Elijah Safford / ACEQ
“Flavortown,” says Elijah Safford, the 22-year-old head chef/owner of Aceq Restaurant in Arroyo Seco. Yeah, you read that right. Flavortown — a mixture of dried herbs and spices (Chimayo chile, for example, amongst other shush-shush ingredients) that’s like a Louisiana-inspired Cajun blackened seasoning. An umami-vibe base, if you will, the title calling to celebrity chef Guy Fieri’s declaration of yumminess on his Food Network TV shows. The stuff goes on chicken, fish and even truffle fries, which are all shoestring-cut zest and zing and paired with sweet onion dipping sauce.
The seasoning was created the way most menu items in the Aceq kitchen are whipped up — in the spirit of play and excitement. “I like to keep people on their toes,” says Safford, who’s quick to admit he’s not professionally trained, which lends to his signature “cool new weird shit” modern-American style. The Taos-native compares himself to mixed martial artist, Conor McGregor, saying, “You never know which hand he’s going to punch with. I’m unorthodox, but it opens people’s eyes to the infinite experiment of cooking.”
Experiments: Combining New Mexican posole with duck. Packing creamy polenta with green chile and cheese. Or the wild-blender taste test of vegan shishito pepper mousse thickened with tofu, which is served with tempura-fried avocado, eggplant and tofu. Safford tries not to get too abstract with his plated amalgamations. He changes up the menu often so folks don’t get too comfortable, their palates bored and unquestioning.
“Cooking is a direct representation of love,” Safford says. Especially when it’s all from scratch (chopping heirloom tomato after heirloom tomato versus pulling from a can). To Safford, all that time and energy is the real secret ingredient.
Marshall Thompson / Donabe Asian Kitchen
“There’s no one simple bullet point for everything as far as the unique flavors that I create,” says Marshall Thompson, the head chef at Donabe Asian Kitchen. “We’re talking 28 years in this business that’ve helped me carve out my own special take.”
Thompson, from Providence, Rhode Island, went from 18-year-old dishwasher to line cook and on to famous culinary school, Johnson & Wales, to whipping up curry-and-coconut inspired French toast at Julian’s restaurant (in Providence), to opening up an Asian food cart in the John Dunn shopping center, to eating his way through every place he’s traveled to. He says it all goes into the mixing pot of inspiration.
The third generation restaurateur (his grandma with her own spot and his dad in hospitality) compares cooking to music: it’s all already been done before. He’s quick to joke that he obviously didn’t invent pho. Or the clay pots utilized in Japanese cooking that the restaurant is named after and that keep flavors banging with each bite. Part of his spin settles on sourcing local ingredients. For example, fresh herbs and vegetables like cilantro and carrots and squash from Umami Gardens in Ranchos, or the tender wagyu beef from Jason at Taos Wagyu, which is used in the tournedos served with a blood orange glaze. The restaurant makes their own ramen.
Marshall started tinkering with food when he was young, because mom’s boiled squash would come out as mush, and dad’s specialty was Kraft Mac and cheese with store-canned pickled beets and a grilled hot dog. (Marshall admits this is actually still a favorite meal of his.) “In college and poor, I’d torture my roommates with outrageous concoctions,” says the now-45-year-old. “Apples, lentils and mustard. Let’s mix it all together! Hey… it works.”
Robert Krause / The Burger Stand at Taos Ale House
For The Burger Stand at Taos Ale House’s chef, Robert Krause, what makes a meal go from tasting good to “mysteriously delicious” is the balance between acidic and sweet. The way a few drops of vinegar or lemon can brighten the flavor in a salad dressing. “If the fire jam on the Fire Burger didn’t have acid in it, it’d end up tasting hot only. It’s not the heat that I crave. It’s the complexity,” says Krause, who goes on to explain how the avocado on that burger adds a meaty textural cool down to the overall flavor.
This understanding comes innately to Krause, who grew up in northern Montana the adopted son of a missionary family who, he says, wouldn’t let the boys in the kitchen, cooking off-limits. “Either you had a great garden and canned everything or you’d go hungry in the winter,” says Krause, whose interest in cuisine amped up at 18 while working in a restaurant in the Bay Area. He then went to The Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York before continuing work in fine dining.
The mysterious deliciousness abounds in the scratch-made condiments that pair with the cooked-to-order top-cut-angus burgers on Chocolate Maven (out of Santa Fe) buns and the baskets of fries: duck-fat, parmesan truffle, red chile Tajin, to name a few. Sauces that are so good that they need to be capitalized. AVOCADO RANCH. BLOODY MARIA BBQ. TOASTED MARSHMALLO, which is creamy and sweet — the marshmallows torched until crispy caramel brown and mixed with marshmallow fluff (it’s real) and a bit of milk — and pairs a hundo percent with the sweet potato fries.
Soon, the restaurant will refine the menu, which adds to the long list of to-do’s in Krause’s — who wrote “The Cook’s Book of Intense Flavors” — busy world. Opening a pizza joint in the Ski Valley. Finding more hands to help in both the Taos and Santa Fe Burger Stand locations.
Until then all remains spicy, sweet, acidic and super saucy.
What's your secret ingredient? | Dining Out | taosnews.com - taosnews
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