Chef Kelly Liken - Find. Eat. Drink.

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CHEF KELLY LIKEN

Q & A WITH KELLY LIKEN

Q. Tell us about your restaurant:

A. My restaurant is called Restaurant Kelly Liken, just like my name! It’s a little, 65 seat fine dining restaurant in the heart of the Vail Village. I cook very simple, seasonal American cuisine. I really focus on the best of what I can source from the Rocky Mountains and Colorado specifically, so the menu is constantly changing, which keeps it very interesting both for myself and my customers.

My husband takes care of the wine program and he pours 65 wines by the half glass or whole glass, so we do a lot of tasting menus and wine pairings, custom wine pairings to go with those.

Q. Domestic or foreign wines?

A. It’s about 60 percent US and 40 percent French. The bottle list has 200 selections on it, so it’s a very comprehensive list, but it’s really nice and focused. We really don’t want our guests to read an encyclopedia just to figure out a great wine to drink.

Q. Do you have signature dishes?

A. Probably our most popular dish, one that has really become my signature, is a Potato-Crusted Rocky Mountain Trout Filet, and in the wintertime I serve it with caramelized brussels sprout leaves, plump golden raisins and toasted pecans.

[See recipe.]

In the summer, I change that a lot according to what beautiful produce we have coming from Colorado. So you may see heirloom tomatoes and haricots verts, beautiful beets and greens and arugula.

Q. How often do you use elk and some of the interesting meats that you have access to?

A. Quite a lot actually. It’s kind of funny, because my menu is very meat-centric. But, I’ve become known for my use of vegetables. I grow a lot of my own and I buy a lot from the local farmers. My menu, though, is full of bison and elk and I have this really amazing, all-natural Colorado lamb that I keep on the menu all the time.

Grilled Lamb with Pea and Green Onion Saute

Photograph courtesy of Kelly Liken

Q. How hard is it to cook bison?

It’s not hard. It’s so lean, that you cook it the same way you cook any beef. I always suggest to people that if they prefer their meat well cooked, like medium well or well done, that maybe it’s not the right meat for them to choose. Just because it does dry out when you cook it beyond medium.

People assume it’s going to be like cooking a lamb chop or a steak, when in reality cooking a lot of game meat - elk, bison, even some game bird, are so lean that you have to treat it more like cooking a pork tenderloin.

Q. Are there difficulties having a restaurant in a resort town?

A. Yeah, it’s a challenge. Because it is so seasonal and each season brings different people. In the summer, we’re really seeing a lot of locals, as well as second home owners, who come to stay 3-4 months at a time. So it feels more like a restaurant in any city in America. You kind of see the same people and you get to know them really well. The winter is quite different. I would say about 90% of our clientele in the wintertime are on vacation and you only see them that night and you don’t see them again until the next year. It’s like a whole new clientele every week.

Q. Before you moved to Colorado, you worked at the legendary The Inn at Little Washington as an intern, what did you learn from that experience?

A. My experience at The Inn at Little Washington really made me who I am today. It fostered my passion for knowing where my food comes from, cooking with a sense of place, honoring the local ingredients and creating those relationships with the local farmers and really taught me that food and a menu and a kitchen can be about so much more than just getting food delivered from a truck to your back door, but that it can have such a deeper meaning.

Q. Tell us about Sowing Seeds, your foundation?

A. That’s my baby. My husband and I had this idea and desire to impact our schools through food. Sowing Seeds is a school yard garden at the Brush Creek Elementary school in Eagle, which is about 30 miles west of Vail, where Rick and I live. We have integrated lessons about the greenhouse throughout the entire curriculum, so it’s not just about eating well and it’s not just about the science of growing seeds, but teachers are doing literacy initiatives in the greenhouse, where they are learning math, science and obviously nutrition.

And the very best part of it is that after just a few months the school district was so impressed with the progress that they gave us extra money in our budget for the cafeteria, and we’re now cooking one hundred percent from scratch with a lot of that food coming from the greenhouse. So there is no more frozen pizza or chicken nuggets on our school menu, it’s all from scratch cooking.

