Savoring Community Through Food

SAVORING COMMUNITY THROUGH FOOD

By Rhea Hirshman

Emily Demarchelier ’95 remembers looking forward to chicken cordon bleu for dinner in the School dining hall. It’s a dish she serves now at her own French bistro.

Damarie Ocasio O’Toole ’99 maintains a cadre of close friends from the school, friends who, even as teenagers, cared about good food. Xenia Zayas ’07 remembers how she liked the look and feel of the dining hall, and being introduced to lobster bisque at one of the community lunches held during her time at Choate. Ellis Reilly ’10 says, “The restaurant business is very relational, and I learned about building bonds at Choate.”

Alex Morgan ’10 experienced Choate Rosemary Hall as a home away from home. “Something I love about the hospitality industry is building those homes away from home on a smaller scale,” he says. Anya Wareck ’19, credits the discipline and work ethic she developed here with sustaining her in a self-motivating career in a highly competitive industry.

These are among the many Choate Rosemary Hall alumni who have built careers in the food industry — chefs, restaurateurs, caterers, educators, agricultural advocates, bar owners, bed and breakfast owners, food reporters, and more. Food anchors our communities — and our community at Choate. As we complete the renovation and expansion of the Hill House servery, and eagerly reopen the Dining Hall with an expanded cultural menu, and a signature coffee blend, we celebrate our alumni building community with food. Whether we are gathering in a communal dining room or neighborhood tavern, sharing a friend’s culture through a home-cooked meal, or inviting colleagues to tea, what we cook, eat, and feed each other helps to connect us.

EXPERIENCING THE WONDERMENT OF GOOD FOOD

As the owner and manager of Demarchelier Bistro in Greenport, N.Y., Emily Demarchelier ’95 wears all the hats. She is the executive chef. She manages the wine list and liquor inventory. She orders the food, manages the kitchen, prices the menu items, decides on the specials, and does the payroll.

And she loves her job.

Born in Paris, Emily’s family came to the U.S. shortly after she was born. Over the next four decades, her parents opened several restaurants in Manhattan. After graduating from Skidmore and spending 10 years in the fashion industry, she began working with her family at Demarchelier Restaurant on East 86th street, managing it for its last 13 years.

When the landlord moved to tear down the building in 2019, Emily’s parents decided to retire — and she decided that the time was right to move the business to an emerging market, which was also where she had spent childhood summers. “With the building being torn down, we could take anything we wanted,” she says. “So, we took the furniture and the fixtures, and I was able to recreate the restaurant in a smaller version in Greenport.”

Emily describes Demarchelier Bistro as “a classic French bistro serving dishes you would see in Paris” such as duck confit, escargot, cassoulet, salad niçoise and, of course, French wines and cheeses. In addition to building her clientele in this new setting, she often sees long-time customers from the old Manhattan location. Customers respond well to consistency, she says, so the menu remains mostly the same with the addition of daily specials in the busier summer season and weekly specials in the colder months.

Still, Emily does like to play around a bit when she is doing the cooking, perhaps adding a new seasoning to a savory dish like coq au vin.

The best part of my job is when I ‘touch the table’ — interact with my customers and have someone look up in wonderment because of what they’ve just tasted.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

Unsure of what kind of work he wanted to do after graduating from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Alexander Morgan ’10 took a job at a bar he had frequented as a student.

“And that,” he says, “is when I fell in love with the hospitality industry.”

Although his parents had emigrated to Connecticut from the United Kingdom, Alex decided to make his life back in the U.K. In 2019 he realized his dream of opening his own bar. Trekkers, located in Chesham, a market town in Buckinghamshire about 25 miles outside central London, is a classic, cozy, local spot with what Alex describes as a “diehard group of regulars.” He says, “People have gotten engaged at Trekkers. We have held weddings and wakes here. One couple brought us their three-day old child to introduce. You get the details of their lives. I love having a place that matters so much to people.”

Having gotten Trekkers comfortably up and running, Alex decided to try his hand at something different. As of last year, he is also a part owner and the managing director of Vault 17 (named after the structure’s history as a bank), a wine, cocktail, and jazz bar in a larger, more Art Deco space just a few minutes down the road. While Trekkers offers light bar snacks, Vault 17 will have a full menu and include an extensive list of non-alcoholic beverages among its offerings. Both establishments offer an ample selection of nonalcoholic beverages. “We don’t use non-alcoholic spirits,” Alex says. “That feels lazy. Instead, we make appetizing drinks that don’t happen to contain any alcohol. You don’t want to shut out anyone from what they consider a safe and friendly place.”

While Alex does whatever is needed — from designing the wine and cocktail menus to paying the musicians who perform at Vault 17 — he says his most important job is hiring the right staff.

