Chef creates meticulous, seasonal dishes
On a recent evening at his eponymous restaurant on the Vallejo outskirts, chef Michael Warring was busy with a tank of liquid nitrogen, employing the cryogenic art to flashfreeze chocolate anglaise.
As frosty smoke billowed, the creamy custard froze so quickly that virtually no ice crystals formed, and the fat’s cellular structure remained intact. The result: a silky and light, yet rich and velvety topping for Warring’s olive oil cake, finished with marshmallow fluff and oatmeal streusel.
Despite the scientific trick, Warring does not consider himself a molecular chef, he insisted. His art came from a simpler inspiration. Necessity.
“We didn’t have a freezer when we opened in 2012, and nitrogen is a very easy and versatile way of getting things cold quickly,” he explained.
These days, the tiny, 20-seat Michael Warring restaurant is outfitted with all the kitchen equipment the chef needs, but Warring maintains his nononsense approach to creating his six-course dinners ($69). The menus change weekly, reflecting the seasons because, as the chef notes, the seasons are what drive food.
Tomatoes are at their peak in late September through early October, for example, so he created a dish of heirloom tomatoes brightly dressed with sorrel, crème fraiche sabayon and a drizzle of aged balsamic.
“I would describe my cuisine as personal,” he said. “It’s not rooted in tradition or culture, but rather in trying to get better and better products and coupling them with how I’m feeling in that moment.”
And he’s not afraid of breaking rules, such as many chefs’ obsession with showcasing local foods.
“I don’t put a lot of importance on locality,” he said. “It’s more important to me that the products are good, rather than where they’re from. Most of the fish is from Tsukiji Market in Japan, although it gets flown in from all over. For special events, we also fly in A5 Wagyu from Japan. The wild foods we get — truffles, mushrooms, pollens, sumac, miner’s lettuce — as well as some cultivated items like mushrooms, hearts of palm and white asparagus, come from all over the U.S. as well as France and Australia.”
Five years into business, he’s used to being asked how he chose such an unexpected strip mall space for his upscale restaurant, tucked in the remote suburban Hiddenbrooke area. The place used to be an ice cream parlor, but now gleams with an open kitchen where guests vie for the few prime seats at the chef’s counter, all the better to watch Warring to prepare a pretty plate of Asian pear trimmed with wood sorrel, crème fraiche sabayon and a dusting of dill pollen.
He and his wife and co-owner of the restaurant, Ali Gulczynski, have customers who travel from all over to enjoy meticulous dishes like ocean trout with foie gras, bottarga, radish, hearts of palm and ice-wine vinegar, or noodles laced around fairytale eggplant, guanciale, padron peppers and a scattering of black truffle.
The couple has already enjoyed their share of big-name cooking, too, including Warring’s time at Napa Valley’s Auberge du Soleil a decade ago and at Bouchon Beverly Hills, while Gulczynski worked at Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc in Yountville. Now, they keep plenty busy staffing their restaurant entirely on their own, drawing on management tools they learned while studying at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and boot camp skills they picked up while in the trenches at their previous jobs.
For the time being, the couple is fine being the only fine dining destination in the area, but should expansion come, they’re ready for that, too.
“It would be great if more restaurants came to the area, but I haven’t really seen a lot of growth,” Warring said. “Maybe more restaurants will open in areas not commonly associated with great food. We’re happy with where our restaurant is now, but we’re always excited about the future and what it may hold.”
“I would describe my cuisine as personal. It’s not rooted in tradition or culture, but rather in trying to get better and better products and coupling them with how I’m feeling in that moment.” Chef Michael Warring