Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/214077
food & THE SPREAD drink Jonathan Schwartz, El Camino's 29-year-old Culinary Institute of America-trained executive chef, spent time in the kitchen of the famous New York restaurant Daniel. He's done French, Italian, Mediterranean, Basa, the Silver Dollar. "French fne-dining execution is about refned techniques; it's almost a way of thinking," Schwartz says. "You can take those foundational techniques and apply them to any sort of cuisine." He met his wife Miryam in Cozumel, Mexico, while working on a spot geared toward European cruise-ship crews. He and his wife were working together at the Silver Dollar when his mother-in-law, a restaurateur in Mexico, came to visit. "I cooked with her. We made empanadas, worked on different sauces," Schwartz says. Asked to describe the El Camino kitchen, he says, "Intense. We're doing everything from scratch. We do 600 people on a Saturday, and we're back there asking, 'Are we busy?' We're set up to produce. Nobody's doing this at the volume we are. I'm like the biggest account at Marksbury Farm." The roasted sea bass ($27) comes whole, with fried capers over a bed of rice. "Serving a whole fsh is something I don't think anybody else in town is doing," he says. "It's a very dramatic presentation and really easy to share." Fried oysters ($8) on a masa cake, with cabbage slaw and a habañero aioli — all made in-house. Everything is, from the bar's bitters and syrups to the guacamole and some 20 different sauces on the menu. Croutons? Leftover telera bread. Each day, Schwartz gets fresh masa (dough, basically) from a local tienda he describes as "little Mexico inside." That masa becomes corn tortillas. Tortillas from the tienda become chips for the guacamole that comes with three salsas and pickled vegetables ($7). Four bucks for all-you-can-eat pickled veggies. "The frst guy I hired had never made a tortilla," Schwartz says. One person — two on busy Friday and Saturday nights — does nothing but make toorder tortillas on a fattop grill. On a busy night? "Probably 1,200 tortillas. One of my guys, he was showing me a callus on his hand," Schwartz says. "I said, 'In a week, your hand is going to be like a stone. You won't even feel the heat.'" (Tacos pictured, from top: cod ($3.50), portabella ($3) and the marinated-for-24-hours pork ($3), roasted on a vertical spit and sliced to order and served with caramelized pineapple, onions and cilantro.) Pastry chef Chris Ripley does tres leches ($7, pictured), a milk cake with fresh strawberries. Also, caramel-topped custards ($6). In your $7 trio of homemade ice cream and sorbet, be sure get our favorite favor: tequila lime with candied jalapeños. Carter Gross comes in every morning at 3:30 to bake fresh telera. By spring, the goal is to open a bakery on the patio in the house that used to be a boutique. 72 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 12.13