All knives on deck

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Copyright Long Island Pulse Magazine Robert Reed runs the kitchens at the Montauk Yacht Club Resort and Marina, using his attention to detail to create edible wonders.

Copyright Long Island Pulse Magazine
Robert Reed runs the kitchens at the Montauk Yacht Club Resort and Marina, using his attention to detail to create edible wonders.

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos originally appeared in the June 2014 issue of Long Island Pulse Magazine. This content is the rightful property of Long Island Pulse Magazine.]

Robert Reed’s love of the paring knife is telling. The head chef has a way of always carrying the short, sharp blade around the kitchen of the Montauk Yacht Club Resort & Marina. The knife’s specialty is painstaking, detailed work, even when wielded by someone responsible for feeding a hundred guests at once on any given summer weekend.

Sure, prepping live Maine lobster, striped bass and mussels doesn’t call for a paring knife, but there’s still plenty of use for Reed’s favorite tool. He digs its tip into the white flesh of a radish, carving it into an elegant rose. He uses it to shape seven-sided chateau potatoes that await tourné-ing. Or sometimes, just to clean crabs. “The food, at the end of the day, is the art,” Reed said. “It’s the reason I’m in this business. If it wasn’t for my passion for being in the kitchen and mentoring the staff and teaching the kids out of college, this job wouldn’t be any fun and I’d be working at the bank.”

Life in a cubical, shuffling paperwork is hard to imagine for someone like Reed. Growing up on the shores of Chicago’s Lake Michigan he took advantage of the proximity to water: Fishing, snorkeling, reef diving and riding a scooter along the picturesque roads. And while he still casts a line from time to time, the scooter has been upgraded. Reed zips across Montauk Highway’s untouched vistas on an electric-blue Honda Nighthawk 750 motorcycle. “No matter how tough my day’s been in the kitchen,” Reed said, “no matter how many hours I’ve worked, a nice ride home on the motorcycle with the wind in my face and the sound of the machine—by the time I get home, I’ve forgotten everything that’s happened.”

Classically trained in and expressly fond of French cuisine, Reed adheres rigidly to what he picked up in culinary school in San Francisco. Convivial Julia Child aside, French cooks are fanatics about the processes in the kitchen. After all, French cuisine “is the mother of all cuisines,” Reed said. “It’s the vehicle from which all other forms of culinary expression grow.” Reed’s training also explains his purist palate and preference for clean dishes like duck confit and rabbit ragù, where natural flavors are enhanced, not masked, by spices, sauces and seasonings.

Reed is not just the big-picture guy who manages the kitchens, schedules and staff. He’s also the garde manger, prep cook and expediter; he gets his hands dirty working the line, shoulder-to-shoulder with the staff. “I’m trying to bring the human element to the kitchen,” he said. “Liveliness.” And that sentiment is not reserved for the interactions with his cooks. It’s also what he feels when he reaches into the refrigerator for a lobster. “They’re alive. How many times can you actually reach into the refrigerator and grab something that’s still alive?”

Reed’s fondness for the ocean has taken him from the shores of San Diego to the island of St. Maarten. Now living a stone’s throw from the water in Montauk, Reed is exploring local bays while boating, scuba diving and water skiing. “The smells, the birds and the people that the ocean draws—it’s the best,” Reed said. “The sea will change your life.” And while the paring knife is used for detail work, working near the waters off Montauk Point might just be the most important detail of all for Reed.

A dash of Delta charm

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Copyright Long Island Pulse Magazine Louisiana native Bobby Bouyer runs the kitchens at Biscuits and Barbeque, bringing Southern flavor — and hospitality — to Mineola.

Copyright Long Island Pulse Magazine
Louisiana native Bobby Bouyer runs the kitchens at Biscuits and Barbeque, bringing Southern flavor — and hospitality — to Mineola.

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos originally appeared in the May 2014 of Long Island Pulse Magazine. This content is the rightful property of Long Island Pulse Magazine.]

A chat with chef Bobby Bouyer is like a stroll down Bourbon Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter. In his faded Cajun accent and with warmth in his voice, he described the simple joys of cooking tangy molasses-smoked barbeque and tender slow-roasted brisket. Louisiana-style cooking is rustic and focuses on seasoning in layers and understanding the nuances of the ingredients. Then again a lot of other cuisines are like that too. But in the South it’s the hospitality that forms the foundation of any authentic dining experience.

The half Creole and half Cajun Louisiana native brought his zesty roots to Mineola, where cookie-cutter chain restaurants abound. He developed the menu at Biscuits & Barbeque, a converted 1947 railcar restaurant with only 6 booths and 15 counter stools. “It’s an intimate environment,” Bouyer said, “which makes it easy from the kitchen standpoint to really focus on each plate and get things right.”

In the two years since it opened, the tiny restaurant, which sits on a quiet street in an industrial part of town, has drummed up considerable attention. “I think we carved ourselves a little niche,” Bouyer said. “We’re staying true to Creole-Cajun seasoning. Low and slow cooking technique is what it’s really all about.” Grasping the difference between Creole and Cajun cuisine involves a thorough history lesson, which Bouyer is happy to provide, but he summed up the distinction simply: Creole food is rooted in refined aristocracy, Cajun food descends from rural and rustic origins. While the restaurant offers traditional Southern fare like fried chicken, Bouyer has also introduced staples of his childhood: Muffuletta and po’ boy sandwiches, shrimp gumbo, jambalaya and alligator ribs.

Alligator is not a typical menu item, nor is it one that most restaurants could easily serve up. Bouyer, who gets his ’gator products from Florida, said the cooking process is a challenge. Tough and extremely lean, alligator meat requires very low heat and extra long cooking periods—a true case of “low and slow.”

Bouyer has worked tirelessly to train Biscuits’ kitchen staff in the ways of the South, even sending a chef to New Orleans for a firsthand experience. “They’ve learned a little bit about Southern hospitality,” he said, “and Southern gentility, which is that love; that person-to-person relationship where you take a little extra moment to smile or share a quick story.”

“Hell,” Bouyer added, “I’ve even got some of them saying y’all.”

Before moving to West Hempstead with his family, Bouyer pursued a new world of food while finishing a degree in culinary arts at Kendall College in Chicago. After a stint cooking on a cruise liner he returned to Chicago to open an ice cream shop specializing in unconventional flavors like avocado, beer and sausage. Considering his history making a dessert that tastes like beer, an alligator entrée isn’t far-fetched.

But always a Louisiana boy at heart, Bouyer returned to the French Quarter to work as a chef at the popular Palace Café. Despite witnessing the reemergence of the Southern spirit following Katrina, Bouyer decided it was time for a fresh start and moved again—this time to Long Island. It didn’t take long for him to pick up on a local trademark.

“There’s a little bit of curtness that is kind of status quo in New York,” Bouyer said. “What we preach is good service for our guests. It’s all about Southern hospitality and how we go far and beyond to make sure…you’re gonna have someone who really cares and gives you that extra attention.”