Video Tour: A Restaurant R’evolution Sneak Peek

We couldn’t be more excited to officially open the doors at Restaurant R’evolution today at 5 p.m.! In anticipation of our public debut, we invited our friends from Bringing it Home into the kitchen a few weeks ago for an exclusive, behind-the-scenes tour, and wanted to share it with you.

Follow Chef Folse as he leads you through the action-packed back line and catch the R’evolution team preparing for the opening – from braising pork shanks, to bubbling soups and gumbos, to a snapshot of our sweet treats...and beyond!

We hope to see you soon!

Chefs Folse and Tramonto

Setting the Bar

Assietes of crudo for the Restaurant R'evolution bar

We’re in the midst of formulating the cocktail and food programs for Restaurant R'evolution's bar. We’re tentatively calling it “Bar R’evolution” – what do you think? We’re in what I call “think tank mode” right now, generating and polishing up our ideas, which we’ll present to the team in tastings next month. The bar menu will offer seasonal, market-driven cocktails with a pre-Prohibition theme, great wines by the glass, artisan beers, and its own food menu. Molly Wismeier, our director of wine and spirits, has been working closely with us to develop the beverage side, and she‘s going to give you a little sneak preview of that this week.



Andouille black sea salt potato chips for the R'evolution bar



My focus, with John and our chef Jody Denton, has been on the food, which will include small plates, crudos, and salumi. Think playful. Things like house made potato chips with black sea salt flavored with andouille sausage, assietes of crudo, our own spins on some classic NOLA dishes like crawfish balls and a pot de crème that’s infused with all of the flavors of a traditional crab boil. We’re really playing with the flavors of New Orleans in fun new ways that we think will be appealing with the drinks that Molly is concocting.

Smoked sea trout panzanella for R'evolution bar

On a more personal note, something has been on my mind recently during this bar-focused piece of the process that I want to share. I’ve been thinking about how I approach the bar as someone who has struggled with addiction in my past. Maybe it’s because this chapter of the restaurant development process has fortuitously aligned with the release of my memoir, Scars of a Chef, which openly shares some of the struggles I’ve had with addiction in my life. It’s been a really important part of my evolution as a chef to realize that I can treat wine and spirits like food. It’s about tasting and appreciating, not consuming. Nowadays when I taste wine or spirits, I’m not tempted to overdo it the way I was tempted by drugs and these things in my youth. It’s not a battle anymore. But then again, I also know that I can’t sit there and taste ten cocktails in a row either. I have a very healthy respect for my sobriety, so I’m very aware and cognizant of my limits.

Another important lesson I’ve learned is that I’m better off leaving most of this piece of the puzzle to others. I’m all about the food part of it, understanding what the flavor profiles need to be in order to match up well with the wine and the cocktails. But at the end of the day, I leave a lot of the beverage piece itself to the experts, like Molly. And with someone as talented as her in charge, I know we’re in good hands. Again, watch for more on the drinks from Molly this week.

- Rick

Formaggio. Fromage. Queso. CHEESE.

Let's talk cheese. Because cheese is where my head's been at for the past week. We're wrapping up our cheese tastings and cheese service decisions for Restaurant R'evolution, and I'm really getting excited to share our program with everyone.

Cheese cart

There’s really two schools of thought on cheese. Everyone’s into signature cheese plates these days, and then there’s the cheese cart. There are some beautiful cheese plates out there, but I’m more of a cart guy. I favor the cart over the plate personally because it's just so much more stunning from a sensory perspective. Sure, you can read the descriptions on the menu and make your selections, but seeing and smelling the whole array laid out for you – it just makes such a great impact. It's a great way to market cheese, and it's a great opportunity for teaching the guest about cheeses they may never have tried. 

At R'evolution, we're going to have four carts – custom carts we’re designing. They’ll have granite counters with beautiful drawers that pull out for plating, clear domes to showcase the cheeses. The cheese will be stored in a series of floor-to ceiling cheese caves in our Market Room.

