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Neil Rogers: The Man In Worcester’s Test Kitchen

Neil Rogers accepted the position of Kitchen Operations Manager at Worcester Regional Food Hub.

Neil Rogers and his sous chef once ordered twenty-four George’s Coney Island hot dogs all the way or “up” with cheese and ate them over the course of a day. This is not a model for his latest venture: executive chef at The Test Kitchen, Worcester’s Niche Hospitality Group’s latest venture.

Well, maybe not a model. Who knows? Right now The Test Kitchen has no set boundaries, just possibilities, and that’s what Rogers loves about it. He’ll be more than a chef for his own kitchen but executive chef de cuisine for all of Niche.

Neil Rogers, Executive Chef du Cuisine for Niche Hospitality Group
Neil Rogers, Executive Chef du Cuisine for Niche Hospitality Group. (Photo by Alex Belisle, Belisle Images for WorcesterScene.com)

“We really don’t have any rules for it yet,” says Rogers. “We can sit in managers’ meetings and say, ‘We really want to try this…’ and The Test Kitchen can do it with the chefs or try it out for them. We are building a community within our group. One night, we might make paella or have a ramen night and have the teams come in. We might create a couple of different versions of dishes we are considering for the restaurants and then let diners vote on them. If the people are going to eat it, why not let them have a say? It’s all limitless.”

Rogers and The Test Kitchen team will explore these limitless possibilities for the public when they start hosting monthly events for 25 to 30 people by reservation only starting in April 2015. (The space will also be available for private events.) Plans for the first dinner—celebrating Worcester Foodies‘ 50th restaurant visit—are centered on a whole pig with individual courses made to showcase a taste of what each Niche restaurant represents. Guests will enjoy an ever-changing menu cooked and plated in front of them as they sit communally at long steel prep tables in the open and bright stripped down space of the kitchen. It promises to be an exciting, intimate, and interactive experience in Worcester. Most importantly to Rogers, it will be “totally fun.”

As much fun to Rogers are the collaborative possibilities The Test Kitchen offers to work with other chefs: It will act as a sort of “think tank” for Niche’s eight restaurants, which include Mezcal (which is next door to The Test Kitchen on Major Taylor Boulevard), three Bocado locations, Rye & Thyme, The People’s Kitchen, and The Fix Burger Bar. Niche chefs will be able to come in and work with Rogers to try something different, get together to work on specific items like French Fries, or plan menus without being bogged down in their own kitchens, something Rogers understands:

“Sometimes you try and do these things in your kitchen and you are not only working alone but against the work of the restaurant. As a result, something that should take an hour takes days. If they come here, we can just play with ideas and do it. We can plan courses for and even prep them for events. We can refine recipes and make them better, making the food at the restaurants better overall. Making incredible food and working with and learning from these chefs and all our group’s personalities on a daily basis? It’s fantastic.”

Neil Rogers in the Test Kitchen, Executive Chef du Cuisine for Niche Hospitality Group
Neil Rogers in the Test Kitchen, Executive Chef du Cuisine for Niche Hospitality Group (Photo by Alex Belisle, Belisle Images for WorcesterScene.com)

That collaborative spirit extends to sourcing too. To that end, Rogers just introduced shrimp from Tasty Harvest, an aquaculture farm in West Boylston, into a dinner at The People’s Kitchen. While Niche and Rogers are devoted to local ingredients, The Test Kitchen will help them do more of this sourcing and create locally driven specials starting this summer.

Clearly Rogers loves that the change around him requires him to seek inspiration constantly. That said, he believes strongly in classic techniques and rails against chefs who think they can incorporate crazy flavors and go into molecular gastronomy without actually learning how to cook. “If you don’t have good technique,” he argues, “if you can’t sauté or dice or chop something properly then you can’t make the best use of great ingredients.”

Rogers, who has no formal training, devotes himself to understanding all he can about technique, citing Jacques Pepin as inspiration. He waxes rhapsodic about his amazing, rare, and ridiculously sharp Shibata Kotetsu knife and gives a nod to Marc Vetri’s acclaimed cooking in Philadelphia. Rogers interned with Vetri in 2014 to learn firsthand how to “bring refinement up to a level that is attainable and approachable for everybody using spectacular ingredients.” On the day we spoke, Rogers had been on a cookbook-buying spree and was grooving on the recipes of London-based Yotam Ottolenghi, pulling ideas for more vegetarian and vegetable-based dishes as spring approaches.

“Not everything needs to be a starch and vegetable and a protein on every plate,” says Rogers. “You can pare it down, use better and different ingredients, and let them shine without being clouded by the standard meat, potato, veg combination.”

