F&W Best New Chefs 2019: Matthew Kammerer of Harbor House Inn in Elk, California
It’s the salt you need to know about first. A taste so big and briny that to let a few flakes melt on your tongue is to feel sucked under a wave, tumbled about in the tide. Matt Kammerer makes it himself, hauling gallons of seawater up craggy Mendocino cliffs, letting it slowly evaporate until the stuff shatters like crystal. This salt is the foundation of everything atHarbor House Inn; it sets the stage not just in flavor but in ideology—each detail here, no matter how minute, shores up the sense of place. You are right here, in Elk, California, 150 miles up the North Coast from San Francisco through the redwoods, within earshot of the churning waters of Greenwood Cove, eating a meal that you will never forget.
卡默尔（Kammerer）及时在比利时的德沃尔夫（In de Wulf）和东京的瑞金（Ryugin）（“他们让我称重米饭”，他记得），然后降落在旧金山的萨森（Saison）。他在约书亚·斯凯尼斯（Joshua Skenes）的领导下在那里度过了三年，这三位米其林明星闪闪发光。但是，有机会接管1916年伐木工人撤退的Harbor House Inn，最终使他向北吸引。他的伴侣阿曼达（Amanda）和他一起来了，几位厨师对城市生活感到厌倦。“这是原始的景观，到处都是草原和溪流，”卡默尔说，当厨师带着黄脚蘑菇箱走过时。“我们的工作是为人们提供其他任何地方的经验。我可以订购每个人都在旧金山获得的成分，但我晚上无法入睡。”取而代之的是，Kammerer和他的船员建造了高架床，并用自然而然地用海雾调味的蔬菜使土地盛开。他们学到了海湾的节奏，涉水，穿过潮汐池，聚集海藻被烤成面包，折叠成黄油。他们进行了雾蒙蒙的徒步旅行，找到了推出那些黄脚的最佳场所。 And of course, they cooked.
Kammerer’s tasting menu is an astonishing testament to the collision of the finest product and the finest skill. Sweet sea urchin, cleaved from rocks a few hundred feet from where you sit, is perched over Harbor House hen egg custard, a chawanmushi by any another name. Albacore is smoked over chrysanthemum and seasoned with salted plum. Abalone is stewed with local wild rice—between bites, rest your chopsticks on a fragment of its own glittering shell.
Until the rest of the world finds out about Harbor House Inn, a meal here will likely be a quiet affair. You might end your night like we did, dancing in the dim light of the fire, the taste of salt and marigold petals on our lips, no one around to judge this display of pure, guileless pleasure.
这是魔术。现在你知道了。