27. Hawthorne Lane
Frbruary 2002 - May 2003
Hawthorne Lane.... this is indeed very special restaurant in my career. The owner chef was David Gingrass and the executive chef was Bridget Batson at the time. Chef Gingrass used to work Spago and Postrio, so the cusine was kind of California Fusion style. The restaurant is unfortuantely closed the door and the space is recently took over by Benu restaurant.
I never been to culinary school in my entire career and just learned everything in the kitchen alone. Before this job I had 2.5yrs culinary expereiences. And I would say this was the restaurant where I made my solid culinary foundations from blanching veges to cooking meat. Also I've learned how to run the staitons, cut time loss, work efficient, orgnize multi pick-up, work clean, communicate with other stations... just everything what all chefs & cooks must know in practical manner. I spent about 16months in this kitchen and it is the longest restaurant I ever worked so far!
The busy night service at Hawthorne Lane was over 300 covers. Now I much prefer doing smaller covers, say max 150 covers. But I think if learning how to work in the kitchen, it's better working over 200 covers. 300 a la carte and 70 degustations are not comaprable, but learning with bigger covers and refining perfomances more sophisticated is making more senses to learn in my opinion.
Hawhorne Lane had weekly change prix fixe menu, it was 3 courses with choices for 30 bucks! It was total steal. Ant this weekly change is perfect for me to learn seasonal flavor combinations. The pics showing above are the weekly change menus from back in day 8 yrs ago!! Yes, I collected those menus every week and saved in my secret culinary treasure box in Japan!
All the menus were really seasonal and changed often. Everything was house made such as smoked salmon, peking duck, chorizo, pastas, cannelloni... On the menu there're certain items always on the menu, such as fillet, sauted foie gras and rissoto, but every months the garnishes were changed. I can remember many menus from the past...
asparagus x bacon x garlic x frisse x sundried tomato
artichoke x ricotta x olives x lamb x red wine
treviso x basamic x egg
duck x mango x mizuna x scallion bun
smoke salmon x brioche x quail egg x dill x cream frache
scallop x califlower x brown butter x caper
butter lettuce x buttermilk x grapefruit x pecan
endive x orange x walnuts x blue cheese...
Name some, there're so many flavor profiles I've learned in this kitchen. I just recently moved to San Francisco and hope I do see some people from HL for reunion! They sure be surprised the youngest one became 32...... well, I look completely same but black hair though..
Thanks list:
Chef David, Bridget, Alexa, Ignacio, Erin, Dan, Eric, Marika, Scott, Crissy, Jeremy, Dario, Daniel, Jennifer, Jennifer, Alex, Max, Brian, Sarah, Tri, Josh, Maggie, Terrence.... and someone I momentally forget!