It’s 8:15 on a cold January night, and Minneapolis chef Erik Anderson is standing in a SoHo restaurant kitchen lab, briskly whisking a goat butter and truffle porridge. This is his opening night of sorts, a chance to cook his food his way for 20 New York foodies. “Cooking in New York isn’t the pressure,” he quips. “Cooking in a kitchen I’ve never worked in before — that’s the pressure.”
It’s all part of an innovative idea called Chefs Club by the folks behind Food & Wine magazine. They bring in the world’s top talent to prepare their favorite dishes for a limited run. It’s like being a New York chef without all the New York hassles. “The format is there is no format,” says President Stephane De Baets. “I give them the key to the restaurant and leave them to wow me.”
Wowing diners is what Anderson has been doing for years. The Chicago area native trained at Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry in Yountville, California, before heading to Minneapolis to work at Auriga then as chef de cuisine at Sea Change. He later moved to Nashville, where his eclectic yet classical cooking style at The Catbird Seat earned him a best new chef nod from Food & Wine in 2012. He’s since returned to Minnesota and is set to open his dream restaurant, Brut, this year. “I’ve tried, but it’s just not possible for me to live outside the Midwest,” he confesses.
But on this night, it’s all about New York. The white-truffle porridge is ready to serve. Next comes a sunny yellow tart made of matsutake mushrooms, rich egg yolk and nasturtium. This is followed by walleye with roasted chicken-skin bouillon alongside roasted squab flavored with cranberry, chestnut and juniper. And then there’s the final dessert flourish: delicate, hay-scented custard with barrel-aged maple syrup served in a tawny eggshell.
“When they asked me to do this, I was feeling out of ideas — kind of like writer’s block,” Anderson recalls. “But then I went up on the roof of our place in Minneapolis and started thinking about it, and slowly, it fell into place.”
Cooking has always been a part of the family ethos. Anderson’s father was a sous-chef at The Drake Hotel in Chicago. His family owned the Village Restaurant in North Aurora, Illinois, where the future chef worked as a dishwasher and saw firsthand the grit it takes to run an eating establishment. Cooking is a way of life, not just a job.
And on this night, cooking is a performance, too. Guests are seated at communal tables just feet away, watching Anderson create and plate every course. It’s like dining with the chef in his home kitchen as he concocts experimental dishes on the spot — intimate and interactive.
Satiated with food and wine, the diners have become fast friends, hugging and posing for pictures. One by one, they file past the kitchen lab to offer their appreciation. “Really outstanding tonight,” says one. “Now that was a meal,” says another. From behind the stove, Anderson seems pleased with the reviews. And then, with a Minnesota twinkle, he teases, “Really? Do you mean it?”
