Healthy foods diners will actually crave

Part of a series of reports about food trends in the USA

Dr. David Eisenberg is teaching a group of medical specialists in a kitchen at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Napa Valley, California this weekend.

Its the 10th meeting of the Healthy Kitchens/Healthy Lives conferencea joint project of the CIA, Harvard School of Public Health and Samueli Institute, a non-profit investigating healing. The conference brings doctors, registered dietitians and nutritionists, educators, sustainability experts and healthcare professionals together with chefs, such as Mollie Katzen and Michelin-starred Suvir Saran.

Dr. Eisenberg co-founded the program as “a place where nutrition scientists could teach medical providers what they need to know about which foods we should eat more of, or less of, and why,” he said. “And, based on scientific evidence, chefs [translate] that into demonstrations on how to prepare healthy, delicious, affordable, easy-to-make dishes.” For him, the continuity between food and medicine is obvious and practical. “It is not my view that the right question is ‘How do we replace drugs with foods?’ The premise of this conference is ‘How do we help people move in the direction of a healthier lifestyle and diet, to prevent illness or manage illness that’s already occurred?'”

Though connecting food and health has a long history, this collaboration between doctors and chefs represents a newer approach—studying and sharing how certain foods can prevent diseases or help manage them. In May, the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane University will debut the nation’s first teaching kitchen affiliated with a medical school. Located in New Orleans, it will be a place for students, doctors, chefs and the local community to investigate the role food can play in managing obesity and related diseases.

The Goldring Center’s Executive Director and Assistant Dean for Clinical Services, Timothy Harlan, is both a chef and a doctor, having owned restaurants before attending medical school. He said the program’s goal is to school doctors-in-training in “some very simple techniques they can use to change the dialogue with their patients, change the way their patients think about food and nutrition.” Classes integrate nutrition with biochemistry, physiology and anatomy. The program also encompasses a food-research branch and has licensed its curriculum to two other medical schools. Dr. Harlan added, “Make no mistake, I am an allopathic physician. I do not believe in anything other than evidence-based medicine. As an internist, I prescribe statins and beta-blockers and ACE inhibitors and aspirin. I believe in them and they have a role. Diet alone is very good. Medication alone is very good. But diet plus medication is synergistic. It’s another tool in the box that physicians should have available to them.”

Both the Harvard/CIA partnership and the Goldring Center’s programming rely heavily on the principles of the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, healthy fats, certain fish and a minimal quantity of good-quality meat and cultured dairy. The results of a recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health and Cambridge Health Alliance link the diet with lower risk of heart disease. A previous study, published by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, shows that the Mediterranean diet is linked with lower risk of obesity, diabetes and cancer.

The chefs involved are eager to demonstrate that eating for wellness needn’t mean dull “health food.” David Bouley, for one, grew up in a French family “where the pantry and medicine cabinet always seemed to overlap,” he said. He recently opened Bouley Botanical, an event space and “living pantry” growing 400 plant species to provision Mr. Bouley’s Manhattan restaurants.

Plants growing by the window at Bouley Botanical Danny Kim for The Wall Street Journal
A continuing interest in the healing properties of food had caused Mr. Bouley to seek the advice of nutritionists in the past. “All they ever told me was what not to put in food,” Mr. Bouley said. “They never told me what I should cook.” It wasn’t until he began to collaborate with a medical doctor, Mark Hyman, that the chef found what he was looking for.

During last fall’s New York City Wine & Food Festival, Dr. Hyman, author of “The Blood Sugar Solution” (Little, Brown), teamed up with Mr. Bouley for a dinner called “The Chef and the Doctor.” Over the meal, the two discussed the healing properties of ingredients such as mushrooms (full of polysaccharides, said to battle tumors) and sardines (omega-3s, believed to protect against heart disease and stroke). Some dishes they collaborated on—a creamy almond soup sharpened by glazed scallions; wild mushrooms with white truffle, sweet garlic, grilled toro and coconut foam—are now staples on the menu at Bouley restaurant.