I want people who embrace our ‘home away from home’ philosophy,” he says. “You can train people to make good cocktails, but you can’t train personalities.

FOOD AS A MEDIUM FOR ART

The cakes are works of art.

Whether it is for an anniversary, baptism, birthday, graduation, retirement, wedding, or any other occasion, each is crafted in close consultation with the customer and may take more than 15 hours to create.

“I always ask for someone at the event to send me a reaction photo,” says Damarie Ocasio O’Toole ’99, owner of Areito Bakery. “Part of my reward is seeing the recipient’s face when they first encounter the cake.”

Professional baking was not her original plan. A graduate of Barnard College and Teachers College, Damarie spent about a dozen years in corporate human resources. “But whenever we had a company potluck,” she says, “I brought dessert. And colleagues always told me that I should sell my baked goods.”

In 2015, now the mother of two, Damarie decided that the time had come to start her own baking business. She rented communal kitchen space near her Rockland County, N.Y. home, started selling to friends and family, then traveled to sell at farmers’ markets, where her vegan, gluten-free granola and oatmealbased cookies were especially popular. With the birth of her third child in 2018, she gave up the commercial space and brought the business into her home. “Also, I wanted to use food as a medium for art,” she says. She created painted cookies to celebrate her third child’s homecoming, posted photos online, and started getting requests for her creations.

Although she still markets her granola — “It has a huge following,” she says — Areito Bakery focuses on Damarie’s one-of-a-kind cakes. (“Areito” derives from the word for “celebration” in the Taíno language of many Caribbean peoples.) She emphasizes fresh, organic ingredients and unique flavors, and offers vegan and gluten-free options.

My recipes draw upon food from my childhood and from the many international cuisines I’ve enjoyed. And I’ve created a buttercream unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. Sometimes, people say that my cakes ‘look too pretty to eat.’ But the point is that they are something to enjoy with all your senses.

A FOCUS ON MAKING THE GUESTS HAPPY

A philosophy major walks into a bar — and oversees a major construction project.

“I use my philosophy major all the time,” says Ellis Reilly ’10 “It comes in handy for understanding and solving problems.”

As the managing partner of Elicit Brewing Company, a part of the Eli’s Restaurant Group family of restaurants, Ellis handles the typical concerns faced by an owner of a public-facing business: hiring staff, ordering products, checking in on the customer experience, and keeping track of finances for Elicit’s two Connecticut brew pubs, one in Fairfield, and the other in Manchester. Additionally, he is currently overseeing the construction of Elicit’s newest brew pub, to be housed in a renovated 23,000-square-foot retail space in Danbury. As with its sister locations — each of which covers over 20,000 square feet — the newest addition will be a restaurant, beer garden, cocktail bar, arcade, lounge, and private event space all rolled into one.

After graduating from Georgetown University, Ellis worked with his father, a restaurant industry professional who, for a while, managed the Eli’s Restaurant Group. “I hadn’t planned on staying,” he says, “but found that I really liked the bar and restaurant business.”

In addition to serving food, cocktails, and an expanding menu of nonalcoholic beverages, all of Elicit’s stores brew beer on site — about 40 different varieties with about 25 on tap at any given time. “We can brew some more obscure blends that are a little more fun,” Ellis says. “And we don’t distribute so if you want to check out our beer you have to walk in the door.”

The Elicit venues also host comedy and music shows, benefits, and private events ranging from birthday celebrations to weddings (including Ellis’ own), to elaborate corporate parties.

There’s nothing like us outside of New York City,” Ellis says. “You can spend seven dollars or seven hundred dollars and have a great time. At the end of the day, I focus on doing whatever is needed to make our guests happy.

CONNECTING WITH PEOPLE THROUGH FOOD AND WRITING

As she approached her senior year at George Washington University with a major in political science and minors in human services and criminal justice, Anya Wareck ’19 had assumed that she was headed for law school. “But that plan began to feel not really right,” she says.

Given her life-long interest in food (“I was never a picky eater,” she says), she didn’t take long to decide on a different direction. Coming from a family of good cooks — “Both my parents loved to experiment” — Anya herself fell in love with cooking at the age of nine, when her mother sent her and her little sister to a children’s cooking camp in Brooklyn.

While at GWU, Anya wrote restaurant reviews for the school newspaper and did some freelance food writing for D.C. – area magazines. After she graduated, she attended an intensive summer course at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. In classes from early morning until well into the evening most days, she had little time to explore the city. “But it was a wonderful experience,” she says, “and invaluable for learning techniques.”

