11.3.26 | Burning Down the House

Crazy kids back in the day.

I have opened a few restaurants from scratch over the course of my career. Each one is a unique a beautiful beast, filled with high stress, high excitement and a crippling amount of work. Becca and I met in Maryland, fell in love in Maryland and then left Maryland.

I had heard about a job opening in a tiny little restaurant in a tiny little town in the heart of the Shenandoah valley. The Red Hen was looking for a chef. The previous chef had left and the restaurant was hiring. I reached out via email, had a few phone conversations and decided to throw my hat into the ring. Becca, the dog, and I head down to Lexington to check out the town.

I remember circling the town a few times before checking into a cheap hotel room. Dressed in button downs and fancy shoes, we pulled up next to the restaurant. Our dog, Bing, who you might say was anti-social, starting going absolutely ballistic at the horse carriage slowly meandering by. I mean insane, causing a scene. We were parked on Randolph Street, right outside the restaurant, I was about to go inside to interview and here was our dog going apeshit at the most wholesome of things. I apologized to the riders and the driver and blushing turned the corner onto Washington.

Who was I greeted by? … Their freshly hired chef. He had arrived earlier and was hired on the spot. Womp, womp, womp. I still meeted and greeted with the then-owners and slunk back to the hotel room. We had fallen pot over tea kettle for Lexington as a whole. From the restaurant, the building, the city, nature, just all of it and now it just wasn't going to work out.

We were broke, travel weary, and just a bit beaten down after the whole affair. We decided to just walk across the parking lot from the hotel to the closest chain restaurant and grab a bite before TV, bed, and back home to M.D. We pull open the doors to some generic fast casual and plopped into a booth. Right there on the table tent was a sign for bottomless margaritas and they were calling my name like a siren

song. I placed my order and the server came back with two martini glasses and a comically large shaker of margaritas. The martini glasses had olives in them. Olives? Like for martinis? And without hesitation the server poured our margaritas out of the clownish shaker tin over the olives and said enjoy?

Now I know martini glasses are typically used to serve martinis which are typically served with olives, but margaritas and olives? No thank you. Becca and I just dug out the olives with our fingers, ate them, drank down the briny margaritas. The food was the type of food you would expect to get at a place that serves olives in their margaritas. Bellies a-rumble we headed back to the hotel room. Surely the worst

of the day was behind us.

Not quite.

That evening, taking Bing out for an evening stroll we were quickly chased back inside by a skunk. (Why does Lexington have so many skunks, by the way?) In the morning, we packed up and headed home. We kept expressing how much we loved the area, too bad it didn't work out, etc, etc. We got back home and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to reach back out.

I started an email, I thanked the owners for meeting with us and at the end I said something to the likes of. “I know restaurants can change fast, we really loved the restaurant and the surrounding area, if anything comes up, whether its in five days or five years, please reach out to us, who knows where we'll be.”

Well it didn't take five years, it took two weeks. The chef they hired didn't work out for one reason or another and they wanted to talk to us, and this time they would travel to us.

“Absolutely, come over for dinner, Becca and I will cook.” I made a crudite grazing board with hummus and veggies, Becca picked out the wine and table setting. I wanted to make something nice, something intricate, something you don't see everyday. Something that would show off my chops. (Chops! Get it?) I settled on chicken ballotine.

For those of you that don't do a lot of whole animal fabrication or forcemeats, a chicken ballotine is a technique where you debone a whole chicken, leaving the skin intact. Then pound it thin with a mallet, fill the inside with a mix of sausage, diced bacon, and fresh herbs, then roll the whole chicken back up into a cylinder, poach it or roast it and voila, you have chicken ballotine.

I decided to take it a step further. After poaching, I chilled the chicken down and breaded the entire thing. The end result would be large breaded chicken cylinders stuffed with bacon, thyme, lemon zest (zested properly) and sausage. I had it all planned out so as soon as our guest arrived, the ballotines would go into the oven on a rack over a sheet tray. Meanwhile we would talk over wine and crudite. As the

chicken cooked and the breading turned a beautiful hue of golden brown, the smell of roasting chicken would fill the house. What could go wrong?

Everything started as planned; we meeted, we greeted and we eatted. Wine, hummus, veggies, conversation. The ballotines were roasting away in the kitchen while we sat in the living room. Bing acted like a good girl and napped on the floor, no bombastic outrages to make our hopefully future employees see us as anything but a talented well mannered little family.

That's when the whisps of smoke started to seep from the oven door and slowly fill the kitchen. Still, we joked and laughed and drank wine as the smoke thickened and went from whisps to clouds, and gray to black.

“Oh, shit!” Smiling ear to ear, sweat forming on my brow, I quickly but calmly slipped into the kitchen. Tea towels flapping, I opened the back door and the windows. “It sure is warm tonight! Maybe I should open the house up?”

The ballotines, while golden brown, were dripping little pools of chicken grease onto the bottom of the sheet tray. The grease was seconds away from bursting into flames when I found it and pulled it from the oven.

“Dinner will be just a moment! Ya'll stay out there, I'll take care of everything!”

After removing the birds from the oven I saw they had actually come out perfectly. Golden brown, crispy cylinders of juicy chicken. I can't remember what vegetables, starches or sauces I served with the dish, I just remember almost burning the house down while my future employers were in the next room. I sliced the birds, plated and turned to see everyone in the kitchen doorway. Someone said “It's not a party without a fire” and we ate.

We got the job, packed and headed south.

Now with one fire out, another had started. Time to open up The Red Hen. We opened the doors in three days. Three days! That's unheard of. We knew we wanted to impress, we wanted local ingredients and we wanted southern fair with French cooking techniques and absolutely classic dishes. We knew we wanted cornbread, what’s more southern than that. Becca, being a Southern Belle and a baker, set to the

task.

Becca was working the line when we first opened. Everyday I would draw a large picture on a piece of parchment paper, flip the paper over and pour the cornbread batter over the non drawn-on side. Later, Becca would come in, turn out the cornbread to find the picture I drew her and cut it into cubes for service.

We also knew we wanted agnolotti. Small stuffed pasta pillows. Once again, a Becca specialty. She just has the touch for these techniques. So we did a roasted pumpkin filling, fresh shaved apples and fried sage.

One of the other opening menu items was scallops (one of Becca's favorites) with local VA Ham. If there's one thing Virginia is known for it’s its ham. If there's four things Virginia is know for it's it's ham, tobacco, peanuts, and lovers.

From those first three days to 10 years later it was a whirlwind. It was almost three years ago now that we decided we wanted to do a Red Hen wine dinner. We just couldn't settle on which foods we wanted, when was the best time, was it too soon, is it too late, are we going to stir up trouble?

Recently Becca and I started reminiscing and looking back at old menus and we decided now is the time. Becca still makes the pasta, she still makes the lemon meringues. The dessert on the wine dinner menu, however, is her apple pie which made an appearance early on. I won’t tell you the story about those because we got into a big fight about them and now we don't work in the kitchen together any more.

Luckily for me, Becca can't stay mad at this face.

Long story short, that's why we have picked these items for our Red Hen Wine dinner. It's because they mean something to us. Sort of the beginning of our story through food. There were a few food items that didn't make it to the list, but maybe they'll show up on a future wine dinner menu someday.

Becca and I are still grinding away, still trying to be creative and have fun. I think we're achieving that … for the most part. It's not always fun to look back on things, but in this case it is. Where we have come from and how much we've changed over the past 13 years. What a long strange trip its been.

—Matt