On Food, Wine and More
with
Executive Chef Kerry Downey Romaniello

by Dr. Timothy Smith

         For the Fall ’05 Issue of The Better Drink, fortune smiled and offered the opportunity to speak via phone with the Executive Chef of Long Acre House at Westport Rivers Winery, Kerry Downey Romaniello. She gained her extensive experience with food and wine working in restaurants from Maryland to California, where she was named one of the “five top up-and-coming chefs in the San Francisco Bay Area” by Sonoma Style magazine. Kerry has written a cookbook entitled Out of the Earth. Additionally she contributes recipes to major publications and has appeared on a number of television shows. She has been the Executive Chef of Westport Rivers’ Wine and Food Education Center, Long Acre House in Westport, MA for years.

Tim: Could you tell me what your responsibilities are at Westport Rivers Winery as the Executive Chef?

Kerry: Sure, I run the Long Acre House, which is a wine and food education center, and my job is to…my mission statement…is to educate and promote the understanding that wine and food belong together at the table as part of a healthy, moderate lifestyle. The owners of this place recognize first of all picking a Massachusetts wine has its own considerations, especially when you are talking about sparkling wine coming from New England. But also, they feel that if you are going to drink wine that that is where it belongs—at the table. So my job is to hold educational events here where people take a tour followed by a pairing.

Tim: What from your experience is a New England flavor and which particular wines go with that?

Kerry: Regional things often go together, but to talk about New England, of course, consider where we are. Westport Rivers Winery is in one of busiest fishing seaports in the country. So a lot of great sea food comes in with shell fish being in great shape right now and all of the fish that comes out of nice cold waters up above the Cape. This produces very nice clean, fresh tasting fish, and it just goes really beautifully with our sparkling wine, Chardonnay and rosé.

Tim: Any particular favorites of yours?

Kerry: I love eating clams. So certainly I love having clams with spaghetti or clams that have been steamed with garlic and parsley and you have that with a Chardonnay or a brut cuvée. It’s really nice or even today I served a roasted fish with sweet corn—sweet corn is everywhere right now.

Tim: I’m not originally from the East, but I love the sweet corn here. It’s truly amazing. It does not exist in Washington where I am from.

Kerry: D.C. or Washington State?

Tim: State. Most of the corn we got there was intended to feed cows.

Kerry: Cows or cornmeal!

Tim: Yeah. Now, what would you serve with just seamed clams.

Kerry: I love them with the brut sparkling wine we have or even our blanc de blancs, which is all Chardonnay…really nice with them.

Tim: When I think of New England cuisine not a lot of things come to mind except maple syrup and the classic Thanksgiving feast of turkey and stuffing with cranberry sauce. Is there something that I am missing? People read this from all over and they might like to know what a New England kind of food is.

Kerry: Sure there is Thanksgiving, and when you read what people really ate at Thanksgiving it’s a little different from what we make for Thanksgiving. But in all fairness there is no reason not to think though that that real traditional sort of New England roasted turkey is what we consider to be New England based cuisine. And I love our blanc de noir with that. And as for maple syrup, maple syrup was used for a lot of different things. In traditional New England cooking meaning when people first came over here and that was what they had to sweeten things with. People who have ever done and brines or glazes with pork, we have sparkling Riesling called Imperial Sec that goes really nicely with a pork that has been cooked with a maple syrup glaze.

Tim: That would be a sweeter sparkling wine?

Kerry: I’m going to say it’s off-dry. So, it’s the closest thing to sweet that we make. One of the things about our wines is that we reflect the climate here. We are a cool maritime climate which means our wines are crisp and dryer. They are not very sweet.

Tim: It sounds like you are in a very unique position being at a winery so you have in some respects your wine list is made for you instead of the challenge most restaurants face deciding what wines to bring in. Do you only serve Westport Rivers’ wines at Long Acre House?

Kerry: For private events. Yes, absolutely. But for events that we sell tickets to, which are educational events that people can buy seats for that the wine maker or the vineyard manager will come to or we have sommeliers or people like that come. So we might do something like what we do every year which is a sparkling wine event and we don’t just have our sparklers but from all over the world—different kinds not just champagne. That’s really fun to be able to taste some of the classic champagnes and some other sparkling wines that might be from Germany or from other places as well as American sparklers. For educational purposes, it is really fun to see how your sparklers stack up against the rest of the world.

Tim: Do you have any particular favorites apart from Westport Rivers that have come along that you think are really great?

Kerry: [laughs] I want to be a traditional girl, but I do like the sparkling wines, the cremants, that come out of France apart from champagne. I tend to like the cooler climate wines. I’ve had some from Germany and Austria, but not too many from the western United States or the other places for a while. Gruet from New Mexico has some fun flavors.

Tim: I find that nothing opens up a dinner party like starting with a sparkling wine. In your expert opinion what cheese always goes well with sparkling wine?

Kerry: That’s a big question, which I was actually asked today. People will automatically serve cheese in the beginning as one of the things they are serving with hors d’ouvre or something like that. I like the classic, a good brut goes with more things—olives, those salty foods, parmesan cheese. Pretty much a good myriad of cheeses goat cheese even a brie, but some of them especially when you get to the fruitier sparkling wines can go a little weird and bring out the flavor of the mold in the cheese. Really, you can see how it tastes and go from there. Is there something you have in mind; I know most people put out some cheese and crackers.

Tim: That’s the default.

Kerry: Right, to me, though, one of the nicest palette cleansers is to go with an ultra brut or a blanc de blancs in the beginning. You are just serving that. You have this beautiful austere wine with no food just to cleanse the palette, just a couple of sips.

Tim: It’s not clear is Long Acre a restaurant or exclusively a place where you prepare these events.