Q. That’s great. For raising money, did your profile rise from appearing on Top Chef?
A. Absolutely. Reality television is a crazy world, but I have to say that it really has given me an opportunity to be an ambassador to Vail. Not just from a restaurant standpoint, but from the community standpoint. I’m very passionate about raising the future generation to be responsible adults.

Q. How was the overall experience of doing Top Chef, was it a pressure cooker environment?

A. It absolutely was a pressure cooker. In hindsight, it was a great experience and it opened my eyes to so many new things and new experiences and I learned so much. You can’t not learn a lot when you’re living with 17 great chefs, who all have different viewpoints. You absorb so much.

But, it was a lot more pressure than I anticipated. It was a lot less sleep than I anticipated, so it was definitely a challenge.

Q. How does the pressure wear your down?

A. The pressure absolutely wears you down. I mean you’re exhausted and you’re being judged every single day for six weeks straight, if you make it to the end. So you find your creativity starting to wane and you find your decision making skills not as sharp as they would be with a normal life and with normal sleep. When I left DC, I knew I had to go back to Singapore, but I had a few weeks in between and I definitely left feeling like I needed to regroup, because I was worn down.

Q. Now that you’re done, has that pressure influenced you either in a good way or bad way?

A. That pressure has driven me in my restaurant. I fee like I’m a better chef today because of it. I certainly am more efficient and I am thinking on my toes faster than I ever have before, so it definitely taught me some great things about being a chef and running my business.

Q. You were judged by some pretty famous chefs on the show. When you returned to your kitchen, did you implement some of their critiques or do you say “oh that was just a competition?” How do you presently use the judging?
A. I personally have used it a lot. It was something like 24 challenges in a row between the quick-fires and the eliminations, I got feedback every single day on my food and so I still think about that. It hasn’t completely changed the way I cook by any stretch, but it’s definitely a gift if you’re willing to look at it like that.

Q. Why do you think that the women always get booted so early?
A. I don’t know and it’s very frustrating to me that the women get eliminated so early. Top Chef doesn’t have a great track record for having women make it too far. It is something that I would like to see changed. I don’t know if it is casting or it’s the pressure. The things that make women great chefs, the fact that we are kind of emotional and we put love into our food, I’m speaking generally, I wonder if those same traits are our downfall when it comes to these competitions.

Q. Did you have a favorite judge?

A. Eric Ripert - but that was because he always said lovely things about my food.

Recommendations

FIND...

Q. Are there particular cookbooks that you love to use?

A. I’m a crazy cookbook lover in terms of fancy books. I have thousands of coffee table style cookbooks. I love The Babbo Cookbook, it’s probably my favorite book that I’ve ever read or cooked out of for a more modern book.

My favorite for all time is the Joy of Cooking. I think it’s like a bible. It’s very much a home cook’s book, but when you need something really basic, a pie crust or a standard shortbread ... you just can’t go wrong. It’s tried and true and tested over the years. I think every chef, whether they want to admit or not, has a tattered copy in their kitchen.

[See details.]

Q. How about a favorite knife, especially since you cook a lot of game?

A. My favorite knives are Shun. I own three of them and they are the only knives I use, because these three knives can do everything.

I have a ten inch chef knife, a twelve inch slicer for big meats, and a fish slicer for cutting sashimi or steaks. And then I have a small boning knife for breaking down chickens and things like that.

[See details.]

Q. Is there a gadget that you find yourself using over and over?

A. I use a tiny ice cream scoop with a spring load on it, a number one hundred ice cream scoop. It’s a little ice cream scoop that makes melon ball-sized scoops and I use it for everything. Portioning gnudi and sorbet, as you can imaging I’m always scooping something with this thing.

[See details.]

Q. Any great markets that you’ve discovered?

In Singapore, we went to the most amazing fish market in Little India. I’ve never seen fish like this, as far as the eye could see beautiful, local fish that had just come out of the water. Crab, there were sharks, and lots of shellfish, that was really cool.