Since returning to Brooklyn, working as a line cook and interning for a local food magazine, Anya has been building her career. She is now a personal assistant to chef and cookbook author Samah Dada, a regular on the Today show, for whom Anya does everything from recipe testing to editing videos and overseeing the chef’s social media presence. Anya is also a private chef for a family, develops and tests recipes for other clients, and does catering for businesses.

“I love to connect with people through food and writing,” Anya says. “Two years ago, I would not have expected to be where I am.”

I didn’t start out planning to start a business,” she says, “but I want to do more events and cook for and collaborate with more people. I hope to write more, but I can’t ever see myself not wanting to cook.

INSPIRING PEOPLE, BRINGING FAMILIES TOGETHER

Her beloved Dominican-born grandmother taught her how to cook, and Xenia Zayas ’07 is determined to honor and impart the cultural legacy that resides in the foods of her childhood.

“I consider myself a storyteller,” she says. “Early on, I found that there was no one who looked like me celebrating the kinds of foods I grew up eating with the production values I feel they deserved.”

Now, as Chef Zee Cooks, Xenia uses her background in media production (which she studied at Syracuse University), her culinary training (from the Institute of Culinary Education) and, of course, the lessons from her grandmother to educate the world about traditional Hispanic foods.

Xenia notes that, when she started her first food blog about 10 years ago, food education content on the internet “was not a big thing” and what did exist was primarily Italian and French. “Even the little bit of Hispanic food was almost entirely Mexican or Tex-Mex,” she ways. “But I’m half Cuban and half Dominican — a Caribbean girl through and through.”

Determined to fill the void, and in the wake of her grandmother’s passing, Xenia and her boyfriend (now husband) created the Chef Zee Cooks channel on YouTube, where she posts new videos every week. There, both newbie and experienced cooks, she says “can learn to feel comfortable tackling the recipes of our ancestors, sometimes with a modern twist.” In addition to the YouTube channel, Xenia posts content on her website, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media outlets. She and her husband also run a boutique production company that creates food videos, as well as offering food photography and product testing and development. But her great love is inspiring people, bringing families together, and reminding them of recipes that may have been lost.

A little while back, a young follower learned from my channel to make a traditional Cuban dish — ropa vieja — for her grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s. She told me that when her abuela tasted the dish, she began to sing, remembering her girlhood in Cuba, when she sang all the time. There is nothing I could love more than that.

ROPA VIEJA

INGREDIENTS

• 2lbs grass-fed brisket (Can substitute with flank steak)

• 1 lime

• 1 orange

• 2 tsp Kosher salt

• black pepper to taste

• 6-8 garlic cloves mashed

• 1 tsp Dominican orégano

• ¼ tsp cumin

• 1 bay leaf

• ½ cup water

• 1 white onion

• ¼ green bell pepper

• ¼ red bell pepper

• ¼ cup tomato paste

• ½ cup tomato sauce

• 1 tbsp vino seco (dry cooking wine)

• 1 tbsp Spanish olives

• braising liquid from pressure cooker

• olive oil

• 1 tbsp chopped cilantro

DIRECTIONS

1. Cut the brisket into roughly 3-5 inch pieces. Remove any excess fat.

2. Season brisket with mashed garlic, garlic, orégano, kosher salt, black pepper, fresh lime, and orange. Mix together until well combined. Marinate for 20 minutes.

3. Set pressure cooker to saute on HIGH. Once the device is hot, add olive oil and brown brisket on each side. Depending on the size of your pressure cooker, you may have to brown in batches. Be careful not to overcrowd the pot. The goal is brown the brisket and seal in color and flavor.

4. Once all the brisket pieces are browned, add to the pressure cooker along with ½ cup of water, and a bay leaf. Cover the pressure cooker and secure the valve so that it’s sealed. Then pressure cook on HIGH for 45 minutes *Optional — you can add bay leaves with braising the meat at the end.

5. After 45 minutes, carefully release the pressure from your pressure cooker. Then remove the meat and set liquid aside.

6. Shred brisket as finely or as thick as you want and set aside.

7. Now warm up a large deep-sided skillet over med-high heat. Then add olive oil, garlic, and kosher salt. Saute for about 2 minutes and then add the shredded brisket. Allow the brisket to crisp up a bit for about 5-7 minutes. Then add leftover liquid from the pressure cooker. This will braise the brisket and add more flavor.

8. Once the braising liquid begins to simmer, add tomato paste, tomato sauce and cumin. Stir until well combined. Then add vino seco (dry cooking wine) and let simmer for 2 minutes while the alcohol vapors cook off. Then add the olives and mix. In the end, add sliced onions and peppers. Turn off the flame and let the steam soften the veggies. Garnish at the end with diced cilantro. Feel free to serve Ropa Vieja with white rice and Cuban black beans.