An Interview with Chef Andre

Last summer, every major event had to be planned, pivoted, planned again, and pivoted again. We were no stranger to this process. The flexibility and ingenuity of our Chefs were necessary for the success of our Full Circle Meal in the year of 2020. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Chef Andre De Waal and heard his perspective on all the pivots. Co-owner of Andre’s Lakeside Dining, Chef Andre has an intuitive and sharp connection to his craft. Learn more about his roots, his experience in The Bacon & Lox Society, and some of his favorite bites from our meal in the creek. 

When did you discover your interest in food?

“My joke is, people argue whether cooking is an art or a craft. I say that it’s a disease that I was born with. Some people get the joke, and some people don’t, but I’ve been cooking since I was a little, little kid. I’ve always known that was my path. At 8 years old, I had a pamphlet from Culinary Students of America in Hyde Park [New York] and I said this is where I want to go to school. There was never a question as far as what I was gonna do with my life. And I always cook. It’s not what I do - it’s who I am. I cook. I’ll leave work after a 16 hour day and go home and make myself something for dinner. When we go on vacation we have to find a place that has a kitchen, so that I can cook. It’s just, after a couple days I get a little itchy if I’m not making food. 

Did your parents cook? When you were that young, were you following someone’s lead?

“No one in my family cooked professionally, but both of my grandmothers were phenomenal cooks. My mother’s side was a little bit more technical, although she was a great cook she was more into doing the pastry end of it. She’d make great meals but the meal always finished with an amazing, a lot of times not very child friendly, dessert. The desserts were less sweet and more like nuts and coffee and bitter elements, things like that. My dad’s mom was just phenomenal at soups and traditional family style stuff. My grandmother on my mom’s side was a nutritionist for a while. When I knew her she was a librarian, but I guess before I came along she was a nutritionist. 

My mom always made dinner. Dinner was always important for us. She was kinda riding that health food wave for a while so there was not a lot of processed foods in the house, like we didn’t drink soda and things like that. Not over the top, snacks were cool, we’d eat some junk food, but most of the stuff we consumed was homemade. For a long stretch of my childhood my dad was at work when we would eat dinner. She would make a meal and sit down and eat with my brother and I, but then when my dad got home at 9:30 at night she would sit down and eat a second dinner with him. Even though we were in bed already, nobody ate alone, nobody ate in front of the TV. She would make salad everyday. European style, after the meal, we would have salad every night, but she would make vinaigrette in a bowl that night. You were not just sitting down and grabbing a quick bite. Even when we were in high school, running around with jobs and stuff, dinner lasted a while. You sat, talked about your day, current events, and stuff like that. It was an important part of my upbringing, was food.

How has your interest in food evolved? 

“I've always been really curious. In addition to going to culinary school, I had always eaten out a lot. Which is something I don’t understand why a lot more cooks don’t do. Especially young people. They’ll complain that they have no money, that it’s too expensive, but they get takeout pizza everyday and they go to Starbucks everyday. Where for me, it was always saving up to be able to go to a restaurant and have the experience, to see what somebody else was doing. I came up before the internet, so it was magazines and cookbooks. But to really get anything for real, you needed to go to a restaurant and experience it. I learned a lot about sushi from just sitting at the sushi bar and watching the Chefs, as opposed to watching a Youtube video. It was another way to get, not really hands-on, but pallet-on experience. The curiosity takes hold and I’m not going to say I get obsessed or over-the-top, but I get into something and then that’s the thing for a while - whether that’s open fire cooking or some new trick that you learn from someone. 

Pre-Covid, we would do a lot of fundraising events. You’re there with other Chefs and you pay attention to what someone else is doing, and then you go and explore that. Tweek it a little bit, try to make it your own. Once I get into that thing, I’ll be into it for a while, how I can incorporate it, how to make it part of what we offer at the restaurant. When we get into something, like what kind of flour will we use in our pasta, I don’t mean to say that then every dish on the menu is pasta. We have a well balanced menu but we pay a little more attention to the pasta course and what percentage of rye can we get in there before it gets too crumbly. You do that for a while, then you perfect that, then you move on to something else. 