Even in Worcester where tradition can rule the day? “Location doesn’t matter!” adds Rogers. “People take location to heart too much. Why not here? We are the second largest city in New England. Why can’t we have the fantastic and different? The city works hard, and a new generation is trying to make it even better by making a difference with forward thinking and doing – building from the ground up instead of just talking. They and we deserve this!”

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No Margin Of Error For Rob Fecteau & BirchTree Bread Co.

Rob Fecteau Baking Bread at BirchTree Bread Co

Rob Fecteau remembers the feeling he had when the first loaves of bread came out of the oven at his BirchTree Bread Company on Green Street: “Not to sound mushy but it was pretty magical.”

Coriander Raisin Loaves at BirchTree Bread Co. Photo by Alex for WorcesterScene.com
Coriander Raisin Loaves at BirchTree Bread Co. Photo by Alex for WorcesterScene.com

The bread was baked before BirchTree opened – ciabatta, an Italian white bread, for Rob’s cousin who helped with the construction: “We are all Italians or mostly Italian eating the Italian bread coming out of the oven. There’s a picture of me with a loaf and there’s construction and a ladder in the background and it was awesome. There were about ten loaves of bread and they were all a little burnt and caramelized, but they were the first and magic.”

That ciabatta, now flecked with rosemary, is still on the menu at BirchTree, one of the special breads that rotate in to complement the three daily loaves, the most popular of which is the simplest: a crusty Country loaf. Second place, however, is more surprising: Coriander Raisin. Not to Rob – he loves the sweet-savory combination – but some really do not care for coriander or aren’t used to having it in bread. The other daily bread is made with local whole wheat and flax. All of them are made with natural leaven – a mixture of wild yeasts and naturally occurring good bacteria that help leaven and flavor the dough – which in itself is a kind of magic… and menace.

Rob Fecteau Baking Bread at BirchTree Bread Co. Photo by Alex Belisle for WorcesterScene.com
Rob Fecteau Baking Bread at BirchTree Bread Co. Photo by Alex Belisle for WorcesterScene.com

“I thought baking would be easier as a chef and it’s not,” says Rob who was born in Worcester and spent 15 years working as a chef in the surrounding area. “There’s a real challenge using the natural leaven starter. It is not always predicable.” Like any living organism, you need to feed it, and Rob adds, “Unless you are on point with the feeding you will get a different result.”

According to Rob, that’s one of the biggest differences between bakers and chefs: “Chefs make lots of miniature calculations and can make amends when they miss. Bakers make a few calculations and if you miss any of them you mess up the whole thing. You must know your dough and what is happening in each level of the process to make the right decisions. You can’t scramble. Once something’s done, it’s done.”

So why leave his established and comfortable career as a chef? To take on that challenge and learn new culinary skills. Besides, chefs work late nights, and Rob, who got married in May of 2014, hopes baking will give him a more balanced life. The baker’s life, like the bread itself, is more precise. Even though his days start early, his wife is a teacher and they both like waking up with the sun. So, he set out to find baking inspiration both near (Five Loaves in Spencer and Hungry Ghost in Northampton) and far (Tartine, Acme, and others in California).

The real revelation was the space Rob ended up with for BirchTree. He pictured himself and a helper opening something like Hungry Ghost, which basically has bread racks and a walk in counter. He knew he wanted to be in Worcester, but he never imagined occupying the massive space on Green Street with its warm, industrial-feel, openness, and constant sunlight pouring in from the windows.

“Sometimes the space creates the vision for what you make,” says Rob.

That big, welcoming, inclusive vision seems much more logical when you consider Rob’s cooking inspiration. His father is French and his mother is Italian and both sides of the family cooked. He remembers semiannual trips to his maternal family’s house in upstate New York where the food just kept coming, the kitchen and dining room filled with platters of seafood, vegetables, and sauces. Rob credits his father, a travelling salesman, for expanding his international tastes and fueling his desire to explore with stories, pictures, and food brought back Africa, China, France, Germany, and South America.

And Rob hasn’t left his chef hat behind. In addition to the breads and pastries, BirchTree added sandwiches to the menu in January and runs what he calls a “scratch kitchen,” braising its own corned beef and making its own preserves, pickles, and nut butters. Rob won’t say what’s coming next – despite this author’s plea for pizza – only that he is happy with the slow growth, wants to keep doing what he is doing better, and is listening to his customers even as he forges ahead with his own vision.

“It’s not called artisan bread because it is baked in an artisan oven,” he notes. “It’s because there is an artisan making it, crafting it every step of the way.”

BirchTree Bread Co on Green Street in Worcester, MA. Photo by Alex Belisle for WorcesterScene.com
BirchTree Bread Co on Green Street in Worcester, MA. Photo by Alex Belisle for WorcesterScene.com