Joel Dennis
Photo: Courtesy of Adour
Chef Joel Dennis looked to the golden age of hotel dining while planning last month’s Vintage Dinner at New York City's Adour. The chef chatted with the Buzz about the event, expounding on the joys of aspic and the challenges of updating vintage recipes for today’s more health-minded diners.
Zagat Buzz: What inspired the menu?
Joel Dennis: We revisited turn-of-the-century New York hotel fine dining, something that people might have experienced at a grand social ball at the St. Regis. All the chefs were French at that time, classically trained and followed Auguste Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire, which was the French culinary reference point at that time. It was the cuisine of that period.
ZB: Were there any techniques you found helpful while preparing the dinner?
JD: I particularly enjoyed preparing the Russian aspic of sole fillets – you don’t see aspics anymore, as it is a very passé, time-consuming technique that has been lost through the culinary generations. Exposing my team to such techniques using modern day tools was quite fun. We took the fresh sole, filleted them and made a fresh mousse with the trim from the sole, folding in some lobster, coral and black truffle. We then rolled up the fillets in a pinwheel, poached them in consommé, sliced them very thinly and arranged them in a mold set in gelée.
Overall, we adapted the menu using today’s techniques, building on those techniques used in 19th-century kitchens. Roux was very big back then, and we made an effort to lighten the recipes, removing the flour component, making the food less rich. Once upon a time, people ate heartier fare to withstand the winter months as they didn’t have the same heating benefits we have with the push of button today.
ZB: Was there anything that people seemed particularly cautious about trying?
JD: Not really…During the dinner, I went out into the dining room to speak with some of the guests, who of course travel quite a bit and they just absolutely loved the evening. For them it was the nostalgia of the ‘50s and ‘60s.