Can you tell us about your current restaurant, Andre’s Lakeside Dining?

“We’ve been here for 5 and a half years. We’re in Sparta, on a private lake - Seneca Lake. Technically we have 100 seats inside but that’s spread out over two floors. The place was a house originally, so some serious renovations had been done before we got here. There’s a couple of private dining rooms upstairs and then there’s a mezzanine level where they’ve cut out half of the upper floor, so if you’re in that upper level you still look out into the main dining room. When we started we were coming from our original restaurant we had owned and operated for 17 years. We sold that and moved here, and we kind of narrowed our focus. Originally it was a little bit more global - like a European technique but borrowing ingredients from everywhere. 

When we came here to Sparta, I decided to narrow the focus a little bit. It’s mostly French, with a nod to Asia, and we came up with this crazy backstory - if you could imagine this cranky old French guy with his restaurant. He marries this beautiful young Japanese woman, and her culture informs the aesthetic and the sensibilities a little bit. Maybe his classic French food gets lightened a little bit, and he incorporates some of the ingredients from her culture too. That’s kind of our made up backstory. If you’re in the South of France and you look to the East, anything along that line you might find on our menu. I try to stay away from the fusion thing - so we’ll have lobster bisque and we’ll have miso soup, but very rarely is it like a ginger-miso-lobster ravioli type of thing. I try to let the dish keep its’ purity. The cool thing was, when I was deciding what I wanted to do, doing some research and looking around, I found out a lot of the impressionists got inspiration from the artists in Japan. My background is Dutch, so you have Van Gogh hanging out in the South of France, taking inspiration from the Japanese, and it was kind of a no-brainer at that point to tie it all together. 

The menu changes all the time depending on how busy we are and all, what’s going on. It changes maybe a little bit less in the winter, but we try to be as seasonal as possible. Now asparagus is in, so we have asparagus all over the place. When it’s gone locally, we won’t have it on the menu anymore. For a couple of weeks we had strawberries. The local strawberries will be a feature, they’ll pop up all over the menu, but then when they’re gone, we try to stay with what’s local and fresh and keep the menu interesting. It was considerably larger before COVID, meaning more choices. What we transitioned to last summer was a four course price fixed meal. You got two starters and they were set every day. Each day was different, but it was the same two starters for everyone. They had a choice between two different main courses, and then dessert was also set. People loved that. It was kind of like a Chef's tasting menu, you were trusting the Chef, but you got the choice on your main course so you didn’t have to give up total control. For us, it was the obvious decision with what we had to do as far as staffing and the economy of it all. We didn’t want to rely on making things and hoping that they sold, what would we do with leftovers, some of the normal restaurant problems we tried to eliminate and people were very receptive. If you weren’t hungry enough to eat the four courses, the server would walk you through it: “We have a soup tonight, that packs up really well to take home. Dessert is served with ice cream, enjoy your scoop of ice cream here so you get a tiny bite of something sweet after your meal, then take the cake home and enjoy that tomorrow when you have the appetite for it.” It worked out really well. 

When we reopened after the winter, we expanded it a little bit more because things opened up a little bit more for us, we had a little more business. Now it’s back to an a la carte type of thing. We don’t force you to have a four course meal, but it’s an option and most people wind up doing four or five courses anyway. The menu is somewhat limited, most people are thrilled, we try to have something for everyone. We’re very accommodating with vegetarian and food allergies, and things like that. Pre-COVID, we probably had 8 or 9 course offerings and now we have 4 with specials that change everyday. Next week, on Wednesdays we’ll do a casual menu. We have a wood fired oven out on the patio, we’ll do pizza and pastas and more simple food meant to be shared, we’ll have live music, that kind of thing. 

When did you start working with The Bacon & Lox Society?

