{"id":7879,"date":"2016-10-23T02:23:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-23T09:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7879"},"modified":"2016-10-18T18:35:54","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T01:35:54","slug":"damon-baehrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/10\/23\/damon-baehrel\/","title":{"rendered":"Damon Baehrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

THE MOST EXCLUSIVE RESTAURANT IN AMERICA<\/h1>\n

Damon Baehrel\u2019s methods are a marvel, and his tables are all booked until 2025. Or are they?<\/h2>\n

By\u00a0Nick Paumgarten<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe is an unheralded genius,\u201d a food critic said of Damon Baehrel. \u201cHe really should be in the upper echelons of the greatest chefs who have ever lived.\u201d ILLUSTRATION BY ELEANOR DAVIS<\/em><\/p>\n

The first time Jeffrey Merrihue came across the name Damon Baehrel, he was amazed that he hadn\u2019t heard of him. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand how the secret had been kept,\u201d Merrihue said recently. \u201cThe people I go around with, it\u2019s hard for us to find something that is genuinely unique and new.\u201d\u00a0The people Merrihue goes around with are gastronomes, the trophy hunters of haute cuisine, the kind who travel the world to dine at famous, or famously obscure, restaurants. After a trip to Cape Town this spring, to a restaurant called the Test Kitchen, Merrihue, who lives in London and produces promotional videos for restaurants, became, he says, the second person to have eaten at every restaurant on the so-called World\u2019s 50 Best list. He\u2019s also been to eighty of the restaurants to which Michelin has granted three stars.<\/p>\n

Around Christmas in 2013, a friend of Merrihue\u2019s alerted him to a Bloomberg News piece about an unranked contender, which Bloomberg called the \u201cmost exclusive restaurant in the U.S.\u201d It described a gourmet operation\u2014in Earlton, New York, a half hour south of Albany\u2014in the basement of a woodland home. Once called Damon Baehrel at the Basement Bistro, the place was now simply called Damon Baehrel, after its presiding wizard and host, who served as forager, farmer, butcher, chef, sous-chef, sommelier, waiter, busboy, dishwasher, and mopper. Baehrel derived his ingredients, except meat, fish, and dairy, from his twelve acres of yard, garden, forest, and swamp. He made his oils and flours from acorns, dandelions, and pine; incorporated barks, saps, stems, and lichen, while eschewing sugar, butter, and cream; cured his meats in pine needles; made dozens of cheeses (without rennet); and cooked on wooden planks, soil, and stone. He had christened his approach Native Harvest. The diners who got into the restaurant raved about it online. But at the time it was booked through 2020. \u201cWe spend our lives looking for places like this,\u201d Merrihue said.<\/p>\n

Undaunted, Merrihue sent an e-mail to the address provided on Baehrel\u2019s Web site. A man who identified himself as Terrance, a friend of the chef\u2019s, wrote that Baehrel had stopped taking reservations. \u201cThat wound me up even more,\u201d Merrihue said. \u201cI pride myself on getting into restaurants.\u201d Still, it didn\u2019t look good. \u201cI thought, I might die before I get a chance to eat there.\u201d<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker THE MOST EXCLUSIVE RESTAURANT IN AMERICA Damon Baehrel\u2019s methods are a marvel, and his tables are all booked until 2025. Or are they? By\u00a0Nick Paumgarten \u201cHe is an unheralded genius,\u201d a food critic said of Damon Baehrel. \u201cHe really should be in the upper echelons of the greatest chefs who have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}