Michael Chiarello is a culinary rock star. During a one hour interview at his Napa- Style store in Yountville – the sixth he’s opened since starting the company in 2000 -- the salt-and-pepper haired star of the Food Network’s Emmy Award winning “Easy Entertaining” autographs a couple cookbooks, the latest is At Home with Michael Chiarello. Clad in a black t-shirt, jeans, black boots and a red plaid shirt, the former executive chef of Tra Vigne in St. Helena briefly confers with his publicist, answers customer questions and urges patrons to sample the various salts at the salt tasting bar. “Move past Morton’s” he says. He shows off the Magimix food processor he helped design and explains the nanotechnology behind breathable wine glasses that allow the wine within them to decant. He talks about how different ingredients are infused in olive oil – some hot, others cold – and outlines how the fresh salami is made. He chats with a bluish haired woman at the table at the front of the store displaying NapaStyle preserves. Made by a local defrocked nun, Chiarello says. The female fan says she has all his cookbooks and watches his show including “Michael Chiarello’s Napa” on PBS. She asks when his new restaurant Bottega will open. He tells her with a laugh it will open this December because he needs to lose money this year. The restaurant, still under construction, is five paces from the entrance to the store and occupies one of the oldest winery in the valley. Its clear Chiarello is eager to be back in the kitchen.
He talks with Luxlife about cooking, kids and the importance of experience.
Greg Lucas: What is it you’re doing with Luxlife?
Michael Chiarello: One of he things that we’ve always felt was important in anything that I do is supporting people who are doing the right thing and doing it in a style of life that I think is really important. We all deserve quality. Quality and access. Access is one of those things money can’t buy. One of the things Luxlife does is provide some of that access. Access to things people might not know about a region or an area. Access to the information that might not be readily available or sitting on the Internet somewhere. We think that we have all the information we need at our fingertips. But what we actually have at our fingertips is all the information that somebody is marketing. Artists and craftsmen, people that are very particular about what they do, tend to spend more time working on their craft than they do marketing their craft. Seeking those experiences out and sharing them is important. Less about stuff and more about experience. As I read through the magazine you really talk about those things.
We always talk about the difference between taste and flavor. There are plenty of things that are tasty – taste good in your mouth or look good on your wrist or look good that you wear – but if something that has an experience to a story, that makes it a little bit richer. I’m wearing a John Varvatos shirt and cook dinner for John in New York in his loft. As I wear it, I’m feeling this experience, even in that most basic sense. If somebody gets to know me and they like me before I cook for them or I throw an event for them then that event feels so much better. It’s the intellectual, the spiritual, the emotional aspect of flavors that is as interesting to me as the literal quality of the product whether it’s a hard good or a table or a chair.
GL: How did you get into cooking?
MC: As a kid. I apprenticed when I was 13. It was a very formal apprenticeship in San Francisco. I was born in the far north part of the state, up around Mt. Shasta. Then I moved to the Central Valley, moved to Turlock when I was a kid. Grew up in family of artisans, craftsmen, and farmers.
GL: Who was the cook at home?
MC: My mom. Southern Italian men don’t know a lot about cooking. I cooked our family reunion this year and I’m out with the gals cooking as I always have been since I was a little boy. The men come in and, right off the bat, come in the yard, look at the vineyard, then they find their spot, they get in their spot, the most important thing, getting into their spot, then they get the right chair, they get it turned just the right way and they look back and say, “Grazie grazie. Look, this is magic. Look at this. Look, this is unbelievable. Look at the way they go here. This is phenomenal. If I could cook like you, I would cook. I’m better just to stand here and watch. This is magic happening before my eyes.” I was always with the women whenever that was happening. Sitting at the table doing nothing when all this great stuff was happening in the kitchen just was beside me.
We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. So our wealth came from our experiences and our experiences came from the kitchen and the gathering of the ingredients, the gathering of those experiences, whether its the rabbit farmer, the goat farmer or going mushroom hunting or picking wild greens. And through that process of gathering the ingredients came a real understanding of the difference between a good and a great ingredient. Natural. Organic. Organic is not a new thing. The rabbit farmer wasn’t pumping them full of hormones and antibiotics. If the rabbit died, the rabbit died. They really worked on wholesome environments for the animals, the chickens. It’s more expensive to farm conventionally if you’re a good natural farmer. So that was always a part of my upbringing.
GL: How do you pronounce Tra Vigne? My wife and I have never been able to say it right.
MC: Tra Vigne. It was a horrible name. It means between the vines. One day I was walking, tra vigne, amongst the vines. Tra Vigne was my first big gig on the West Coast. My background: Culinary Institute (of America) grad. I worked in New York. Worked In Europe and France being a cook. Came back and I went to the University of Miami for management school and I worked with two of the hotels at the time and I opened a restaurant when I was 22 there. (Toby’s) It was a really well acclaimed restaurant. I never felt – not that I didn’t deserve it – but I didn’t do anything that was that deserving. I was cooking some good food but it was all happening on the plate. There was no experience beyond the plate. I was looking for something beyond that 12-inch plate. It was a new American cuisine restaurant so there were bits and pieces from various regions and things I’ve cooked or seen in my life but it wasn’t part of my own heritage. At 24, I came out to open Tra Vigne in the Napa Valley. I moved out here in 86 and opened in 87. The Napa Valley wasn’t what it is today. It was in the formative years and it was just beginning to gain some momentum. It was a perfect time to cut my teeth.
GL: I’m old enough to remember when Napa was the prune capital of California.
MC: Exactly. I remember driving through here and still seeing all the active prune drying racks.
GL: I get a lot of mileage out of the harvest salad from the Tra Vigne cookbook.
MC: Is that right? Good. It’s dynamite. Frying the rosemary is a good trick. It takes down all the soapiness to it.
