elephantwalktalk

More than up to the Challenge...

This past Tuesday's Challenging Flavors dinner at The Elephant Walk in Waltham was a lot of fun. The spirited group dove right into all the dishes, which included plenty of pork belly, tamarind, shrimp paste and, of course, prahok. In fact, nothing daunted a soul, nothing until the durian served warm over sticky rice, that is!

It's always dangerous to generalize based on feedback from a self-selected group such as ours, but my biggest take-away from our guests is that flavors that once were extreme may be much closer now to the mainstream than even 10 years ago. Diners' palates have grown so experienced and sophisticated in the modern era of so many wonderful restaurants showcasing the full rainbow of global cuisines that there's not much people really don't like or can't handle. [Except maybe durian.... ;-)]

The wine component of the dinner was matched to the family-style presentation of the food: We offered 4 wines - 2 whites, 2 reds - up to the group to taste through in random fashion. Rather than the strict "this wine goes with that dish" traditional wine dinner format, we went free-form to acknowledge the fact that pairing Western wine with Eastern food is far from an exact science, or no science at all. As I suspected, personal choice ruled, with no obvious, perfect matches.

The one wine surprise to me was that the darker and more concentrated Toro - made with tempranillo - was much preferred over the brighter and fruitier Beaujolais-Villages - made with gamay. No question the Toro was the more elegant wine but what I didn't expect was that it would find such favor with our guests in the context of an unusual meal. To me, that's robust support for this truism I personally adhere to: "Have wine you like with food you like and very likely you're going to have a meal you like." - Tuesday's Challenging Flavors dinner was a good meal indeed.

Challenging Flavors

One of the things we've been doing in recent months is trying to align our self-perception with that of our customers. Our first step down that path was recognizing that most people view us as Asian restaurants first, and not fine-dining. And since most people expect non-sushi Asian restaurants to be inexpensive, we realized that we needed to lower our prices and did so in October.

Tomorrow night's "Challenging Flavors" dinner at The Elephant Walk in Waltham is another step in the direction of seeing ourselves as others see us.  While perennial Elephant Walk favorites like Poulet à la Citronnelle, Loc Lac, and Khar Saiko are authentic Cambodian dishes, they offer fairly mainstream flavors - very approachable for the vast majority of our clientele.

Most of our Cambodian menu consists of more approachable dishes for one simple, sound business reason: People like them and rarely send them back. For a vocal minority in the dining public, however, our playing it safe has been tantamount to a betrayal of sorts.

As you probably already know, there are relatively few Cambodian restaurants in this country, and precious few with a national profile such as ours. So when some people come to The Elephant Walk and find that prahok - a fermented and salted fish paste that is Cambodian cuisine's one truly unique ingredient - has only a bit part in our play, they feel let down and really slam us for it.

Those critics make a fair point. As a more mainstream Cambodian restaurant concept, it makes good business sense for us to emphasize the flavors that we've learned our clientele wants, and avoid serving those flavors they've taught us they'd rather not try again! But what about that vocal minority that craves the rustic intensity of prahok, bitter melon, shrimp paste, tamarind, and durian? What about their needs? One answer is our Challenging Flavors dinner tomorrow night in Waltham.

It is a small irony that our Cambodian, chef-owners, Nyep and Nadsa - who are mother and daughter - themselves prefer the more challenging flavors of their cuisine even as their customers do not. So they're pretty excited about tomorrow night!

Predictably, there's still some space available if you want throw your palate for a loop. But if you want to have this experience but can't make it tomorrow, don't worry: "Challenging Flavors" is a very special theme dinner we are sure to host again soon!

Time flies...

Hello again... It doesn't FEEL like four months but it has indeed been four months since my last post...a cardinal sin in the blogosphere. Can't - won't - let THAT happen again!

It's been a busy time. Since early November, among other things, we've remodeled our Cambridge restaurant, really warming things up there. [And we now serve Sunday brunch and lunch Monday-Friday in all three restaurants.]

We've also been adjusting to the new economic reality confronting just about everyone: people simply have less money to spend.

