A Restaurant, a Hotel and a Mad Gift Idea

Plus the simplest way to roast a chicken

This is an utterly mad suggestion, but perfect for the cook who has everything. It is a sea urchin opener; I bought mine a few years ago from Stephanie Mutz, the famous Santa Barbara diver who supplies superb sea urchins to chefs across the country. Her website is here.

And, of course, you’ll want to supply a few sea urchins as well. If you live on the West Coast you can purchase sea urchins directly from Stephanie, but the only online source I know for live sea urchins is Regalis. Even if you’re not in the market for sea urchins, Regalis offers an astonishing range of rare foodstuffs (fresh wasabi roots, wild specialty game flash frozen eels). Definitely worth a look.

I’m sorry to say I’ve never been to The Trellis, which opened in 1980, but I admire this menu tremendously. Straightforward, unfussy and utterly American, it’s an example of how seriously some chefs were thinking about local and seasonal ingredients in the early eighties.

This is the article that prompted Marcel Desaulniers to send me his menu. If I was surprised that a chef in Virginia was reading a review of a San Francisco restaurant, I shouldn’t have been; Masa Kobayashi was a star and every food person in the country was interested in him. (Tragically, he was murdered the following year.)

What I did not say in this review is that Masa’s was also important for another reason. In the eighties, when Bill Kimpton started his hotel empire, he offered small rooms at reasonable prices. What gave his hotels cachet was that each was anchored by a big-deal restaurant. (In 1989 he opened the Prescott Hotel with Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio in pride of place.) The idea first took off with Masa’s; the restaurant opened with a 6-month waiting list which made everyone take notice of Kimpton’s new Vintage Court Hotel.

Roast Chicken

Here’s the first thing you have to do: relax. And here’s the second: forget all the stupid advice that people give you. There’s so much nonsense out there it will make you crazy, make you scared and make you never want to roast a chicken again. Some people insist that you brine it, others want you to massage and baste it religiously with butter, truss it with twine, turn it every 10 minutes... Stop!

This is what I say: The only thing that really matters is the bird itself. Get a really great chicken and you almost can’t go wrong. Put it in the oven, take it out, let it rest. Eat it with great joy. End of story. 

That said, here are a few simple tips to make a good dinner better:

Let the chicken come to room temperature and pat it really dry, inside and out, before cooking. You want to roast your bird, not steam it, so your chicken needs to be as dry as possible. 

Remove all visible fat from the chicken, especially near the cavity. Roughly chop it up if it’s in big pieces. Carefully lift the skin away from the breast and shove the fat underneath, where it will baste the meat and keep it moist.

Put the chicken on a rack, so the heat can circulate around it.

Cook the chicken at high heat, which will make the chicken crisper.

Let the chicken rest, out of the oven, for at least 20 minutes before carving. This will make for a juicier bird, because the flesh will relax and reabsorb all the juices which would otherwise be lost in cutting. 

Roast Chicken

a 3 to 4 pound, free-range organic chicken
6 to 8 smallish waxy potatoes (Yukon Golds), peeled and quartered
1 onion, cut in eighths
4 whole unpeeled cloves of garlic
olive oil or butter

Remove the chicken from the refrigerator an hour before cooking. Wash and dry the chicken very well. Dry it again. Rub it inside and out with salt. 

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Remove all visible fat from the chicken, and with your fingers gently pry up the skin from the breast and stuff the fat as far under the breast skin as possible, without tearing the skin. Rub the chicken with olive oil or softened butter

Pour a bit of olive oil into a large roasting pan. Toss the potatoes and onions in the oil, so that they are covered on all sides, and then spread into a single layer in the pan. Toss in the garlic cloves. Season with salt and pepper.

Position a rack over the vegetables and set the chicken, breast side up, on the rack and put it in the hot oven. Roast for about 50 minutes, or until the chicken is golden, the leg joint moves easily when you tweak it, and the juices run clear.

Allow to rest for 20 minutes before carving and serving. This will feed 3 hungry people, or 4 of more modest appetites.

Click HERE for a printable recipe