Tim Wiechmann of Playska
Destination: Eastern Europe
Ask Tim Wiechmann about his most vivid memories of Eastern Europe, and he won’t cite Budapest’s iconic Parliament Building or Croatia’s picturesque beaches, but rather the influences of an ancient empire that cut a culinary swath through the Balkans.
“The core of that part of Europe’s food is very meat-, potato- and bread-oriented, but the Balkans are more interesting in the way of the Ottomans’ influence with pomegranates, yogurt, sumac—the whole Playska menu is that sensibility,” Wiechmann says.
His new Inman Square sandwich shop—so named for the signature pork and beef sandwich with ajvar red pepper and eggplant relish—is his first purely inspired by a well-stamped passport. “I think people get excited that me and Bronwyn [his wife] bring them interesting choices in a world that’s very hungry for choices,” Wiechmann says. “That’s what we do at a French restaurant [T.W. Food], at a German restaurant [Bronwyn]. But this is just super fun, and if there’s any one purely based on travel, this is it.”
Making his own lepinje leavened flatbread was essential to re-creating his experiences abroad, says Wiechmann, who travels two to three times a year “to find inspiration and, basically, new food.” Visits to Budapest, Belgrade, Bulgaria and Croatia allowed for a cross-section of culinary experiences, from fine dining to street foods, from visiting farms to surveying supermarkets and pastry cases. It’s a passion that started when he was a child, traveling with his dad for international business. “I gained a global palate by the time I was 3 or 4, eating croissants in Europe, trying new things in South America… but I really remember not wanting to eat raw fish for breakfast in Japan!”
Chew Your Own Adventure
For globe-trotting toques, inspiration is often the best souvenir. Here’s a look at how the stamps on their passports impact what’s on your plate.
By C. Dimiti | Photo Credit: Diego Navarro | Feb. 12, 2016
Dan Bazzinotti of BISq
Destination: Peru
The greatest adventure Dan Bazzinotti had in Peru wasn’t climbing the mist-shrouded foothills of Machu Picchu—it was in his mother-in-law’s kitchen.
“All the guys went outside to play soccer,” says the BISq chef. “They laughed about me hanging back in the kitchen with her to learn her secrets and drink a beer.”
Diners in Cambridge are having the last laugh now that Bazzinotti has expanded BISq’s menu with rotating Peruvian specialties such as shambar soup (a hearty stew of beans, peppers and pork belly finished with mint), several varieties of ceviche and inexpensive but adventurous bar snacks, like $6-$7 savory anticucho—beef, chicken or duck hearts served with quinoa salad and cilantro.
In his wife Veronicka’s homeland, Bazzinotti was most impressed with the variety of cuisines and produce made available by the diverse terrain. (There are about 3,800 types of potato alone in the Andes.) “In the mountains, they’re famous for raising guinea pig,” Bazzinotti says. “But where my wife is from on the coast, it’s all about roasted chicken and ceviche. You can go from one strip of the beach and find five different ones all in a row—it’s so cool, and so fresh!” Back in Inman Square, Bazzinotti makes his ceviche by hand-juicing three pounds of key limes and adding rocoto peppers he and a friend grow using Peruvian seeds.
Though Machu Picchu is on Bazzinotti’s to-do list for his third trip back, he says eating goat head stew for breakfast and fried guinea pig make for some unforgettable travel experiences, too. “Even the 12-year-old selling street food takes so much care and has so much passion about this food—it’s some of the best in the world.”
By C. Dimiti | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Brendan Pelley of Pelekasis at Wink & Nod
Destination: Greece
Sure, growing up in a Greek-American household helped Brendan Pelley learn to appreciate the flavors of his forefathers—but traveling to their homeland truly inspired him.
“Everywhere you go is crazy-beautiful,” he says of recent Mediterranean adventures that included a stay in Athens and island hopping to Mykonos, Santorini and Crete. “Each island has its own culinary style, but Crete was so varied. Strategically, from a military standpoint, it’s a great spot in the middle of the ocean, so it’s got influence from Turkey, Northern Africa, Phoenicians… it’s really exciting food.”
