Nailing Down an Upstate Cuisine

Some cuisines are forged through the fire of time, and have deep cultural histories. Europe is old. Asia is older. And experiencing these foods in their native lands is perhaps the best reason for international travel that I can imagine.

America is much, much younger. However, that is not to say we are without our regional cuisines pegged to history. Southern food may put you in a diabetic coma, but it’s marvelous. Other regional American cuisines have ties to long established immigrant communities, like the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Regional cuisines, don’t appear overnight. As much as I might wish the Upstate New York had a regional cuisine all its own, it cannot be willed into existence. But there can be small events that light a spark, which then inspire others to fan the flames, and eventually, over time, grow into the creative fire of a new cuisine.

Jeremiah Tower is widely credited with creating the spark that would become California Cuisine at Chez Panisse back in 1976 with a single dinner. It was a celebration of local ingredients, simply prepared, and paired with regional wines.

Let’s look at that original menu, and then we’ll see what local chefs from around the region have put together when asked, “What would an Upstate New York Regional Dinner menu look like?”

Back in the day, this menu cost $20 and the wine pairing was $7.50. Just using a basic inflation calculator, that would translate into $85 and $32 respectively. My understanding is that the wine was quite a bargain for the bottles being poured, and in fact, that was a large part of the draw for chef Jeremiah’s dinners.

You may notice that while this menu may have been the launch pad of California Cuisine, it does not include what may have turned out to be the most iconic dishes of the form. There is no baked goat cheese salad. There is no wood fired pizza.

I suppose you could even argue that there is nothing about this menu that is uniquely Californian per se. Sure, everything comes from California sources, but the vast majority of ingredients could be found up along the Pacific Coast (except for of course the wines). And while the kitchen at Chez Panisse was focused on French techniques, there are also Italian flavors woven into this menu, most notably in the cheese course. Vela Dry Jack was created as a Parm-Reg substitute during World War Two, and Zinfandel was pioneered by Italian winemakers and deeply connected to Primitivo.

So riffing off this menu as a starting point, here is what chef Brian Bowden put together.

There are culinary themes in Brian’s menu that we see in other chefs’ visions of an Upstate New York cuisine. That’s a good thing. The presence of rabbit, duck, and venison, all acknowledge our position amidst the mountains and rivers of Northeast Appalachia. Apples, maple, winter squash, and mustard are also well understood elements that comprise the flavors of the region.

When looking at the dishes a little closer, they are largely a blend of Italian and French influences. It may be a bit of a stretch, but Albany county was originally settled by the French. And it should be quite clear to even a casual observer, how dominant Italian food is in the culture of the region today.

Chef Rob Handel from Heather Ridge Farm took a more focused approach and came back with a menu entitled, Late Summer in The Catskills.

Rob actually cooks like this all the time. It’s part of the challenge of being the chef on a farm. In his menu, we see trout from our rivers, and cheese from one of Upstate New York’s great producers. I’m particularly entranced by his sorrel and sumac chimichurri, which is a very clever way of bringing together these wild ingredients. And the fact he uses the almond flavored peach seed kernels in the ice cream that adorns the peaches, and then pairs it with an almond shortbread, just fills me with joy.

With chef Rob’s creative style, it’s hard to pin down a descriptor for this menu. What this menu has is a definitive, and explicit, sense of place. That place is The Catskills. But more than anything else, I would call his cooking, resourceful. And resourcefulness has Upstate New York written all over it.

The chefs over at Dali Mamma in Albany had a lot of fun with this project. They put together almost an entirely vegetarian menu highlighting one iconic Upstate New York vegetable: the humble beet.

There is a lot of love for local producers in the seven dishes of this menu, including Meadowbrook dairy, R&G cheesemakers, Albany Distilling Co., Saratoga Water, Nine Pin Cider, Argyle Cheese Farmer, and more. Then there are all the local farms used in every single dish.

Remember, the idea here is not to present Upstate New York Cuisine for what it is. Because as of now, it doesn’t really exist. Rather, this was a thought exercise to express a vision of what the could be. There are four more menus that try to answer this very same question over at All Over Albany, along with more commentary on the common threads that tie everything together.

One additional chef is actually cooking an Upstate New York Regional Dinner this weekend, and he promised to send me pictures for a follow up post next week. I’ve also agreed to post any further menus that chefs may create inspired by this idea, on the FLB.

Taken as a whole, these menus start to paint a picture. Perhaps even more important than the menus will be people’s reactions to them, and where things go from here. But what’s extraordinarily encouraging is the enthusiasm for this project among the chefs who I asked to participate.

Thanks to all of them for putting thought behind this. I think we’ve definitely achieved a spark. Now the next step is to see if we can fan the flames.