A mock cheese service for Restaurant R'evolution

We're planning to have 20-30 cheeses on each of our four carts (with a possibility of doing different ones on each cart). Blues, goats, cows, sheep, but also with reference to the seven nations – German cheeses, French, Spanish. John even tells me we can source some African cheeses, which will be exciting to try. So we’re going to tie all that in as another layer of interest in our cheese program. Same with the fruit breads, mostardas, and other accompaniments to the cheese cart.

In addition to having a rocking stand-alone cheese program, we'll also be able to use these artisanal cheeses to do some great salads and pastas, which pushes us to be creative..

I’m excited to keep the cheese offerings rotating. You find these great little artisanal, small-production cheesemakers, and I love that we’ll be able to keep showcasing the ones we're passionate about. I’m also excited to showcase some of the cheeses being made at John’s Bittersweet Plantation Dairy, like his Fleur de Lis, his Bayou Blue and his Holy Cow (Vache Sante). Fleur de Teche, a triple cream cow's milk cheese with a layer of vegetable ash, is a showstopper. Oh man. Having his dairy in our corner will also allow us to explore making some exclusive R'evolution cheeses, which would be very cool.



Some cheese knives we're
considering



A mock-up of our signature
cheese board



One of John's and my goals for Restaurant R'evolution is to have one of the best cheese programs in New Orleans, and you can bet we'll be showing our attention to detail at the highest level, from how the cheese is tempered and ripened, to how it's cut, served and displayed. We hope the cheese-lovers out there will be as excited about this as we are.

- Rick           

Getting into Game



John and Rick cook over a fire in the Louisiana swamp



Unlike John, I didn’t grow up as a hunter or with any background in hunting. I’ve gone hunting as an adult; the most hunting I did was during the four years I was living in England with Gale, working at the Stapleford Park Hotel. I had the chance to go hunting with Malcolm, the hotel’s gamekeeper, in Scotland. We’d be staying in these cabins in the middle of nowhere, and the hunts would start super early in the morning – sometimes as early as 3 a.m. After a proper Scottish breakfast of haggis on toast, we’d hunt pheasant and grouse until about 7 or 8 a.m. and then we’d do the “Whiskey Trail,” hitting the single malt scotch producers – Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, as many as we could fit in. Then we’d come back to the hunting cabin and cook all the game we shot.



Antlers Lodge at Giles Island (Credit: GilesIsland.com)



When I came back to the States, I would occasionally hunt deer and turkey, but it wasn’t a part of my culture like it was for John. He’s been hunting since he was four, so he knows all the trails and all the techniques, from guns to bow-and-arrow. Since we’ve been working together, I’ve had the chance to go hunting with him, and go to some of the super high-end hunting lodges where he gets invited to cook – Grosse Savanne, Giles Island, places in the middle of the marsh where you need a helicopter to even get there. Honestly, it kind of feels like Jurassic Park! But reconnecting with hunting has been awesome. It’s something that I hope to get my boys into so they can handle guns and understand gun safety. I think that’s really important. The younger guys on these hunts with us have a huge appreciation for the lives of the animals they’re taking. I want my boys to have that kind of understanding.

So, on to the menu. We’ve been breaking it down by category. And since the hunting seasons here are so tied to the calendar, the month we open will determine what kind of game animals we’ll have to work with. For now, we’ve got about 10 or 12 items in the works in our Wild Game and Offal category. We’re doing dishes with rabbit, duck, quail, Guinea fowl and venison. The dishes will be very seasonal, and very indigenous to the area; people in New Orleans never hesitate to order these meats.

"Bird in a Cage" for Restaurant R'evolution

We’ll be doing a Bayou Blue venison chop, sort of in the style of Beef Wellington, but with a Native American twist. Jody, our chef de cuisine, made this awesome Native American flatbread, and we made a duxelle and added foie gras, and we wrapped this venison chop and the duxelle and foie and roasted it like a Beef Wellington. We're doing a whimsical take on guinea fowl that's inspired by Louisiana's German heritage: "Bird in a Cage" is smoked Guinea fowl with homemade sauerkraut, Creole mustard spaetzle and caramelized onion sauce, with a caraway "cage" that fits over the top of the dish.

