Interview with Plum's Charlie Parker

Jim Wilson/New York Times

Charlie Parker.

​Charlie Parker, who took over the kitchen at Daniel Patterson's Plum on Dec. 15, is a veteran of Manresa and Ubuntu who has also done a stage at Noma in Copenhagen. Before moving up to Oakland, he was the chef at Bonny Doon Vineyard's Cellar Door Café from April 2009 to October 2010. As I was finishing up my review of Plum, I called Parker for an interview. Apologies in advance for all the asides I inserted to define less-common terms.

SFoodie: So in the five or six weeks since you have arrived, how have you changed the menu? Going forward, what kinds of directions are you planning on taking the restaurant?

Parker: You know, the first couple of weeks, I was getting to know the place ― learning more about Daniel's cooking style and trying to use his dishes but change them to more my style. But I think we approach food in a very similar way, Daniel and I, using local, sustainable products, very seasonal. We make very fresh, light, palatable dishes and use a lot of vegetables. That's what I really like about his cooking, and what I respect about him as a chef. We're pretty much committed to using things that only come from Northern California.

Lara Hata

Plating the leeks with radishes and ash.

​Even with the existing dishes, are you redesigning the way they're plated?

Yeah. I use a lot of greens on my plates, a lot of them foraged like miner's lettuce and chickweed, and I use a lot of flowers: nasturtium petals, radish flowers, all sorts of broccoli flowers.

Is the plancha [ed note: the thick metal griddle that many of the dishes are cooked directly on] unique to Daniel's restaurants?

Yes. I was familiar with using a plancha for Manresa, but Daniel doesn't have one at Coi. I love it ― it's so great and efficient for how small the restaurant is. It helps us get plates out faster, and produces that great, smoky sear.

It seemed like you were prepping most of the ingredients either by blanching them or cooking them sous-vide, then searing them on the plancha to order. [Note to readers: sous-vide cooking involves sealing the ingredient, along with seasonings and perhaps a small amount of liquid, in a plastic bag, then slow-cooking that in an "immersion circulator," a controlled-temperature water bath. Sous-vide cooking doesn't just retain the flavor of the ingredients, it allows the cooks to get the precise temperature ― and thus texture ― they want in the finished product.]

Yeah. Due to the size of the kitchen, and the number of plates that people are ordering, we're doing a lot of sous-vide cooking of both vegetables and meat. We'll cook them with different seasonings. For example, right now, we have a bavette steak from Marin Sun Farms that we're cooking sous-vide in brown butter, beef suet, and juiced horseradish. We're cooking cauliflower in new olive oil, and endive with cara cara orange juice and fresh bay leaves.

With the beef cheek and oxtail burger, are you forming the patties with Activa (aka "meat glue")?

No. We're using beef tendon.

Really?

We're doing a red wine braise for the cheeks and oxtail, and we braise tendons with it. We do it for 12 hours, then pull out the tendon and puree it. Tendon works as a natural glue. Plus, the other meat around the bones [which is picked off] is a little gelatinous. So we mix everything together, roll it into logs, then slice off patties to serve.

In the New York Times profile of you when you were at the Cellar Door Café, I read about how you were having a lot of vegetables custom-grown. Are you planning on doing the same thing for Plum?

Yeah. I'm staying true to Dirty Girl [Produce]. They were a major source of produce for me down there, and so I'm still bringing a lot of produce up. Lindencroft Farms was a major provider for me at Cellar Door, but she was supplying Sean Baker at Gather, too, and Sean basically bought her away from me. And Freewheelin' Farm, the farm pictured in the Times story, right now they're between seasons. They grow the most beautiful lettuces right off Highway 1. The big farm that Daniel has been using is County Line [Harvest]. They have great products, so when I arrived I felt like I didn't miss a beat.

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