As the morning fog lifts from the rolling hills of Barboursville Vineyards, Melissa Close-Hart, executive chef at the Palladio Restaurant, is busy opening boxes of fresh local produce with her sous chef, Mike Yager, and three assistants. Later, from this assortment of basil, mint and mushrooms, they’ll prepare fresh garnishes for their handmade pastas and season an assortment of fine meats for the lunch crowd that awaits their classic Italian fare.
|
VIDEO BY LANCE WARREN
Chef Melissa Close-Hart |
Close-Hart walks out to greet me, wiping her hands on an apron that covers part of her cotton striped chef pants. Her reddish brown hair is pulled back in a pony tail, covered by a head wrap, while her glasses are slightly steamed up from the difference in temperature between the kitchen and the foyer of the restaurant. “Sorry I’m such a mess,” she says, as she extends a right hand. Yet Close-Hart is all together charming, humble and confident at the same time, and she has good reason to smile. In the 10 years that she’s been at Palladio, the restaurant has grown to become one of the top fine-dining destinations in Central Virginia.
This Saturday, June 26, Palladio will host its next Guest Chef Winery Celebration Feast by pairing a five course meal created by Close-Hart and her mentor, iconic Southern chef Frank Stitt, with five wines created by Barboursville winemaker Luca Paschina.
“It’s been 15 years since I’ve worked with Frank,” says Close-Hart. “It was at Bottega that I plated absolutely perfect Italian food and went, ‘Hmm, this is what I’m good at; this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ That experience with Frank was sort of the gun from the gate for me.”
Stitt’s reputation precedes him. The Highlands Bar and Grill on the Southside of Birmingham has been serving up fine French cuisine since the early 1980s, while the native Alabamian’s second restaurant, Bottega, focuses on Northern Italian dishes. There he turns humble ingredients—ground corn, bitter greens, cured pork, the daily catch—into poetry on the plate.
Yet as impressive as Stitt’s resumé is (and there can be little doubt), Close-Hart’s rise to prominence has been just as extraordinary. Raised in the somewhat humble surroundings of Mobile, Alabama, Close-Hart has been in the restaurant business since she was 16 years old (“In a fast food joint that I won’t name,” she jokes). Yet after studying psychology and sociology in college, Close-Hart found she could not shake the allure of the kitchen.
“I’m thankful for the education that I got,” insists Close-Hart, who is 39. “But I was a really bad teacher. I knew I’d rather be working in the restaurant business.” She has been the executive chef in Palladio’s kitchen since the fall of 2000. After leaving Stitt’s Bottega in the early 1990s, Close-Hart continued her quest for Italian fluency in cuisine, first at the New England Culinary Institute, then at San Francisco’s Rose Pistola, before joining fellow Charlottesville chef Craig Hartman at the Cliff House in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Hartman eventually returned to Central Virginia to head Fossett’s at Keswick Hall (a position he recently left to focus on his barbeque business in Gordonsville), while Close-Hart was lured to the year-old Palladio at Barboursville. She lives in Charlottesville with her husband Matthew Hart, who is the head chef of the Local in Belmont.
“With both of us being chefs,” admits Close-Hart, “it can be very hard. We miss a lot of weddings, graduations, reunions and whatnot. This career is a lifestyle.”
Though Close-Hart brought with her a host of background experience, Barboursville has come to represent her big break, the place where she could finally spread her wings. While it is hard to imagine the operation at Palladio as being anything but fully formed, in fact, a tremendous amount of planning and experimentation has taken place over the years.
So what is the secret to her culinary wizardry?
For one thing, the local food movement is a vital element to Palladio’s ever-evolving menu. “The whole concept of ‘Buy Local’ has grown so much over the last 10 years in this area,” says Close-Hart. “It takes the recipes to a whole new level to have produce that comes from field to truck to kitchen all within an hour.” Coincidentally, Close-Hart informs me, Spring Lake Farms has just pulled up with boxes of freshly picked fruits and vegetables. She also points to Barboursville’s own backyard vegetable garden as a source of produce for the restaurant.
“I grew up in the Deep South,” reminds Close-Hart, “where you use what is in your own backyard. My mom would tell you that she has no idea how to cook, but she always made food from scratch. Frank’s Highland’s Bar and Grill in Alabama took the same approach and put it in a high-end setting; his was one of the first places in Alabama to use local foods and apply them to classic European dishes.”
After about a half-hour in the kitchen, Close-Hart emerges with a bowl of handmade ravioli stuffed with mozzarella, green peas and chopped mint, topped with a light cream sauce. The portion precisely calibrated (paired with a glass of Paschina’s 2007 Rose), the pasta tastes earthy, with the sweetness of the peas and cream sauce balanced by the mint flavor. A later dish of spinach and potato gnocchi with cherry tomatoes and baby scallops is the epitome of the form, marrying local ingredients with classic Italian technique.
“A lot of things have changed at Palladio over the last 12 years,” suggests Alessandro Medici, Palladio’s sommelier, who is running around the restaurant in a black T-shirt and pair of green cargo pants, setting up its intimate atmosphere in preparation for expected guests. “We used to have the chef come out and explain each dish. But we started having a lot of clientele coming back each week and they didn’t want to hear the same lecture. The way we have it now is a more classic experience.”