“So last year was my third Creek Dinner. We had met Alisa a couple times but we hadn’t worked together at all, and then they brought me up to speed on what they had been doing and wanted to know if I would get on board. Three years ago was our first one, now almost four years ago, but three dinners worth. I was the only Chef involved in the Ice Dinner that we did out on Lake Wallenpaupack [February 2018]. That was a crazy day. My sous Chef wound up with hypothermia, spent half the day curled up in a ball. It was below freezing temperatures, we were out there for 8 or 10 hours, it was windy and cold, and a beautiful sunny day - one of the best days of my life. It was absolutely amazing. We were using coolers to keep the food from freezing as opposed to using coolers to keep food cold, we were using the coolers to keep food at workable temperature. I had bought a bottle of champagne, we were going to do a fish fry, and instead of making a beer batter I wanted to make a champagne batter and the champagne had frozen. 

What does it mean to you to be a member of The Bacon & Lox community? 

“Originally, I didn’t realize how much I was going to get out of it, to be honest with you. When we signed on, we had seen pictures from years past and it looked kind of fun, it looked kind of cool. I thought it would be a one off thing - check that, been there done that, move on to the next thing. I think it was really last year when we sat in on the creative process and what we were going to do and if memory serves, we had that meeting pre-Covid. We came up with all these grand ideas and then it was like well, I guess we’re not doing that. Then once things settled, shaked out and settled down, and it looked like we could do something, then we had to rework some of our ideas. But it was that session of sitting down with other folks involved, I think that’s when it hit me - how cool it was, what a big deal it was, and how much I was really getting out of it, just from the creative aspect. I tend to not work well in the brainstorm session - I'm kind of a loner in that. I’m really good at taking half your idea and making it my own, or reworking something that somebody else has, or come to me with an ingredient or an idea and I can expand on that. But to sit down with a bunch of other creative people, my brain just doesn’t work that way, I guess. 

But something about the vibe, the people involved, it was very cool and expanded my mind to the whole thing a little bit. There’s been a little bit, as far as a professional connection, that has helped us out. I think we’re all so far removed with different people coming from Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. It’s not like you’re working with a Chef or a Florist who’s right around the corner, that you can go grab something or pick up something. It’s not that kind of thing, but there has been a professional aspect of it too that has definitely been a benefit. More than anything, it’s just that - it’s the inspiration. If I had to distill it down to a word, I would say that’s the thing - the people that are involved with it are just so inspiring. 

How do you typically approach designing a dinner menu?

“It’s different every time. For the Ice Dinner, I just really wanted to have a Nordic theme, so that’s what ran through the menu. It’s interesting - a long time ago I was working at a restaurant and I was the Chef, but it was also a Chef/Owner type of thing. He was involved, but I was basically writing the menu. A friend of his was having a wedding at the restaurant, and they came to me and were like, ‘We want you to write the menu and it’s a Carribean theme!’ I had never. I kind of turned my nose up at the idea, like I have to write a Carribean menu? You’re having a Carribean themed wedding? I thought it was kind of hoaky and dumb, and I turned my nose up at the idea but I wrote the menu. Then what I realized was that they didn’t really have a Carribean theme, but just they let that inform their decisions. It wasn’t like they were only listening to Caribbean music or only eating Carribean food, it was just like everything was informed by that Caribbean idea. It wasn’t like she was wearing a coconut bra, you know what I mean. 

I kind of took that moving forward at our restaurant. We have always done a theme for New Year’s Eve, kind of because of that. Sometimes the theme is in your face with costumes and the whole thing. Sometimes it’s just real subtle - like we’ll just pick a color. We did a Red Dinner and it’s not that you’re eating a whole bunch of red food but it just kind of informs all your decisions - as far as plating, flavors, things like that. I’m kind of used to that idea for writing a whole menu. We’ll do someone’s wedding and you ask them, ‘Is there any kind of theme?’ And they’ll say no and they’ll look perplexed. Then you’ll say, ‘Oh where are you going for your honeymoon?’ ‘Oh, we’re going to the South of France!’ So that’s it, that’s your jumping off point. You just write a menu of foods from the South of France, because that’s where they’re gonna be going on their honeymoon. 