We’ve done a lot of triptychs in this category. We’re trying to showcase different cuts of the same animal with different cooking techniques. It made the category very complicated and intricate, but we’re thrilled with the results.


Triptych of Offal for Restaurant R'evolution



On the offal side of the section, we’ll be doing a whole roasted foie gras presented tableside with six or seven different types of accompaniments. It was a signature dish at Tru, and we’re bringing it back in a new rendition!

We’re working on a great triptych of offal, too, with kidneys, brain and tripe. It’s veal kidneys braised in red wine and served on pumpernickel toast; panko-coated, sauteed lamb brain and tripe stewed old-school Italian with chilis, tomatoes and garlic. 

- Rick



Gone Fishing

Last week was fish week in the Restaurant R’evolution test kitchen at Bittersweet Plantation, and for me, another week in what we’ve half-jokingly dubbed the “John Folse Cooking School.” As a chef who didn’t previously have a background in Cajun and Creole cooking, this menu development process has been an incredible learning opportunity for me, getting to cook side-by-side with the man who literally wrote the book (12 of them!) on that style of cuisine. To give you a little bit of insight into our menu development process for R’evolution, it’s really a three-step process for each section of the menu we look at.

Step One: John and I decide which of the classic Creole and Cajun dishes we want to do our riffs on. We’ll read and talk about the history of those dishes and which of the Seven Nations contributed to those dishes (more on the Seven Nations from John later this week). Then we’ll go into the kitchen together with our team of chefs for three days of intensive study and cooking, and John takes us through the classic preparations for those dishes from start to finish.

Step Two: I usually take a day or two to go away and marinate on it all. I think about the dishes we made, and I figure out how to interpret them through my palate and my culinary sensibilities to make them new, make them my own. I sketch out the dishes on paper, I think about how they’ll look and how they’ll be presented. I shop and prep in the kitchen to get ready for the last step.

Step Three: Tasting Day. We taste the reinterpreted dishes. We pass judgment. We decide what will make the cut for the menu and what we’ll table for the time being. We talk about plating and presentation. Then we work out the logistics of each recipe and the kitchen process and system for each dish. In all, it can take more than a week to iron out each part of the menu.



A Tale of Three Fish Stews...the first rendition.



For fish week, we examined and broke down the iconic fish dishes of New Orleans. We did about 12 different dishes on Wednesday, and then on Thursday we worked out the recipes and systems that go with the eight dishes we had approved. The most exciting dish that came out of the week, for me, was the Tale of Three Fish Stews. We looked at three of the seven nations – France, Italy and Spain – that are most famous for bouillabaisse and fish stews, and created three different takes on the dish through those culinary lenses. Bouillabaisse from France, a Ligurian fish stew from Italy and a Spanish “zarzuela.” Ultimately, rather than choose just one, we decided to create a trio of fish stews in a three-course tasting offering.

We had some fun playing around with surf and turf, pulling together things like red snapper and sugar cane-cured pork belly. We’re messing around with a version of shrimp and grits. A Creole dish with grouper. These are the kinds of things we’re cooking and getting inspired by. Not everything will wind up on the menu, but it’s all part of the journey.

Pontchartrain Blues crab boat



A Pontchartrain Blue crab



One of the coolest parts of fish week for me was getting to go out on the Gulf on shrimp and crab boats with some prospective purveyors, and watching these guys harvest these incredible Pontchartrain Blue crabs in their cages. The day that I was out there, I was actually touring with White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford, and we had a private tour of the operation. It was fascinating to see how they sort through the crabs and stack them and pick them by hand. They were so fast. There were like ten tables with eight people around each table, and they’re packing all of this incredible blue crab meat into plastic containers and weighing it. Pretty amazing stuff.

Next week: meat. We’ll be doing tastings with purveyors at farms, slaughterhouses and butchers, deciding where we’ll be sourcing our meat.

- Rick