The EAT interview with restaurateur and chef Andrey Durbach (Parkside, La Buca, Pied-a-Terre) as published in the Nov-Dec issue of EAT Magazine, follows after the beep [...]
Interview With Andrey Durbach
by Chris Mason Stearns
The outspoken but hardly ever heard from Andrey Durbach has earned a die-hard following for his refined and rustic cooking. For four years at Parkside in the West End and most recently at the newly opened La Buca in Kitsilano, it’s a style that puts bums in seats, night after night. A third restaurant, Pied à Terre, is slated to open shortly after this goes to print. While it was under construction, Durbach sat down with Chris Mason Stearns to discuss his culinary upbringing, sustainability as a buzzword, why molecular gastronomy is irrelevant, and why we should set aside our intellect when eating and listen instead to our senses.
EAT: Where did you learn to cook?
Andrey Durbach: In the restaurant at Mark James in the early 80s. On a busy night we’d put out 250 to 300 dinners. [It was] what passed as fine dining during that time in Vancouver. I remember a lot of fruit sauces [laughs]. But you know what? We may look back and kind of sneer and giggle at that style of cooking, but we used formula milk-fed white veal, delivered out of the back of a station wagon. We used fresh Yellowfin tuna, fresh halibut, and spot prawns. There was a commitment to local, fresh, wholesome high-quality products; it’s just that the dining culture wasn’t such that people were jumping all over it, like they are now.
I started there as a dishwasher. I was 15 or 16 years old. I wanted some money so I could drink beer. I loved the environment. I loved the atmosphere. I loved the buzz. I used to watch the guy who worked the vegetable station, and one day he didn’t show up for work, so I took his job. And I kept it. I didn’t actually know how to cook, but I knew how to replicate what the person beside me was doing. Then I would watch the guy on the sauce station, and one day he didn’t show up for work either. So there I was at 17, cooking the sauce station for minimum wage. It’s an opportunity most people don’t get. I was learning to fly the plane as I was flying it. I mean, I didn’t really understand much about cooking or the science of cooking or the chemistry, but I think if you have a natural curiosity and an active mind you’re going to try to figure things out.
EAT: So, you’re self-taught - trial and error?
AD: Yes, for a long time. After that I had quite a nifty job, at Bishop’s. I learned a lot from John. At the time [’88-‘89], it was certainly the most high-end restaurant in Vancouver. I picked things up largely through osmosis; it was a really great and valuable learning experience. At that point, I kind of knew that I was going to be a chef, that’s what I wanted to do with my life. So I figured that I find a job in a more responsible position. In 1989 was I was quite a precocious 22 year old. So I took a job at Café de Paris as sous chef.
EAT: Was Café de Paris the first time you’d been exposed to that rustic, French bistro food?
AD: Yes, it was the first time I’d seen any serious, proper French food. Terrines, confits, patés, super-loaded sauces, the sort of no-holds-barred, traditional outlook on French cooking. In the 1980s, we were very much looking to California for inspiration, rather than Europe. I went to Café de Paris and there was none of that there. There was beurre blanc. There’s something to be said for being able to make a silky, perfect beurre blanc.
EAT: Where can we trace the origins of your style to? Your cooking — simple, direct, boldly flavoured, no ostentation, honest cooking — was it defined during your time at Café de Paris?
AD: It was, but after I finished there, I went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York, where I did an “Associate of Occupational Sciences” degree. It was a very tough school. They’d line you up and check your fingernails, see how far your hair was from your collar; it was quite strict. If you were late, you couldn’t come to class, if you missed two classes, you were out. I started in a class of almost 40 and I graduated (first in my class) in a class of 14.
EAT: You are about to open a new restaurant on Cambie street called Pied à Terre with your business partner Chris Stewart. The model is to do what you did with Italian cooking at La Buca — but with French bistro food, right?
AD: Yes. We’ll have about 40 seats and no bar with beer and aperitifs, a small, contained wine list (carefully selected), and Parisian bistro cooking (not Provençal). It will be more of an urban-style bistro, offering a few different types of steaks, casseroles, coq au vin, daube of beef, classic fish like sole or trout, crispy roast chicken with rosemary, lamb shoulder with morel mushrooms and bacon, that sort of thing.
EAT: Let’s talk about sustainability. These issues have really dominated discussion and press coverage in the local food media over the last year. It’s become the “big story.” What’s the reality?
AD: Well, I can tell you what my reality is, as a chef and restaurateur. My drive is always towards quality and value. I’m not interested in a gimmick. I don’t need one. I’m certainly not deriding people who want to do good things for the planet, but a lot of what you see now, about saving the Earth, is a by-product of people’s gimmicks.