There are marketing "experts" who counsel lying about how things are going ["never let them see you sweat"] when things aren't going great. And in my experience most small business owners really prefer not to tell the truth when times are tough. I prefer to respect people's intelligence [don't kid yourself: most people already know how things are going!], and I especially want to "keep it real," which in this case means having conversations about the truth of the matter rather than what I hope I can make them think. We all stand to gain the most out of what we share with one another when we share honestly, and earn each other's trust.

So, how are WE doing? Sales are definitely off a bit. The fall was off significantly with December particularly slow due to businesses reigning in their holiday celebrations, and that butal three-day snowstorm the weekend before Christmas was no help at all! But, as they were only a little slower than last year, both January and February provided us with a bit of encouragement.

Someone told me in the early 90s that restaurants are leading economic indicators, one of the first things people cut our of their budgets when the begin to worry about their economic well-being, and one of the first things they add back in when they begin to feel better. So what are our restaurants telling us? That the worst is over, but we've not turned the corner just yet.

Yes, like most businesses, non-profits and governments great and small, we have had to make some changes to the way we run our business to feel sure we're going to be serving you - and serving you well - for the long haul. I'll be exploring some of those things in future posts.

But for the moment, let me just thank you for reading, and for continuing to support The Elephant Walk with your patronage and your feedback. We are here for you, and because of you. Thank you indeed.

Defining - and delivering - Authenticity

You know something is authentic when you just know it's "the real deal," right?

Have you ever wondered about The Elephant Walk and how authentic we are?

Probably the most fascinating ad hoc debate I've observed play out on online "foodie" message boards like Chowhound and Yelp, as well as other restaurant listings sites that accept comments such as CitySearch, Zagat, and others, is over whether or not The Elephant Walk is "real - or really Cambodian," or "true - or truly Cambodian." As celebrated as The Elephant Walk has been over the years, we've also taken a lot of hits - some from native Khmers - for NOT being authentic.

Sigh... Of course we brought that on ourselves first when we chose to serve French food in addition to Cambodian food. But we really invited criticism from native Khmers and others who know Cambodian food well when we took the risk of creating NEW Cambodian food.

I remember well the evening in late 1992 when Nyep and I sat down at a table in the dining room of our orignal Somerville restaurant to talk about making some menu changes. After a tumultuous first year serving Cambodian food to primarily non-Cambodians in America, we had learned a few things about our guests' preferences. One of those things we learned was that the really strong and unusual Cambodian flavors were frequently rejected.

Customers sent back significant percentage of dishes that had enough shrimp paste, fish sauce, or prahok [the one truly unique Cambodian ingredient: preserved featherback fish - a VERY pungent fishy and salty paste that our primarily Western waitstaff dubbed "Cambodian cheese"] to really dominate their flavor profiles. And the people who ordered them sometimes left unhappy, panning us to their friends, and sometimes to our faces!

To tell you the truth, those experiences worried us. We wondered about the potential long-term affect on our business of serving people food they wouldn't like. Our most creative adaptation was to create a boxed-out section on our menu we called "Challenging Flavors." "Caveat Emptor!" we wrote, warning people that the flavors in those dishes were not for the faint of heart, or palate, and that people who didn't want a relatively extreme experience ought to think twice about ordering them. But even then we still had what felt like too many people leaving not having enjoyed their first Cambodian meal.

That was the context when Nyep and I sat down that night to talk about our next menu. She confided that she was worried, feeling like she had already presented most of the traditional Cambodian food that she thought our guests would enjoy. Well, what about presenting some new Cambodian food?, I said.

I'm not sure that even today most Asian chefs are comfortable creating new food for their their native culture. Even today most "ethnic" restaurants - Chinese, Mexican, Greek, Cambodian, you name it - tend to have menus very similar to one another. But now and then chef-driven restaurants serving higher-end "continental" cuisines - I'm thinking French and Italian, primarily - offer menus likely to be entirely unique, or original. More to the point, rarely in my experience do Asian restaurants in America take the "risk" creating an entirely new, original dish.

And I'm sure Nyep felt the same way that night; one just doesn't create new Cambodian food. It is our duty to serve the traditional, the familiar.... But of course, that leads to a dead end.

