BR's Buffalo Chef's Challenge: Chayote w/ North End
Placing in our Honorable Mention category is the North End Bistro located on Hertel. Formerly Little Talia's, the business changed hands and became the North End a number of years ago. More recently it was purchased by chef/owner Marc Marotta. The cuisine remains decidedly Italian, with a good mix of both classic dishes and a few originals developed and honed by the chef throughout his career. The most popular of these is the pasta with a banana pepper cream sauce. Everything here is homemade, “from dressing to dessert” according to Marotta. Additionally, I can personally attest to the undeniable friendliness of the staff.
Marotta's decision to participate in Buffalo Chef's Challenge: Chayote was a brave one in the sense that he had only been open for six short weeks when we approached him with the opportunity. As chef and owner, his day is already filled with a whirlwind of tasks and responsibilities, not to mention those incurred by a newly-acquired establishment.
Like most of our other competitors (Amaryllis, Left Bank, Mode, Sample, Shango and Torches), Marotta had never worked with chayote before. His entry was a dish featuring both a protein and a starch. The protein consisted of a marinated porterhouse steak with a very bright bourbon and brown sugar glaze. The “mystery ingredient” made its appearance in the dish's starch offering. Marotta felt that the chayote's potato-like texture made a good match with the sweet potato, so he prepared the chayote and the sweet potato similarly and combined them with a good dose of chipotle pepper. The meal, in its entirety, was spicy and flavorful.
Thank you to Marotta and the staff at North End for participating in our first Chef's Challenge.
North End Bistro, 1458 Hertel, 14216, 446.0025, call for hours
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dougk
would not have thought to combine potato and merliton, having worked new orleans kitchens, i've used it as a replacement for courgettes in ratatouille, i'll have to try
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porter
wow! - you speak french? you BR foodies amaze me every day. this thread makes me sick. it's so unfortunate (that almost) no one in this in entire city has any technique to back up any of their hot air. tell me where i can go and have a real meal!. WHAT - the left bank and a tlilapia stack -- are you kidding? HOW BOUT YOUR DARLING coda AND THEIR WONDERFUL BRUNCH...? -- SUX! on to the 5 or so steak houses that have opened in the last year ... have any of you ever eaten at peter lugers, and what is up with your disgusting wet aged beef (cryovacked in their own blood , yummmmm). how bout all the great new sushi popping up -- where do you source your fish from? - hayes or schnieder? NO ONE, I REPEAT, NO ONE besides Oliver's and the Rue Franklin have a clue about sourcing and producing quality food in "the city of Buffalo". You may kid yourself into believing Franks Sunny Italy is good italian food, but it could be the worst sunday dinner i've ever had in my life. Thank god mike is opening up a sushi hole - i wish it was gonna be in the city. yeah - i'm a hater, but at least i know what i hate!
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ChristaSeychew
Porter-
I'm sure Peter Luger's is thrilled to have such a well spoken person like yourself here as their champion.
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dougk
porter:
a piece of advice...be nice to your waitress; chances are she can kick the shit out of you
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porter
dougk:
be nice to the cook; he will kick the shit out of you
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dougk
i am the chef, call to visit me
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porter
where are you the chef? i will call, and may have visited already. why do you call yourself "the chef"? after many years and many restaurants all over this country i have never asked to be called, or claimed to be "the chef". it is such a loose term and is so easily taken by far too many hacks, shoemakers and shit-shovelers.
tell me what a "chef" is, please? not the chef de cuisine, or a chef de partie or kitchen manager -- "the chef".
are you an owner? do you have a dining room manager? do you have a beverage manager? do you carry a clipboard? do you cook anymore? are you still learning anything, or did you stop at chef? are people clawing their way into your kitchen to learn? do you do a line-up every day? do you send your cooks home early on slow nights and cover their positions? do you help your dishwasher(s)? do you look through the garbage every once in a while to see what's being thrown away? do you inspect plates coming back from the dinning room to see what was eaten, and more importantly what wasn't? do you command respect and expect excellence, or do you do the easy thing and try to be all of your employee's friends just to make things work more smoothly? do you taste a little bit of everything you (and your line cooks) plate, every time you plate it? do you scrub things when there's nothing else to do? of course your familiar with food cost? do you make sure the employee bathroom is up to code, when you always use the nice one in the dining room? are you always the hero? did you go to culinary school, was it worth it, what did you learn? what's the best way to clean up a huge oil spill? how do you make your stocks? do you make stocks? on and on and on and on, huh?
i dunno much, but these are things i think any chef can answer. i'd love to hear them and dine in your establishment if you can answer them thoughtfully.
much love to all of the cooks who had a busy saturday night. i hope y'all had a few beers and smiles after your shift. enjoy your memorial day, i hope you're all off sunday and monday.
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porter
by the way, what the hell is a chef doing posting stuff on this thread at 10:47 pm on a saturday night? you should have been scrubbing down the line and ordering if you weren't still putting food out, or sitting at the bar like a good chef does while the rest of the worker bees grind it out!
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spotswoc
Porter- Let's be honest and say that you dine in the likes of McDonald's, 7-Eleven Hot Dogs and the La Nova pizza served on Chippewa atfer a great night of drinking. You are so ugly that you remind me of the set of houses that align the street from which you chose your screenname. Yuck!
I would say that Porter is a pretty disenfranchised "chef", since he knows everything about fast food and is jealous of others who actually know their s?%*. Fine eating.....Get over yourself you prenetious s*!@! You're probably eating at Louie's Hot Dogs right now and calling it a delicacy...
You said it yourself you sad little phlegm, "You're a hater and you know you are" as you say. It's just a shame that your lack of intellect compares Swanson dinners to everything.
Puh-lease!? Do I hear Happy Meals in the distance you lame s&%#?
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spotswoc
And by the way Porter, why don't you take your little moped profile and take a scenic tour over the Niagara Falls? I heard it's pretty scenic.
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porter
spotwoc -
WTF are you talking about?
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porter
spotwoc -
WTF are you talking about?
BTW, I prefer Ted's hot dogs, but i do miss them being on PORTER.
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dougk
porter:
calling attention to interesting posting times, appears you overwhelmingly post in the wee hours...are you home alone again, after yet another unsuccessful night, and taking your failings out on others? by the way, sold my place in the mid-90's, where i was chef/owner, to concentrate on family, writing and teaching...good luck, look beyond your anger, perfect your poulet roti (yes, i speak french), finally, the people at the two-top may become your best friends before nights end (they're all not rubes from the suburbs)
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ChristaSeychew
It seems to me that most professional chefs/cooks have at least a basic grasp of the French nouns and verbs that relate directly to cookery. Especially someone with a Cajun/Creole background. I am not a chef, nor a French major, but do not find it at all absurd to use the word courgette or sundry other French terms. Certainly someone using Italian to describe techniques or ingredients would not be treated as though they were snobs unless they were overdoing the accent in order to call attention to themselves.
Can't we all just get along?
There's room for every kind of cuisine and dining atmosphere in Buffalo. I know many cooks that consider themselves chefs though they've had no professional training, and some extremely talented ones that blush at the thought. Good cooking, whether inventive or traditional, schooled or natural, is still good cooking.
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