Posts

Mofongo

The first time I heard the word mofongo I knew I wanted to use it on one of my menus! I didn’t even know what the dish was and … I almost didn’t care. I simply loved the word and wanted to use it for our guests to enjoy too….

Sausages

It was the best of time it was the wurst of times… That might be funny if you could read it… wurst being spelled w-u-r-s-t in this case. But I digress. The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reportedly had 13 pigs aboard when he arrived to the new world and…

Barbecue Season Is Here!

In Chicago in 1956 one of the welders at Weber Brothers Metal Works named George Stephen, made a grill by cutting a metal buoy in half. The Weber folks were already making grills. They’d begun to do that in 1952. But George Stephen made his with said buoy and a…

An Interview with Norman Van Aken

Tell us about your formative years and how did you find your way into the culinary field to become widely known as ‘the founding father of New World Cuisine’. NVA: My ‘formative years’ eh? I first must tell you that I wrote a memoir on this which goes into some…

Our Lunch at Michel Bras, Laguiole, France

“MICHEL BRAS” It was not originally on the itinerary at all, but as the months drew closer to our going Charlie came to one of his famously resolute decisions and told Steve Greystone, “We’re going to add in Michel Bras. Norman can’t go to France without dining there!”  With that…

Interview with Norman Van Aken

What inspired you in the search of new flavors? how was your culinary style born? People inspire me. Food is about the love of people and families and the never-ceasing exploration of our globe. My style was born in my childhood in some ways but it took flower in Key…

Miso

Despite our (we thought!), carefully planned strategy for a lunch of divine sushi… we were in for a shock as we slowed to pull on to the side street off the 79th street causeway. The shock was due to the line of even more prepared folks lined outside the still…

The Egg

The summer I became a golf caddie was one filled with suddenly unfamiliar routines and the deep lows and soaring highs of messy adolescence. I was 14 years of age and not skipping smoothly along the surface of life’s waters. My childhood pals, the Harris boys seemed to suffer no…

The Foods of India

‘A Word on Food’ is done with … words … of course. Where would I be without them? Our blonde-haired, blue-eyed granddaughter Audrey is not yet two… yet she is teaching me to try more communication … with the hand language known as ‘signing’. She has been taking lessons to…

An Interview: No Experience Necessary

There are some strong words of endorsement for your book. Here’s a few. “. . . One of the most compelling and page-turning memoirs I’ve read. . . . Revealing, funny and brutally honest . . . ” —Thomas Keller, The French Laundry “Norman Van Aken is the Jimmy Page…

Sopa De Pollo

We were in the Miami International Airport joined in a shuffling line of other travelers at ‘La Carreta’ …  the famously successful Miami restaurant chain that also boasts ‘Versailles’ and ‘Casa Juancho’ in its culinary stable. It is one of our common stops in that airport despite the lines. They…

Katsuobushi

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda,  wrote in “Ode to Salt” “I know you won’t believe me, but it sings, salt sings… Dust of the sea, in you the tongue receives a kiss from ocean night… in it, … we taste infinitude.” ‘Elizabeth the Beautiful’s’ face lit up. She said it…

A Table for Friends

I am recalling another visit to our restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando. I am not recalling it from distant memory but actually from a very immediate place. I love to sit in the quiet early-morning of the grand lobby of this amazing hotel and savor a cappuccino … and…

Fried Chicken

When I was 19, 20 and 21 years of age … I seemed to be on a yo-yo between my boyhood home in Illinois and the place I was seeking. I wanted sunlight. I wanted music. I wanted good books. I didn’t know I wanted … Fried Chicken too! I…

 
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