“ ‘All they ever told me was what not to put in food. They never told me what I should cook.’ ”

Another high-profile New York chef, Seamus Mullen, has been working in an idiom he calls “Hero Food,” in a cookbook of the same name and at his acclaimed restaurant Tertulia. Mr. Mullen has seen for himself what diet can do: According to his doctor, Frank Lipman, he has reversed the effects of rheumatoid arthritis by eating the right foods. Mr. Mullen’s pain was debilitating; he endured multiple hospitalizations. “I knew there was a direct correlation between food and my body’s ability to deal with inflammation,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure how to put that into practice.” It took months, but when Mr. Mullen woke up one morning last May without chronic pain, his life changed. He started cycling again (he was once semi-pro). Last October, he said, for the first time his blood-test results showed no sign of rheumatoid arthritis.

Mr. Mullen believes eliminating gluten was a major factor, in addition to sticking to “hero foods” like leafy greens, grass-fed meat and eggs. (For more on the benefits associated with these foods, see “Culinary Rx.”) “The fundamental part of the equation is that it needs to be delicious, that the ingredients are well sourced,” he said. “I take it one step further by increasing the good fats and cutting back on some of the carbohydrates and sugar.” Take a recipe from Mr. Mullen’s book, tosta matrimonio: grilled flatbread topped with tomatoes and anchovies, their briny tang tempered by fresh ricotta and a drizzle of saba, a naturally sweet grape-juice reduction. The dish packs a big dose of heart-disease-fighting omega-3s from the fish; cancer-battling folate and sulfur from garlic; and anti-inflammatory olive oil. Mr. Mullen hopes to collaborate further with Dr. Lipman on a restaurant concept.

Beyond the rise in, and growing concern about, rates of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, the conversation around the Affordable Care Act is shaping thinking about food as prevention. “It’s pretty clear that if we can reduce the burden of disease, we can reduce the burden of the cost of disease,” said Dr. Harlan of the Goldring Center. “Farm before pharm” is the mantra of a number of programs designed to provide assistance to children at risk of developing diet-related diseases. In this vein, Wholesome Wave, a non-profit whose mission is to make locally grown produce available to people at all income levels, launched its Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program (FVRx) in 2010.

Now available in six states, FVRx prescriptions are dispensed by primary care providers and redeemed at farmers’ markets. According to a 2012 study by the program’s healthcare partners, 37.8% of participants decreased their BMI (body mass index, a weight-to-height calculation used to predict health problems) over one year. Wholesome Wave President and CEO Michel Nischan—a chef, restaurateur and cookbook author—points to affordable local food access as a platform for policy change. “If large employers could see an investment in providing minimum-wage employees a connection with a company doctor and an opportunity to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, their premiums are going to go down pretty significantly on the back end,” he said.

It is the goal of Mr. Nischan and other chefs collaborating with doctors and farmers to advocate for the role that nutrition can play in overall wellness by gathering and offering up data that supports their claims. Encouraging people to eat more of these foods—by showing how delicious they can be—is the first step.

Advice on running a gastropub

White Eagle chef

Businessman John Timpson, owner of Timpsons the repair retailer, also has a pub – here he talks about business at the White Eagle.

Most people think they know how to run a pub, but it’s not that easy. All the derelict ones sadly displaying a “For Sale” sign should tell you something.

But don’t be deceived.

The great British pub isn’t dead. It has changed. Your dream rural pub is now unlikely to survive without good food. Many well–run gastro pubs that cater for families are already fully booked for Mothering Sunday.

Like most new publicans, we were pretty naïve. The White Eagle was acquired on a whim.

When we bought a holiday home on Anglesey, Alex, who hates cooking, couldn’t find a good restaurant, so her solution was to buy the White Eagle. She said: “It will be a lot of fun.”

We passed the licensees’ course, but still had a lot to learn. When we bought it, the White Eagle wasn’t busy (the only stock we could find in the kitchen was two fish fingers and a limp lettuce) so our first objective was to get a few more customers. We got busier, but soon found you can have a busy pub that makes no money.

