This fall marks redemption for Zak Pelaccio, Fatty's Crab's wiz-kid chef whom we last saw "consulting" at a couple high-profile bombs (notably Chop Suey and one-year-and-out Borough Food & Drink) and not opening restaurants, which is what he does best. (Eater recently took umbrage with the chef's wandering eye with their ingenious Zak-O-Matic.)
But by November, Pelaccio hopes to open a satellite location of Fatty Crab, his popular Malaysian street-cart homage, on the Upper West Side—as well as a tri-level Southest Asian smoked meats and bourbon playground in Williamsburg called Fatty ‘Cue.
From his family's vacation home upstate, and between sips of Pappy Van Winkle 12-year, Pelaccio gave us some details about the openings, including how he's teamed up with pitmeister Robbie Richter.
On taking Fatty Crab to the Upper West Side
"We have a lot of clientele from the Upper West Side and the opportunity presented itself, so we gave it a shot. I don't speak Upper Westside-ian—I've still got my Berlitz to finish. Tom Valenti is opening West Branch right next door to us, so I have hung out with him quite a bit and developed a nice relationship. He is sorta the ambassador of the Upper West Side."
On launching restaurants
"Anything can go wrong. I remember when we were launching 5 Ninth we were ready to roll and started doing our first friends-and-family service and there was a fire in the ventilation system. Some schmuck had left a bunch of debris up in the vent, and the debris caught fire and set a fire in the wall. And that was night one. [Like what happened at Per Se, we asked?] That whole mall should have burned down. Midtown is a weird place these days. We don't get along."
On hooking up with Fatty ‘Cue partner Robbie Richter
"I've known Robbie since 2005, and ever since we met we've been talking about working together. I did a wedding for a friend in Ghent, New York, and wanted to do something really cool and rustic, like squab and porcini, and finish with a 200-pound whole roasted pig. So I got in touch with Robbie, through Josh Ozersky, and Robbie came up with his smoker and I got the pig from Patrick Martins at Heritage Foods and we hung out for 30 hours and cooked the motherfucker."
On his Asian barbecue philosophy
"I lived and cooked in Malaysia and Thailand and obviously love those flavors. When you eat grilled meats in a simple open-air restaurant in Southeast Asia, typically there will be a flat basket piled with herbs, astringent leaves and sweet leaves like dried and fresh chili, young ginger and Vietnamese mint. So the idea is to pick from that basket so the flavors from the meat balance and/or contrast with the herbs. If you are eating something fatty and you bite into a bitter leaf, it's going to cut the fat, but what it also does is stimulate the appetite."
On Fatty ‘Cue's menu
"I see the meal as a progression. Start with a shrimp salad, which is raw shrimp cured with lime juice, fish sauce, minced garlic, cilantro and chili sauce, tossed with warm pig trotter. Next, go with a little whipped lardo spread on bread with prosciutto, and then you move into the real meat [laughing], which is brisket, pork ribs with a palm sugar and chili glaze, and maybe goat brined in soy sauce finished with sesame oil, fresh cilantro and salted chiles. Finish the meal off with a rich bone broth, which is made from all the bones from butchering and finished with grated galangal root and Chinese celery. You will drink that down as a digestivo, while drinking plenty of bourbon along the way."
On his consulting jobs
I had taken on the consulting jobs to get me through a rough patch—splitting up with my ex—which allowed me to have some free time to be with my kid. I didn't want to open anything that I was the chef of during that time because I would have been conflicted on where I was spending my time. So I made the conscious decision not to. [Any conflicts now, opening two restaurants?] No, no. My son Hudson knows the deal and knows all the restaurants and is old enough to understand. We have our schedules."
On finding quality seafood in NYC
"It's so fucked up that we cannot get better seafood in New York. I mean, we're on the ocean! The guy who gets the best seafood in New York is Pasternack at Esca. My girlfriend used to work there and we end up there all the time. We will be jetting around on the scooter all day and walk in totally haggard with a greasy T-shirt and flip-flops and a couple beers in us and we'll be like, 'Do you have a table?' The food is so good there."
On vacationing upstate until Labor Day
"This is the calm before the storm. I have three solid months of seven-day weeks ahead of me. But right now I'm drinking Pappy Van Winkle 12-year given to me by my good friend Audrey Saunders. The voice mail on my cell phone is full, and I'm going to leave it that way."
Photo by Jori Klein
