Hi there everyone.Thanks for signing up for the mailing list. I'm Dave Green, and for now, and for the foreseeable future I will be in the kitchen at The Bellport. I have a long history here. I started working for Taylor and Patricia in May of 1991, and on and off over the last 30 years have been cooking at the restaurant in various positions. What Taylor and Patricia built is a cherished part of my life, and the lives of many others in town, and I consider all those I have worked with over the years to be part of my family. I have almost 30 years worth of Bellport menu history floating around in my head, so when the opportunity came up for me to get back to my kitchen roots full time, I was more than happy to take it. What does this mean for you, the diner? For a start, it means ketchup.
When you’re a young chef, kitchen conversations will inevitably turn into culinary muscle flexing. "I had to open 300 clams every Thursday for the clams casino prep," or "the spit the suckling pig was on broke at an off-site wedding and we had to tie it up with guitar strings and crushed beer cans." My rhetorical ace in the hole was "I worked at a restaurant where we made our own ketchup." That would shut them up; there was just was no way to top that. In the 90's, making bespoke ketchup wasn’t something even fancy city folk did, much less the staff at a small restaurant on the south shore.
We did make our own ketchup here at The Bellport. I don't know exactly when it stopped happening, but restaurant menus change capriciously, sometimes priority's change, and things go missing.
I have been back in the kitchen about a month now, and the ketchup has been on my mind; one of many things on a list of items that I would like to work on. When Taylor came in from procuring supplies this Thursday, he had a bag of shallots in his hand. When he said that he would like to go back to us making the ketchup again, I was of overcome with emotion I can’t really name, but I'm sure there is a German word for.
The Shallot-Red Wine Ketchup is back. I made a batch on Monday, and it will have mellowed properly by this Friday when we open back up for take out. (Keep checking the menus!) This is what you will get when you order fries or ask for ketchup for your burger or your well-done steak. I will still have a squeeze bottle of Heinz 57 in the back of the walk-in fridge for those too young to know better, or the weak of constitution.
There will be more changes like this happening, when the world starts turning again, and people can be close again, and restaurants can open for the guests we treasure. I hope that, when that happens, we will see you all back in the dining room, where you belong.
Sincerely,
Dave Green.