08.26.08

The New Restaurant

Posted in The Story at 4:52 pm by Chef Matt

This is something I’ve tried not to talk about here in the blog too much, but since the word has come out in the Washington Post Magazine and several blogs, and since it plays to the story, I guess I can talk some about it here now.

There will be another Rustico - though not called Rustico, and with a different menu. So maybe it’s not a new Rustico per se… but all the same, we are the team that will be working hard to open it as soon as we can. So here are the FAQ’s with the new place, so as to get them out of the way:

Where is the new restaurant?
Near Logan Circle in Downtown DC. The address will be 1337 14th St. N.W., but I have not yet been to the new location.

What is the name of the new place going to be?
I just learned that it’s going to be called “Birch & Barley” as well as “Churchkey”. The downstairs will be Birch & Barley - the restaurant, and the upstairs will be Churchkey, the bar. So, in a track similar to Rustico, there will be a divide between the two sections, but this will be more distinct as it will be separate floors, and have different names.

Are you going to be working at the new place, or stay at Rustico?
As far as I can tell, I will be working at both. I’ll be working hard to keep Rustico running in the mornings, but at the same time, all of the skills I have picked up in setting up and getting the restaurant running daily will have to be transferred over to the new place as well. I’m helping to create an operating manual for the new place based on how we do things at Rustico, and who better to help implement it than the guy who wrote it, right? But nothing is set in stone. Simply put, I’m gonna go where they need me, and where they ask me to be.

This has nothing to do with the story, it’s just what I was listening to while typing this. And it’s an awesome album.

But the point of this story is to talk about the surprise demo menu that I suddenly had foisted upon me a few days ago. We need to get a menu together for this new place, and of course Chef has several ideas. The problem was, he wanted to try them all out at once. On a Saturday. Without telling me.

All I knew was, the day before we were to put it all together, I was greeted with a huge list of new dishes to attempt to make, new foods I had to bring in, and I had to get as much of it together and ready while still working a Friday and Saturday set-up.

This was an interesting position to be put in. On the one hand, it was confusing and tiring to cook all these new foods I had never worked on while handling a busy kitchen. But on the other hand, it was awesome to be making all these new dishes after making a lot of the same things for a year. The thought that there will be a whole new menu to develop and work on is about the most exciting thing to come along in some time!

And let me say, even though these were just the rough drafts, the food was darn good! You’ll all have to come by when we are open!

Chef Matt