No one told us how difficult it is to find a good, honest, loyal chef with a placid nature. We quickly had to discover how to cope with long hours and short–tempered customers. We had to find out about stock levels, waste, margin and wage percentages.

We would never have succeeded without lots of help, in particular from Stuart and Kirsty, who managed the White Eagle for our first three years, Adrienne, who is in charge today, and Roger, our executive chef who is not only placid, patient and loyal, but also now teaches young people how to make cooking a career.

Before you sign up for life behind the bar, beware of the pitfalls and be clear what sort of pub you want. It isn’t enough for the pub to be a pretty building, you also must provide a square meal and a warm welcome.

For me, the best part of buying the White Eagle was the market research. We went around Rutland, Leicestershire, Cheshire and the Cotswolds sampling pubs, pinching ideas and collecting menus. We took Stuart and Kirsty back to the places we liked best, together with Rupert, who did the decor. They did the rest, helped by Woody and Gary, friends who had run a few pubs of their own.

If you are lucky enough to build such a loyal team and get a good reputation, you can start having fun enjoying your success.

Gordon Ramsay edged out at Claridges

Simon Rogan is not the Claridge’s type. His casual manner and blunt style might be reminiscent of Ramsay, though without the four-letter words, but he never aspired to be head chef at the posh London hotel.

Known for his two-Michelin-starred L’Enclume in the Lake District, in mid-April he moves to the role occupied Gordon Ramsay for over a decade, though possibly without the permanent suite which Ramsay was said to make use of frequently. The hotel decided not to renew his contract when it expired last year—and redesign the space, but also seek to change the restaurant’s atmosphere. Instead of traditional fare, Rogan’s new eatery will feature local, organic ingredients, sustainable cutlery and health-conscious food options like gluten-free bread. Service will be less formal. “It’s not there for people with bags of money or people who want to be seen,” he says.

Rogan’s populist turn is odd as Claridge’s is top drawer.

In Cumbria, Rogan serves only local British ingredients, such as the herbs sweet cicely and good king Henry. He refuses to use even lemon, instead replacing the non-native citrus with vinegars made in his on-site research lab. At Claridge’s, he will compose English ingredients in new ways, serving dishes like “grilled salad” smoked over embers with Isle of Mull cheese; Hogweed shoots with “smoked yolk” and juniper cream; and dishes topped with apple and violet flowers.

Part Wylie Dufresne and part Willy Wonka, Rogan wants to give diners a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes. As at L’Enclume—where there is no wall or door between dining room and kitchen—guests will be able to tour the kitchen.

As a self-declared “southern lad” from Southampton, England, Rogan says he never intended to plant roots in the north. Now, he has a mini empire there, with two restaurants near his L’Enclume flagship as well as two others in Manchester called the French and Mr. Cooper’s House & Garden. He grew up watching his father work in the wholesale fruit markets serving freight and cruise ships, which brought in produce from around the world. His father would bring home exotic offerings—star fruit, kiwis—that weren’t available in grocery stores at the time. Still, no one in the family knew what to do with them, and they would be left in the refrigerator for Rogan to ponder. “I just didn’t want to see them go in the bin,” he says. That curiosity, paired with a crush on his home economics teacher—”there was a higher percentage of boys in the home economics class than normal”—kept him drawn to the kitchen.

At age 14, he took a job at an upscale Greek restaurant on nights and weekends, mostly so he could afford to buy clothes and records by bands like The Clash and Echo and the Bunnymen. “It was 24 pounds a week, which was an absolute fortune,” he remembers. “I was probably the highest-paid person in my year.” Rather than attending university, Rogan enrolled part time at Southampton Technical College, where he took cooking courses. “I suppose at the time it was more the money I liked rather than the cooking,” he says. Afterward, he worked at a hotel kitchen in New Forest and then for a series of restaurants in the south, where he was an apprentice for high-profile chefs such as Marco Pierre White and John Burton–Race. He later spent two years at the three-Michelin-starred Lucas Carton restaurant in Paris.