I just found this salumi maker in Denver, Il Mondo Vechico. The guy’s name is Mark and he makes like 25 different kinds of salumi from pork and beef and lamb and all of his animals are sourced as locally as he can possibly get them. Most are Colorado or Rocky Mountain animals. He’s making the stuff in super Old World ways. I never tasted salumi like this. It’s amazing.

In New York, there is the Kitchen Arts and Letters bookstore. It’s a tiny little store with nothing but cookbooks and they have super old first editions. You can’t afford anything in there but, it’s really fun to look.

[See details.]

EAT...

Q. What restaurant are you a regular at in Vail?

A. Avondale Restaurant. It’s at the Westin Riverfront Resort. The food is delicious and it’s just really simple and beautiful. They are sourcing a lot of things that are truly organic and local, it’s not just a buzzword for them or a fad. I feel really comfortable eating there knowing that I am supporting what I want to be supported.

I also love Dish Restaurant in Edwards, just outside of Beaver Creek, for its creativity and straight up deliciousness. It’s a little small plate restaurant. The menu changes daily, so every time you go in you get something different. It’s always fun and delicious.

[See details.]

Q. Where to you go off the beaten track?

A. A little sushi place called Osaki. It has 20 seats, it’s really simple and plain and the whole place is probably 500 square feet, including the open kitchen. It is just the most amazing sushi. It’s a husband and wife team, she waits tables and he cooks. He is a third generation sushi chef from Osaka, Japan. And the best way to do it is to just tell him to cook for you. He comes up with the most amazing flavor combinations you’ve ever had.

[See details.]

Q. Where should we go for lunch?

A. My favorite is Moe’s Original Bar-B-Que. It’s three guys from Alabama who started out with a 50 gallon drum turned into a smoker on the side of the road for construction workers to get lunch. Now they have lots of locations. It’s the most delicious barbecue. They basically serve barbecue, whisky and a little bit of beer. That’s it.

[See details.]

Q. Are there restaurants you like to visit when you go to your hometown, Pittsburgh?

A. There is nothing like a Primanti Brothers’ sandwich. They are big sandwiches of french fries and coleslaw piled on the sandwich. I love that.

My favorite pizza place is Vincent’s Pizza. My dad is 61 years old and he’s been eating there since he was two. It’s like no other pizza. It’s not thin crusted, it’s not thick crusted, it’s this sort of like hand-tossed deliciousness. We are convinced that they haven’t cleaned their pizza ovens in like 25 years and that is why it tastes so good.

There are two new places that I just tried last the time I was home and I was super impressed with. One is Salt of the Earth and the other is called Spoon. They are definitely new for Pittsburgh, innovative, fun and definitely the next generation. These places are blowing it up.

[See details.]

Q. How about on your travels that you would go back to in a heartbeat?

A. My favorite restaurant, and I’ve been back twice just to make sure it was as good as I thought it was, is Eleven Madison Park. I love the entire experience. The food is so creative and delicious, the service is great, even the china stands out.

[See details.]

DRINK...

Q. Where should we start our night with a drink in Vail?

A. Avondale. They have the best cocktails in town (besides mine, of course). It’s a really beautiful bar and you can go outside by the fireplaces. So it’s a really nice place to have a cocktail.

[See details.]

Q. Where do the locals go for a drink?

A. The Red Lion, it’s an institution in Vail. I think it’s been open for 35 or 40 years. They have live music, a band that plays great covers - Bon Jovi and a whole mix of different music. It’s packed every night. If you’re coming to Vail and you want to party, that is the quintessential party place.

The most fun, inexpensive, casual after-work place is called The George. It’s empty until the restaurants close and then it’s packed with hotel and restaurant workers.

[See details.]

Q. How about for ending the night?

A. My favorite nightcap place would be the Kings Club at the Sonnenalp Hotel. Very comfy bar, very distinguished with big leather chairs, and a piano player. They make great after-dinner drinks with coffee or cocoa or hot cider. They have great high-end digestifs.

[See details.]