Eric Rivera – XPOSED

 Name: Eric Rivera
Hometown: Olympia, WA
Currently resides in: West Seattle, WA Chicago, IL
Specializes in: culinary arts
Support Eric’s projects:
Eric Rivera Cooks online
BlueAcre Seafood
Alinea

 UPDATE – September 2011

We just received word via Eater Seattle that Eric Rivera has accepted a new job in Chicago as culinary liaison at the three-Michelin starred restaurant Alinea.  We wish him all the best of luck in his new home!

The Seattle culinary world is filled with talented chefs, many of whom are well established and just plain intimidating to take on as our first food-related subjects. We turned to Allecia Vermillion, editor of Eater Seattle for advice, and her immediate recommendation was Eric Rivera. The same week we got into contact with Rivera, the 29 year old chef graduated from culinary school and was promoted to sous chef at BlueAcre Seafood, all the while maintaining regular posts on his well known food blog EricRiveraCooks.com. The more we pored over his short yet prolific resume, the more we were certain an interview had to happen. On the evening of June 29, Rivera invited us over to his West Seattle home for dinner. Suffice to say our minds were blown within minutes of our arrival.

Oysters

Picture a slender, casually dressed male of average height hunched over his kitchen counter, poring over what looks like a plate of sand with chunks of grey rock-like mounds. “This is soil,” he announces, “it’s made with (Redhook) ESB, barley flour and a little bit of water. The only problem with this one is it doesn’t hold up when it’s wet.” He then hands me a spoonful, urging me to taste it. I’m amazed to find that the “soil” is crunchy, and practically melts in my mouth with a sweet finish to it. My first time meeting Eric Rivera, and he has me eating dirt. The final product, however, was stunning. It looked more or less like a dessert of sand with rocks and trees, but it was all completely edible. “So that’s it, I’m done with that. It has earthy theme, and it’s just soil, blanched baby squash, asparagus, and morel mushrooms butter poached with thyme, salt, and pepper.  That was just a taste of the tricks that he had up his sleeve for the evening.

Morel mushrooms, baby squash, asparagus, edible "dirt"

Rivera had a full seven courses planned with basic ideas and ingredients scribbled on a piece of paper, but no recipes in sight. “All this stuff we’re gonna do today, I’ve never done before.,” he says with a laugh as he launches into preparing the first item on his list. “I know what all the sauces and components taste like, but I don’t always know how they taste put together.” While that might make some feel quizzical, it’s hard not to doubt Rivera as he moves swiftly and confidently from one part of his kitchen to another, throwing ingredients together without hesitation. He does all of his personal cooking in the kitchen of his West Seattle home, where he crafts all of the dishes seen on his blog Eric Rivera Cooks. It’s a blog that he started on January 2009, beginning with simple dishes such as his wife’s spaghetti sauce and Frito pie. It’s now evolved into showcasing elaborate creations that can best be described as food art.

“There are people who say that being on TV is more important than having a Michelin star….”

“I get bored really fast with stuff. I was trying to not make the same thing twice on my blog, so the first year I had about 1,200 posts. The blogger community is always really supportive. When you’re on a blog, you can sort of hide, and you can go back and evaluate it as your opinions change. So that’s how it got started, and then a year later, it was like, well what am I going to do next? I wasn’t setting out to be the next Julia Child. There are people who say that being on TV is more important than having a Michelin star, but I’d rather have the Michelin star.” While Rivera is currently on a mission to shed his title as “blogger,” preferring that of “chef,” his blog is still regularly updated and an amazing showcase of his latest culinary adventures.

At 29, Rivera is both young and old, considering he just finished culinary school. Boredom is what pushed him to first start his food blog, and then take the full leap to becoming a full-fledged chef. “I’ve always loved cooking. When I was a kid I’d cook with my grandpa all the time. He’d set up a stool next to the stove. Mindy and I got married really young at 19, so we did a lot of fast food and stuff that everyone around that age does. When I start something, I want to be good at it. I hit a wall with the food blogger thing. I was talking with my wife one day, and she said I should check out culinary school, and within a week I was enrolled. After the first quarter where they try to weed all the bad people out, I started to hit it. I really listened to what they had to say. They were like, ‘you need to get restaurant experience, and if you can’t travel and do that, then get cookbooks,’ so I went and got cookbooks. I think that made the biggest difference. There were so many people in school who just tried to learn as much as they could there, thinking that by the time they got out, they’d all be ready. But that’s bullshit. It’s not true. And it’s funny because some of the people that said that, I’m their boss now. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but I took chances, and I worked hard to do it.”

Clams with pork belly

“I don’t really have food rules like other people do.”

While in culinary school, Rivera took his biggest chance ever by traveling to Copenhagen, Denmark to work at the prestigious Noma, a two Michelin star restaurant run by chef René Redzepi. It was at Noma that Rivera learned to fully embrace and exude his mad passion for cooking. “I didn’t know how well I’d stack up against everybody because I was so new, and there are so many ridiculously talented people out there, but I did realize that they’re all just as crazy as I am. That was the first kitchen where I really felt comfortable being this really intense person, because elsewhere I’d always had to dial it down. I’d get there at 8:45 in the morning and work until 2am and everyone was ok with that. There were people from Spain, Japan, Mexico, Canada. A restaurant like that attracts everyone from everywhere. Everyone wants to work there. I had a chance and I went. I wasn’t the best or worst, but it was the first time I’d ever worked at a kitchen where they called me ‘chef,’ because they called everyone ‘chef.’ I learned a lot about respect and pushing yourself even further and further. So once I got back, I started going even harder than I already was, and that lead to other opportunities.”

