Dinner at the Auberge at Little Washington – the famous three -star Michelin restaurant by chef Patrick O’Connell in Washington, Virginia – is not an ordinary party.
The night could start with an egg shell filled with garlic roasted cream, chanterelle mushrooms and Parmesan mousse. Halfway, you could have a chartreuse of cabbage and Savoy lobster with a white butter caviar. What about dessert? A cheesecake disguised as a perfect pear, with a single drop of water rolling in its curve.
It is a menu full of technical finesse and prowess, but winning a place to cook in the kitchen of O’Connell begins with a much more basic dish: a simple omelet.
Patrick O’Connell is the owner and chief of the inn Little Washington, which he opened in 1978. With the kind authorization of the hostel in Little Washington
If you imagine the genre you will find in your local waffle or Denny – massive, lips, curved of cheese and vegetables – you have already failed maintenance. O’Connell awaits the classic French version.
“Americans have a very different meaning from what an omelet is because they eat it in a restaurant on a heating plate, and it is a sponge with a texture,” O’Connell told Business Insider. “The French price for eggs cuisine.”
O’Connell learned to cook with Julia Child’s Seminal Cooking Book “Master the Art of French Cooking”, which includes a recipe for the perfect French omelet. Decades later, his technique still resonates.
“The description of Julia because it was the best scrambled eggs locked in an egg envelope, rolled and went to the plate,” said O’Connell. “It is succulent and absolutely wonderful, even without filling.”
And, according to O’Connell, an omelet can reveal a lot about a person’s kitchen history.
You can find a perfect French omelet on the hostel on the Breakfast menu of Little Washington. Anneta Konstantinides / Business Insider
“Sometimes they will give you a waste in the pan or a thing of disk and dimension hard hard,” he said. “But an appropriate French omelet takes a certain dexterity and competence. You cannot think of anything else when these eggs are in the pan. It requires a complete concentration, illustrating that the simplest things are often the most difficult.”
A large omelet is not the only test. Aspiring chiefs also need to make a salad, which, according to O’Connell, is not as simple as it seems.
“I think we were corrupted by the concept of the salad bar,” said O’Connell. “The role of a salad in the context of a meal is often like a kind of palate cleanser and a refreshing interlude. It is a question of choosing the greens very carefully, the crunchy green vegetables, the freshness of the greens. When it is done correctly, a salad can be intoxicating.”
“Rarely you have someone who gets right away,” he added. “So you start to teach him.”
Kitchen hard at work in the kitchen of the Little Washington hostel. Anneta Konstantinides / Business Insider
Once you have obtained a place in O’Connell’s kitchen, you will help feed some of the most powerful people in Washington, DC. Over the past four decades, the inn of Little Washington has become a destination for the political elite – attracting presidents, senators and judges of the Supreme Court. Among his famous fans were the Reagan, Kennedy and Bush families.
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However, O’Connell, which transformed a service station abandoned into a three-star Michelin restaurant, is not won by its star customers.
“This part of the world is very comfortable with celebrities,” he said. “They have to escape, and they want to go to a place where people do not jump to congratulate or insult them. There is a certain invisibility here.”
In addition, it is difficult to beat the hostel on the breakfast menu of Little Washington, which, of course, includes a perfect French omelet.
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