Chefs Mike Wiley of Hugo’s and David Levi from Vinland (still under construction) were interviewed by the Boston Globe for an article on “The New New England Cuisine”.
If chefs like Wiley have their way, fine dining menus, with their unlimited year-round fresh produce and expensive cuts of meat, will soon be replaced by a cuisine that is a more specific expression of New England’s seasons, landscape, and culture. Chefs are elevating humble ingredients that have always grown here. When our short growing season is over, we may have cold temperatures but we have plenty of light. Cooks find hearty greenhouse greens or stored root vegetables, or they ferment carrots, beets, cabbages, radishes, and other firm produce. In the North Atlantic, fishermen head out for some prized fish that are at their best in the cold months: sea urchins and their roe, Jonah crabs, smelts, monkfish, wolffish.