Known Traveler: Eric Ripert Finds Seafood Inspiration Across America
The Le Bernardin chef on his new cookbook, Seafood Simple, his favorite weekend destinations, and how traveling shapes his menus
Welcome to the weekend! Here’s what you’ll find in today’s newsletter.
Known Traveler: Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert shares how American travel influences his seafood-focused cuisine.
The Order: It turns out, the last Triple XXX restaurant left standing is on the edge of Purdue’s campus in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Weekend Reading List: Central Grocery is nearing its return, a top Cleveland chef shares his restaurant picks, and a Southern California road trip.
Featured Destination: Download our Field Guide to the Hudson Valley, a 24-page digital dining guide formatted for your phone.
Our new series, Known Traveler, checks in with culinary tastemakers to talk about how travel fits into their lives and their work. For our first interview, we sat down with Eric Ripert, the chef and co-owner at New York’s Le Bernardin and a fixture on many travel shows over the years.
Sourcing Seafood with Eric Ripert
Paging through Eric Ripert’s new cookbook, Seafood Simple, a few things jump out. Among recipes for Spanish mackerel tartare with caviar and an herb-crusted yellowfin tuna, he offers recipes for shrimp boils and fried smelt, crab cake sandwiches and poke, fish tacos and BBQ striped bass. He writes of eating blackened red snapper with red beans and rice on trips to Louisiana and cedar plank salmon on visits to the West Coast. It is a cookbook that is clearly defined by the French-born chef’s time and travels in America.
“When I travel I come back with ideas and some of them make it to the menu at Le Bernardin,” he told me. “The tacos never made it but I thought for the book, why not? It’s part of the culture and this book is very American in a way. I didn’t try to bring fish from Europe and make a book that is international. This is the fish we have in the U.S. and we’re going to stick to that. I have no intention of selling the book in France. There’s no black bass, there’s no snapper, they don’t have those fishes.”
When Ripert came through Chicago recently, we met up to talk about the book, where he’s been eating on his book tour around the country, and how travel is the ultimate source of culinary inspiration.
You’ve been traveling a lot on your book tour. Did you find any standout spots to eat?
In Cleveland, I went to a Vietnamese restaurant [Saigon Restaurant & Bar] and it was very good. The restaurant is across the street from the spot that was Michael Symon’s Lola. I didn’t make it [to Cordelia], but everyone was saying it was so good. In Madison, Wisconsin, I ate pickled pig’s feet. I was very impressed with the pickled pig’s feet, I was like “Oh my god, this is so good!” I was in Los Angeles last week. I love the Japanese restaurants there. Everywhere I go I find some good spots to eat.
I saw you were recently in Maine?
I was in Portland not too long ago because we buy seafood at Browne Trading Company. They sell fish to us and many nice restaurants all over the U.S. The owner is Rod Mitchell, he’s a dear, dear friend of mine. You can go to Browne Trading, it’s on the harbor and you cannot miss it.
When I go to Portland, Rod takes me to all the places he wants. I cannot go to Portland and not go visit him. Most of our fish from the Northeast comes from him. We buy from Rod in Portland, then a fish market in New York. And then we have some Japanese connections to bring in fishes from Japan. We have connections in North Carolina and Florida for wild shrimp and snapper.
Oysters factor prominently into the book and on your menu. Where do you source your oysters?
We try to get the oysters as close as we can from Le Bernardin. Peconic Bay, which is between the North and the South Fork, has a lot of oyster farms now. It was a very good industry in the beginning of the 20th century then it collapsed and now it's coming back. We like to support them as much as we can. There’s one in Greenport, the farm is called Widow’s Hole, he does a very good job and I like working with him very much. We get a lot of our oysters from Maine or Canada. It's rare we get oysters from the West Coast.
How did you decide what recipes to include?
I decided to break down the book into techniques and there are nine techniques in the book. I had a board where I wrote the techniques and dishes, like ceviche in the category with raw fish. The advantage with a big wall is you can see your entire book. After I liked the order of the book, I developed the recipes that weren't written yet. Writing the recipe means I make the recipe, I don't measure, but someone is making sure it's close to the measurement of what I'm doing. Then I send that to a recipe tester in Portland, Oregon. She cooks them in her house and gives us feedback.
Some are based on Le Bernardin recipes, but are others completely new?
Some are adapted from Le Bernardin and slightly simplified. That’s maybe 30%. The other 70% are recipes that were created for the book or recipes I like that I wanted to put in a book.
Where do you and the team like to travel for research?
We travel inside the U.S. or outside the U.S. Depending where I go or where my chefs go, we come back with ideas, then we discuss it, and we collaborate and come up with a dish. I lived in Washington, DC in the late ’80s so I was going to the Chesapeake Bay, which is where I discovered soft-shell crabs and crab cakes. I had never heard of them before. Fish tacos are mostly from L.A., though in L.A. they don’t fry so much, it’s mostly grilled. But the influence comes from Mexico and California.
Where do you like to get away from New York for the weekend?
I have a house in the Hamptons close to Sag Harbor, and for summer weekends, I go there. In the winter, we sometimes go to Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Portland, Maine, or Boston for a weekend trip.
When you’re in Sag Harbor, where do you eat?
I usually entertain in the summer. I like to grill. I go to the farm stands and shop whatever is local, and then if I find some good fish, which is very often, I cook seafood. I have a couple fish markets I like. Sometimes I bring the fish from Le Bernardin in my cooler.