This last Creek dinner, the one thing that I remember from the first creative session, when we were sitting down, we were bouncing around different ideas. [Someone] said the phrase, ‘A riot of color.’ And that phrase, ‘a riot of color,’ just stuck with me and I kind of ruminated on that for a little bit. It reminded me of a street fair, like how you might imagine the market in Marrakesh, something like that. Where it’s just vibrant and noisy and all the bright colors and the different spices from all over the place and all the different clothes, and you hear everybody talking. That is where I ran, and I figured there’s a market culture globally - you know, everybody has one. You could do a global menu but with that market theme. Taking that phrase, a riot of color, and making a menu around that. That year we worked with two other chefs [Chef Brandon Grimila and Mike Carrino], and I expanded on it a little bit more for them and asked if they wanted to have any input. They each came back to me with different things, one more so than the other just because Brandon was working on another project and potentially moving to, and ultimately did move to Sweden, so he had less creative input last year. Mike came back and hit me with ‘I love the idea’ and then he comes back with a few things, then I throw back on him like ‘Tweak this, take this off, we can’t have, we don’t want to have the same ingredient in three dishes,’ that kind of thing. The whole menu just came from the idea of ‘a riot of color.’ 

How did you pivot to create a COVID safe menu for 2020’s Full Circle Creek Meal?

“The menu didn’t change much, but the plating did. I’m very go with the flow - if this is what you want to do, that’s cool by me. There were certain things you just didn’t get the right feeling from. Like Nicole [Hutnyk] wanted to do something. She was hot on this idea, she must have seen it somewhere or it was at a party where they had done something, and like the food was in a pizza box. She wanted the food in a pizza box in the worst way and I just couldn’t see it. To me, at the end of the meal, it’s gonna look like a frat party because everybody's going to be sitting and looking at this empty pizza box. It might be amazing when you first open it, but then halfway through it looks like a frat house, you know? So I kind of stuck to my guns, which is out of the ordinary, and I was like - ‘Just not feeling the pizza box, can we do something else?’ She originally had the idea to make a picnic basket, so it wasn’t like I was sticking up for my idea. I was sticking up for her original idea that I liked better than her second idea. At the end, she came back to me and was like, ‘I’m so glad we didn’t do the pizza box.’ 

Can you tell us about the menu for 2020’s Full Circle Creek Dinner?

“The little appetizer box [Global Market Box] had what was supposed to be more like street food - satays and things like that. I always like to cook as much on site as possible, when you’re working with other Chefs they’re not always as comfortable doing that. So they tend to bring things that are already ready or already cooked, or something that they can hold at the right temperature, and serve it that way, so when they’re there it’s a little more relaxed. I like to cook when I’m there. I remember Chef Mike really wanted to do shawarma, gyro with meat on a spit that you slice off shavings of it. He put that whole thing together which was awesome. He had the meat all done ahead of time but we cooked it there over an open fire. Then, bread is a big part of it, but to just show up with bread that you bought somewhere else I think is kind of a cop out. Like at the Ice Dinner, we were grilling flatbreads. For this dinner, we brought a steel flattop and made scallion pancakes similar to what you would have with peking duck. We were cooking those over the open fire. We did a yogurt marinated chicken. Dessert we did a berry cobbler, but we baked it in a paint can and then we had a honey cream, and everybody got their own individual paint can. We had done that in the past, where you put together a can - you could do a clambake like that. Where you put all the raw ingredients in a can and you bang the lid on it. You need to make sure that you buy just a plain metal can that’s not lined. And you put a little wine, herbs, and aromatics in there and then you just put it either on top of the grill or throw it right in the fire and cook it right there. So we decided to use that technique for dessert… Sometimes the things that don’t make the menu, I think it’s too bad, I get disappointed, I almost want to do the same dinner again with a different menu so that the ones that didn’t make the cut get a chance. 

FULL MENU:

Global Market Box - Summer roll, sweet potato empanada, lemongrass shrimp, chicken karaage, beef saam

Picnic Basket  - Bronzino baked in salt clay, chicken + sheep’s milk yogurt, lamb leg, doner kebab, tfayabrined and roasted potato, cucumber salad with lemon and mint, charred greens, scallion pancakes

DESSERT - Paint can cobbler with honey cream

What was your Bite of the Night?

“For sure it was the Bronzino baked in clay. I think we wound up using black bass. The deboned fish was seasoned and then wrapped individually in clay. Those were baked in the open fire. The fish essentially steams in its own juices. The clay is brought to the table and cracked open in front of the guest to reveal the aroma. And then of course, dinner! You used all of your senses to appreciate this one.

