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Connecticut Magazine Awards Good News 4-Star Rating
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The following review appeared in the March 2005 issue of “Connecticut Magazine.”
The article is reproduced on this website by permission of “Connecticut Magazine.”
Open Sourcing
Carole Peck
leads the way
into a delicious,
locally grown future
A Connecticut Magazine restaurant review
By Elise Maclay
New England settlers cooked and ate what they found around them. Now, mainstream restaurants are going back to nature for inspiration and ingredients.
In Connecticut, small farms are not only alive and well, they’re on the comeback trail—and our best chefs are seeking them out. So is the public. “Sourcing” is suddenly a buzzword. As a result, you don’t have to go far to find a restaurant where organic, free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free, diver-picked, line-caught ingredients are imaginatively cooked and beautifully presented.
Carole Peck’s Good News Cafe, Woodbury: Four star rating
A four-star rating by the restaurant critic of ”Connecticut Magazine” represents a rating of “extraordinary,” the highest ranking awarded by the magazine.
Carole Peck is the bravest chef I know. She is also the safest to follow. Rest assured, where Carole Peck is today, the culinary hotshots will be tomorrow. Organic, free-range, locally farmed, artisanal, natural—Peck’s been insisting on it for years. Getting there first is her game and she’s at the top of it right now.
She began early, carrying liverwurst and blood sausage sandwiches to kindergarten, flying through the Culinary Institute of America, and breaking culinary records (youngest chef, first female chef) when barely out of her teens. With major-league restaurant experience behind her, she chose Connecticut for her debut as restaurateur, turning a small, white farmhouse in New Milford into a temple of classic French gastronomy. Before the huzzahs had died down, she was rethinking the genre and playing around with it. In an interview, she was asked why she would fiddle around with seriously good French food. “Why ever not?” she exclaimed. “Food is life, and life is surprising.”
Carole Peck’s Good News Cafe in Woodbury is that and more. Lively, surprising, fun—with food so pure and fresh, exciting and flat-out good that I am forced to reevaluate my definition of four-star. Does wildly delicious, rule-breaking cuisine in a free-spirited, make-you-want-to-smile cafe qualify? Michelin might say no. I say: You bet!
Wherever you look, there is something (in addition to celebrities) to delight the eye and engage the mind. A collection of antique radios, a Picasso-esque mural, frequently changing art shows featuring the work of contemporary painters, etchers, sculptors and glass artists, stylish flatware, silvery tabletops refracting light. White tablecloths? Mais non. This is not Le Pavillon (where Peck won a coveted apprenticeship with legendary chef Fernand Granger years ago). This is Chez Panisse East—future tense.
We begin with an appetizer. I can scarcely bring myself to order. Pecan-crusted fresh oysters with cherry, jicama, tomatillo salsa and chili aioli. C’mon, Carole, would you really do that to an oyster? She would and she does and I absolutely adore these plump, crunchy-edged, piping-hot oysters underlined with a flick of tartness (cherry) and a shot of heat (salsa and chili aioli). Take my word for it, Peck’s pecan-crusted oysters will blow you away.
Surprises follow faster than the proverbial speeding bullet. Grilled radicchio on sopressata salami slices with medjool dates. Sounds outlandish but it tastes bright, peppy, unexpectedly pleasing—one of those why-hasn’t-anyone-done-this-before? dishes. A salad of pickled Spanish anchovies, slivered kale, apple-and-red-cabbage slaw, is in the same category, and the silvery little fishes twinkling on the plate are a far cry from the oft-disdained super-salty anchovies canned in oil.
What’s Peck up to here? Pairing. Brilliant, informed pairing. Anyone can throw a disparate array of ingredients together and occasionally come up with a winner. Peck composes dishes in her head, knows how they will taste before she goes into the kitchen—a bit like the great “noses” in the perfume industry when they set out to create a new scent. Like them, she has an aromatic memory along with a thorough knowledge of food chemistry and cooking techniques. Sounds stodgy but, as with any art, once you’ve mastered the basics, the fun begins.
Withal, many dishes at the Good News Cafe are familiar and straightforward—only better. ”Our original lobster soup with lobster chunks” is outstanding. Organic garden salad could not be fresher, crisper, more enticing, interlaced with crunchy pomegranate seeds and jicama.
Venison osso buco, darkly delicious, is served on the bone so you can watch it fall off. Closer observation reveals creamy marrow inside the bone. “Real” is an operative word at this cafe. Braised chestnuts, pearl barley and fresh cranberry relish turn this venison into a game festival. Organic duck is roasted Peking-style and served with cauliflower, sweet potatoes, onions, asparagus and slices of poached pear—with black currant sauce. The duck is crisp-skinned and greaseless, the leg meat a tad tougher (and tastier) than artificially fattened fowl.
David’s mother used to buy swordfish from the fishermen on the Chatham (Cape Cod) docks and cook it within the hour. He keeps hoping to replicate the taste. We allow him to order swordfish but make our own assessment. Carole Peck’s swordfish is as fresh as it gets in a restaurant, nicely grilled and wonderfully enhanced with nutty wild-rice pancakes and a mix of chanterelle, shiitake, oyster and white mushrooms.
But the showstopper is branzino, served whole—head, tail, fins and all—in a foaming sea of leek frites and shiitake mushrooms. Beautiful is the only word for this fish. Ann, who grew up on a fish farm in Asia, is enchanted. She allows us to admire it for a moment, deftly debones it and gives us a taste. It is unequivocally the best Mediterranean sea bass I’ve ever tasted. moist, falling away from the fork in silky flakes, tasting like clean ocean air. I want more. I want to come back tomorrow and order a whole branzino for myself. I want to kidnap Carole Peck.
I settle for dessert. All except the ice creams and sorbets are house-made by pastry chef Becky Vermilyea. I favor the apple-raisin-spice cake, a trip back to grandma’s kitchen. Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice—remember? It’s chock-a-block with plump, moist raisins, gilded with warm cider sauce. Crème brulée is perfect—of course. Chcolate Sinclair cake is a multilayered concoction of cake, espresso-hazelnut anglaise and chocolate-covered hazelnuts. A chocolate cupcake with whipped cream and chocolate sauce is indeed “better than Yankee Doodles,” but what takes the cake is the “mile-high” coconut layer cake with mango and raspberry sauce. This is the birthday cake of childhood dreams.
If I could, I would send one to every 3-year-old in the world. With candles.
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