I pressed my case: "Who makes the rules, anyway? You're Cambodian. You're the best Cambodian cook I know, probably among the best in the world. If you prepare a dish that uses traditional Cambodian ingredients and techniques, is it not Cambodian just because no one's ever had it before? I think you are a culinary artist with the talent and this wonderful opportunity to continue to develop the medium in whatever direction your instincts take you.

"Chefs create; cooks re-create. You're a chef! You have every right to create new Cambodian food - as long as you respect the art of Cambodian cooking as you understand it.

"Plus, if you create new Cambodian dishes, you guarantee that The Elephant Walk will always remain unique, unlike any other Cambodian restaurant. And by continuing to evolve, we'll keep things interesting for our guests who will inevitably become bored if we limit ourselves to the strictly traditional."

Yes, we were worried that we'd reached a dead end. I tried to convince Nyep that new Cambodian food was the way out.

Late one evening about a week later Nyep emerged with a dish of chicken stir-fried in a rich, deep golden curry-like sauce fragrant with garlic, galangal [a ginger-like root] and its slivered kaffir lime leaf garnish. It was beautiful. I dove in. It was absolutely delicious.

"What do you think?" she said... I asked her what it was. Haltingly, she told me she didn't know, exactly; she'd just made it up... I smiled. We were free!

That was Nyep's first original Cambodian dish. She named it "Poulet Dhomrei," and it was a MAJOR hit, immediately. Many more favorites - Avocat Kanthor, Poulet Malika, and more have followed.

This is straight from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language at my favorite online wordsmithing referent, bartleby.com:

"authentic

"adjective: 1. Conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance or belief. 2. Having a claimed and verfiable origin or authorship; not counterfeit or copied...

"synonyms: bona fide, genuine, real, true, undoubted, unquestionable..."

The most visible change we made with our recent menu change was to reduce our prices so that all of our entrées cost less than $20, in line with what we've learned people expect of Asian and ethnic restaurants.

But the other major change is almost as important insofar as it attempts to address the authenticity issue, by clarifying who we are and what we do at The Elephant Walk. We re-classified our dishes so that each item we serve comfortably resides in one of three categories: Traditional Cambodian Food, Original Cambodian Food, and Original French Food.

There has been occasional and understandable confusion over the meaning of "original" in this context. Original Cambodian certainly could mean "First" Cambodian, or to some "True" Cambodian.

However, we refer to those dishes we serve that are known to people already familiar with Cambodian cuisine as "Traditional." Our Traditional Cambodian dishes - and a good synonym in this sense of the word would be "orthodox" - are the old-time recipes, food you'll often find in Cambodia today and served in Cambodian homes and restaurants the world around - dishes Khmer natives recognize as "the real thing."

At The Elephant Walk, our use of the word "Original" in describing our food is - and this is straight from Roget's Thesauraus: "characterized by new things or new ideas; not the sames as what was previously known or done..." - and also "arising from or going to the root or source." In other words, our Original Cambodian dishes are new Cambodian food created by our Cambodian chef/owners, using traditional Cambodian ingredients and techniques, a natural evolution of the Khmer culinary art. 

Is The Elephant Walk authentic? Perhaps that's not for us to say, for some people don't think a restaurant that doesn't serve strictly traditional food can be authentic.

But I think The Elephant Walk is authentic in the sense that our restaurants are an honest expression of who we are. The Elephant Walk is authentically us. We all [the owners] come from multi-cultural backgrounds. I grew up in Asia. Gérard [Lopez] is half-French, half-Spanish. The De Monteiros were raised in a Cambodia that was a French protectorate; they were educated in French schools. I think it's fair to say that the bi-cultural aspect of The Elephant Walk is more true to who they are than if it were Cambodian alone.

Our new menu format now makes it possible for anyone to enjoy a strictly traditional Cambodian meal anytime. Someone else will inevitably prefer to dine on some of our Original Cambodian [or French!] dishes instead. But either way, both can feel confident that their meals are authentic!

