Breaking out of the bread basket: chefs butter up guests with exciting, new offerings as traditional premeal service turns stale

Nation's Restaurant News, Sept 13, 2004 by Erica Duecy

Forget bread and butter. As operators continue to look for new and novel ways to differentiate their establishments, signature offerings, such as popovers, relish trays and Mediterranean spreads, are popping up as premeal giveaways at many upscale restaurants.

"Bread and butter is boring," says Johan Svensson, chef at Riingo, a Japanese-American restaurant in New York. "I wanted to create something that makes people go, 'Wow'--something they haven't had before."

Svensson knew he wanted to use edamame--boiled soybeans--to convey the restaurant's Japanese influences, he says. "But I didn't want to serve bowls of them like you'd find in a Japanese restaurant," Svensson says. So he crushed the boiled soybeans and mixed them with chickpeas to make a Japanese version of hummus, a thick Middle Eastern dip or spread, which at Riingo is a mash of blanched soybeans, chickpeas, olive oil, herbs and spices. It is served with a selection of breads and crackers, including nori-rice crackers, sourdough rolls and French rolls that further emphasize the cross-cultural identity of the restaurant, Svensson believes.

At One Midtown Kitchen in Atlanta, chef Joey Masi also serves a premeal variation on hummus, a mixture of chickpeas pureed with garlic, olive oil, red chile flakes, rosemary and thyme. The chickpea puree is served with baguettes, black-pepper-and-rosemary breadsticks and flat bread.

Other chefs are serving variations on tapenade, which in its classic form is a thick paste made from capers, anchovies, olives and seasonings, traditionally from Provence in France. At the New American restaurant Palette in Washington, D.C., chef James Clark presents a rotating selection of tapenades alongside a rectangular block of sweet-cream butter. Recent tapenade flavors have included roasted red pepper, caper and Parmesan, and curried vegetable and feta. The tapenade and butter are served with a selection of breads, including fig and pine nut, rustic Italian and roasted garlic-thyme flat bread.

At New York's Lever House, chef Dan Silverman serves rosemary-flecked focaccia with a walnut-and-roasted-garlic tapenade seasoned with chervil and marjoram.

At the Mediterranean seafood restaurant The Neptune Room in New York, chef Glenn Harris serves focaccia with a dip made from white beans, potato and garlic.

In other restaurants the focus is on variety, with multiple premeal offerings.

Kevin Reilly, chef at Silverleaf Tavern in New York, plans to serve "a modernized version of the 1950s relish tray" when the restaurant opens later this month. The trays will feature separate compartments for butter, fresh ricotta topped with seasonal herbs, crispy garlic and olive oil, and a rotating selection of vegetables, such as shaved zucchini with pine nuts, mint and lemon juice, or olives marinated in hot pepper oil. A selection of breads will include rosemary flat bread, sourdough baguettes and cranberry-pecan rolls.

"It's a little more exciting than just bread and butter," Reilly says. "I didn't want to do an amuse-bouche that involved putting something new out each day, so this is a special touch that accomplishes the same thing."

The updated relish tray also expresses the retro personality of the concept, Reilly said. "It's a fine-dining restaurant, but we're doing updated versions of New York neighborhood dishes." Those dishes include such innovative variations on classic New York offerings as an oyster pan-roast with chile oil and short-rib knishes.

Robert Gadsby, chef of the new American restaurant Noe, at the Omni Los Angeles hotel, also prefers variety. Gadsby serves a selection of breads, such as ciabatta, rosemary and wheat varieties, with a plate of accompaniments that include hot-chile paste, black-olive tapenade, Kalamata and French green olives, olive oil and sea salt.

Popovers, puffy, muffin-sized bread with crispy brown exteriors and moist, mostly hollow interiors, have appeared as yet another variation on bread service, at New York's BLT Steak. "I wanted to do something different," explains chef Laurent Tourondel, chef-owner of the upscale concept, whose brand-name prefix is short for Bistro Laurent Tourondel. Just as the restaurant is a meeting of culinary traditions--part French bistro and part American steakhouse--so too is the popover, Tourondel says. "I wanted to create something American and French, so I chose the popover, an American bread, with Gruyere, a French cheese," he says.

Tourondel's Gruyere-topped popovers have become an expected part of the dining experience at BLT Steak, he says. "If [the popovers] don't come to the table right away, people will ask for them," Tourondel says. "They've become a signature."