In the same vein, Pelley is applying his classical French and Italian training to put his own spin on Greek classics at new South End pop-up Pelekasis, which features his family’s original surname. Since cucumbers aren’t currently in season in Boston, Pelley gets creative and instead uses apples for a tart tzatziki with a bright crunch. He’s roasting local beets for horiatiki salad with citrus, pickled onion, hazelnuts and feta, and he’s importing tomatoes for a classic Santorini fritter. He did, however, stay mostly true to his mom’s recipe for spanakopita, searing the spinach pie in butter to evoke the crisp corner pieces that were his favorite growing up.
As for other “mom and pops,” wandering off beaten paths to family-run tavernas was Pelley’s favorite part of his time in Greece. “Mykonos is great for the party atmosphere, but you’ve kind of got to ‘follow your nose,’ ” he says. “The best stuff is where the locals eat—half the time they’ll invite you back to peek your head into the pots to see what’s cooking… rustic goat stews and braises and lamb and slow-cooked dishes that are some of the most intoxicating smells ever.”
By C. Dimiti | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Tiffani Faison of Tiger Mama
Destination: Southeast Asia
Tiffani Faison may have been an Army brat, but her culinary upbringing was far removed from MREs. “To their credit, my parents were great about never letting us live on-base,” she says. “That set the path now for what I do with my life and my passion for other cultures and their cuisines.”
Some of her earliest and most vivid travel memories include her first fish taco in Mexico (“It blew my head off”) and getting off a plane in Greece to find a traditional Mediterranean feast. “Those experiences lit the match for me wanting to be a chef and understanding who I am.”
The Sweet Cheeks BBQ proprietrix took a sharp left turn from pulled pork after two trips with wife Kelly Walsh to Southeast Asia, where a bowl of the classic street food gra pow changed everything. “It brought me to my knees—it was unbelievable to the point where I think I had three more orders. It was like seeing a couple of unicorns.”
Now there’s a version on the menu at her new Fenway restaurant Tiger Mama. But Faison is aiming to interpret rather than re-create the couple’s culinary journeys through Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, replacing the fresh papaya of a traditional Thai salad with crisp fried ribbons of the fruit, for instance. And she and her staff are still trying to wrap their heads around challenges like “broken” broths (“Fat separating from the protein is a concept that doesn’t work in Western cuisine!”) and sourcing specialty Asian produce in Boston.
But while Tiger Mama’s menu may evolve, Faison is committed to her travel philosophy: Make reservations first, and then fill in the gaps. “We eat, touch the Colosseum, spend an hour walking and then go eat again,” she says of her travels with Walsh. “I would argue that food provides the same level of history, insight and terroir as any museum or monument.”
By C. Dimiti | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Tim Wiechmann of Playska
Destination: Eastern Europe
Ask Tim Wiechmann about his most vivid memories of Eastern Europe, and he won’t cite Budapest’s iconic Parliament Building or Croatia’s picturesque beaches, but rather the influences of an ancient empire that cut a culinary swath through the Balkans.
“The core of that part of Europe’s food is very meat-, potato- and bread-oriented, but the Balkans are more interesting in the way of the Ottomans’ influence with pomegranates, yogurt, sumac—the whole Playska menu is that sensibility,” Wiechmann says.
His new Inman Square sandwich shop—so named for the signature pork and beef sandwich with ajvar red pepper and eggplant relish—is his first purely inspired by a well-stamped passport. “I think people get excited that me and Bronwyn [his wife] bring them interesting choices in a world that’s very hungry for choices,” Wiechmann says. “That’s what we do at a French restaurant [T.W. Food], at a German restaurant [Bronwyn]. But this is just super fun, and if there’s any one purely based on travel, this is it.”
