VIA Italian Table should be credited as one of the first restaurants in the city to have recognized the value in hosting pairing dinners for local clientele who sought equal parts education and camaraderie. These days, VIA routinely offers a plethora of both wine and beer dinners for guests to enjoy. The carefully curated multi-course affairs tend to evoke an experience that is both thoughtful and memorable. Now, Corporate Executive Chef Mark Hawley has begun to play with the idea of multi-course group dining in an entirely new fashion. In January of 2018, Hawley rolled out the Suckling Pig Dinner, a family-style meal intended to spark interactive dining for parties of 8.
Hawley oversees all three Worcester Restaurant Group – The Sole Proprietor, One Eleven Chop House and VIA – kitchens and has proven his ability to construct tidy plates fit for foodies time and time again. The Suckling Pig Dinner was conceived as the epitome of convivial dining – an intimate and gregarious feast that places emphasis on quality ingredients and good company. For Hawley, this is the sweet spot where fine dining and family dining meet.
Guests begin with a selection of appetizers, like the crispy pork meatballs with sweet and sour glaze, bruschetta built on loaves of grilled Tuscan bread, and the caprese salad, piled high with fresh burrata. The main course arrives on a silver platter, taking Chef Hawley an entire day to prepare. Its delivery comes in a whirlwind of fanfare – first presented whole, then carved for consumption. The suckling pig boasts tender light meat with a crisp exterior. Around the table, portions are large, laughs are inevitable, and old tales are ripe for the telling. We should warn you: given such a spectacle, other guests are apt to stare. Sometimes it’s okay to be the center of attention.
Reservations for the Suckling Pig dinner are open to parties on Tuesday evenings at a cost of $365. Beverage pairings of beer, wine, or whiskey are available as well and promise to be hand selected by VIA’s exceptionally knowledgeable team.
We’ve come to understand what Hawley means when he says, “Sometimes, we just want to eat like a family.” This is your chance.
This month, we’re catching up with three of Worcester’s most talented Executive Chefs to unearth their trade secrets. From serious pickles to water baths to ugly vegetables, these chefs are dishing out the truth about what goes on behind the scenes at their respective restaurants. At Mass Foodies, we jumped at the chance to get an all-too-rare glimpse inside the minds (and kitchens) of the culinary elite. We knew you would too.
The Secret: For a chef, there’s no such thing as a day off, but supporting staff members in their pet projects (even the messy ones) will extend a your reach exponentially.
Cooking is not my day (night) job. It is my life. Making our menu better and more interesting consumes me. Nature will not wait for you to come back from a long weekend. The bread starters need to be fed, the nuka pickles need to be rotated, and the veal hanging in the walk in needs to be butchered…today! On Mondays, my “day off,” I shop for the restaurant, read books and watch videos pertaining to the week ahead. Responding to emails, sourcing product, planning future projects and dreaming of dishes yet to come fills the few hours I spend away from the restaurant. There is no other option. “c’est la vie”
I have a secret weapon, as well: my staff. We do our very best to hire passionate people and provide guidance, tools, and support to let them run with their ideas. My sous chef Robin crushes handmade pastas, ice cream, and desserts all while holding the kitchen together. Robin is my right hand girl; she is a certified badass. My old, old friend Derrick hails from North Carolina and excels at southern comfort foods. Liam, our GM cook, has a degree from WPI so his science background is key to producing quality and consistent house made butter, creme fraiche and tofu. Nate is the bastion of sandwiches, keeper of our pickles. (Our pickle program is serious business.) Julia assembles a wine list that rivals any restaurant in the country for natural and small production wines. Sean, my handsome business partner, can convince the toughest guests to order something they have never heard of, enjoy it immensely, and think it was all their idea from the start. Our CFO Bert is the absolute linchpin in our operation; he keeps me reigned in financially, while never impeding on creativity. Our Front of House greets you at the door and keeps you in their hands throughout your entire experience. We have the best dishwashers in the universe – all of our handmade and vintage plates thank them everyday. Without the people to use the tools and products we have, nothing would happen. I hope they know how much I appreciate them.
Mark Hawley, Executive Chef at VIA Italian Table in Worcester, MA
The Secret: Use an immersion circulator to eliminate guess work in the kitchen and a vacuum sealer to enhance flavor intensity.
Let’s talk about cooking with the immersion circulator and the vacuum sealer. They go hand and hand but they are also used separately. The immersion circulator is a machine where you can take something like pork tenderloin and add whatever flavors you want to it, place it in a bag to vacuum seal it, and submerse it in the water bath you have set at a very particular degree with the circulator. The immersion circulator allows you to cook the tenderloin within a .001 of a degree of what you want. This technique takes the guess work out of the chef’s hands and cooks everything perfectly from tip to tip.
The vacuum machine that you would use to seal the tenderloin is great for other reasons too, such as a quick pickle, compression, or simply adding tremendous flavor. For instance, if you were to take an ordinary tomato and compress it, the tomato cell structure breaks down and you will have a more intensely flavored tomato. You can also add other flavors into an ingredient this way. For instance, I like doing watermelon with a vinegar mixture and serving that with a nice piece of pork belly and feta cheese. We prefer to call these “tricks of the trade” rather than “dirty little secrets” but this is what happens behind the scenes that an average diner would not know, and I think they might be surprised. It’s kind of like making ice cubes of your favorite drink and using those instead of frozen water so your drinks don’t get watered down.
Alina Eisenhauer, Executive Chef of Sweet Kitchen & Bar on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA
The Secret: Make use of peels, cores, and ugly parts of vegetables to minimize waste and maximize the growing season.
At Sweet Kitchen & Bar,we are able to source the best possible local ingredients year-round by using every part of everything by pickling, curing, freezing, canning…
Apples are a good example. We go through about 60 pounds of apples every week and instead of throwing away the cores and peels, we cook them down with apple cider and spices to make homemade apple butter which we cook with, bake with, and serve with toast for brunch. Each case of apples yields enough core and peels to make a few gallons of apple butter. In similar fashion, we candy our orange and lemon peels for use in cooking and baking. We dry fruit and freeze fruit when in season. We pickle vegetables. We cure meat. We save carrot tops all year to make pesto for our Salmon dish. All of these things prolong shelf life, let us use local ingredients year-round, and cut waste.
It’s no secret that local chefs can accomplish a great deal when they work together. All three of the chefs featured in this article are collaborating on theNo Kid Hungry – Share our Strength Dinner, held at the 111 Chophouse on March 27th. Tickets will be available online. The dinner includes The Worcester Restaurant Group, the Niche Group, Sweet, Sonoma and deadhorse hill.
