspaper awarded the "Venus In Furs" the best named cocktail in Boston, if you don't know what it's named after, you can ask me next time you're at the bar.

Summer Fruits

As summer approaches we are loathing the fact that the ramps are yellowing, that we are saying goodbye to green garlic, and leaving every heavy dish behind. I would have to say spring is our favorite season because it is the first ramp, the first fiddle head, and succulent morel. Secretly I am just getting excited for the next season, the warm raspberries on the market table, the first tomatoes drenched in olive oil sprinkled with salt. When technical ablity goes by the way side because food is so extrodinary on its own, with no manipulation.

I think the most magical moments in my life are spent in the sun with my toes in the dirt picking peas from the garden ( it helps that it is my mothers garden, and she does all the weeding). I was raised in a place where the quote "Food is love" is replaced with "Food is love, and life". On the farm there is a respect for the land, for the plants, for the animals, that can never be paralled.

So cooking in the summer is the reward for a winter filled with tropical fruits, and overpriced underripe berries. It becomes a treat, a break in the day, to "run over to the farmers market" and just inhale the summer. Summer savory, basil, and tyhme, extrodinary.



My Suggestion; order the special.

Vacation and Renovation

We all had to take a break this week because of the Monday Club Bar renovations. Technically not all of us since Deborah is overseeing the design and she has to be there a lot and Dina and Eliza are there a lot too, and Marci...Ok, so I had to take a break, a whole week away from my restaurant friends.
The first few days of my break I spent on Martha's Vineyard, where I fished for fluke and bluefish. By the way, Fluke is a kind of flounder, the main difference is that it's right eye travels to the left side of the fish. See I learned something too! We only brought back one or two at a time and we ate it the same day, so it was really fresh. I went to see a jazz trio at one of my old haunts in Edgartown, my old guitar teacher was playing bass, it was kind of cool.
Then we went to Emily's farm and that was just amazing! To experience nature like we did in the farm, and to understand that Emily grew up there transcends her cooking to a new level.
After the farm we visited Mary Catherine and Reid at their Westport Cottage. That was another amazing experience. We can all agree that Mary-Catherine is the quintessential hostess at the restaurant, so to be a guest at her summer home was truly fantastic. I did attempt to make frozen margaritas but we had a bit of a blender situation. As in it leaked and I made a mess in her kitchen, but she didn't mind and went on preparing salami and cheeses for an extraordinary antipasto platter and then slicing rib eye and dressing salads, and making you feel comfortable all the way. Talk about hospitality!
I'm happy to be back and looking forward to seeing some of my regulars at the bar. Deborah's design is stellar and we are all in a really good mood, really confident with our kitchen and just amped and ready to re-open the doors!

UpStairs: The Blog Begins ...

Over the hill, down the rabbit hole and onto the internet, welcome to the UpStairs On The Square blog.

There was an advertisement from years ago that stated, "you've come a long way, baby!" Who would have thought that after 25 years in business, UpStairs on the Square would be producing its very own web log?

The intention behind our blog is simple: UpStairs has always prided itself on its commitment to completely honest, no holds barred food (and drinks). Furthermore, our front-of-the-house knows no boundaries, as chefs are just as likely to be out and about the dining rooms as servers. To that end, we seek to use this blog as an opportunity to elongate the conversations that often get cut off in the restaurant industry. To elaborate upon an explanation that we just couldn't finish because we were pulled away by another engagement. In other words, the UpStairs blog is a dialogue between guest and restaurant. We hope that you take the time to explore the multiple facets of our blog, and participate either through your comments or simply telling us when you come in.