THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 2, 1996 TAG: 9610010050
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY M.F. ONDERDONK, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: 168 lines
``FAT COOKS are an inclusive fraternity,'' wrote food enthusiast John Thorne. ``All are welcome at their table.''
The brotherhood of culinary largesse remains alive and well. But the cult of largeness? Of late, it's become tough for cuisine's big boys to fit in.
Thorne's archetypal kitchen maven, ``built solid as a side of beef, with blooded complexion and well-licked lips'' is a figure shrinking into the candy-colored culinary sunset. Beyond the buttery extravagances of Escoffier, beyond the comforting bulk of meatloaf-with-mashed, the terrible truth is hitting chefs just as hard as it is hitting the rest of us.
``As you get older, the food sticks to you more,'' says Amy Brandt, chef at the Lucky Star in Virginia Beach.
Brandt admits what all chefs know at heart. ``With my job I'm constantly grazing. My mind is constantly on food.''
One thinks of the Great Chefs of Europe, each plumper than the one before him, or of Paul Prudhomme, notorious for requiring two seats for air travel.
Brandt isn't like them. She belongs to a new, possibly more sensible generation of chefs, whose attention to fitness is mirrored in both menu and lifestyle.
Brandt plays tennis and runs, goes mountain biking and fly fishing. She does crunches while watching her favorite cooking programs. Even at the restaurant, she'll take a few moments to step outside the kitchen and do lunges with weights.
``I have to do it,'' she says. ``I love to eat so much.''
Her diet has also entered a new era, in which ``my goal is to change my lifestyle to a two-meal-a-day format.''
She eats only fruit before noon: ``It has great fiber and it's more natural.'' She's staying away from sandwiches: ``They're really a downfall for me.'' She drinks a lot of water: ``I love water.'' She goes for vegetables, grains and beans. She sautes in pans barely filmed with oil. Grilling is good. So are vegetable and fruit sauces.
Judging by the restaurant's popularity, her customers agree.
``My menu,'' Brandt observes, ``changes with my tastes.''
She adds: ``I'm a very avid skier and I do a type of skiing that requires you to be very fit. It's double black diamond skiing - down avalanche chutes. It's easier to do when you stay fit all year 'round.''
Did someone say something about a more sensible generation?
For the jovial, somewhat rotund Bobby Huber, there is only one palatable answer.
``I belong to the gym next door'' (actually on the next block down Granby Street from Bobbywood, Huber's lime-green Ward's Corner bistro). ``But I hate being stuck inside.''
So Huber has acquired an ocean-going kayak.
``It's lime green,'' he says, ``just like the building.''
From the back yard of his waterfront home in Hampton, he drops the craft into the water each morning. And each morning he may be seen paddling about Hampton Roads and the Chesapeake Bay, making an occasional dash across shipping channels.
``I was out in the middle of Edouard, when there were six-foot seas.
``That was fun.''
And as goes the fun stuff, so goes the foodstuff. When it comes to the goodies he cooks so well, ``I've changed my lifestyle,'' Huber admits. ``I spend six days a week eating as little fat as possible. Sunday is my day of indulgence. I eat anything I want.''
Since launching this regime at the first of the year, Huber's lost 45 pounds.
He's got 50 to go.
Belying rumors of an all-chocolate diet and his self-bestowed title of ``Guru of Ganache,'' trim Marcel Desaulniers is more disciplined than that. ``Addicted to running'' for the past 20 years, the executive chef and co-owner of the Trellis Restaurant in Williamsburg does eight miles a day both at home and during his frequent travels. Life on the road, he observes, presents a runner with its own peculiar challenges and hazards.
Once, in Italy (``not the most friendly country for runners'') he ended up doing laps around a swimming pool while his wife Connie stroked her own laps within.
In San Francisco, ``I try to avoid Laguna and Octavia - those are the streets that'll kill you.''
As for trendy Calistoga, in California's Napa Valley: ``Everyone's got a dog and no one's got a leash.''
But when it comes to food, his attitude softens. This is a man who can't emphasize enough the importance of nutrition.
``I think nutrition should be taught in grade school.''
