The Chefs of Massachusetts Restaurants

Posted on March 28, 2016March 29, 2016 by Staff Writer

Jay Powell Is A Serious Guy That Loves To Play With His Food

Chef Jay Powell of Twisted Fork in Cherry Valley, MA.

You don’t know quite what to expect when a chef cites his main influences as Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Justin Wilson (“Cookin’ Cajun”), Martin Yan (“Yan Can Cook”), and … Chief Jay Strongbow, one of the best-known professional wrestlers of the 1970s and 80s?

Actually, it makes perfect sense if that chef is Jay Powell of The Twisted Fork Bistro. Twisted Fork bills itself as “French, Italian, and American” – and it is that. And more. A mash up of influences, ideas, and imaginings, just like Jay.

“I’ve been cooking since I was four,” Jay says. “My father would be yelling at me to go outside and mow the lawn, and I’d tell him I was watching TV. I would flip the channels between Chief Jay Strongbow donning a headdress, going on the warpath, and doing the sleeper hold and Julia Child deboning a duck or Martin Yan dicing something impossibly fast without even looking as people applauded. You gotta think people were getting drunk, decided to do that, and whacked their fingers off.”

Jay has all of his fingers and gets plenty of applause for his food but knows he would surely get grief for political incorrectness (Strongbow was actually an Italian-American from Philly) if he decided to do an Indian war dance as he cooked. Not that you get the sense that he cares. After all, this is a guy whose Facebook page had the Abominable Snowman roasting the Elf on a Shelf on a spit and who refuses to put salt and pepper on the table during dinner service. (“I season everything. Can you please take a bite first?”)

But, still, it’s an open kitchen at Twisted Fork so no war dance, though you might think he was on one given how animated he is back there. Jay is as open and animated when it comes to his food. French, Italian, and American are really just some of the influences and he can go for high or low, which seems appropriate for a restaurant that serves most of its food in the mornings until 1 or 2pm and transforms itself into a real bistro for dinner on Fridays and Saturdays.

To emphasize this point, Jay offers me a taste of a sauce from a pan of Brussels sprouts. Sweet, tart, and warming, it is not what I expect from a master of elevated breakfast fare like portobello mushroom eggs benedict and chili omelets.

“I wasn’t going for shitty today,” Jay smiles as he sees my reaction. “I was going for good. It depends on what side of the bed I get up on. I can go for real shitty too.”

What Jay can’t go for, whether high or low cooking, is ingredients that lack a human connection. He prides himself on not just cooking from local ingredients – some of them from his own half-acre heirloom farm – but knowing the people who stand behind the food he buys regardless of where they come from: “I can tell you the person I get my food from, not just where. If I can’t source it from somebody I can talk to, I will not buy it.”

Chef Jay Powell is known for having a big personality.

The dishes Jay puts in front of me as we talk exemplify this. Those Brussels sprouts come with cranberries from the Cape that Jay buys and freezes himself. He then braises them with apple cider and Auburn’s Pure BS Maple Shack maple syrup. They will pair with heirloom fingerling potatoes in brown butter and sage as sides for a 27-day dry-aged rib eye from Arista Beef Company in Southbridge (Jay does the aging himself). Next, a soup of tomato, mushroom, and bacon – like a pasta fajioli made from whole plum tomatoes Jay canned this fall and drizzled with his own hot sauce made from ghost chilies. He’s also making his own raviolis, today a mix of mushrooms and ricotta finished with sherry cream and homemade beef demi-glace. The marinara on that eggplant napoleon with slices of Somerville’s Fiore di Nonno mozzarella? It’s a massive hit that just joined the menu, made from scratch of course, the sauce thick, rich, and alive with fresh herbs.

Again, not what I expected when I walk into Twisted Fork. It has a familiarity and a comfort that belies its age (it opened in 2009). So does Jay’s relationship with his wife, Nancy, who does all the baking and is entrusted with prepping the restaurant’s beautiful baked beans, a secret recipe from Jay’s dad. Their easy rapport gives you the sense that they have been together decades, though they married in 2012. (She fell for him because of his signature hollandaise.)

