Peche, Link’s new seafood restaurant with chef/partners Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt, has established a direct connection to fisherman. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink
by Newsroom Ink staff
New Orleans chef/restaurateur Donald Link has two words on his mind at the moment – “Softshell shrimp!”.
New Orleans chef/restaurateur Donald Link has two words on his mind at the moment – “Softshell shrimp!”. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink
“For all the years I’ve been in this business, I mean, I’ve seen softshell shrimp every once in a while in a batch before, but until recently, I had no idea someone could get it all the time,” he explained.
Link made the discovery with the help of his restaurant group’s full-time forager, Ashley Locklear, who spends her days scouring Louisiana’s farmland and coast for sublime raw ingredients and food producers to supply his restaurants, Herbsaint, Cochon and Butcher.
With Peche, Link’s new seafood restaurant with chef/partners Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt, he has established a direct connection to fisherman with an extra bit of paperwork: a $250 wholesale seafood business license that allows his restaurants to buy directly from commercial fishermen.
Buying Direct From Fishermen
Everything has to be perfect for customers, Chef/owner Stephen Stryjewski tastes a creation to make sure it is up to the restaurants high standards. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink
Link says having the license – which legitimizes a long-standing practice of direct buying – boils down to the philosophy that guides all of his restaurants: “The more community-based buying we do, the better it is for the community,” Link says.
The softshell shrimp discovery exemplifies the advantages of having a wholesale seafood license and fostering close relationships with Louisiana fishermen. “We just found this guy who catches softshell shrimp, and it’ll show up on the menu tonight at Herbsaint and Peche,” said Link. “I would never be able to get this product through the typical wholesale seafood channels.”
Link is quick to point out that buying the wholesale seafood license is not a move to cut out “the middle man” – the big seafood vendors who supply hundreds of restaurants. “The vendors we use do a good job – they have more buying power and we need them,” says Link. But having a wholesale seafood license opens the door to a greater variety of seafood – fish that often lands in boats but doesn’t make it to market because the demand or price isn’t high enough for big seafood vendors to work with in volume.
“You don’t see the great variety of seafood we have available in the Gulf on restaurant menus,” said Link, rattling off a list of seasonal and unusual fish he has access to when buying from a boat versus a warehouse, like cobia, American reds, mackerel, whole tilefish and squid.
“We talk to a fisherman and he mentions baby squid – he catches them all the time and they’re delicious, but I’ve never, in 13 years in New Orleans restaurants, had a vendor bring me squid,” Link said. “This is what having direct access to fishermen fosters. Baby squid on the menu.”
Boat-to-Table Seafood
Link’s boat-to-table purchasing also shaves a few days off of storage, processing and delivery, which means peak-fresh, wild-caught seafood and farmed fish hits his kitchens within hours or a few days of leaving the boat, versus spending a week or two traveling from boat to processor, freezer and restaurant.
At Peche seafood dishes are placed in the pick-up window by Chef/partner Ryan Prewitt. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink
As much as variety and quality play into the business side of Link’s seafood buying, community and connection are the underlying motives. Direct buying puts money directly into a local fisherman’s pocket, Link says.
“These are real people with families and kids, with bills to pay,” said Link. “I like knowing where my food comes from. You get better quality, and we’re looking out for each other.”
Chefs and restaurants often pay lip service to feel-good local, sustainable foodways, but it’s not just a pitch for Link, who reserves a few choice, off-the-record words for inexpensive, imported frozen seafood and the save-a-buck mentality that discourages people from buying local. “Our fishermen are not going to get back to work if there’s no one to buy what they’re catching.”
Chefs and restaurants often pay lip service to feel-good local, sustainable foodways, but at Peche it is not just a pitch for Link, who reserves a few choice, off-the-record words for inexpensive, imported frozen seafood. Photo: Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink
Close connection to the food and the people who produce it is running theme in conversations with Link about the restaurant business, and it’s a theme subtly echoed in his newest restaurant, Peche, where whole fish and other seafood is cooked on an open hearth over a hardwood charcoal fire. The concept for the restaurant was inspired by a 2011 trip to Uruguay, where Link and chef/partner Stephen Stryjewski were re-introduced to the idea of open-fire cookery. In the restaurant, split hardwood logs are burned down to charcoal and raked into place – the most primal of cooking methods.
“Open-fire cooking connects you to food in a deeper way. There’s no numbered knob that controls heat – it’s just you and your gut instincts and knowing the fish,” Link says. “That kind of connection with the fishermen, with the fish, with the cooking technique…it’s just better, all the way around.”
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