No matter how much money a restaurant owner spends on china, glassware or other items, and no matter how a dining room sparkles, the bottom line is how special is the menu – is the food something you enjoy and would recommend to others?
I mention this as a new restaurant (opened in October of this year) called Café Vivant in Menlo Park, California, has taken a unique approach to attract customers. Heritage chickens will be among the featured items on the menu, and if you aren’t familiar with these specific chickens, you’re not alone.
Café Vivant co-founders Jason Jacobeit and Daniel Jung, who both have strong backgrounds in high-end wines, especially those from Burgundy – Jung is the former head sommelier at Tribeca Grill in New York City – made numerous trips to France, studying not just the wines, but also the cuisine of several regions in the country; what they learned was eye-opening. “Poultry is given the spotlight there in a way that just isn’t the case in this country,” remarks Jacobeit. He explains that this situation is also true in several large cities around the world, such as London and Tokyo. “In those cities and other developed areas of the world, poultry tends to be served on the basis of the genetics of the animal, the breed of the animal (such as Sussex or Dorking in England),”
Jacobeit contrasts that with America where suppliers and chefs focus on the lifestyle of the chickens, such as organic, free-range, passenger-free,” he comments. “We’re not actually looking at premiumness from the lens of genetic quality. We’re looking at what happens when the animal is alive.” For Jacobeit, the chickens from France and much of Europe have much greater inherent character and texture than the “fast-food and broiler chickens”of America.
Many of the chickens used at Café Vivant are coming from an 80-acre regenerative farm that Jacobeit, Jung and their partners own in Pescadero, about 30 miles, as the crow flies, from the restaurant; the farm is so close to the ocean that “you can hear the elephant seals barking,” as Jacobeit says. Their team has been conducting research for the past few years on heritage poultry chickens, with the result being they can work with the ideal examples for their menu. The birds from their farm will also be supplemented by certain heritage breeds from other farms.
What makes heritage chickens special, and does Jacobeit think the diners at Café Vivant will notice how different they are from the ones that are used to? Also, does his think diners will be ready for this approach? He admits that these heritage birds don’t look very different from a modern broiler chicken, but they are apart from them, in that they have less white meat, and have very narrow-shaped breasts comparatively. He also notes that most chickens Americans are used to are alive no more than 45 days, while the heritage birds are allowed to live longer. “Heritage chickens are very different,” he says. “ They’re much more fiber dense and the flavor is much, much stronger.”
Jacobeit explains that these chickens need to be cooked correctly, or else they could be a bit tough. “That’s kind of the hard part for regular consumers if they want to cook the chickens at their place. Our goal is to give that experience in a perfect way; to cook it and have this beautiful flavor and nice density, a little like steak.”
Of course, man does not live by chicken alone, so Café Vivant offers what has to be termed as a spectacular wine program, headed by Jacobeit and Jung. The wine collection is not limited to the restaurant, as next door, a retail store named Somm Cellars will also house some of these wines, and the collection is a wine-lover’s dream. There are more than 2500 wine selections, and the highlights are remarkable, including more than 700 pre-2020 vintages from California regions such as Napa Valley, Alexander Valley as well as the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains area. “Our main focus,” says Jung, “is California, including going back to the 1930s, but we have some of the ‘50s as well as the ’60s, ‘70s and ’80s.”
As someone who has followed the California wine industry for decades, I have seen the changes in the industry and have tasted many older wines from the state; I realize how few restaurants in the country offer these wines for sale, and when the selections include such revered producers as Robert Mondavi (nine vintages, 1966-1974), Chateau Montelena (16 vintages), Mount Eden Vineyards (nine bottlings from the 1970s, and the iconic Georges de Latour Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from Beaulieu Vineyard (17 bottlings (1959-1985), you realize how rare this collection is, and hoe tempting this will be to consumers.
Jung notes that their location, not far from Cupertino, is a wine region that few people know about. “We want to bring back the beautiful wines from Santa Cruz.” Among these will be the iconic Montebello wines from Ridge, offerings that were immediately recognized for their structure and breeding even back in the 1960s.
Café Vivant is an ambitious project, especially in these difficult financial times, but given the team and the research they have done over the past few years, I’m betting this will be a notable success. I hope to dine there soon – I’ve never tasted a heritage chicken in America!
720 Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park, CA 94025
Phone: (650) 557-2244