Making his own lepinje leavened flatbread was essential to re-creating his experiences abroad, says Wiechmann, who travels two to three times a year “to find inspiration and, basically, new food.” Visits to Budapest, Belgrade, Bulgaria and Croatia allowed for a cross-section of culinary experiences, from fine dining to street foods, from visiting farms to surveying supermarkets and pastry cases. It’s a passion that started when he was a child, traveling with his dad for international business. “I gained a global palate by the time I was 3 or 4, eating croissants in Europe, trying new things in South America… but I really remember not wanting to eat raw fish for breakfast in Japan!”
By C. Dimiti | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Kevin O’Donnell & Michael Lombardi of SRV
Destinations: Italy & France
Forget the lasagna and Bolognese—the menu at the new South End hot spot SRV was inspired by Kevin O’Donnell and Michael Lombardi’s adventures in Venice.
“Italian cuisine is diverse and pretty regional,” says O’Donnell, who first worked with Lombardi at a restaurant in Orvieto, an Umbrian town “really known for its fresh pastas and hare and boar.” The pair went on to use the charcuterie expertise garnered there at Boston’s Salty Pig, but their time training in Italy also allowed for inspiring visits to Venice, where the bacaro—a wine bar where many patrons stand as they nosh on cicchetti (small plates)—serves as a center of social life. Enter their new venture, SRV (short for Serene Republic of Venice), which focuses on risottos, polenta, seafood and cicchetti, along with pasta made with house hand-milled grain from Western Mass. But they’re aiming to evoke the experience as much as the food, from the traditional Venetian plaster in the dining room to the made-for-mingling drink rails and the marble bar by the cicchetti station.
“We didn’t just say we were going to do a Venetian bacaro and then have just tables,” Lombardi says. “We wanted that essence of being able to stand up, eat food in a window and drink together with a cook making snacks in the front of the restaurant.”
While certain details are distinct to Venice, the duo also drew inspiration from the similarly communal, convivial vibe they discovered while living and cooking together in Paris after their stint in Italy. “Every day we had off, we’d go to this little wine bar, L’Avant Comptoir, and have a couple of glasses, four or five snacks and hang for a couple hours,” O’Donnell recalls. “We made a lot of friends there and had a great time—it’s what we’re trying to re-create here at SRV.”
By C. Dimiti | Photo Credit: Diego Navarro
Cassie Piuma of Sarma
Destination: Turkey
As the daughter of a flight attendant, Cassie Piuma got to log plenty of miles growing up. But it was a journey to Turkey in her mid-20s that really laid the groundwork for her path as chef/co-owner of acclaimed Somerville restaurant Sarma.
“The food, the architecture, the music, the people—it was all so rich, so vibrant, so unusual,” Piuma says. One of the traditional meyhanes (taverns serving meze) in Istanbul was especially memorable. “The tables were super close together. The food was simple but well-prepared, the service unpretentious, and the energy extremely high,” she explains. “It didn’t matter that the guy behind me bumped my chair every time he breathed or that I could barely hear my dining companions or that I was sweating bullets and had nowhere to put my jacket except on the floor. This place had a vibe that was palpable. People were there to be part of something joyful and genuine, to celebrate life, family and friendship. I realized in that moment the kind of restaurant I wanted to have.”
While that meyhane became a model for Sarma, the menu also riffs on culinary encounters beyond the Mediterranean and the Middle East. One dish—the signature crab and red-lentil kibbeh—draws on Piuma’s culinary training in Singapore. “It has all the flavors I was most fond of: crab, coconut, green curry and lime leaves incorporated into what is a very iconic Turkish meze. It speaks loudly about my experiences and embodies the concept of the menu at Sarma, small plates inspired by the Middle East with new flavor combinations and a fresh perspective.”
It’s a perspective she can’t wait to share when her 8-month-old daughter Fiona is ready to hit the road. “I want to instill this sense of adventure in her at a young age,” Piuma says. “You can read every cookbook under the sun, but nothing can compare to seeing the tapas bars of San Sebastián in full swing at 2 am, listening to the call to prayer resonate through the streets or eating spanakopita still warm from a rickety little oven made by a woman who hasn’t done anything different for the past 75 years.”
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