Defining - and delivering - Value

Defining value is relatively easy. Delivering value is hard. – Hopefully you’ll find this lengthy post delivers some value of it’s own.

What makes something, anything we decide to spend our increasingly precious money on, a good value? Bringing that question home to us, the right-between-the-eyes version became: “Is The Elephant Walk a good value?”

We’ve taken a long, hard look at ourselves this year in the context of value. Of course, we’ve learned some interesting things about subjects other than value that we’ll talk about here at elephantwalktalk as time goes by. But, on the question of whether or not we’re a good value, we found that – surprise, surprise - it depends… It depends heavily on the lens through which people view us.

We learned that most people view The Elephant Walk restaurants through one of two lenses, as either “fine dining” or “Asian.” At the risk of being accused of stereotyping, it seems to us that the dining public gives fine dining restaurants permission to price almost as they like, but most Asian restaurants are expected to price their menus inexpensively. And we concluded that more people view us as Asian [some say “ethnic”] rather than fine dining. Accepting the foregoing, it is not surprising that price over the years became an issue for many customers of The Elephant Walk. For the most part, most people who view us as fine dining considered us a good value. On the other hand, those who view The Elephant Walk primarily as Asian grew to feel we had become expensive – or, in other words, not such a good value.

The choice we made nearly 18 years ago to serve both Cambodian food and French food has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it gives The Elephant Walk texture and nuance; our guests have more choice in an authentic [authenticity will be the subject of a future post!], multi-cultural context. On the other hand, being both Cambodian and French [we ARE bi-cultural restaurants; we are NOT “fusion” restaurants] has sown seeds of confusion, some which have matured into strong opinions about us that conflict with one another.

In all honesty, we’ve probably been a bit confused ourselves about our own identity – a not our cultural identity, mind you, but our economic/marketing/branding identity. I’ve been using the term “fine dining” in this post. But a more accurate descriptor of how we’ve regarded ourselves for many years is the restaurant industry has term “upscale casual.” We grew very comfortable viewing ourselves in that context, as peers of many other great restaurants in Greater Boston. What we ignored is that most of them were American or European in theme, there having been relatively few upscale casual Asian restaurants in Greater Boston during our time. We felt very comfortable comparing our pricing with the European and American restaurants in Greater Boston [look for an analysis of the Zagat Survey's list of Greater Boston’s “Most Popular” restaurants in a future post]; in that context we ARE a good value. But the fact is, according to most of our customers [and our sales bear this out: nearly three out of four people order Cambodian food at The Elephant Walk]… we are Asian.

It did not feel good sweeping away the denial, to understand and accept that a large percentage – perhaps more than half – of our existing and potential clientele thought we were overpriced. Swallowing hard, it was on to the obvious next question: What were we going to do about it?

If math is not your thing, please accept my apologies… but one way it’s possible to define Value is in the form of the following equation: V = Q / P or Value is equal to Quality divided by Price. Accordingly, if we increase the Quality of The Elephant Walk dining experience while holding our Prices steady, the Value of The Elephant Walk dining experience goes up. Similarly, if we hold the Quality of The Elephant Walk dining experience steady while lowering our Prices, again, theoretically, the Value of the dining experience we offer goes up.

It was easy to decide that we wanted to commit to providing better value to our guests. In the healthy internal debate that ensued over how, we concluded we should address both quality and price. Quality is the far harder nut to crack since, when you do, it fractures into so many big pieces: We can change how our dining rooms look and feel, what food and drink we serve and how it is presented, how we greet people, seat people, serve people, and much more. We have begun the process of planning how to improve in each of those important areas. But price, while not EASY to address, requires a much narrower focus to address. So it was price where we decided to begin our process of making The Elephant Walk a better value to our guests.

The first decision we faced was: What kind of new pricing policy would be truly meaningful to our clientele? The immediate follow-up question: Can we do it? Our discussion zeroed in on making a genuine effort to price ourselves more in line with Asian restaurants at our level of quality. And we also felt that we had to make it obvious at a glance that our prices were better than they were, and better than other restaurants perceived to be at least at our level of overall quality regardless of ethnicity. The prices on our menus today meet those requirements, with the clearest indication the fact that all of our entrées are now under $20.