What was one unique challenge from 2020’s Full Circle Creek Dinner? 

“I was back and forth with Will [Croasdale], the chief fabricator. If he can’t get it done he knows someone who can. So when we started, he was going to fabricate this custom grill for us to cook on. I wrote a menu and designed this cooking piece, and then when we weren’t going to do the full blown 60-80 people, we kind of talked about how there's no reason to build this whole big thing. Will said, ‘But it’s not a one shot deal, it’s not like we’re going to build this thing, and you’re going to use it once, and then it’s garbage - we’re going to build it and we’ll use it over and over again.’ So we went back and forth, and it was a lot of texting and emails and trying to communicate, and you’re looking at someone else's drawings, and I’m certainly no mechanical drawer by any stretch of the imagination. So when we got to the site the unit that he had built was not even remotely what I expected. It worked out great, what he built was phenomenal and it did the job and it was the right size and it did everything we needed it to do. But I kind of showed up there not really sure what we had to work with. I would say that was probably, like if I had to pick a challenge, it would either be that, or just the overall perception of the day, and the whole thing with COVID. Getting past the mask, no mask, social distancing, just getting over that hump of the perception of how to throw a party in this kind of thing. Not that it was difficult to throw the party, not that it was difficult to conceptualize the delivery of the food, the presentation, things like that. That was all done ahead of time. But I think day-of perception, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, imagining how they’re feeling, safety wise. I would say that was another sort of hurdle, road block, obstruction, whatever you want to call it. They would be my two things. 

Just to clarify, we’re talking about a grill that needed to be built in order to grill within the creek? 

“Exactly. And what we were looking for was almost like the combination of a grill and an oven. We were definitely able to work with what Will built. But the idea, which is difficult to describe, was almost like a metal cage that is vertical and that would be filled with burning wood. Then as the wood burns, we could hang things in front of that to do indirect cooking, so you would have this wall of fire. You could hang meat or fish in front of it and it would cook from that indirect heat. But then as the wood was burning you would get the embers and coals at the bottom, that would all fall to the bottom, and they could then be raked out and you would have a grilling surface that was horizontal. So it was a combination of direct and indirect depending on what you needed to do. Hopefully he’ll still build it for me one day. 

What was one unique reward from 2020’s Full Circle Creek Dinner?

“You know, I’ve always involved my family. My wife is involved with the restaurant here, she runs the dining room and I run the kitchen. So she’s always come with me, she’s always been a part of it, I bounce ideas off of her. Both my kids have come. It’s just time spent, I think. With the new people that you meet, the people that you know from other dinners, and with my own family. It’s cool to have the two intersect, or coalesce, whatever adjective you want to throw in there. My kids are 18 and 20 but they’re very mature for their age and it’s interesting for me to see how they interact with others and what they come away with. It’s always a long talk in the car on the way home or even the next day, or a year later when you’re looking at pictures. You hear their perceptions and what they took away from it. That’s the real gift. 

Was there a lesson from last summer’s Creek Dinner that you found you still carry with you?

“I guess it would be sticking up for the good ideas. It’s good to go with the flow, it’s nice to be that guy happy to work with whatever is thrown my way, but I think it worked really well to stick up for someone’s original idea that I thought was the way to go. 

Any final thoughts for the Bacon & Lox Society?

“It’s just nice to be included, you know? That’s what it comes down to. I’m sure Alisa [Tongg] would tell you that the Chefs kind of tend to stay around the fire. The Chefs will stay in the kitchen, as much as anybody anywhere wants to try to have you be part of the party. We’re just not comfortable. We’re more comfortable in the kitchen, I mean I’ll speak for myself and say I’m more comfortable in the kitchen. I tend to keep to myself. I don’t think there’ll ever be an event where I would be able to go and sit down and enjoy myself. But to be included, to be with the people who are enjoying the food, to see the looks on people’s faces, and hear their comments and interact with them during the course of the day - it’s pretty special. And I think that I would leave it at that - just the joy of being included.