Chef Suzanne Goin: Market-to-Table Sunday Suppers

If you ever decide to check out the cel­e­brated Sunday Supper at her Lucques restau­rant, you’ll find out where it all began and why it’s really about ingre­di­ent taste.

Finding Lucques may be a bit difficult—the sign over the door of the single-story build­ing is mostly hid­den in crawl­ing ivy. Driving slowly down fash­ion­able Melrose Avenue, it is much eas­ier to find the sign for the restaurant’s valet park­ing, which in this neigh­bor­hood you’re likely to need, as there is lit­tle street park­ing to be found anywhere.

Once you’ve taken care of your vehi­cle, you’ll then wan­der into the restau­rant and real­ize that find­ing it doesn’t seem a prob­lem for the near-capacity crowd of qui­etly talk­ing, eager patrons pre­vi­ously seated. It’s very comfortable—the inte­rior done up in brick and wood beams with a cozy fire­place; and from the front you can also see an enclosed patio, with white-clothed tables set among live trees. Already you feel quite invited and relaxed.

Let’s hope you’ve made reservations—you’ll be need­ing those; but we’ll assume that you have, and you’re then shown to your table. Like any other restau­rant, you’ll notice that there is a menu laid out for your exam­i­na­tion. If you’re not informed, your first sur­prise will come at this juncture—for this Sunday Supper menu offers lit­tle selec­tion. In fact, the only selec­tion is for the main course, and even that is lim­ited to a choice of either a beef or a fish entrée. However, these—plus the appe­tizer and dessert courses—are strictly at the dis­cre­tion of the chef.

You look around anew, real­iz­ing that all these peo­ple have shown up sim­ply and only to find out what Chef Suzanne Goin will be offer­ing on this day. If you hap­pen to inquire, you’ll dis­cover that there are cus­tomers who have been doing exactly this for the over ten years that the restau­rant has been in operation.

“When we first opened, peo­ple weren’t quite sure about hav­ing only a chef’s choice for Sunday Suppers,” Suzanne Goin laugh­ingly told Organic Connections. “They won­dered if we would be serv­ing them left­overs or some such. Then we got a great review, and sud­denly peo­ple were real­iz­ing, ‘Oh, this is a good thing, then!’ We’ve been doing it ever since.”

The Not-So-Secret Secret

Every chef has a secret—or secrets—to what they do, a par­tic­u­lar way of cook­ing or fla­vor­ing or prepar­ing that makes them unique and keeps peo­ple com­ing back. Suzanne cer­tainly has all this—but she’s got some­thing else as well, some­thing she has really made no secret of, and it’s def­i­nitely been a key to her suc­cess. If you watch patrons eat­ing at Lucques, you’ll notice many looks of sur­prised and pleas­ant won­der as they take their first bites, espe­cially if they’ve never been here before. Although they might be eat­ing some­thing that looks familiar—such as smoked salmon on a bed of soft lettuces—the let­tuces have sure never tasted like this, with each indi­vid­ual kind hav­ing its own dis­tinct essence and aroma; nei­ther has the smoked salmon. Everything is burst­ing with fla­vor like you always imag­ined it should but it cer­tainly never has. What is the difference?

It’s quite sim­ple, really. Like many great chefs, Suzanne has always fol­lowed her taste. While still attend­ing Brown University in Rhode Island, she was cook­ing for a restau­rant called Al Forno in Providence, and it was there she made the ini­tial dis­cov­ery of the dif­fer­ence that locally and sus­tain­ably grown food could make. “I def­i­nitely had my first taste of locally grown food at Al Forno,” she said. “We would drive to Little Compton on the coast to one par­tic­u­lar farm stand just for toma­toes. That was pretty unheard of at the time.”

But it wasn’t until Suzanne had grad­u­ated col­lege and gone to work as a chef for Alice Waters at her leg­endary Chez Panisse restau­rant in Berkeley that the penny really dropped on the sub­ject. She and the staff would greatly look for­ward to reg­u­lar deliv­er­ies from local pro­duce farmer Bob Cannard (see Organic Connections, January–February 2009), whom Waters had hand­picked because of the taste of his fruits and veg­eta­bles. It just so hap­pened that in prac­tic­ing farm­ing, Cannard made sure the soil was com­pletely and nat­u­rally nutri­tious by adding the cor­rect mix of min­er­als, hav­ing found that this would make for very healthy crops and—surprise—fantastic taste.

Suzanne learned her les­son. And in 1998, when she opened her own restau­rant, Lucques, in her native Los Angeles, she went in search of ingre­di­ent taste of the sort she’d expe­ri­enced at Chez Panisse. She found it at local farm­ers’ mar­kets and began long-standing rela­tion­ships with many of the farm­ers she met there. She dis­cov­ered that they prac­ticed sus­tain­able farm­ing meth­ods as well.

