Hanging With Dave Arnold and Nils Noren
Meet Dave Arnold and Nils Noren (right and left), respectively director of Culinary Technology and VP of Culinary and Pastry Arts at The French Culinary Institute. One is a food techy with a healthy obsession with food clarification. The other one is a distinguished international chef who was cast on the first season of Top Chef Masters, the star chef spin-off of Bravo’s Top Chef (scheduled to air in June). What initially started out as a plain Q&A evolved into a fun session of story telling and joke sharing highlighted by unstoppable laughter. This only goes to show that there’s never a dull moment in these guys’ lives. So, with no further delay, here are Dave and Nils.
A native of New York City, Dave Arnold is the mad scientist/mixologist behind the Red Hot Poker cocktails. He began tinkering with restaurant equipment after earning his MFA from Columbia University. For an art project that required a 360-degree view of the inside of an oven, Dave re-fabricated a traditional range with glass walls. After meeting Chef Wylie Dufresne of wd-50, Dave became even more passionate about culinary sciences and focused his inventive skills on professional and home cooking.
A Native of Sweden, Nils Noren served as a chef at world-famous Aquavit for five years, before being promoted to executive chef in 2003. Before arriving in the U.S., Chef Nils made a name for himself in his native Sweden, as a chef at two of Stockholm’s Michelin-starred restaurants and served as the educational coordinator at Restaurant Akademin. Chef Nils has traveled extensively around the world and cooked in every continent except Antarctica.
What type of eaters are you?
Both: Omnivores with a critical palate.
What would your friends or colleagues be surprised to find in your kitchen?
Dave: Ore-Ida Tater Tots. I’ve got two kids.
What are 5 items you always keep in the fridge?
Nils: Aquavit, herring, cheese, coconut water, Parmesan from Di Palo and I always have Sriracha readily available.
Dave: Bacon, eggs, butter, vacuum-sealed Vermouth in my fridge. But in my pantry, I always keep coconut milk, tomato paste, olive oil, industrial size containers of cumin and caraway seeds.
What’s a kitchen tool or equipment worth splurging on?
Dave: My kitchen is a bit unusual, almost everything would be a considered splurge for the average home cook.
Nils: For me, it’s a good blender like the Vita-prep.
Your Italian friend is in town. Where do you take him or her for the best cup of espresso?
Dave: My house. I have a great espresso machine.
Nils: Yes you do. I’d say let’s go back to Italy. I stopped drinking coffee four years ago.
Have you come across any underrated restaurant worth checking out?
Nils: Nyonya. Very good Malaysian food!
Any restaurant you would like to try, but haven’t yet?
Both: Many of our friends have restaurants we have not been to yet. So, we’d like to go to those.
If you had a $35 allowance for dinner, where would you go and what would you get?
Nils: I would go to Nyonya and get the Roti Canai, the beef chow fun and the Hainanese chicken.
Dave: I’d go home and cook something involving fried chicken.
What was the last restaurant you went to?
Nils: L’Ecole, last night. Other than that, I went to Patois, a French bistro on Mulberry and I had the Coq au Vin Blanc.
Dave: Coq au Vin Blanc?
Nils: Yeah. It was pretty good actually.
Dave: Interesting. The last restaurant I went to was Cafe Katja, an Austrian place on Orchard street.
You have either worked or interacted with many notable chefs. Name one chef you highly respect or admire.
Dave: Chef Boyardee. The guy with the big hat on the pasta cans. You know him?
Nils: There’s also the chef from Ratatouille.
Dave: Haha! The chef from The Little Mermaid was pretty good too.
Nils: Hahaha! There are many chefs we admire for various reasons, but if we have to pick one, I think we’d both agree that The Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show was awesome. (laughters)
Can you give us a thrifty gourmet recommendation for a good steak dinner?
Both: Good meat is expensive so you’d be better off buying your own steak and making it yourself. You can go to Jeffrey’s at the Essex market. He’s a funny guy and the meat prices are very reasonable.
Where would you go if you were offered a free meal at any restaurant?
Dave: I would want to go to El Bulli since it’s so hard to get into. In New York, I’d go to Per Se.
Nils: I’d go to Masa, especially if someone else is paying for it.
What’s your pick for best pizza?
Nils. I thought the pizza at Co. (Company) was very good.
Dave: Lombardi’s revisited at home. Get it delivered to your house or take it to go. Once home, flip it over. Use a blow torch or a salamander to crisp up the bottom. Then, re-bubble the cheese on top and you’ve got one awesome pizza.
What’s a foreign/ethnic food item you love?
Nils: Parmesan cheese from Di Palo, but I also like the roast pork belly banh mi at An Choi.
Dave: Mexican tortas. Do you know where I can get a good one? The taqueria where I used to get it shut down.
Where do you go for a great dessert?
Dave: Jean Georges and get the dessert tasting.
Nils: I’d go to wd-50 and get the dessert tasting as well.
Dave: When you go to a fancy restaurant, I highly recommend you spend the extra money to get the dessert tasting. That’s the only way to understand what the pastry chef is doing. He or she designed the tasting for you to experience a progression of flavors, which you don’t get by having just one dessert or sharing a few desserts with your friends.
Give us a thrifty gourmet tip.
Both: You can sous-vide without a vacuum machine. All you need are a ziploc bag and a straw. Insert a straw halfway into the bag, zip up to the straw. Suck the air out of the bag using the straw. Remove the straw, zip and cook.
Sources: Biography excerpts from the French Culinary Institute’s website.
By Raissa Nebie on April 27, 2009 | 0
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