From Le Crocodile to the Monkey Bar, Andrew Chase finds that life in the culinary jungle is a wild adventure

Nation's Restaurant News, August 2, 1999 by Bret Thorn

In 1985, Andrew Chase narrowly escaped a life in real-estate development and restaurant management, finding refuge in some of New York City's finest kitchens. After a stint of formal culinary training so minor that he rarely even mentions it, he spent 12 years in working his way up the line at Manhattan's culinary establishments, with a brief 10-month break to work at L'Assiette Champenoise, a one-star Michelin restaurant in Reims, France.

After the 1997 closure of the Santo Family Group's Sign of the Dove, where he was chef de cuisine, Chase ended up at Le Crocodile in Strasbourg, France, where he was the second-ranking man at the fish station. That might have been an ignominious role except that Le Crocodile has three Michelin stars.

Now Chase has taken over the kitchen at the Monkey Bar, a Midtown Manhattan restaurant that opened in 1994.

Title: executive chef, Monkey Bar, New York City.

Birth Date: November 22,1961.

Hometown: New York, N.Y.

Education: B.A., psychology, Clark University, Worcester, Mass., 1984; six-month course in restaurant management and cooking at The New School, New York City, 1985.

Career Highlights: learning how a real French kitchen works at Le Cygne in New York City; being taken under the wings by the chefs at L'Assiette Champenoise in Reims, France, and at Le Crocodile in Strasbourg, France.

Why did you decide at this somewhat advanced stage in your career to go help somebody cook fish in France?

I don't hear people say this a lot, but this is what happens: When you're the chef, no one feeds you. You read, you go to the market, you look at ingredients, you call on the sum of your experiences to give you new inspiration. But there's something that I really missed about working for other people and seeing new things all the time, and I felt like I needed to be rejuvenated, and that's really what that trip to France did for me. Now I just feel so excited all the time, and I can't wait to get my hands on things and cook.

How did you get the job?

I had worked in France about 10 years ago, in Reims, but it wasn't as easy this time. When I went to Reims, I was working at a place called Le Cygne, which is now Oceana, and everyone in the kitchen was French. It was pretty easy to move to France, because I just said, "Hey, can someone send me to France?" and someone knew someone and they sent me.

This time it was harder, but Jean-Yves Schillinger at Restaurant Destine [in New York] helped me out. He's from a famous restaurant family in Colmar in Alsace, and he called up a couple of people for me. Some said no, flat out, and Emile Jung said "Yeah, sure, send him over." And I had a great, great experience. Mr. Jung took me with him to do dinners in Burgundy, Germany, Japan for a week. I saw a lot of stuff.

What kind of food were you raised on?

I lived on Nantucket [Mass.] from a pretty early age, from the time I was 6. My mom was a great cook, and I was influenced by that. She did very simple things, but she was one of the best.

What she did really was household cooking, which to me is good American home cooking, when a late-night meal is maybe an omelet and some salad, or a roast chicken and some roasted potatoes, or roast pork. We ate a lot of scallops because that's what my parents did for a living. She grew vegetables, so we had great salads, a lot of fresh vegetables. My brothers and I were big fishermen, so we ate a lot of fish. Simple food. I didn't really think about it too much, but I realized later that we ate very, very well. We didn't eat extravagantly, but we ate very well.

Do you think that sort of cooking is reflected on the menu at the Monkey Bar?

Yes and no. What I respect and value in any cooking, but especially in a restaurant, is honesty in the food, and that could be on all levels. Yesterday I went to one of my favorite restaurants, which is Malaysia restaurant in Chinatown. It is great. I love it. Formica tablecloths, plastic plates. It's honest cooking. But I spent most of last year in Alsace. I worked at a three-star Michelin place, but it's a very old-school place. I was the second at the fish station, and that was very honest cooking. It was a very unpretentious restaurant, not stiff The owner [Emile Jung] and his wife just have this sincere enthusiasm for their food and for the service and for making the customer feel happy and great. They don't do it from an ego point of view at all. And to me that's honest cooking. That's honest hospitality. That's what we're in, the hospitality industry. That's really what it is to me. I love that.

And how are you trying to translate that at a fancy Midtown restaurant?

I'm trying to really do it from a philosophy of what will make the diner happy So, say I have a dish like the duck with the coriander crust. This is a dish that is attributed to Apicius, from Roman times. It's a great idea, and it's a fantastic dish. He covers the whole duck with whole coriander seeds. I love it. However, I've tried it in the States, and people don't like to eat whole coriander seeds too much here. We just don't get it. I don't either; it's a little bit too much. But in France you get whole coriander seeds a lot. People aren't bothered by it. So here I take them and crack them finely -- just sort of tone it down.