At night I like to go out to the local restaurants. I have a lot of favorites. The little town of Sag Harbor is very small but they have a lot of cute places, good places. One of them is called The Bell & Anchor, another is a French bistro called Le Bilboquet. There's Lulu, which is pretty French as a name, but is American food. They cook everything wood-fired.
Lobster rolls are on the lounge menu at Le Bernardin. How do you put your own spin on them?
At Le Bernardin, it’s definitely a mix between French culture and American culture because we’re using black truffles. We make a black truffle emulsion, and then we use small brioche rolls. We cook the lobster at the very last minute, then we chop it, mix it with truffle emulsion, and put it in small buns. At the table, the waiters add a bit more sauce. And it’s not your typical lobster roll you find in Maine or anywhere else, it’s our luxurious version adapted to Le Bernardin.
Where do you like to go to eat lobster rolls?
In Montauk and in the North Fork in Greenport there’s a place called Duryea’s. It's on the dock, and they have very good lobster rolls. In the summer I go there.
I grew up going to Long Island Sound on the Connecticut side…
It's nice there. Right next to Mystic? It’s beautiful there.
We would go to Abbott’s Lobster a lot, and Lobster Landing. Those are two of my favorites.
Oh yes, they do a good job.
Do you have a favorite between Connecticut and Maine-style lobster rolls? Butter versus mayo?
No. It’s all about my mood. The mayonnaise has the benefit of giving you the illusion of lightness – even though it’s not at all.
How do American seafood traditions inspire you as a chef?
At the restaurant, we have a mantra that dictates our style. It’s that the fish is the star of the plate, so therefore whatever goes on the plate is supposed to elevate and enhance the qualities of the fish and make it better. So that’s really the backbone that dictates everything. But at Le Bernardin, although we have our roots in French culture, we embrace what we get inspiration from, and that is traveling.
Seafood Simple: A Cookbook
Eric Ripert, Random House, 304 pages, $35
In Indiana, A Last Burger Stand Standing
WEST LAFAYETTE, IN — When I lived in Indiana, I would on occasion make the drive up to the Triple XXX Family Restaurant in West Lafayette. On each visit, I’d take a seat at the counter and order up The Duane Purvis All-American cheeseburger. Named for a star player on a long-ago Purdue football team, this is an all-American burger, topped with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onion, all served on a toasted sesame seed bun. But there’s one extra condiment that makes this burger special: peanut butter.
Don’t knock it ’til you try it.
It’s just the kind of burger a college student might crave after a long night out, perhaps sharing pitchers of beer with friends at Harry’s Chocolate Shop, a one-time soda fountain turned tavern that sits on the edge of Purdue’s campus. I have always equated the Triple XXX Family Restaurant with Purdue, so I was surprised to read Jackie Varriano’s story in the Seattle Times that noted the closing of the Triple XXX Rootbeer Drive-In in Issaquah, Washington. It turns out, Triple XXX was once a chain of burger joints that stretched across the country, slinging their signature root beer alongside cheeseburgers and fries since the dawn of the drive-in era. The closing of the independently-owned Issaquah location has left the Indiana outpost as the last remaining Triple XXX left standing.
So the next time you find yourself near Purdue, do your part to keep the Triple XXX brand alive and honor the on-the-field heroism of Duane Purvis: Order the peanut butter cheeseburger. It’s the all-American thing to do.
— Kenney Marlatt
Working Their Way Back To You: If you’ve missed stopping in at Central Grocery on your last few trips to New Orleans, we have good news. The century-old market known for their muffulettas is nearing a re-opening date, according to a story by Ian McNulty in the The Times-Picayune. The famed grocery store was heavily damaged by Hurricane Ida in 2021, requiring a complete demolition and reconstruction. In the meantime, their famous sandwiches have been available for pickup elsewhere, and McNulty offers up some spots to get your fix. A tip: The sandwiches are even better as leftovers, so our move is to pick one up on our first day in town and keep it in the refrigerator for occasional snacking between Sazeracs and Vieux Carrés.
Cleveland Rocks: Our favorite restaurant in Cleveland is Cordelia, and their chef, Vinnie Cimino, talked with Cleveland Magazine’s Sophie Farrar to share some of his favorite spots in town. I guess we will be stopping by LJ Shanghai for soup dumplings next time we are in Ohio.
Escape From L.A.: Writing for The New York Times, Eric A. Taub and photographer Stella Kalinina took a scenic drive along the backroads of Southern California. Along the way, they found a 50-year-old Mexican restaurant, a tavern that began as a stagecoach stop in 1868, and a spot specializing in steaks grilled over logs of red oak.
— Compiled by Kenney Marlatt
This month, paid subscribers to American Weekender received our newsletter featuring some of our favorite spots in Hudson Valley, New York. You can download all of our picks for the area in our Field Guide to the Hudson Valley, a 24-page digital dining guide formatted for your phone. During the month of December, paid subscribers can snag a complimentary download on our website using the code found in this month’s Featured Destination newsletter. (Paid subscribers also get 50% off any other Field Guide they’d like!) Upgrade your subscription today and get your free Field Guide to Hudson Valley.
Want more? Download our Field Guides, check out our archives, or follow us on Instagram @americanweekender. We’ll be back next week.
I love that you met Eric Ripert! I’ve been a fan of his for a long time now.
I'm heading to NOLA in just a couple of weeks and really hoping that Central Grocery is back up and running by then -- but if not, at least there are other options for their muffaleta.