EAT: So it’s a sales pitch?
AD: It’s a sales pitch. That’s what I believe; that’s the reality for me. My sales pitch is about my product, about my value and about my quality. I was invited recently to submit recipes to a sustainable fish cookbook that the David Suzuki Foundation is putting out and I declined. Not because I don’t believe we 6should always have an eye towards sustainable fish stocks, but because at what point to you become beholden to people?
EAT: Is it a fad? Are we still going to be talking about it in five years?
AD: I think there will always be a part for sustainability to play. As a life principle, I think it’s quite an important thing, but I think a lot of it [with regard to restaurants] is a marketing ploy. Having said that, I’ve never bought a piece of farmed salmon, I’m not interested in Thai or Vietnamese farmed prawns. For me it’s not about marketing. if I have organic vegetables in my restaurant, which I do a lot, I don’t say it on the menu. They’re just good vegetables. “Organic” is a political rallying cry for some people. I think individuals should do research and make decisions based on their own values about what products to bring into their restaurants. I think too often the imperative is taken away from the people who should have it. At the end of the day, what we are running here is a business. This is an economic institution. It is not a educational institution or a political institution — it’s a viable economic business.
EAT: What about the idea of the “100 mile diet”
AD: It’s nonsense. Where are you going to get lemons? What kind of salt are you going to use? Where are you going to get rice from? What kind of wine are you going to drink? Are you going to have any green vegetables at all?
EAT: To be fair, I always saw the 100 mile menus as more of an exercise — something done in a spirit of fun to educate diners about precisely those issues — how much of what we eat on a regular basis comes from our backyard, and more importantly, how much doesn’t?
AD: You bring up an interesting point here — there are a couple of different kinds of diners. When I go out to dinner, it’s purely a visceral and hedonistic pleasure for me. The whole issue of dinner as education doesn’t exist for me. Or as political statement. The idea of having a plate of food put in front of you that you are supposed to analyze and pick apart and think about on an intellectual level– it doesn’t work for me. I guess that’s why I opt out of a lot of this stuff. I’m kind of interested in the whole Slow Food thing, but again it interests me because I like old-fashioned things, traditional things, regional things — I like them because they taste good. Where I part company with them is where they start writing manifestos. I’ve never been much of a joiner, or one for clubs, so once I see manifestos, I’m out.
EAT: So we over-intellectualize our food? Should we just let it be sensual?
AD: I think a lot of people who categorize themselves as “foodies” do. I think there are a lot of people who like to nitpick about stuff. At the end of the day the most enjoyable meals are the ones that you have with good food and good wine and good company, right? And while we’re on the subject, one thing I can’t bear is the whole concept of “virtual” things. When someone brings you an order of mussels and gets you to put headphones on so you can listen to the sound of the ocean? Not interested.
EAT: So do I already know what you’re going to say about molecular gastronomy? [laughs]
AD: No! New tools and techniques come along fairly regularly in the world of cuisine. Microwave ovens, food processors, stick blenders, induction cook tops — and I think when you start looking at this new wave of stuff that comes along, I think there are lots of things that are very useful. I use some new techniques to make my traditional food, like sous-vide. You can do some marvellous stuff with sous-vide. I think the problem with it at the moment is that many chefs don’t fully understand how to use it. If you really know how to use sous-vide properly, as a part of your cooking process, you can do fantastic things.
EAT: So science should be at the service of pleasure, always. Has molecular gastronomy been seized upon by the food intellectualizers?
AD: I think so. And kids. This whole fad for making caviar out of fruit with agar agar and making hot lozenges of gelatine that doesn’t melt in soup — this will go away. What will never go away is being able to roast a perfect chicken, or grill a really nice veal chop, or make a silky, perfect beurre blanc. In the history of people eating at restaurants — these are the things that people will come back for. I see a bunch of young guys who are enthralled by the novelty, the newness, and are determined to use these new techniques to make their mark, but at the end of the day “fruit apple caviar” is bullshit.
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Parkside, open for dinner Sunday through Thursday from 6 to 10 and Friday from 6 to 11, is located at 1906 Haro Street. Visit their website at parksiderestaurant.ca or call 604.683.6912 for current menus and further information.
La Buca, open for dinner Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 9:30 and 5 to 10 on Friday and Saturday, is located at 4025 MacDonald Street. Visit their website at labuca.ca or call 604.730.6988 for current menus and further information.
Pied à Terre is slated to open late summer 2007.
ed. note: It’s open.
