Will restaurant cookbooks allow you to recreate famous dishes at home?
January 21, 2009 at 10:42 am by Brian Ries
Slate food writer Lauren Shockey grabbed a few cookbooks pegged to famous restaurants — Eat Me, Carmine’s Family-Style Cookbook, and Chanterelle — and tried to recreate the dishes at home. We’ve all done something like that, certainly, but she also had the opportunity to compare her attempts with the real deal by visiting the restaurants. The result? Surprisingly sucessful.
All of the recipes I tested resembled their originals, but none perfectly recreated the restaurant version-not an entirely surprising verdict.
Eat Me’s Slutty Cakes (peanut butter pancakes), Carmine’s Linguine with White Clam Sauce, and Chanterelle’s Cumin-Crusted Salmon all turned out almost as good as what she found at the source restaurants. Problem is, eating in your kitchen just isn’t the same as eating out.
At home, Kenny Shopsin didn’t insult me (which is really an integral part of the Shopsin’s experience); I missed out on people-watching at Carmine’s (enthusiastic hordes devouring heaps of pasta); and while my salmon resembled Chanterelle’s, I didn’t get to taste the complementary deviled quail egg canapés and homemade rolls with two types of artisanal butter. At home, I had to play the part not only of chef but of waiter and dishwasher, too, with no chance of a tip.
Still, it bodes well for a home cook who’s a fan of those glossy restaurant recipes. Any local cookbooks that deserve the same test?
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