Michael’s chef–owner on restaurant trends

Chef Michael McCarty — who was raising his own ducks and cooking seasonal, regional cuisine in the 1970s — was a pioneer in the culinary philosophy that now dominates American dining in independent restaurants.

In the second installment of a two-part interview, the chef owner of two Michael’s restaurants, in Santa Monica, Calif., and New York City, analyzes the current state of the U.S. food scene and looks to the future.

How do you think American cuisine has evolved in recent years?

How many years did you read and write about small plates and grazing? How many times in the ’80s and ’90s did people try it? Nobody really bought it, but now that’s what’s happening. If the five of us went to ABC Kitchen [Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s New York City restaurant] today and we each ordered something, they’d come one at a time, and we’d all pick at it. It’s shared plates. The dishwasher should be the highest paid person in restaurants today.

That’s what happens during a recession; these new things occur. Now just to sit down at a table for an hour and a half or two hours is a rarity among this generation.

What are your customers responding to these days?

I have in L.A. a 23-year-old chef who’s half Japanese and half Mexican, John-Carlos Kuramoto. He pretty much was brought up by his grandmothers. He’s an American — that whole East L.A. group, which I’d recommend you go see one day. You will be blown away. There are no white people, there are no black people, no brown people, no Asians. Everybody is a mix. They’re the most gorgeous, phenomenal people. They are schooled in every aspect of these cuisines. You just cannot believe this group that’s coming up.

And in New York my chef is Kyung Up Lim, a 27-year-old Korean who I’ve worked with for three years, and he’s the best chef I’ve ever had here.

Everyone knew that molecular food had its time and place. I mean, I went to El Bulli a lot, but seven hours, 48 courses — it’s insane, beautiful, fabulous, but it’s not a lifestyle. It’s ironic that a town like Chicago would be the one that really supports it. In the 1980s we got arrested having a sous-vide machine in our place in California.
If you were to ask me very simply where food’s going now, I’d say, “everyone loves Italy.” I’d say 45 percent [of the most popular restaurants] are Italian food and the next 15 percent are Asian, all sizes and shapes. Then Latin is around 10 or 15 percent.
The idea of someone serving the American food that we started — a simple Laura Chenel goat cheese salad — it morphed out of American food into, like, insane fusion-on-steroids food.

If you look at the mixology world, there’s a nice balance, which will ultimately settle out [in food] — the balance between the fun and games, and the quality, which will continue to rise.

We’re just launching our mixology program in New York, with Korean bar bites and a blend of cocktails. You can get the best martini you’ve ever had, or you can have some rendered-bacon-this-and-that-with-some-kind-of-odd-10-year-aged-bourbon cocktail.

How has the industry changed for restaurant operators?

No longer do you need to spend $10 million on a restaurant. There are what I call storefronts. This occurred in L.A. in 1992, after the riots. You could open a little store. No one cared what the décor was, they just cared about the quality of the food and the hospitality of the little place.

My daughter’s friends run storefronts like Vinegar Hill House [in Brooklyn] and Torrisi [in Manhattan]. Those places never would have been considered a restaurant before. But you go in there and you get some of the best food at a price that works. That’s also what’s happened in Paris in the past five years. A lot of the top chefs I knew left their restaurants and opened up storefronts and did 45-euro prix-fixe, with one choice of food.

But there’s always going to be an ebb and a flow. I see a return to simplicity, too. When I put on the stone crabs with the Dijon mayonnaise, or the Dover sole or the Nantucket Bay scallops — the real ones from the guy that we bought from for 20 years, and people taste that here — they fly out of here. And this is a pretty jaded group.
But the Dover sole flying out of here is impeccable. It’s about the quality of the ingredients and the simplicity.

We’re still focused on the ingredients. We have a menu that changes every three months, but within that three months period we have the two shoulder months. So Stone crabs and Nantucket Bay scallops and sole are examples of the last half of the fall, and winter doesn’t really start in January. Our proteins remain pretty much the same, and our setup changes based on what the season is.

I mean wild salmon comes and goes, and spiny lobster in California from Oct. 15 to March 15.

And the food’s always wine-centric. The good news with all the crazy wine people these days is that they’re creating wines that go with all the crazy food that’s coming out. People used to say clichés like you can’t drink wine with Asian food. That’s just not true anymore. There are too many cool wines that go with all of that stuff.

And this young generation is ready, willing and able to participate in all this. That’s what they want.

Do you think there’s a future for classic, old-school fine dining?

Yes, just like I believe that there’s still a relevancy to picking up the New York Times and reading it, versus online.

Maybe in the future there won’t be, but as long as I’m alive there will be that point, just like there will be a point to sit down and have crystal and silver and real linen and flowers and attention and people who talk to you.

But in L.A. they eat in 45 minutes because they’re going somewhere else. I see it with my own children. They go to four or five things a night.