Kerry: It’s only for events, and it’s more of an educational facility meaning. If somebody wants to hold an event here like a person or a company, we are not like an event facility where you go and pick your wine and menu. Because it’s a wine and food pairing they take a tour; that’s what they want to do as a group. It’s different than just having a party. You can’t just come up and order a sandwich.

Tim: OK. I see what you are saying. Now, how long have you been on the East Coast?

Kerry: Well I was raised not far from here. So, a lot of my life I have been out here, but I have also lived around the country. In terms of wine and food experience, I was the Sous-Chef at Berringer Vineyards out in Napa for four years before I returned home. My husband and I wanted to live out in New England with our children. I left in 1992 and haven’t been out there in a while.

Tim: You mentioned that you have a husband and children. I always wondered about chefs, do you when you get home from work try out different foods or do you like to just take it easy.

Kerry: Well my secret weapon is that my husband and I are both chefs. So he works part time so he can more stay at home than I do. He does a lot of cooking, which is great because he is a fabulous cook. We don’t eat what most people eat at home. Sometimes we do eat pizza or a roasted chicken, but we don’t a lot of stuff out of a box or anything.

Tim: I always wondered about the chef coming home after a long day do they put together something fantastic or do they say I’m tired and grab something easy.

Kerry: We have some of those nights, you know a big salad night. Some of those every once in a while.

Tim: How did you initially get into the culinary arts?

Kerry: Well, I think that I was one of those people that was just sort of born interested. I started cooking really young. As soon as I could get a job, I was doing cooking, party serving, and mother’s-helper kind of stuff at a young age. Then I went to school for psychology and someone suggested that I considered culinary school because I really liked food. So that is how I ended up going to New England Culinary Institute up in Montpellier, Vermont. My career path just sort of made itself apparent.

Tim: Do you have any input into what types of wine is being made and developed at Westport Rivers, or they do bring what they’ve made and ask you to find foods to pair with it?

Kerry: Well, this is a family owned business--two brothers, Rob and Bill Russell, and they make those decisions. Planting new vines you’re looking at another four years before you are making wine. It’s a long term project. But I do taste things with them and they are very open. One thing you should know is that you start with what will do well in the vineyard, and what will you do with the juice when it comes in. We do have conversations but they make those decisions.

Tim: Would there be anything on your wish list?

Kerry: I’ve never asked them, but I love really crisp clean Sauvignon Blancs. I don’t know if they have ever tried that, but we do do Pinot Gris, which is one of my favorite grapes.

Tim: I too love a good Sauvignon Blanc, but one has to be careful because there are some really generic ones out there.

Kerry: I like some ones with really great character such as ones coming out of New Zealand and where you are from [West Coast].

Tim: In terms of local character or terroir, I even notice that locally produced farm fresh foods bought at the roadside look like the normal ones but don’t taste the same. In your work do you mostly rely on local producers?

Kerry: Whatever I can do I will do in a particular season. I will usually start getting produce early in the spring and then through late fall. Meat is another is another question because it is not mass produced in this state. I can do some things. Cheese obviously I can get tons of that…produce in season, and sea food I can get all year round. We have great bread all the time. Then there are people, local food producers who have distributorships here too that cold store things. Sometime I can get thing quite late in the season.

Tim: What’s really fantastic right now that you are looking for?

Kerry: The lack of rain presents a problem with certain things. But what it does do for tomatoes is give them a tremendous amount of intensity. They are a little more tart and intense to taste. You cut them up and soak them in olive oil and then a little bit of tart grape juice. Then you can serve them with some fresh fish or a roasted chicken. One of the things I do here is try to make foods here that are very comfortable and familiar for people. Then take that and pair that up with what we do with our Pinot Noir is a blanc de noir and a rosé. Tomato is really nice with those wines when they are really tart. To make it really simple just make a really good salsa.

Tim: Oh, yeah!

Kerry: With some hand made chips and your blanc de noir and you sit out on your deck on a breezy warm evening like tonight. You are good to go.

Tim: I’ll have to do something like that because it is gorgeous up here as I’m sure it is down there.

Kerry: Yes, it’s beautiful here too.

Tim: For our readers out there, do you have any particular sparkling wine moments or a particular bottle that you would like to share with them?

Kerry: Two things come to wine. One was when I was little, my parents would have wine at the table. And there were certain things that we had, I don’t even remember what this wine was, but it was a sparkling rosé. But I can remember having it with Christmas ham and it was so good. We were just kids, young teenagers to just below that, there were six of us. We would always be allowed to taste a little bit of the wine that was with dinner. I that was the first time having sparkling wine and I can remember the smell of it.

The other time was when I first met my husband. We had a ten year old bottle of vintage champagne with pizza. It was his way of wooing me. So I did eventually marry him. There was something there.

Tim: Finally, I have one last question for you. We appear to live in an unprecedented era of the celebrity chef. With the Food Network and the Iron Chef, chefs appear to have a wider exposure than ever before. How do you feel about this?

Kerry: The TV chefs are getting much wider audience than ever before and many people are finding this very helpful.

Tim: Is this making people more sophisticated?

Kerry: People really are becoming more open to trying new things. This is especially apparent at the Long Acre House where, unlike a restaurant, you are served and not ordering what you want from a menu. We have a wide audience here from people that will say that is the best duck I’ve had since I was in France to someone that says that tastes like my favorite pie. We are not seeing more know-it-alls just more adventurous people.

Tim: But one of the most crucial things in cooking, smell, you cannot get from the TV.

Kerry: Once the invent smell-a-vision we’ll really start getting excited.

Tim: That would be something. Thank you Kerry it has been a pleasure talking with you?

Kerry: Thank you.