Rogan opened L’Enclume in 2002 in part by default. He had wanted to open a restaurant closer to Southampton, but after a recruitment consultant contacted him about the Cartmel property and offered its lease at a discount, he agreed to relocate. But a year before he and his business partner, Penny Tapsell (who is also his romantic partner and the mother of his son), arrived, foot and mouth disease broke out, adding gravity to the already gray atmosphere. “It’s quite desolate up there and sometimes quite bleak,” says Rogan. For the first few months, he says, “We were asking, ‘What have we done?’ ”

Rogan soon realized that the ingredients and flavors that came out of the land up north were unlike those in any other place he’d worked. He eventually decided to eliminate all foreign goods from his menu and focus on purifying each ingredient by bringing out its essence. Before, he says, “I was a chef full of testosterone: I wanted to cook what I wanted to cook, not what my customers wanted to eat,” he remembers. “That’s a stage most chefs go through at some point in their career, but you come full circle and you become more of a businessman and more mature.”

Rogan is well aware that when it opens in April, all eyes will be on the restaurant; and he expects they’ll see a striking contrast to what was there before. “I remember walking into the kitchen here for the first time and thinking it’s very oppressive, very traditional,” he says. When he saw the first rendering of his own space, he recalls, “It was quite an emotional moment for me—I got quite a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.”

Please tell us your experiences working for East Coast Trains

NOT long ago, dinner on a train was an event.

In a dining car with white tablecloths you could eat hearty fare served by jolly staff while the world whizzed by at 70 miles an hour. It didn’t matter whether you were travelling first or standard class, everyone was welcome and it cost around £20 for three courses. There was soup, steak and school pudding or a generous plate of cheese and biscuits.
That was then. Now we have East Coast Trains. Continue reading →

Cathal Armstrong

Born into a family with a passion for food and travel, Cathal Armstrong grew up in Dublin, Ireland, where he spent his days in the family’s fruit and vegetable garden. Through the Armstrong family’s travel business, young Cathal was exposed to different cultures and cuisines throughout Europe.

At the age of seven, Armstrong began an annual summer student exchange with a French family. These summers were spent amidst truffle farms, peasant food, and local vineyards. The chef developed strong values for fresh ingredients, humane animal care, and concern for the land.

After working in various Irish kitchens, Armstrong met his wife and business partner, Meshelle. The two moved to Virginia to create Restaurant Eve, where the farmland and atmosphere would be similar to “home.” The goal at Eve is to create straightforward, ingredient-based food.

In 2006, the Armstrongs, with their business partners, opened Eamonn’s: A Dublin Chipper, which is, naturally, a fish-and-chips shop, as well as PX, the hip speakeasy lounge upstairs. Most recently, Cathal and Meshelle restored The Majestic in Old Town Alexandria, featuring Virginia-inspired fare.

Armstrong was a James Beard Foundation Best Mid-Atlantic Chef nominee in 2007 and 2008. He was also honored as one of “10 Best New Chefs” by Food & Wine magazine and StarChefs Rising Star in 2006.

Fun Fact: Cathal can speak four languages: English, French, Spanish, and Irish.

Recipes:

Bouillabaisse

Carbonara

Pure Irish Kerrygold Butter Poached Maine Lobster with Baby Carrots

Harpal Singh Sokhi

A fusion of Indian food with international cuisine is what made chef Harpal Singh Sokhi a name to reckon with. Hailing from North India, Chef Harpal is a music lover and is fluent in English and five Indian languages – Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya and Telugu. A graduate from the catering school at Bhubaneshwar, he spent his initial years learning different international cuisines, but later realized that his interest lay in unearthing the authentic regional Indian food.

Pursuing this goal Chef Harpal mastered the art of Indian food and created a niche for himself by learning authentic Hyderabadi food under Ustad Habib Pasha. Begum Mumtaz Khan, an authority in Hyderabadi cuisine, further helped him in enhancing his knowledge.

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