Chef of the Year 2007: Joey Campanaro

If you were able to nab a table this year at The Little Owl, Joey Campanaro’s West Village “apartment” (his term), chances are you thought, “This is it?” This is the four-week wait? This is where the Jimmy Bradley disciple cooks for Sarah Jessica Parker, Charlie Rose and Martha Stewart? It certainly ain’t Del Posto. The corner space, which also served as the apartment façade for “Friends,” typifies New York cozy with 28 rickety chairs wedged into a single room with vaulted ceilings, crumbling walls and an elevated skybox bench for waiting patrons. And, yes, even with a reservation, there can be a wait.     

But we haven’t named Campanaro our chef of the year because of shout-outs from A-listers or links on Eater. (For the most part, he’s managed to stay relatively below the radar in this chef-obsessed town, even after teaming up with Mikey Price to open the buzzworthy Market Table.) Or the fact that he personally shaved our white truffles tableside while offering a lesson about adding essence to Arborio rice—he had no idea we wrote about food, but he served us plenty to scribble about.

No, Campanaro is our chef of the year because, as we ate through the seasons in 2007, trying out the barbecue joints, micro-gastronomy labs and French farmhouses, we found ourselves coming back to The Little Owl, with its clean, consistent cuisine. And never once were we served, or heard about, a single poor dish. The crispy organic chicken was always juicy. The perfectly cooked pork chop, as thick as a copy of “Underworld” and infused with seasonal herbs, was an otherworldly entrée. Risotto bianco was simple, but still rich, with parmesan, farm-fresh yolk and truffle oil. The reputation was, indeed, well deserved.

We sat down with Campanaro to talk about his year: the kitchen breakthroughs, opening Market Table and “curating” Martha Stewart’s holiday party.
         
What was your most popular dish this year?
In the summer it was the soft-shell crab. In the fall it is risotto bianco with the white truffles. I store the tuffles with raw Arborio rice, and within a couple days the rice takes on the natural aroma of the white truffle. We cook the rice with good Piedmont wine and mix it with truffle butter and parmesan cheese, and top it with an organic egg yolk.

How does a chef keep his precious white truffles safe?
The truffles stay in a special little refrigerator in the kitchen. I threaten everybody with their life—if this truffle is not stored properly or thrown in the garbage or it gets confused for a potato or mushroom, the fear of god should be in them. [Laughs] We have a really tight crew here. Most of the kitchen guys have been working with me since I was with Jimmy Bradley.   

Let’s cut to it. When are you going to open another restaurant?
Opportunities get presented a lot. One thing that was interesting was an opportunity in Vegas.

No way…New York chefs never go there.
Here’s why I think it’s interesting: A small restaurant from Manhattan, with the basic fundamentals of cooking and serving down pat—is it possible in Vegas?

Maybe downtown.      
That’s what I’m being approached with. How can we have something that is wholesome and unpretentious in one of the craziest cities in the world? It sounds like an interesting challenge. The idea is something like Market Table. The only time I have been to Vegas, I was getting New York New York open. It was two weeks in the basement stuck in refrigerators. And the pool. That was my time in Vegas. 

Even though you worked in Hollywood as the executive chef at the dining room at Universal Studios, you must get star struck in your restaurant.
You always get the jitters because you want to meet expectations. People are coming to a restaurant the size of a New York City apartment. Steven Spielberg came in a couple times and that gave me the jitters. He’s coming to my apartment, and you are always thinking, “Are the bathrooms clean enough?” It’s an old, old, old building, which I guess adds to the charm, but you are always wondering if they are going to notice that piece of wood that is falling apart. Sarah Jessica Parker came in with Matthew Broderick and Jerry Seinfeld. The funniest thing was the couple sitting next to them. They actually freaked out, calling their daughter on the telephone. I was a little, “Hey, simmer down now.” [Laughing]

Describe your role during the opening of Market Table?
I really put the deal together, but there was no reason for me to executive-chef at two restaurants. I’ve had a 14-year relationship with [chef] Mikey Price, and it was his time. He was at the Mermaid Inn for four years and was sick of looking at the same walls and wanted to do something different with his life. His natural instinct was to abandon fish and focus on braised meats like lamb shanks and short ribs.

When planning the restaurant, did you see this market trend taking shape?
I had no idea, but as they say, great minds think alike. I hate calling it a trend. Look at the neighborhood. The West Village is one of the oldest in the city, and there used to be a grocery store at the same location over 60 years ago. So, is it a trend really?

You seem to disavow trends. So what 2007 dining trend would you like to see go away?
The cocktail craze kind of bums me out a bit. The hospitality business is not about the proprietor, but about the guest. The cocktail trend is all about the “celebrity cocktail maker.” Like, “Oh, I am coming to mix this with elderflower.” I mean, come on, man?

Other than Market Table, do you have a favorite new restaurant?
I wish that I can say that I have been out. The one place that I have wanted to go was Park Avenue Winter. I wanted to go to Park Avenue Fall and Summer, but I missed it. I think that is one of the coolest concepts a restaurateur has ever done. Sixty-third and Park Avenue is a neighborhood with a lot of old money, but the concept is really downtown and edgy.

What about in your neighborhood?
There is a dish at BarFry that I eat three times a week: fluke sashimi with chives and white soy. It’s out of this world, man.

With your elevated profile, have you been hired for lot of private events?
Our biggest event this season is the staff holiday party for Martha Stewart. We are taking over a studio in Tribeca, and it’s a major production because I proposed to Martha that we pick nine of her other favorite chefs. So now I am producing the entire event with these other chefs: Harold Dieterle, Jimmy Bradley, Jonathan Waxman, Will Goldfarb, Johnny Iuzzini, Mikey Price and myself. Two of those guys were my previous sous-chefs, and now they own their own restaurants, which is kind of cool.

Ok, you lost to—some may say you were schooled by—Cat Cora on “Iron Chef.” Should you have won?
I should have, but I didn’t. It was intense and one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do in my entire life. They lift that thing up, and that’s when you find out the ingredient.

And do you really only get an hour?
It’s actually less, about 45 minutes of actual cooking time. It’s hard to do and I should have won. It was a setup.

What did you learn this year?
Excuse my lack of a better term, but if you are not cheap on quality and put out a value to your guests, the return patronage is unbelievable. I would rather charge somebody a dollar less and have them return than make that extra buck. So value, on top of imagination and care and technique in cooking, has lead to the success of The Little Owl.

Photo by Melissa Hom