15 minutes, 23 seconds. You’ve probably waited longer for coffee at the Dunks drive-thru.
Yet that’s all it took for Michael Dussault to prepare six dishes from his menu at The International in Bolton, where he has been executive chef since early 2015: Cobb Wedge Salad (the love child of the two salads with mini iceberg lettuce, candied pepper bacon, quail eggs, Maytag blue cheese, grilled corn, heirloom tomatoes, and cilantro ranch dressing); Spicy Crab Maki Roll (laced with cream cheese and Sriracha); Yellowfin Tuna Burger (a sushi-grade burger, not a steak, seasoned with scallions, sweet soy, garlic, and ginger); Herb-Crusted Berkshire Pork Chop (with mashed potatoes and bacon-fed Brussels sprouts, topped with Granny Smith apples, and drizzled with a homemade apple-cider demi-glace); Fall-Spiced Pumpkin Scallops (which despite my aversion to the scourge of pumpkin and its spices work perfectly on that bed of Asiago pumpkin risotto dotted with toasted pepitas); and Lobster & Pumpkin Risotto (the knuckles of the beautiful bugs spooned with the same risotto as the scallops into a tiny brown sugar cinnamon roasted pumpkin).
15 minutes and 23 seconds for all that.
Sure, some of the food had been prepped in advance but there’s color in the pans and on the plates, drama in Michael’s efficient movement along the line, and fun in watching him talk through it all as he cooks. Everything is topped, turned, seared, and plated with “lots of love.”
Minutes 1 through 5: Pork chop gets coat of salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, thyme, and “lots of love” and hits the grill. Tuna burger gets that same love, a quick sear, and heads to the oven. Crab Maki, from rolling to wasabi tobiko, takes less than two minutes. Wedge salad, dressed for success takes even less.
As delightful as Michael Dussault’s food is at The International, it is unexpectedly delicious for a golf club and resort well off the beaten path. The setting is attractive inside and out for sure, but you don’t necessarily expect the food to be elevated – you just enjoy the escape and surroundings. I for one hear “resort” and think bad buffets and cheap booze; I hear “golf club” and think of food that hasn’t evolved since Caddyshack. This is decidedly not the case at The International.
“People come in all the time and say I never knew you were here, but they come back for the food. You don’t have to go to Boston for this kind of quality,” Michael says, noting he likes the location: “I love it. I’m from New Hampshire. I grew up in the woods. I’m used to having farms within a couple of miles of where I live and have them be the inspiration for what I’m going to make that day. I’m close with farmers markets and farms right down the street, and I have a nice garden right in front.”
Minutes 6 to 11: Apple cider demi is reduced for the pork chop after it hits the oven. Brussels sprouts get “lots of love” from a bath in bacon fat (which never hurt anything, recent studies be damned). Scallops are seasoned and seared in a super-hot pan and the pumpkin risottos get a shot of fresh chicken stock. A baby pumpkin is warmed, while its lobster partner meets its butter maker.
The fine ingredients are far from how Michael grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. The child of a single working mom, she taught him the value of working for what you have and appreciating what you got: “I wanted the Air Jordans and to go skiing like my friends. But if I wanted that I had to work for it so at thirteen I started washing dishes in all-girls school. From there it just kinda stuck with me. After five years of working in restaurants, I realized how much I had learned. Cooking became muscle memory and my passion.”
He also learned respect and appreciation for the ingredients and the importance of taste: “I grew up on Jolly Green Giant and Meatloaf Mondays. In restaurants, I realized where food actually came from. How a whole chicken looks. Clams? How do you open and eat them? Killing my first lobster? I never had any of that that growing up. I had hot dogs and hamburgers and Salisbury Steak.”
After serving in the Army National Guard, Michael knew he wanted to be a chef and had the leadership skills to match. He soon found himself back in New Hampshire, winning awards for his cooking, notably at Manhattan on Pearl, which was named the best tapas restaurant in New Hampshire and was also right down the street from where he grew up.
“Coming from very little and being there it really meant a lot to me,” he says.
Minute 11 to 15:23: Bacon, roasted tomatoes, and field greens go into the Brussels sprouts. Mashed potatoes are given a last turn. Lobster gets a hit of Asiago. Scallops chill out in the window so they don’t over cook. Tuna burger gets a thick soy glaze, garlic mayonnaise, avocado purée, micro green salad, cucumbers, radishes, and sesame oil. The pumpkin is filled with lobster and risotto, now dotted with peas and bacon, and the pork chop drizzled with demi.
Michael allows himself a smile, one last “lots of love,” and a wry note that he “tries to keep it sexy but not too sexy.” Which is how it has to be. After all, The International isn’t some cutting-edge new restaurant in the “Big City.” It has a rich history that dates back to the turn of the 20th Century and has been reimagined under the Weadock family’s ownership since 1999. Michael’s cooking is The International’s latest evolutionary step but he is respectful of tradition.
“People certainly expect a certain kind of comfort food when they come here so we try to keep a happy balance,” he says. “I try and keep my own style but I don’t want it to be dominant. I want to adapt to what the customers want and like and then add my style into that. I’ve been able to put everything I’ve done together here, because you never do just one thing. We can have 400 people at an event in one part of the resort, two barbecues, three snack bars, and a full dining room.”
To accommodate them all, Michael describes what he does as “recreating the classics in my style. It’s fresh. It’s local. It’s familiar. And it’s so exciting.”
15 minutes 24 seconds: We understand what he means.
Attacking everything Michael has prepared, every dish is familiar but with unexpected touches. Shellfish and cheese, not to mention pumpkin and its sweet fall spices? It comes together. Cream cheese is not something you would automatically think of putting in crab Maki but it works. The tuna burger recalls the one that Danny Meyer and Michael Romano made waves with at Union Square Café decades ago yet feels recognizable and fresh. Which is exactly how Michael Dussault knows it needs to be:
“Listen, I know we have to have chicken wings and New England Baked Haddock and they are really good here. Why would I want to take ‘The International’ ice cream dessert with its butterscotch corn flakes off the menu? People don’t come in here and want to be afraid to pronounce the menu. The challenge isn’t to give those customers something unexpected. It’s to elevate what they expect. So cranberry sauce becomes a cranberry gastrique, potatoes au gratin become a pizza. They are going to come in here and have some old favorites and at the same time be a little daring because they feel like the food is so approachable.”
When he wants to try something really new, Michael tests the dish as a special. If it works, it could end up on the menus as they “evolve” through the seasons. But every night, he says, he puts “his heart on a plate. When you’re limping home after a seventeen-hour day to remember that something you created made a customer or client’s night? That’s really it.”