Reprinting a menu with new prices is easy. Maintaining food quality in the process is hard! Nadsa faced the huge challenge of creating new dishes that met our price and quality standards and re-plating our classics that had to look better while costing less, using the same ingredients. Something had to give, of course. What was required of her was reducing portion sizes where necessary, and possible, to fit our new pricing structure. When she bumped up against a dish that no longer fit, she created a worthy replacement. Nadsa, I think, achieved something great accomplishing this daunting task, recalibrating our menu pricing to meet people’s expectations of Asian restaurants with no sacrifice of The Elephant Walk quality that our guests have loved for so long.

While eating my lunch yesterday afternoon at The Elephant Walk in Waltham, a few days after the last new menu was implemented, I picked up a copy of the September 23, 2008 edition of Stuff @Night, a Boston “scene” bi-weekly. Flipping through the pages I came across a review by Louisa Kasdon of a new Indian restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts called “Tamarind Bay Coastal Indian Kitchen” – quite a mouthful! It sounds like an interesting place worth checking out – but I digress…

What caught my eye in Ms. Kasdon’s rich and informative review was the conclusion of the third paragraph: “…And with only one or two entrées above $20, it’s also a fabulous value.”

I agree.

Do you?

Big menu changes! Lower Prices and Better Organization

Beginning in late September, restaurant-by-restaurant, we introduced new menus at The Elephant Walk.

Perhaps most importantly, we have significantly lowered our prices. Most individual items on our menus have had their prices reduced. Perhaps the most noteworthy change is that all of our dinner entrées are now priced below $20.

The other major change is in how we group our dishes together. The Elephant Walk’s choice to serve Cambodian food and French food under the same roof presents its share of challenges in making the experience of dining with us user-friendly.

We've learned over the years [can you believe we are now in our 18th year?!] that each of our guests is looking for something different when they visit us. Accordingly, we rededicated ourselves to the goal this menu redesign of providing a clearer and more useful roadmap to a delightful, personal Elephant Walk dining experience.

To do that we felt we had to give you a way of better understanding the origins of each dish. Accordingly, within each familiar menu grouping of Starter, Soup, Salad, and Entrée, we now feature the sections "Traditional Cambodian Dishes," "Original Cambodian Dishes," and "Original French Dishes." And of course, we also provide a definition of each of those sections.

As you might imagine, a great many factors influenced the process of developing this new menu. Probably the three most important were the economy and our reputation for delivering value and authenticity. The organizational introspection and internal debate that this process stimulated was challenging and fascinating.

For those who are interested, we will continue to talk with you about that process here, on our blog.

Best Vegetarian Food 2008

I admit it: It felt good to learn that The Elephant Walk was voted the restaurant with the Best Vegetarian Food in Greater Boston by Citysearch.

We've been part of the Greater Boston restaurant landscape for over 17 years now and have offered vegetarians and vegans a strong vegetarian menu for at least 16 and a half of those years.

Soon after we opened The Elephant Walk in Somerville in 1991 we realized we had to do a better job of meeting the needs of vegetarians. On our very first menu we offered only Vegetable Curry.

It was then and remains now quite typical of restaurants to offer only a single vegetarian entrée to accommodate vegetarian clientele. But think about it from a vegetarian perspective: Is one vegetarian entrée choice really what you're looking for when you go out to dinner? Of course not. We had to do better than that.

It wasn't a simple task to develop The Elephant Walk's vegetarian menu. Believe it or not, there are extremely few traditional vegetarian Cambodian dishes! There is meat or fish or their essence in just about everything savory in the Cambodian diet.

It was quite a challenge to get the flavors of Tofu Citronnelle close to our all-time customer favorite [and what I enjoy referring to, along with Loc Lac, as The Elephant Walk's own gateway drug!]: "Poulet à la Citronnelle."

It's not simply a matter of a chef replacing chicken, beef, pork or fish in a traditional dish with tofu that gets it right. The hard - and by far most important - challenge confronting a chef who is trying to create a vegetarian version of a meaty favorite is getting the sauce right. Beef, chicken and fish stocks are tough to replace!