Jay is totally good with these familiar feelings. That’s what makes him and Twisted Fork so approachable – he gives the people more than they ever thought they wanted and gets back what he wants from them.

“I want them to say, ‘Holy shit!’ when they get a plate from me,” Jay says, turning fairly Proustian. “When I cook for people, my goal is when you taste something it will evoke the memory and bring you back to your childhood, your grandparents, your aunt and uncle, your parents, or a particular situation or event. When they eat and take that first bite? That’s why I have an open window in my kitchen. I want to see their faces. I’m looking at facial reactions. I don’t just want to see if there are problems. I want to see people being blown away when they eat my food. I want them to feel like it is silly good – like they can’t figure out what is going on. I know at that point I have done my job and exactly what I was put on this earth to do.”

It took Jay some time to get there though. He may have started cooking at four but after a half-century on this earth, this is his first restaurant. Sure, he had a catering business and still does, providing food for everything from movies filmed in Worcester to his and Nancy’s wedding in 2013 to – unknowingly – his own 50th birthday party. Sure, he cooked at Howard Johnson’s near Holy Cross and York Steakhouse in the Auburn Mall as a teenager, but his first career was as an engineer at Digital.

“My mother knew what I was supposed to do before I did. She wanted me to go to Johnson & Wales after high school, because I loved to cook, but it was hot and hard work and I thought I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. But my dad is a CPA, and I can swear to you I was not put on this earth to be a CPA. So, I went to engineering school and then to Digital and while I am working there I win a chili contest out of a 100 people.”

That chili was still a ways away from gracing our plates, however. After a decade at Digital, he also explored careers in car and mortgage sales before finally heading to Johnson & Wales and then opening his twisted restaurant.

The name comes from his best friend who told Jay, “You’re always twisted when you come up with these things.” Like his signature shrimp scampi omelet, which he first made following Easter Day brunch in 2010: “One of my servers asked what the special was going to be. I had all this shrimp left over. I was thinking about egg foo young which has a great mouth feel and said, ‘I’m going to do a shrimp scampi omelet.’ We sold nine that day. Then Phantom Gourmet tries it and the rest is history.”

That mouth feel and flavor profiling are the foundation of all Jay cooks, an inductee into Les Dames d’Escoffier in 2014. As approachable as the place and the food is, this is a serious guy loves to play with his food. He sous vides his eggs on weekends and is now evolving from the homemade flatbreads now on the menu to try and create a perfect Neapolitan pizza crust. He tries something new and instantly tries to make it his own. (Sriracha shrimp is the latest customer addiction and Jay is delighted it has caught on.) He’ll also go “out there” and pair things that live and grow together and his customers will usually follow – even if it is, say, a rabbit taco served with a sauce and slaw based on what that animal was eating.

“There isn’t anything I don’t like and won’t explore,” he says. “I try and embrace everything in the area that I can get. If I could get a squirrel or a raccoon locally and find a recipe that comes from the period of the Pilgrims when we ate that? I would do it. The best part about the people who come to this restaurant is they will friggin’ try it too. People say how can you stick to your roots having so many people come in? But I know the people. I know there’s an ass for every seat out there – a restaurant for everybody. I want people to come here because they are happy. I owe everything I do to them.”

And they in turn ask Nancy, “Is he always like this?”

“Chefs open up their lives,” he says. “You come in to my restaurant and this is my life – my bedroom, living room, dining room. And when you run a small family restaurant, customers are my extended family. Nancy asks me all the time, ‘Does everyone need to know all our business?’ But I don’t know any other way.”

