In Situ - A Restaurant Celebrating The Art Of Cooking

Many restaurants take pride  in signature dishes. After all , they're what give any eatery, bistro or cafe their reputation and following. Yet a new restaurant in San Francisco is doing the opposite. The chef is taking world famous  recipes from restaurants around the world and putting a new spin on them.

Pete Wells interviewed In Situ's creator and chef, Corey Lee in his A Recipe Lab column in today's New York Times Food section. The concept is unique in an industry where individuality is key to success,The restaurant with the closest ideology is Chicago''s Next, founded by Grant Achaz , which  completely changes menus every four months. Of course Chef Lee also owns a traditional restaurant, Benu where there is only seven main dishes to choose from.In Situ is sort of like a culinary art museum. Even the name, comes from the Latin phrase meaning a piece of art is embedded in its' original location. Its' menus  are folded and fastened with  metal museum admission tags and look like  guides to a gallery exhibition of works that are on temporary loan. One side of the menu depicts  a map of the world tilted on its' axis. The reason for this is showing a dislocation of sorts that hints' that there is a shift from the recipe's original location to In Situ's. Circles on the map show the many dishes many birthplaces.There is a key in the menu's right margin that gives each's ingredients ,it's originator;s name and the city where it was created.

  Chef Lee is so good that he  even earned praise from the famed WD-50 chef  Wylie Dufresne. What he had done with Chef Dufresne's signature dish shrimp and grits is nothing short of amazing.The grits in Chef Lee's interpretation are actually the shrimp repeatedly ground and fried married to pickled jalapeno slices.Another masterpiece is The Forest ,taken from Mirazur in Menton, France,The original dish created by Chef Mauro Colagreco fashioned this vegan dish to look like the woods outside his restaurant on the French Riviera,It involves recreating moss from a parsley soaked sponge cake while the bark is created from fried sunchoke peels. Chef Colagreco gave Chef Lee permission to use mushrooms from Northern California for true authenticity as opposed to ones used from Provence, A dish from the great eatery, Momufuku Ssam Bar is also on In Situ's menu. It is spicy pork sausage and rice cakes. Chef Lee amped up this ragout with sliced rice sticks,  turning it into a mapo-tofu.For dessert Chef Lee honors Chez Panisse,It is a salute to Alice Waters lemon ice cream  dish in a hollowed out lemon shell placed next to lemon sherbert. A lemon flavored cat's tongue or langue du chat shares the spotlight.

Chefs are usually encouraged to create signature dishes, reflecting their tastes and backgrounds Chef Corey Lee breaks away from that by putting his own spin on already famous dishes. The result is stunning and delicious, the perfect homage from a culinary master.

Waking Up Brunch

Sometimes brunch can be a sleepy affair.It's the same old omelets, French toast and eggs Benedict.Once in a while a delicate salad or quiche is thrown into spike it up a little.Yet it still remains the same - a sedate meal for both the mind and the palate.However it's time to give this weekend tradition a well deserved jolt. Melissa Clark got the chance to do this and garner some interesting recipes from some of Manhattan's best chefs.New York City is notorious for its brunches . In fact the town probably invented them but as with every meal ,dishes can become boring .Chefs stuck on the shift resentfully whip up the same over used recipes.Luckily that's all changing.Cooks are tapping into their creative vein and inventing new recipes that are sure to be favorites.The ingredients are all the same, eggs,bread, and sausages along with fruit but they're being reconstructed. Instead of a frittata, eggs are now being whipped into a silky terrine ,more like a savory bread pudding.The reasonably priced restaurant El Rey Coffee Bar and Luncheonette. Chef April Bloomfield will still serve a variety of egg dishes at her place, the Breslin. She gives brunch goers, eggs poached with curried lentils and and yogurt or fried with cotechino sausage and beans.There are even baked eggs, flavored with tomato and chorizo. These new dishes will bring in new diners too,looking for something different as well as keeping regulars happy.For most restaurants brunch is the most lucrative meal of the week.Many who can't afford the restaurants dinners will usually try the cheaper Sunday brunch menu.Brunch is also cost effective too.It has given rise to nose to tail cooking.Every part of the animal is used in these new recipes. At the famed Hearth restaurant, the chef serves a slab of pork blade steak, that works well with breakfast menu but not with a lunch or dinner one.Also fruits and vegetables never go to waste.Danny Amend of the Brooklyn hotspot Marco's reconfigured grapefruit slices as a savory salad,drizzled with olive oil and seasalt,served with chorizo sausages.The fruit would maybe be used as decoration otherwise and in this recipe, the entire fruit is being used.As for the booze that always accompanies brunch,that too has been reconfigured.The new star of the city cooking scene,Wylie Dufresne serves popcorn seasoned with Bloody Mary spices, such as Tabasco at his restaurant, Alders. Brunch is no longer a snooze affair in New York restaurants.New recipes are waking up brunch lovers. It's eggs and sausage but with a spark .