“Being a chef rather than a farmer or bio­chemist, for me it’s really about the taste,” Suzanne explained. “I some­times can’t tell why a par­tic­u­lar crop tastes so good, but I can def­i­nitely tell when I taste some­thing spe­cial. There is a farmer in Three Rivers, California, named James Birch, and I swear he has magic in his soil (his farm is Flora Bella Farm). There is noth­ing like his arugula; it’s absolutely the best. Or Peter Schaner at Schaner Farms—no one’s cit­rus tastes as good as his. His tan­ge­los are insane!”

Click on any image above to see a larger version.

It’s not just the pro­duce, either—it also includes the meats. On today’s Sunday Supper menu you might find some­thing called a grilled Niman Ranch steak. The Niman Ranch is a north­ern California beef ranch that goes beyond the USDA def­i­n­i­tion of nat­ural, because the pro­pri­etors believe that the def­i­n­i­tion should also include the way that cat­tle are raised—humanely, with no antibi­otics or hor­mones and fed an all-natural veg­e­tar­ian diet.

The smoked salmon from an ear­lier course would have come from a local, sus­tain­able smoked-fish arti­san named Michel Blanchet and his com­pany Michel Cordon Bleu.

Even herbs are local and sus­tain­able. Those pro­vided for the feta salsa verde on the Niman Ranch steak came from the Rutiz Family Farm of Arroyo Grande, California.

Nowadays, Suzanne co-owns three other restau­rants in addi­tion to Lucques—but she still keeps per­sonal tabs on the sources of ingre­di­ents. “I have the help of quite a few great sous-chefs, but I do direct what we are shop­ping for,” she said. “I go to the mar­kets and also taste what we get from each farmer to see how things are chang­ing and tast­ing at any moment. Talking to the farm­ers is very valu­able. I like know­ing what is com­ing up, any spe­cial items they might have up their sleeves, and what is espe­cially pro­lific at any time.”

Let the Food Dictate the Menu

This brings us to the next ele­ment that makes Suzanne unique: instead of decid­ing on recipes and scram­bling to find ingre­di­ents to fit them, she actu­ally lets the in-season avail­able pro­duce dic­tate her menus. “I really feel like my job is to cre­ate dishes with the pro­duce that the farm­ers are har­vest­ing at any given time,” she remarked. “I love being able to ‘save the day’ by buy­ing up a par­tic­u­lar bumper crop and using it on a Sunday Supper or for a spe­cial. There is some­thing so mag­i­cal about know­ing the peo­ple who are grow­ing your food.”

A recent exam­ple was a higher-than-usual num­ber of kumquats she received—a case in point that shows how she lets her cre­ativ­ity take hold and expand on a spe­cific item. “One of our pro­duc­ers had a mas­sive amount of kumquats and ended up just giv­ing some extra ones to us,” she related. “They were so perfect—sour yet with a sweet­ness in the skin—that I wanted to do some­thing to really show them off. We work with them in many dif­fer­ent ways, but this time I wanted them as a sort of savory mar­malade. I thought about what they would taste good with; I wanted some­thing spicy to counter their sweet-and-sourness. I decided on a spiced lamb tagine with saf­fron cous­cous and green harissa. I can­died half of them and blended some uncooked kumquats with orange juice. Then I stirred the two together with a lit­tle of the can­dy­ing syrup; so there was a hint of sweet­ness, and that great can­died tex­ture, but a lot of acid to bal­ance it. From there I built a North African–inspired menu: grilled local sword­fish with shaved fen­nel, green olives and tahini, and a starter of fava-bean purée with gar­lic toast, crum­bled feta, mint and wal­nuts. But it all started with the kumquats.”

The Lesson for Us

If you do ever make it to Sunday Supper at Lucques, it’s an expe­ri­ence you’ll never for­get. And if you are not already, you—and any­one else you bring—will become a pro­po­nent for life of locally and sus­tain­ably grown food.

But if you can’t make it all the way to Lucques, do your­self the (great) favor of check­ing out local, sus­tain­able food avail­able in your area. See what’s in sea­son and get some. Obtain a copy of Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table, pop it open and expe­ri­ence these fan­tas­tic ingre­di­ents at home. Suzanne is all for it.

“In actu­al­ity, enjoy­ing the process of cook­ing and pro­vid­ing an atmos­phere where friends can gather and relax, escape, cel­e­brate and eat trans­lates best to the home cook,” Suzanne said. “Personally I like cook­ing by myself, espe­cially at home, prob­a­bly because I’m so used to hav­ing lots of peo­ple and action around me. I set aside enough time so I’m not rushed (again, not hec­tic like work), put on some music, pos­si­bly have a glass of cham­pagne or wine, and just enjoy the process. It’s so fun to have peo­ple over to enjoy the fruits of your labor. It’s also fun to have a bunch of peo­ple in the kitchen, hang­ing out and cooking.”

Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table is avail­able from the Organic Connections book­store.

For more infor­ma­tion on Lucques restau­rant, visit www.lucques.com.