Chowbaby's Chef of the Month (New York) Rob MiketaNew York City Chef Cooks Up a Moment of Relief for Rescuers at Ground Zero by Brian Kerstetter
New York City Chef Cooks Up a Moment of Relief for Rescuers at Ground Zero
"I watched firemen wash blood and ash from their mouths," recalls Rob Miketa, "then I went back to the kitchen to decorate strawberries in French chocolate."
As executive chef of the Church Lounge in the Tribeca Grand hotel, Rob Miketa went back and forth between feeding exhausted rescue workers at ground zero and cooking refined dishes for hotel guests. For Miketa, it was never a question of returning to work after the World Trade Center attacks. He had never left it. From Tuesday morning when bands of rescue workers started trudging into the lounge, a mere ten blocks from where the towers stood, until the following Saturday, Miketa never vacated his post except for a few hours sleep above the restaurant.
Like so many other New Yorkers, Rob Miketa, a 31-year-old native of Colorado, was in the midst of the mundane when it all happened - preparing the menu for the coming day. But the hours and days that followed the September 11th attacks proved to be anything but mundane. Miketa faced sights, sounds, and smells that most of today's military personnel have never witnessed.
As the gravity of the attacks became apparent, Miketa and the hotel staff shuffled the Church Lounge into a makeshift food and beverage buffet with snacks, sandwiches, and juices. Firemen, policemen, and emergency personnel began filtering in like ashen zombies for a few moments of security in the company of a hot sandwich. They had such a look of urgency in their eyes, recalls Miketa. They believed they could find and save people.
"Nothing that could ever happen to a chef could prepare you for the drama of that Tuesday," said Miketa. In the days that followed, he juggled his ever-dwindling supplies to generate platters of scrambled eggs in the morning, a selection of wraps in the afternoon, devising a hearty lamb stew in the evening. "Suddenly I was completely focused and I started improvising," recalled Miketa.
As a blanket of barricades sealed southern Manhattan in its own misery, Miketa and his staff faced the problem of how to ensure that provisions would make their way into lower Manhattan for the emergency workers who desperately needed them. He called on his friends at the Tribeca Police Precinct, already regulars at his emergency buffet.
"After arranging it with the precinct, I called one of my purveyors and told him to meet the police escort at a specified intersection just outside the restricted area," Miketa recalls. "Then, in the company of New York's finest, my purveyor along with the ingredients were given a police escort through the barricades to the restaurant."
As ground zero faded from a rescue to a clean-up operation, Miketa's mission shifted from being a source of vital sustenance for beleaguered rescuers on the front lines to his role as executive chef, doting on the delicate dishes he is known for at the Church Lounge.
"It felt a little strange going from a cook who comforts with scrambled eggs and turkey wraps to a chef who insists upon the delicacy of a sauce," Miketa admits.
Things did eventually return to normal at the Church Lounge -- for the most part. An acrid stench of sizzled wire continued to ooze over the restaurant from the steaming spaghetti bowl of fiery pipes and wires at ground zero, skulking into the refined setting of the lounge. "At first I wore a mask in the kitchen," said Miketa. "And our waiters waited on tables wearing protective masks. Imagine, your waiter taking your order in a mask."
Watching his cooking play a vital role in sustaining those who had risked their lives for others rejuvenated what he has always known to be the impetus behind his métier as chef. It's brought back into focus my priorities, he said. For me it's the food. It's not rocket science, it's just the food.
Rob Miketa's modesty is disarming. Despite graduating top of his class from Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine et Patisserie in Paris and working in celebrated restaurants in Paris and New York, Miketa isn't seduced by the cult of food. "I don't want my food to play center stage," Miketa says. "Going out to dinner is about the experience - the company, the ambiance, and the food all play a part."
When my food is placed between two people, he continues, I want it to enlighten the evening, to bring the table together. After all, when I go out, it's not about the food or the chef but about the person I'm with.
But, he adds, "The food needs to be outstanding!"
And outstanding food doesn't just walk off the whisk. Miketa has infused the menu at the Church Lounge with a well-balanced presence of classic comfort dishes and stylized, nicely executed fusion cuisine.
Conspiring to ruffle the coif of traditional comfort food, for example, his wasabi aioli and Asian slaw convene to tease a delicately seared sesame-crusted tuna loin while the exotic edamame succotash does its utmost to disturb the comfort of the homey half chicken.
Another find, my favorite, that heralds the lounge's approach to "fine dining without the lining" are the Hemp Nut-Crusted Hot Wings, a fun-loving rendition of your plain-Jane chicken wings and perfect for the cool atmosphere of the Church Lounge. The tangy cayenne pepper sauce is lip smacking and the hemp nuts make the repetitions of chewing crunchily satisfying. And you'll want to get in there nicely with all ten fingers so as not to miss a hemp nut - they cure timidity and add atmosphere.
As New Yorkers, and Americans across the country, regain their taste for dining out, fewer wish to plot a hazardous course through a restaurant's menu to an innovative dish devoid of a familiar past. With all that has happened, said Miketa, people don't want to be challenged by food, especially right now. They don't necessarily want to be eating sea urchin and wasabi sorbet.
In trying times, little shame is there in seeking out the foods that made us feel secure as children. "It's about pleasing the guest," Miketa says. "If they want pot roast with glazed carrots or macaroni and cheese - food they remember growing up with - I'm going to make it for them."
The Church Lounge Tribeca Grand Hotel Two Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10013 Tel.: 212.519.6600
Chowbaby's Chef of the Month (New York) Rob Miketa
