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Destroy It To Enjoy It?
Area chefs fabricate confections almost too pretty to eat
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Business New Haven
08/18/2003
By: Teri Corso
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Frozen dinners, to-your-door-delivered pizza and ready-made pastas, it seems, are becoming positively passé. Leave it to the experts who know how to revitalize the art of classical foods with new twists that satisfy the appetite and provide an aesthetically pleasing outcome.
When Arturo Franco-Camacho opened a restaurant almost four years ago, he was destined to fail. This was according to three Yale Business School students who chose Franco-Camacho’s restaurant, Roomba, as a business case-study assignment.
The students were required to determine the likelihood of success for a new restaurant located in the basement of a building in Sherman’s Alley in New Haven. Roomba and Franco-Camacho didn’t fail. Guess who did?
With his wife Suzette, Franco-Camacho owns the Nuevo-Latino restaurant located at 1044 Chapel Street. The restaurant’s interior, a lively open room with music, captures the meaning of the business’ namesake, Roomba. The rumba, a rhythmically complex Latin dance, was the very idea of the restaurant. "Roomba is a celebration with great food, great friends and music," said Franco-Camacho.
And, as the rumba incorporates an amalgam of beats, sounds and rhythms, Roomba is an artful blend of Central and South American and Caribbean foods creating a new-world cuisine.
A classically trained graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Franco-Camacho is always thinking of new recipes and ways to harmoniously combine foods that create art. "Food is a personal expression of the chef’s experiences," he explains, "[there are] so many elements and you learn to see beauty in every item."
It’s a commitment that is redefined daily. Franco-Camacho says he is continually inventing ways to make people happy. "Culinary arts are a form of art," he notes. "Unfortunately, not many people see it that way, because it’s an every-day thing. It’s more than that [though], it’s personal."
Appetizers on Roomba’s menu include Cuban-style pork spring rolls, duck confit empanadas and crab and rock shrimp cake with sunshine aioli and jicama.
A featured entrée of seared citrus-ginger tuna served with chayote slaw, fufu and smoked tomato essence with shrimp is on the menu. Or, eager diners may spice it up with pumpkin seed-crusted mahi-mahi and malanga purée, eggplant caviar and coconut-curry lemongrass sauce.
Like most art, Roomba’s food does not come cheap. Entrée prices range from $21 to $24 and appetizers are between $7 and $14.
However, the classical-influenced quality of the food must be taken into consideration. They are original recipes from the creative minds of the owners, made with quality ingredients in harmony with flavors of diverse cultures.
Chef Jeffrey Arnold of Hamden weaves the fundamentals of classically prepared food with the creativity of an artist. The finest quality and the out of the ordinary comprise his selection of ingredients for his recipes.
A buffet prepared by Arnold included a garde-manger display of saddle of lamb atop a bed of asparagus with Cornish hen and wild boar terrine.
"European craftsmanship and American products, being the finest in the world, are among the things that correlate my vision of fine dining," explains Arnold, a former executive chef at 500 Blake Street Café in New Haven.
Quaglie Ai Ferri, a dish of amaro marinated grilled quail served with a zucchini blossom and truffled foie gras sauce, is one item on a game menu Arnold designed exclusively for LaCupola Ristorante & Inn in Litchfield, where he does consulting work. This, along with other menu items such as roasted caribou and baby goat baked with white wine, verifies his approach to choosing superior ingredients.
"When it comes to food, some people [view] it as something to fill the void. They want to get full, they’re hungry and they’re in a rush. [Instead], they could look at it as ‘Let’s sit down and be entertained.’ They’ll go out, have wine and enjoy what’s in front of them," says Arnold.
Like Franco-Camacho a CIA graduate, Arnold does his fair share of entertaining. In addition to his transition into teaching vocational culinary arts to high school students at A.C.E.S in Hamden, Arnold is pursuing building an in-home catering business.
In-home catering provides Arnold the chance to interact with guests as he cooks in front of them.
"It allows me to interpret feedback directly which is vital in learning and improving," explains Arnold. This is an opportunity for people to utilize their own kitchens while providing their guest with the exciting experience of watching the chef at work. "This is for people who have large kitchens, money, taste and like to splurge on such things."
In June, Arnold and Lesley Roy of Lesley Roy Designs embarked on a project called Culinary Collaborative, which hosted a benefit for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Using Roy’s découpage tableware (BNH, June 9, Arnold prepared a seven-course meal was for 13 guests. Arnold fashioned the food to complement Roy’s dinnerware, resulting in a spectacular arrangement of art.
And let’s not forget dessert.
Six years ago, David Brooks bought Judie’s European Bakery, then located in Branford. The eatery’s menu consisted of breakfast and lunch items and an assortment of the original Judie’s breads.
Brooks added sweets to the menu and moved the business to 63 Grove Street in New Haven. "A lot more traffic dramatically changed business," reports Brooks, whose wholesale breads are manufactured in New Haven and sold in neighboring towns.
Brooks, another CIA grad, worked for a bakery for about a year and a half before purchasing Judie’s. He says he never planned on owning a bakery himself.
A significant portion of the bakery’s business comes from Yale employees and students, as well as patrons flocking for breakfast and lunch items. "Making cakes is not profitable," explains Brooks. "We make more money off the food." Cakes for celebrations such as weddings or retirements, he explains, are time-consuming to create and consume high-cost ingredients.
If cakes and pastries do not generate the most business, Judie’s has a wide selection of exquisite desserts that are fun, colorful and almost too pretty to eat.
Pink- and yellow-striped apricot and champagne mousses with an almond cake, giaconda wrap and topped with fresh raspberries, looks just like what one would expect with a name of Festival Cake. Fresh fruit tarts are one of the more popular desserts with fruit and vanilla bean custard with a butter short crust.
Wedding cakes are a work of art. A tall-tiered wedding cake of chocolate mousse, spray-painted with chocolate and leaves of white chocolate is a Judie’s signature wedding cake. All cakes are custom-made including a white wedding coconut mousseline cream cake with flowers, chocolate whipped cream and an almond layer soaked in rum.
In the rush of the times, where corporate restaurants have sacrificed much or all to the art of making a buck, one forgets it is still possible to not only savor delectable dishes, but to also appreciate the beauty of food preparation.
Perhaps it’s time for consumers to stop and smell the white chocolate roses.
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