Welcome to The Kitchen Spy, where we visit local chefs’ home kitchens, and force them to open up their fridge, drawers, and cabinets.
 Bissonnette works a Berkel slicer, a gift from two of his regulars, in his South End apartment. All photos by Charlotte Wilder for Boston magazine
For our first installment of The Kitchen Spy, I headed over to the South End to check out Toro and Coppa chef/co-owner Jamie Bissonnette’s two-floor pad. “I’ve lived in a lot of tiny apartments with shitty kitchens,” Bissonnette says. Now that he’s in nicer digs, he wanted to create a space that’s meant for socializing and hanging out. “It’s got high ceilings, I can decorate it with cool stuff, and it has a lot of space. If I want to make pasta or say, ‘Hey I want to have friends over and do a cooking class,’ or entertain and cook with other guys, we have plenty of space to set up and do productions,” he says. Ahead, get a peek at the chef’s home bar, Fernet obsession, cookbook collection and more. READ MORE
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Get a look at the still-under-construction space.
The blueprint for Moksa, slated to open mid-next month. All photos by Leah Mennies.
Earlier this month, I showed you a preview of Patricia Yeo’s menu for Moksa, her highly anticipated izakaya in Central Square. Though the concept was originally slated to open in December, it’s now been pushed back to the middle of next month.
“This has been the longest gestation ever,” Yeo told me yesterday, when I visited her in the still-rough space for a preview of the massive 8,500 square ft (!!) space. So while you may not be able to sample Yeo’s small plates and skewers for a few more weeks, you can learn about Moksa’s separate night club, “restaurant within the restaurant,” and bristled walls ahead. READ MORE
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 Louis DiBiccari goes to town on a hunk of porchetta. (Photo courtesy of Chef Louie Night) Chef Louis DiBiccari, currently at the helm of Storyville in Back Bay (and formerly in charge of the kitchen at Sel de la Terre), just announced the latest installment in his recurring pop-up Iron Chef-meets-Kitchen Impossible dinner event Chef Louie Night, to take place on January 7 at the Boston Center for Adult Education. READ MORE
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 Thanks to restaurants like Sweet Cheeks (above), there's more places to find quality pulled pork. (Photo by Leah Mennies) Today, Eater Boston announced that a new BBQ spot, called The Red-Eyed Pig, is gearing up to open tonight in West Roxbury. It’ll serve some serious-sounding Southern-style eats: On the app side, there’s pork belly and green chile doughnuts, hush puppies slathered in orange maple-bacon butter, and crispy pimento cheese-stuffed jalapenos, while a pit BBQ list promises fried chicken with red-eye gravy, smoked spicy fennel sausages, Texas-style brisket, and smoked pork belly.
Sound familiar? It should—local chef darling Tiffani Faison is currently killing it in Fenway with her own Texas-style smoked meats, buttery biscuits, and jug-sized Micheladas at Sweet Cheeks, while Somerville barbecue standby Redbones recently expanded with a rib shack in Kendall Square and a roving food truck. READ MORE
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Eleven Madison Park comes to Menton from Justin Ide on Vimeo.
On Saturday night, the team from New York’s venerable Eleven Madison Park (quick stats: four New York Times stars, three Michelin Guide stars) made a guest appearance at Barbara Lynch’s fine-dining destination for a five-course guest meal as part of a book tour promoting their new eponymous cookbook (preview the gorgeous food-porn photography here). For those curious, the luxurious menu included brioche toasts topped with uni and shaved foie gras, creamy celery root soup topped with barely-cooked strips of langoustine tail and icy green apple “snow,” fat lobster tails with lemongrass sabayon and celery, black truffle-stuffed chicken, and warm sweet potato beignets with chocolate ganache.
Before the evening began, I sat down in Menton’s swanky lounge to chat with Eleven Madison Park general manager Will Guidara and chef Daniel Humm (who recently took over the ownership of the restaurant from hospitality guru Danny Meyer). They were upbeat and energetic, despite having spent the night before getting the full Barbara Lynch experience with stops at Drink, B&G Oysters, The Butcher Shop, and what Guidara called a “down home Southie bar.” Read ahead to find out more about the duo’s book tour, their take on Menton, and their thoughts on the importance of fine dining in today’s economy. READ MORE
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 Meet Robert Grant, the latest addition to The Blue Room. (Photo courtesy of The Blue Room) On November 1, Kendall Square stalwart The Blue Room welcomed a change of guard in the kitchen— longtime chef Jorge Lopes departed in order to spend more time with his family, and in his place came Robert Grant, a veteran of Bouchon in Las Vegas and The Butcher Shop in the South End. Now that he’s been in the kitchen for a solid month, his first new menu for the restaurant drops this evening. I chatted with Grant earlier this week to find out his plans for The Blue Room and its sibling gourmet food and wine shop Central Bottle. Read on for a Q&A with Grant, and a peek at his debut menu. READ MORE
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At Bergamot, one of our 50 Best Restaurant picks, chef Keith Pooler is known for his elegant, locavore cuisine. Over the past six months, Pooler has been upping his meat game with the introduction of charcuterie plates that contain a combination of classic cured meats (think coppa, rilletes) and funkier wildcards (like head cheese potpie, corned beef/pimiento scrapple, and salami beignets).
Next week, the chef plans to roll out a charcuterie plate ($14) that is fit for non-carnivores—everything from the terrine to the sausage is all-vegetarian. “What I really like about this plate is that it takes you for a flavor ride,” Pooler says. Get to know what goes into the vegetarian charcuterie in our breakdown ahead.
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 Chang lectured on the topic of microbiology last night at Harvard. (Photo by Kimya Kavehkar) Last night, David Chang, leader of the Momofuku restaurant empire (and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People), spoke to a packed house of food geeks, science geeks and food-science geeks as the latest high-profile chef to take part in the Harvard’s “Science and Cooking” lecture series. The topic? The role of microbiology in food. READ MORE
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 Meet Karen Akunowicz, M+C's new pink-haired toque. (Photo by Sara Engel/Prism Pixels Photography.) At Myers + Chang, one of this year’s 50 Best Restaurants, everyone has a dish that they can’t live without: Sometimes (more often than I’d like to admit) I daydream about polishing off half a dozen of the plump, savory Mama Chang’s pork-and-chive dumplings. I’ve had friends wax poetic about the spicy hot and sour soup, while others can’t visit without ordering the crispy scallion pancakes.
This past summer, M+C chef Matthew Barros left for a swanky gig at the helm of the kitchen at Market by Jean-Georges (another 50 best pick), and in late August chef Karen Akunowicz took over the wok. I called up the chef while she was at work, and we discussed her cooking background, the meal that won her the gig, and how she’s changing up the menu (don’t worry, those can’t-live-without-them standards are sticking around). READ MORE
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 A preview of what's to come at Julep. (Rendering courtesy of Tanya Nayak Design) Next month, aqua-haired chef Jason Santos’ downtown spot Blue Inc. (which we featured in our November issue here) will gain a “upscale lounge” sibling in Julep, which comes from an investor team that’s also behind Blue Inc., Petit Robert Central, and MacGreevy’s (who knew?). It’s taking over the former Revolution Rock Bar space. READ MORE
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