I’ll start with this: I genuinely love what I do. On any given day I get to eat and drink and talk about food with people who have given their lives to it. Some of the best conversations I’ve had in this city happened over a plate of something extraordinary, and most of what was said stayed in the room. That’s the deal, and it’s one I have never once regretted.
So when chef Brian Luscher called and invited me to lunch at The Grape, I said yes before he finished the sentence. I knew what kind of afternoon it would be.
Before I get to the lunch, let me tell you about a night a few years back that I still think about. It was late — genuinely late — and about a dozen chefs had gathered in the kitchen of the Fairmont Hotel in one of those unplanned, almost extemporaneous moments that happen when the right people end up in the same room at the same time. Andre Natera was hosting. Luscher was there. Matt McCallister showed up. Ferdinand Metz — Certified Master Chef, former president of the Culinary Institute of America, a man the industry quietly refers to as the pope of cuisine — was there. So were Patrick Mitchell, Scotty Romano from Charlie Palmers, and Mike Hiller, who had been a chef before going on to do all the things he does now.
Nobody planned a menu. Someone called out an ingredient, someone else grabbed a station, and it went from there. An hour later we were all eating family-style from whatever each of them had conjured up, with wine poured through the whole thing and servers who stayed long past their shift because the evening demanded it. Being in that kitchen, at that hour, with those people — that’s not something you forget.
Today had that same feeling, just in the afternoon and considerably less chaotic.
I slipped in through the back, found Luscher behind the bar, and settled in as his unofficial shadow for the next few hours. What was spread out in front of us was charcuterie — boards and plates of it, brought in by each of the chefs who had gathered. And the group was something. Retired legend Ewald Scholz, whose name is synonymous with The Stoneleigh Hotel and a generation of fine Dallas dining. Karl Kuby, owner of Kuby’s, whose family has been in the sausage and charcuterie business in this city since 1961. Andre Bedouret from Milestone. J.D. Werle. Patrick Mitchell. Michael Scott from Northwood Country Club. And Luscher himself, who organized the whole thing and knew exactly what he was doing when he invited me.
Charcuterie is one of my great weaknesses and Brian is well aware of that fact. I suspect it is precisely why I was on the guest list.
Kuby took the lead early, working his way through each piece — a small bite here, a pause, a considered observation about curing methods, salt ratios, the particular character of the fat. He and Scholz between them carry decades of muscle memory in this craft, and watching them taste together was like watching two musicians work through a piece they both know differently. Notes were actually being taken. Small notepads came out. The conversation went places that don’t come through in cooking school.
Luscher presented his own boards with quiet pride and walked the group through each preparation — how it was made, what he was after, where the recipe had come from or evolved. Two things stopped the room. His chicken liver pâté with Armagnac-soaked currants was the kind of thing that makes you put down your glass and pay attention — silky, complex, just sweet enough from the currants to balance the iron richness of the liver. And his chicken and caramelized mushroom terrine, pressed and sliced clean, was everything a terrine should be. Both, he mentioned, are on his menu most days. Both should be.
He had also just pulled a pork belly off the smoke for his house-cured bacon — the whole room paused when it came out — and you could see in the way the other chefs leaned in exactly what kind of company we were keeping that afternoon.
As the light started going flat outside on Greenville, you could feel the afternoon winding down. The chefs gathered their things, the boards were mostly cleared, and there was that particular ease in the room that comes from a few hours spent doing exactly what you love with people who love the same thing.
Luscher has a deep admiration for this group and he doesn’t bother hiding it. I understand that feeling completely. Some afternoons in this city remind you why you never want to do anything else. This was one of them.
