Chef talk with Ric Orlando

Ric Orlando is a pioneer of the Hudson Valley farm-to-table movement. Since 1989, when he left New York City, Ric’s tireless work in promoting the farms, products and people of upstate New York has made him one of the most well-known chefs in the region. After 20 years running one of the area’s favorite restaurants, he is now focusing on consulting and special dining events. He also owns his own brand of creative seasonings and condiments

You might have seen Ric on television beating Bobby Flay on the Food Network or winning twice on the cooking reality show Chopped. He is a regular guest on WAMC Public Radio’s Food Friday, and even had his own TEDX talk.

How many restaurants do you frequent where you don’t know the name of the chef preparing your food? That’s wouldn’t be the case with Ric. He, not the restaurant itself, is the focus of the experience.

Today, Ric is preparing his annual Feast of the Seven Fishes, in Averill Park, N.Y. This Italian Christmas tradition focuses on the fruits of the sea. This year, Ric is cooking the feast at his good friend Kevin Tighe’s Bistro Americain, a French-American bistro. Later, I had the opportunity to enjoy dinner service and to try the dishes Ric had been preparing during our interview.

Jason: I certainly never perceived New World as an Italian restaurant, but it seems in the last few years you have really turned toward your Italian roots,

Ric: The last five years I’ve spent two or three months a year in southern Italy. After 40 years of cooking food from around the world, I would say that Italy has recently been an inspiration to me. At my age, it’s good to be inspired.
I still love cooking all my global flavors, but I have a great appreciation for the simplicity of Italian cooking — being able to make amazing food with very few ingredients. I like focusing on ingredients more than anything else. I obviously still love cooking and eating food from all over, though.

Jason: I once heard Mario Carbone say that the quintessential and most defining trait of Italian cooking is using what you have available in season and creating something simple and delicious. He was explaining that at his restaurants you might see something that we wouldn’t consider typically Italian by American standards, but by following his definition he has had the freedom to experiment. As long as he is using in-season local ingredients, that still makes it Italian at heart.

Ric: Farm-to-table isn’t just Italian, it is Mediterranean at heart. You know, Spain, Portugal, Greece, North Africa. Farm-to-table is a great thing that happened to America, but it’s the way we cooked up until about 50 years ago. Farm-to-table is just a reaction to the corporatization of the American food system. The food in our supermarkets is not very good compared to the rest of the world, and they know it. In Italy, you go to the market, and they only have what’s in season. In America, we expect everything to be ripe all year.

Jason: So how did you learn to cook? Traditional schooling?

Ric: I ended up getting a job as a waiter at Harvest in Harvard Square, Cambridge. We had a daily changing menu, truly farm-to-table for its day. I got so into it.

That’s when I realized I didn’t always have to be a food slinger. I realized it’s possible to cook with intellectual pursuit. You can cook elevated ethnic food with any ingredient in the world. So working at a restaurant like Harvest changed my life.

I left the Harvest to help open 21 Federal in Nantucket. I started cooking the lunch shift, and within three months I was running the kitchen. Back then there was no Internet, so we had stacks of books and magazines. You would actually have to follow the recipes and order the ingredients on the list.

We learned how to make stock by watching James Beard and Julia Childs. Julia Childs was a regular at the Harvest, actually. I cooked for her several times. I made her mussels with tamarind juice, chili, tarragon, and a whole mess of ingredients. She loved it! All the other cooks poked fun at me. She was a character, for sure. A genius!

Jason: So then, when did you open New World?

Ric: May 1993 at 401 Zena Road.

Jason: And what was that restaurant called before New World?

Ric: Shirley’s. Musicians hung out there. Rumor is Love Shack was written about Shirley’s. Kate Pierson used to hang there regularly. The building on 212 was The Getaway in the 80s. Then Medusa, then Seasons. It was built on top of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The pool was made for Johnny Weissmuller, from Tarzan, to practice swimming for the Olympics. His uncle lived next door.
New World closed on April 7th, 2018. Two weeks before we closed, we called the Freeman and the Poughkeepsie Journal and everyone came out. It was glorious! Everyone that worked there over the last 10 or 20 years came out to work for free. They wanted to put in their last shift. It was a great run.