Barboursville, as a wine-producing estate, was founded in 1976 by Gianni Zonin, an Italian winemaker from the Northeastern part of Italy. The winery is built on the grounds of the 19th governor of Virginia, James Barbour, an estate that also boasts an inn as well as the original mansion’s ruins on 870 acres. The home was built in 1814 and is based on an architectural design provided by Barbour’s political ally and friend Thomas Jefferson derived (as always) from the classical style of 16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio.
Evidence suggests Jefferson tried to host a winemaking vineyard at his Monticello estate, but soon found it an unworkable situation, giving up on the idea by the first decade of the 19th century. In a sense, the confluence of Italian culture in Central Virginia had been waiting for its full expression since the time of Jefferson.
In this most recent era of Virginian wine history, former Barboursville vineyard manager Gabriele Rausse was the first to plant vitis vinifera since the failed attempts of Jefferson. Since Paschina’s arrival in 1990, he has become one of Virginia’s leading winemakers. His Octagon (a Bordeaux-style blend dubbed by Paschina “the first true Virginia wine”) has won stacks of awards and was selected to be served to Queen Elizabeth II on her 2007 visit to Virginia. It was poured at President Obama’s inauguration gala, too. When Alessandro Medici arrived in 1998, the two began plans for a larger vision. “The Palladio Restaurant started as the best way to showcase Luca’s wines,” says Medici.
“The best way to taste the wine,” agrees Paschina, “is with the right food at the right temperature. Then it was a matter of finding the right chef to complete the vision.” Enter Melissa Close-Hart.
“Since the ’80s,” says Close-Hart, who, since her time at Palladio, has been honored by the James Beard House in New York City, “it’s been interesting to watch the evolution of restaurants, chefs and especially women chefs. We were sort of unofficially told back then that women should be in the bakery.” At Barboursville, Close-Hart experienced none of that.
“Luca has always allowed me to go in any direction I choose,” she says. “For me, the main thing is to let the food be the food. There are still tons of nouveau and fusion restaurants out there, but a lot of new restaurants are returning to simple foods and classic recipes and getting great responses.”
Paschina’s face lights up when asked about traditional Italian cooking in this setting. “Take a look at this soft-shell crab,” he says, pointing to the 4" wide succulent crustaceans we both have plated before us. “In Italy, we season it with spices and a little corn meal, and then pan fry it. But where I’m from, the crab is half the size of the crabs from this area. So, yes, it is classic Italian in its concept, but it is very much unique to Virginia, too. That’s what I try to do with the wines, and Melissa does the same with the restaurant.”
“We always try to find a slightly different way of interpreting the classics,” agrees Close-Hart. “On the other hand, we have clientele that come back every year for their Ravioli di Zucca, and it’s not a recipe they want messed with.”
In just a few days, Close-Hart and Frank Stitt will prepare the Bottega-Palladio five-course meal that they designed together. Each chef will alternate in preparing course by course, including a pair of main dishes made of wild mushroom and parmesan pasticcio (a baked pasta dish), with spinach and roasted garlic puree (paired with the Cabernet Franc Reserve 2007), followed by the Rabbit Torino, stuffed with dried plums and Swiss chard, wrapped in pancetta with creamy polenta (paired with the 2006 Octagon). The $130 meal concludes with a trio of strawberry deserts paired with Paschina’s special Phileo nv, a blend of Muscat Canelli, Orange Muscat, Traminer and citrusy Riesling that makes for a rich and complex dessert wine.
“I am so looking forward to cooking with Frank again,” says Close-Hart. “He came in during the 1970s and basically said, ‘We can do soul food and classic dishes in a high-end way.’ He’s always been a pioneer, adding the most subtle hints of Southern style and local foods to Old World dishes. It’s going to be exciting.”
Stitt’s Bottega was born of a lifelong passion on his part for Northern Italy’s food and lifestyle. The beloved Southern chef has brought back to Alabama the rustic simplicity of Italian cuisine and added his own ingenious twists, such as the Tabasco sauce he uses to spike a dish of potato ravioli with crawfish and candied lemon. “There’s no pompano in Venice,” Stitt acknowledges in his book Bottega Favorita: A Southern Chef’s Love Affair with Italian Food. “But ours, fresh from Apalachicola, makes a great cartoccio [baked in a parchment bag].” As if to drive the point home, he implores: “Our Chilton County white peaches make a great bellini.”
While this vision of Old World mixed with New World is fast becoming de rigueur, Palladio hopes to deliver the message that simple and supple will always require a desire on the taster’s part to embrace the classical. You have to be willing to step outside of what we know here in America and be open to international flavors that have strong cultural resonance in our own backyards. In the age of rapid Internet pluralism, it is comforting to know that deep knowledge of craftsmanship can be combined with a spirit of experimentation.
“In the 10 years that I’ve been at Palladio,” says Close-Hart, “this area has become more adventurous about food and I think [Palladio’s] Guest Chef series embodies that growth. I’m sure UVA has helped, with its professors coming from all over the world, as has the celebrity culture of chefs these days. But the snowball effect has turned Palladio into a destination restaurant where people come for their anniversaries or special occasions and they want to try something new.”
Beyond the taste, the texture, the aroma, the presentation and the creativity of her cooking, Close-Hart is unwilling to rest on her laurels, choosing instead to look ahead with great optimism. “Sure, I’m proud of my achievements so far,” she reflects with a smile. “But in a way, I feel like my best years are yet to come.”