Restaurants | In-house Butchering...Haute Salt...Fresh Tofu

By Kate Krader

Chefs as Butchers Cory Schreiber says his sausages at Wildwood in Portland, Oregon, taste better now that he buys whole pigs and butchers them himself. At San Francisco's Incanto, Chris Cosentino purchases baby goats and lambs in addition to pigs; so do lots of other chefs including Peter Hoffman at Savoy in New York City, Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez at Harvest Vine in Seattle, Shea Gallante at Manhattan's Cru, and Chicago's Charlie Trotter.

Fresh-Ground Salt Waiters grate rocks of Japanese sea salt tableside at CityZen in Washington, D.C.; at the Restaurant at Domaine Chandon in Napa, servers shave Bolivian rock salt onto butter for bread. At Trio in Evanston, Illinois, there's now a flight of salts with accompaniments like hard-boiled eggs. In Manhattan, at Per Se, foie gras comes with a quartet of salts, while the new 28-seat Bar Tonno keeps 10 salts on the shelf.

Restaurant-Made Tofu Jer-Ne at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, California, cooks five kinds of tofu daily; Manhattan's new EN makes it fresh every 90 minutes; at Philadelphia's Morimoto, tofu is prepared tableside. Tofu skins are a low-carb replacement for dumpling wrappers at New York City's upcoming Rickshaw.

Published January 2005