Press

NORMAN’S Orlando. “One Door Closes and Another Opens”.

Orlando Sentinel: Amy Drew Thompson “It was Saturday night in the ritzy enclave of Coral Gables and the board was full of tickets. Chef Norman Van Aken was expediting orders, hands flying fast, when a gentleman strolled into the madness of the kitchen and introduced himself. Van Aken didn’t know it, but…

Press

NORMAN’S Orlando. “One Door Closes and Another Opens”.

Recipes

Full Moon Saloon Fish Sandwich

FULL MOON FISH SANDWICH, ‘FULL MOON SALOON’ Norman Van Aken © All rights reserved. No sandwich in the history of Key West was consumed by more drunks on premise than this one. No sandwich saved more people from a certain, potentially lethal, hangover. Essentially it is a fresh as can be fish…

Turntable

“Remember When”, Alan Jackson

There are certain songs that make you fall in love with your life partner all over again… If you are very lucky. And this song is certainly one of ‘those songs’ that will release that emotion. It is his patience and strength that I find in his voice that makes ‘Remember When’…

Press

Interview, D’Artagnan, “Center Of The Plate”

Courtesy: Center of the Plate

At D’Artagnan we proudly work with chefs across the country, providing them with quality ingredients to express their creativity in the kitchen. Some we have decades-long relationships with, and others are new to the family. The chef we interviewed for this blog post falls in the former camp. Chef Norman Van Aken is…

Memories and Musings

Meeting Julia Child, (The First Time)

I didn’t grow up watching Julia Child on television the way many people of my generation did. My television hours were not inclined toward any aspects of cooking, though we did cook in our home. My mother was a both a restaurant worker and also (for a time) a Girl Scout leader….

Press

Edward Lee’s “Buttermilk Graffiti” in the L.A. Times; A Review by Amy Scattergood

Courtesy: LA Times

To be candid I love Edward Lee. I came to know him after he came to know me. That happens when there is a generational divide sometimes. But something drew us together and in places like Atlanta, Napa Valley, Orlando, New York City and Miami we have had the chance to experience…

Memories and Musings

My Kitchen Meditations: “On Knives”

My Kitchen Meditations ‘On Knives’ I went to bed after a long day of cutting. I thought back on the previous 24 hours as I hulled and then evenly sliced Florida strawberries in the ascending morning light using a Japanese knife its creator might have envisioned for other tasks. My knives are an…

A Word on Food™Series

A Word On Food: Pastrami

Listen on WLRN

First we mourn. We all miss the legendary Miami delis of the past. We need to name them to honor them. Corky’s, Pumpernik’s, Wolfie’s and The Rascal House. I’m sure my New York City born and raised mother took me and my sisters into a few if not all of them when...

A Word On Food: Pit Beef & BBQ

Listen on WLRN

Some chefs start their careers in humble places and then work their way up the ladder to more and more fancy and complex places. And for some that is the goal. But some of them get up on that perch and say something that rhymes with “Tuck It”! And they seek to...

Tony with me, Charlie Trotter and Emeril

A Word On Food: Anthony Bourdain

Listen on WLRN

My introduction to the world of Anthony Bourdain began with the sound of hearing my mother laughing while reading a book in her favored chair. Not a minute passed before she was laughing again. I was getting ready for work and between trips to my coffee cup, I stopped and said, “Okay...

A Word On Food: The Mother Sauces

Growing up I didn’t have anything one might refer to as received scripture. Our church tried. And I tried with them. I did my Methodist best but it just didn’t stick with me. And though I had hero’s … in sports, there was Muhammad Ali … who we first knew as Cassius...

A Word on Food: Food Festivals

Listen on WLRN

With Summer here I’ve been noticing some of the various Food Festivals coming up.Sadly we just missed the Eau Claire, Michigan July 4th weekend Intercontinental Cherry Pit Spitting Championship. This popped up … sorry … in 1974 for the first time. Who knew something like that could be so … enduring? Their...

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@NormanVanAken

@inthekitchennva @normansorlando @timeoutmarketmiami @npr

#fusion #newworldcuisine

“If the map of the world were a tablecloth, and I could choose a place at that table, I would sit at the Southern tip of Florida, at the nexus of North America and the Caribbean. My plate would touch Cuba, the Florida Keys, the Yucatan, the West Indies, the Bahamas, and South America. And, if time could tell, I would listen to the tales of voyagers, discoverers, traders and mystics who, in searching for “the Indies”, the Great Kahn and the riches of China, discovered something much more valuable and enduring, A New World of Culinary Treasures. Almost instantly, the cuisines of the Old World began to merge with foods of the new one; This evolutionary and inexorable fusion lies at the heart of New World Cuisine.”

— Norman Van Aken, July, 1993