Jason: So when did you move from Zena Road to Route 212?

Ric: July 1998.

Jason: New World closed well before Covid?

Ric: Yeah.  I was working in Albany at the other New-World location. Consulting for a chef’s salary, and Saugerties was becoming financially unviable. My wife, who was working for the restaurant, also got a great job offer, and it didn’t make sense any more.

Jason: I used to hear stories about you bringing your employees on a pilgrimage to Boston. What’s that all about?

Ric: We went to the East Coast Grill, Chris Schlesinger’s East Coast Grill. He was a well-known food writer and chef in the late Eighties, early Nineties. He really brought rock ‘n’ roll into eating. His restaurants were loud! One of the menu items was a twelve-pack for the kitchen. Just rock and roll. I took my crew to a lot of weird places. East Coast Grill definitely had the vibe I was trying to create in New World – in-your-face, loud flavors!

Jason: One of my favorite New World memories was your special Valentine’s dinner. I vaguely remember blindfolds being involved.

Ric: Our safe-sex dinner! A lot of people really enjoyed that. The safe-sex plates were eight pairs of very simple but intense flavors. All of these really freaky things that you could eat with a blindfold on to trick your senses. You couldn’t put a finger on what you were tasting. Like a mango Serrano chili pepper dipped in white chocolate or a date stuffed with gorgonzola. Then – bam! — it exploded in your mouth.

Jason: When did you discover your love of big flavors?

Ric: I learned how to love to eat being in Boston and the Village in my early twenties. Being introduced to mom-and-pop ethnic restaurants changed my life. When you are a poor, starving musician, often ethnic food was cheaper than McDonald’s. Like real Thai food, Szechuan noodles, chicken livers, Vietnamese.
I wanted to learn how to cook what I was experiencing. To really be a good cook, you need to know how to eat. Not just shoving food in your piehole, but really eat. I’m not talking ranch dressing on pizza!

Jason: How would you credit the evolution of the more sophisticated palettes of just ordinary diners? Now customers expect more than ever. I feel New World was ahead of the curve when it comes to the elevation of flavors and pushing the envelope.

Ric: Food Network shows changed everything. Social media has taken over, and Instagram has ruined a lot of it. Chefs see things on social media, and they try to make their food look like what they saw but without actually tasting it.

Jason: So seeing celebrity chefs on TV?

Ric: Say what you want about him, but Mario Batali changed people’s perception of Italian food completely. Bobby Flay introduced Tex-Mex, and Martin Yan introduced Shanghai and real Chinese food. All these people on TV in the Nineties introduced America to regional and global food.

Wolfgang Puck put smoked salmon on a pizza, and it was like the Sex Pistols. It completely opened our brains to taking a medium like pizza or tacos or pasta and putting new things on them. Something as simple as goat cheese and salmon on a pizza was revolutionary.

Then came the cookbooks, and it all kind of exploded. Don’t get me wrong, the old-fashioned restaurants were great because mom was cooking. Mom isn’t cooking in them any more. Now there is corner-cutting, and it’s a step above diner food.

Jason: What makes the Hudson Valley special or different from the rest of the country, in your opinion?

Ric: There are two factors. One is the proximity to the city. We are pretty much a suburb of New York. A lot of chefs make their way up here and bring that experience with them. We are an agricultural hub. We really have great farms up here. The Hudson Valley is one of a half-dozen great food centers in America that are not in a big city. That’s the way I always described it. The Hudson Valley is the sixth borough.

Jason: Here’s a fun one. What is your least favorite ingredient to work with?

Ric: I don’t have a least favorite ingredient, but I do get tired of some after a while. I guess my least favorite ingredient would be anything premade and processed for sure. Nothing tastes like it’s supposed to. It’s all been dumbed down and made sweet and weird with chemicals and sugar. Maybe nacho cheese sauce? That orange-cheese shit. Dude, I hate that shit! Am I allowed to say that?

Whipped Ricotta Toasts with Zucca in Agrodolce

Whipped ricotta is always a fun spread, but adding these sweet and squash bits and some parsley or mint elevate these into a delish party snack. This dish is as Sicilian as it gets!