Posted on January 24, 2016May 18, 2016 by Staff Writer

Chris Rovezzi Is Constantly on The Edge of Fear To Create Satisfying Tastes

Chef Chris Rovezzi in his kitchen at Rovezzi's

The legendary Marcella Hazan changed the way Americans thought about and cooked Italian food. In 1997, I had the pleasure of meeting her at an event featuring food from her cookbook Marcella Cucina. As she signed my copy, she asked, “How did everything taste?” Her use of the word “taste” stuck with me that night and again when I read this in the book’s introduction: “Wherever the dishes come from, my only concern is how they taste.” Recently, the line came back to me when Christopher Rovezzi, chef and owner of Rovezzi’s Ristorante in Sturbridge, said something similar to describe what matters most to him.

Turns out, Rovezzi is a fan of Hazan, and he does the legend proud.

Hazan had no patience for food with “imagined flavors,” dishes that lacked “identity,” or culinary fusion. She focused on taste and how best to genuinely achieve it. So does Rovezzi: “I read that book’s introduction and thought, ‘Right!’ Nothing else matters if it doesn’t taste great. Service and setting add circumstantial interest to eating but signify nothing when taste is lacking and isn’t authentic. I use local ingredients but I don’t care about farm-to-table food because that’s about marketing not taste. You’ll never see a foam on any of my plates, no molecular gastronomy. I don’t pretend to be a chef at The Four Seasons. My food is my own. Other chefs can do that. I’m what I’m supposed to be.”

Rovezzi calls his food “lusty,” describing its intense warm feeling. And indeed to call it comfort food doesn’t do it justice. The food is recognizable, not because you are eating spaghetti and meatballs but because he says, “No matter what the dish is you taste something familiar. I haven’t changed my food and style since we opened in 2002. I have tried to innovate but only to prevent myself and my customers from getting bored. But if someone doesn’t have that visceral reaction, I’m getting it wrong.”

That is certainly true of the porcini mushroom panzerotti with oxtail ragout, which won him the first Worcester’s Best Chef competition in 2007. Maybe you haven’t seen the shape of the ravioli-like panzerotti or eaten oxtail before but the idea of a mushroom ravioli in a rich meat sauce invites even the least intrepid eaters in. Rovezzi does change the menu seasonally to take advantage of what is available and try new things, explore new dishes, and experiment on whim, just don’t expect him to be heart healthy because that’s not authentic to him. “I don’t hide from it,” Rovezzi says. “My grandmother’s grandmother wasn’t using 2% milk. Marcella Hazan used butter. My menu isn’t healthy. My food is a little fattening. It is what people want to eat. If you come here on a diet, decide it’s going to be a cheat day.” That said, he will respond when the customers ask for things as a rule not a trend. Rovezzi took it as a challenge for years to find flour that would allow him to make really good and gluten-free handmade pastas and focaccia bread (all available with 24-hour advanced notice).

The important thing to Rovezzi is that his pasta is appealing to customers and tastes delicious no matter what. That is true of the instantly familiar dishes like veal saltimbocca, pasta bolognese, and chicken parm, and those that are not, like lasagna filled with winter squashes and maple sausage. The meat next to those caramelized root vegetables and cavatelli? Rabbit. In other words, this is not Rovezzi’s II, a sequel to his father’s beloved Worcester restaurant that closed in 1992.

“My dad never changed his menu. My dad opened with a menu in 1978 and closed with the same menu. We had twelve veal dishes. We were the biggest veal seller in the state of Massachusetts. So when I knew I wanted to open a new Rovezzi’s, I did not want to do it in Worcester. I didn’t want everyone to think it was going to be the same restaurant.” Yet the entire reason he opened up a restaurant was because he is his father’s child. Rovezzi was second in command at The International – a job he loved and “you retire doing.” Unless you are a Rovezzi: “I wasn’t the top guy. I have my father in me, I have to be the last decision-maker. That’s me.”