This is also a man who loves to take road trips so that he can pop M&Ms.
``I only ate five bags on the drive to San Francisco. Usually five bags will just get me to New Jersey.
``Everybody is freaked out about food. What we all need is a well-thought-out diet with occasional indulgences.''
This is also a man who has just published ``An Alphabet of Sweets,'' his third all-dessert cookbook.
He's now at work on a fourth.
Getting back to recreation, Desaulniers also likes para-gliding. And ``I did bike for a number of years. Then I fell and jammed my shoulder and almost got run over on the Colonial Parkway.''
He mentions in passing a routine of sit-ups and push-ups for 15 to 20 minutes a day.
``I can't say I'm crazy about it. But I love the running,'' notes Desaulniers, pausing to conclude:
``I get a lot of people who give me a lot of grief about being a skinny chef.''
Marginally less bent on physical rigor is Chuck Sass. Food and beverage manager for the Ramada Inn On The Beach, Sass masterminds the flagship Mahi Mah's Seafood Grill and Sushi Saloon.
``Genetically I've got high cholesterol and my blood pressure is very low,'' he explains. ``So I go to the gym three or four times a week and I try to eat right. I got out of this routine for about a year. Then I got my cholesterol checked about four months ago and I said to myself, `I'd better get back on the program.' ''
As to diet, Sass cites the litany. ``Beans, legumes, grains.'' He also takes a multi-food-source vitamin with ginseng and bee pollen.
``I try very hard not to eat red meats,'' he says. ``But I was at Bistro a couple of weeks ago and just had to break down and eat that beef in Bistro sauce.''
Sass exercises for an hour, early in the morning when ``I'd rather be in bed.'' Ever the chef, he espouses a ``mix it up'' approach to working out. Climbing the climber, riding the stationary bike, weight training, the occasional swim - he does it all. And his preferred venue is the YMCA.
``I don't go to a trendy gym,'' Sass says. ``You go there and everyone wants to talk business.''
Others don't go to a gym of any sort. When it comes to fitness, ``I just try to feel as guilty as possible,'' notes Norfolk's Cafe Rosso chef Susan Painter, who has the kind of wiry physique weight watchers regard with envy.
``I will occasionally take a walk around the block,'' she says, adding: ``You know, I have to struggle to keep my weight up. So - maybe I'll go over to McDonald's and get a breakfast sandwich.''
From the opposite end of the scale comes an echo of this approach.
``Most chefs I know like trash food. You know, fast food. Breakfast from McDonald's,'' confides Monroe Duncan.
A chef of both fame and bulk, even Duncan has lately lost 70 pounds.
``I eat no fat any more,'' he says wistfully. ``Everything's steamed or boiled.''
Of his days as maitre d' for the famed Pump Room in Chicago, Duncan recalls, ``I used to run seven miles a day and swim a mile a night. I was in the front of the house, in the public eye. Once you get in the back of the house you're . . . sheltered.
``I recall when my friend Jimmy Perkinson and I were opening Suddenly Last Summer.'' (This was the first Suddenly Last Summer, a tiny, famed venue, which lasted for a couple of years in Norfolk during the early '80s. Duncan's second restaurant of the same name in Virginia Beach closed last spring.) ``Jimmy was painting pink flamingoes on everything - including me. He said something I liked so much I put it in the ads for my restaurant. Since then I've seen it everywhere. But I swear it was original with him.
``Never trust a skinny chef.''
MEMO: M.F. Onderdonk is a free-lance food writer in Norfolk who will
regularly cover beverages and restaurants for the Flavor sections. ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Bobby Huber, owner of Bobbywood in Norfolk, kayaks out of his back
yard in Hampton.
Chef Amy Brandt of the Lucky Star in Virginia Beach jogs in Seashore
State Park. She also plays tennis and goes mountain biking.
Chef Chuck Sass of Mahi Mah's in Virginia Beach works out at the
Hilltop YMCA.
Photo
FILE/The Virginian-Pilot
Marcel Desaulniers, executive chef and co-owner of the Trellis
Restaurant in Williamsburg, runs eight miles a day. by CNB