Gabrielle Hamilton: Prune's plain-speaking proprietor a smooth operator

Nation's Restaurant News, April 26, 2004 by Brooke Barrier

Some chefs don toques because of their inescapable passion for cooking. Others, like Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune in New York's East Village, succumb to the profession after years of resistance.

Hamilton has been working in kitchens since she was 15. However, it was not her love of cooking that brought her there--or kept her there, for that matter. She had set her sights on "writing the great American novel," she says. Cooking, for a time, was just "a skill" she used to pay the bills.

Over the past 24 years, Hamilton has worked as a private chef caterer, food stylist and recipe developer for various cookbooks. Then in 1999, with little restaurant experience behind her, she opened the quirky, 30-seat Prune, which serves rustic American fare with a European influence.

Title: chef-owner, Prune, New York

Birth date: Nov. 6, 1965

Hometown: Lambertville, N.J.

Education: master's degree in English, creative writing, from the University of Michigan

Career highlight: "For years I thought I was going to be a writer, and my excuse about not writing a novel was that I was cooking in kitchens all day. When I finally said goodbye to writing and opened a restaurant, I got more paid writing opportunities than ever before. So I guess [my career highlight] is finding out that sometimes in life you get to take both forks in the road."

How did you decide to become a professional chef?.

I spent my whole life working in kitchens and had my heart and eyes elsewhere, thinking I was going to do something else. But the better you get at something, the better paid you are and the more difficult it becomes to extricate yourself. You sort of get trapped--like a rat.

When I was 30, I went to graduate school to answer this question for myself. Am I something else, or am I this? When I finished school, I came back to New York and sat on my couch in my underwear--not writing my great American novel. I think I answered the question.

The restaurant became available on the block where I live. The size was right; the price was right. At some point you have to say, "If this is what I do, I might as well just do it," instead of resisting it. So I took the restaurant, stopped looking over my shoulder and finally feel excellent. Twenty years with a divided heart is too long.

How have you handled the difficulties of being a woman in a male-dominated field, especially as a chef-owner?

The 20-some years in kitchens prior to opening Prune I had the pronounced feeling of "OK, I'm the woman in the kitchen," I'm going to heft it and huff it and lift things that are twice as heavy and stay later than the men. Or you figure out a way to connive; you get charming and wear lipstick.

I mean you can go any route, you can meet them, surpass them, seduce them. It's just fatiguing. Whatever you have to do to get the guys to back the f-- off--you do it. You can smoke the filterless cigarettes side by side with them; get the biggest, baddest burns and be back on the line in five minutes Or you can play wussy.

But all that was before opening Prune. Once you're the chef and owner, there's no more of that. Anyone who walks in the door to work here, eat here, sell me products--there's no argument. I don't have to prove anything to them. The proof is there, which is such a relief.

How would you describe your cooking style?

It's rustic American with a European influence. I have a French mom, I grew up in New Jersey, those two things are evident in the food. It's personal; it's food that I grew up eating or know well from traveling. Nothing is invented. It is all deeply rooted in tradition, or it's a classic that lives in the world already. I just put my style on it.

What is your biggest strength in the kitchen?

I'm a good cook, and I'm becoming a very good manager. I'm noticing that when I meet other chefs, there are a lot of them that say, "I can never be out of my kitchen. I can't leave the restaurant for a single day." I don't know if I'm doing it wrong, but I don't have that problem. I'm able to cultivate my crew to get exactly what I want out of them and to empower them to make good decisions.

What do you focus on in training your staff?.

Mostly, you have to help them unlearn things Every day I say, "That looks too restauranty." Cooks come here, wanting to stack it tall and presear meats That I can't bear. Everything here starts and ends to order. So it's more breaking people than teaching them.

Generally, we hire people who know what they're doing. I'm not the greatest, most patient teacher. But I provide a clean, functioning, professional atmosphere where people can do their jobs.

What do you look for when hiring staff?

We take professionally and nonprofessionally trained people. We get a lot of the walking wounded--the refugees from starred restaurants. Beautiful kids who have ambition, talent and energy, and I don't know why you wouldn't want to cultivate that. I guess a lot of kitchens are run by humiliation, with long, six-day weeks, no pay and never a word of praise. I don't get that.