Christopher first located Rovezzi’s in a former pub that was part of the Sturbridge Country Inn but quickly encountered two problems. The first was you could not see the restaurant from the street, and he wasn’t allowed to have a sign. Rovezzi solved that problem using his gift for communication, building relationships, and confidence in his food: He invited 40-50 business owners from around Sturbridge for a free dinner with booze dinner at which he told them how happy he was to join the community and to please spread the word. A week later, he was turning people away. A year later, he took over the much larger space that houses Rovezzi’s today. The second problem was Rovezzi’s didn’t have the red sauce Italian-American food or a fettuccini alfredo, and when people didn’t see that on the menu, they left. Rovezzi solved that problem by making sure he satisfied those who stayed:

“All I did was give the town food that they hadn’t had before. I used to engage the customers who wanted that food or said, ‘I can get chicken parm at Applebee’s for $11.95 and it comes with a breadstick and a salad.’ Today I just smile and say, ‘That’s a great deal and probably where you should go.’ I used to try and explain the difference between the frozen chicken at Applebee’s and the hand cut and pounded chicken here. That’s a foreign language to people who are looking for a meal for a price. It’s pointless. I focus on pleasing the people who know my restaurant delivers value for the price I charge. I genuinely care about that. I’m going to do anything for them and they are going to sell my restaurant. Luckily, I have a lot of people who get that.”

Those customers and his loyalty to them have pulled Rovezzi through difficulties self-created and not. Before the recession hit in 2008, he had opened two more Rovezzi’s in Worcester and Rutland and they were doing fine but he wasn’t. He was servicing all three and finding it hard to delegate. In that way the recession was a relief: It forced him to close the other two locations and refocus on making sure the customer has a great experience no matter how much they have to spend. “That is why I am still in the game,” Rovezzi says. “I am still here every day. I still cook. I still think this has to work tonight and every night. That would be the name of my book: The Edge. I am constantly on the edge of fear and of shit I can’t control. I live in fear every day that my restaurant won’t stay successful and that fear causes me to pay attention to everything. Make it as good as can be every night for the customers. That’s my happy. I need to provide them with that experience. It just has to be that people are happier than when they came in because there’s a lot of shit that’s going on out there that you want to forget about. I’m not changing the world or performing brain surgery, but I can affect the lives, in a small way, of 600 to 800 people a week.”

Which is why as he moves into the middle of his second decade in business, Rovezzi’s biggest fear is a couple with $100 deciding where to go out to eat and one of them says, “How about Rovezzi’s?” and the other says, “Oh, we’ve been going to Rovezzi’s for years.” Christopher constantly worries about the next sentence. Is it “Yeah and it’s awesome!” or “Yeah, you’re right let’s go somewhere else…”

Rovezzi realizes there are lots of new places to choose from in Worcester and increasingly Sturbridge. Not all of them stand up and continue to deliver great taste but more and more do. He plans on continuing to play his game his way. Rovezzi’s is the legacy now. He has no interest in competing against the “young punks” (a term he uses mostly with affection), which is why he has not entered the Best Chef competition since winning it again in 2012. “So many of the new chefs are great, they really are. And it pisses me off they are so good. Even the ones doing foams – they want to explore, have fun, and try things but they are focused on the taste. I have cooks who come in with resumes that are tasting menus, but I’d rather know someone can cook a chicken perfectly 100 times in a row. I want someone to put the time in to understand the taste before swishing sauce on the plate with a paintbrush.”

So how does he compete? Through his customers. Rovezzi’s sole marketing expense is social media to reach those customers and engage them honestly and transparently.

“I just put myself in the position where I am there for the people dining at Rovezzi’s. I get an intense and physical reaction inside of me watching two people eat my food. When one smiles and says to the other one, ‘Taste this!’ That’s giving other people pleasure. I know that sounds vaguely sexual but that’s the best way to describe that pleasure.”

That’s the power of taste.

Editor’s Note: Christopher Rovezzi was the second chef to participate in the Chef’s Best dinner series. You can read about the experience here and please consider joining us for the next installment of the series.