Nyep and Nadsa put in the time and effort to create worthwhile vegetarian Cambodian options, adapting many traditional Cambodian dishes and some of their own original Cambodian recipes to meet vegetarian and often vegan standards, while creating others from scratch. As a consequence, we offer a full menu of vegetarian and vegan choices at lunch and dinner at all three of our restaurants. And for the past five years or so they've both been teaching vegetarian cooking classes as well.

We're defintely grateful to Citysearch users for celebrating us for our commitment to serving vegetarians and vegans well - by serving the "Best Vegetarian Food 2008!"

Special Events for Charity...in Hong Kong!

Yes indeed, Nyep and Nadsa will be travelling to Hong Kong together to host a charity wine dinner on Friday, October 17, 2008 and teach a cooking class on Saturday, October 18th. The farthest they'd travelled together from Boston to cook for a special event until this one was the Big Island of Hawaii!

This trip is the inspiration of, and by invitation of Jeffrey LeBon, Nadsa's former Sous Chef from about 8 years back at The Elephant Walk in Boston. Since leaving us - on very good terms, mind you - Jeffrey has seen the world, gotten married, had a child, and settled in Hong Kong. He's clearly established himself professionally, now Group Executive Chef for the Chiram Strategic Group, a Hong Kong-based foodservice conglomerate with an Asia-wide reach as far as Australia. Needless to say, we're impressed.

The Charity Wine Dinner and Cooking Class will both be held at Sukhothai restaurant in Wan Chai. A generous portion of the proceeds of both events will be donated to two charities that primarily benefit children:the Heep Hong Society of Hong Kong and the Nginn Karet Foundation for Cambodia of which Nyep is a U.S. trustee.

Thank you Jeffrey! This is an exciting and important opportunity to do some good work for kids, to bring The Elephant Walk's Cambodian food to Hong Kong, to cook with Jeffrey again, and for Nyep and Nadsa to have a little fun together too (they love Hong Kong!).

Basil - from The Elephant Walk Cookbook

Basil flavors are frequently used in Cambodian cooking, and many different herbs have a basil-like flavor.

Asian Basil (chi ng'rong or chi krahom in Khmer) stems and flowers have a purple tinge, and its leaves are more pointed than those of regular sweet basil.

Holy Basil (mareh preuw in Khmer) is known for its slightly hairy leaves and a sweet clove-like aroma. It has a somewhat flat, mildly bitter taste that sweet basil only approximates, and it is used largely in stir-fries and sour soups. Both of these herbs are available in Asian markets, and Thai Basil, as Asian basil is often called, is beginning to make an appearance in garden center herb sections.

Siam Queen is another variety being sold to gardeners. It is lighter green than sweet basil, with smaller, more pointed leaves and a flavor similar to that of Asian basil.

All of these basils, including sweet basil, can be used interchangeably.

Why The Elephant Walk is Cambodian and French: Part 1

The short version is that our choice to serve both Cambodian and French food reflects a profound and personally-significant era in Cambodia's modern history.

The De Monteiros, Cambodian co-founders of The Elephant Walk, were raised under the French Protectorate in Cambodia. The colony of French Indochina, which included Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, was constituted from 1863-1953, with a brief World War II occupation by the Japanese.

Any visitor to Phnom Penh can easily see the French influence in the city's almost Parisian broad boulevards and magnificent 19th and early 20th century colonial architecture. This image, taken during the family's first post-Khmer Rouge visit in 1996, shows Kenthao and daughter Nadsa de Monteiro [now The Elephant Walk's executive chef - in an Elephant Walk t-shirt no less!] in the courtyard of Kenthao's parent's home of his childhood. French architectural sensibility is plainly evident.

Consequently, the De Monteiros, who were born in Phnom Penh in the 1920s and 1930s, were French-educated [their schools in Phnom Penh were administered in French] and their homelives were strongly influenced by French culture. In fact, The Elephant Walk's founding chef, Longteine de Monteiro, learned to cook French food before she learned Cambodian [more on that later in another post].