The next dish Rivera prepared was his wife’s favorite: smoked clams with pork belly. He sprinkled the finished product with bits of purple flowers, as he’s going through a phase of using flower bits to plate his food. Throughout the night, he used a variety of flowers, some from his his wife’s garden, and others he’d picked earlier in the day during a stroll through Discovery Park. Why flowers? “Flowers are in season, and most are totally edible,” Rivera says, “I don’t really have food rules like other people do. There are so many rules, and I don’t get it. I don’t get paid to be the guy that does the normal food. The chef at my work wants me to do the crazy stuff, so it works out like that. He also wants me to stop cussing so much [laughs]. Trying to make food into living things is kind of ridiculous. There’s a lot to it and there’s a lot of failure. Once I tried to make edible stained glass, and out of a whole sheet, I pretty much just got an edge that looked just right, so just one person got the benefit of that. There’s no book that says, ‘hey if you want to make edible stained glass, then do this.’ When I worked at NOMA [in Denmark], they were doing edible soil, but they were using malt flour and their own beer. I didn’t have that stuff, so I used barley flour and my own beer. It’s all about transitioning and making do with what you’ve got.”

“I’m a really intense kind of person, and I like my food to be intense with me.”

Rivera’s very first culinary job was at BlueAcre Seafood, where he began working a year ago and is now the sous chef. ”I love seafood–that’s why I tracked Kevin [Davis] down and stalked him to work in his restaurant. He’s the best at seafood in Seattle. The quality of seafood we get here in Seattle is second to none. It took about 6 months before they started asking me for my opinions,” Rivera said, “it helped that I had my blog to show some of my ideas. It worked out pretty nice, and now they really trust me.  I want people to take my cooking seriously, the same way that I do. I want it to taste good too.  I’m not making stand up baby squash just to do it, I want it to look cool and taste awesome. Beyond everything, it’s fun for me, and I want people to see that. I’m not a bland type of dude, I’m pretty intense. I like different textures, different flavors, things that develop as I eat them. I’m a really intense kind of person, and I like my food to be intense with me. It’s really hard to tone it down, that’s my biggest problem right now.”

Blueberry puree with xanthan gum and without

“Make it interesting so people are guessing what they’re eating”

“Along the lines of transformation, this is a blueberry puree. This is the same thing, just with a bit of xanthan gum. This is the sauce, and this is the heavier stuff that layers the bottom, so that’s what I’m gonna do. It’s texture, it tastes good, but to make it interesting so people are guessing what they’re eating; that’s the goal here.” Part of the blueberry mixture is served with an elaborate fruit and cheese plate, consisting entirely of all local products. Fromage blanc from Mount Townsend Cremery , toasted ciabatta from Grand Central Bakery, lemon verbena and argula flowers from the front yard, and Rainier cherries, blueberries, and strawberries from the farmers market. It was hard to believe such a tasty dish could be healthy and all-natural too.

Rivera moved on to make dessert, his second time experimenting with this dish. As he was explaining the recipe, he suddenly talked himself into his next big culinary idea: the inside out s’more. “ This is crème and sugar—I frothed it and set it with an ice cream stabilizer. Three ingredients—no eggs. This gives the texture of a flan or custard. I just add blueberry sauce, whole blueberries, apple bits in cognac, whipped cream, and crushed freeze dried blueberries.  I think pastry chefs now are leading the culinary world. They take their time to plate stuff really well. I’d maybe take this idea and add a little crunch to it, maybe putting it in the middle to make an inside out s’more. Pour the bottom, put the graham cracker in the middle, and pour the top, so the graham cracker is in the middle.”

The final course he prepared featured large, plump Vancouver scallops.  Rivera is Puerto Rican by ethnicity, and explained how this influenced his next dish.  “The first time I ate a casserole was with my wife right after we got married. Dishes like scalloped potatoes were very new to me until recently, so I got this idea of doing actual scallops and potatoes as a dish. I have potatoes shaped like little button scallops and scallops shaped like huge chunks of potato!”

Scallops and potatoes

By the time all seven dishes had been finished and completely devoured, Rivera was still bouncing off the walls with energy.  “Anyone still hungry? I’ve got food experiments all around the house ready to go.  In the dining room, there’s a water bath with short ribs marinating, and fresh garlic in the dehydrator next to it–it’s all ready to go!”

Rivera readily embraces his intense passion for food, calling it a cool addiction because it benefits others.  “Every once in a while, we’ll go do something like take a walk, but I’m always thinking about the next thing. I’ll like read something about a chef. It’s a good time to be a chef that wants to learn. There are so many cookbooks out there, and social media is an even bigger gateway.  Some chef will post a photo of a great dish they made, or I’ll read a tweet about great ingredients they get from certain purveyors. I’ll see and hear that and try to understand what it is they’re doing. It’s not to copy them, but to understand how and why they do things. Michel Bras—I idolize him, and I just look at his books and stuff, and see how he plates stuff. That’s the closest I’ll probably ever get to working with him or eating at his restaurant. I just…want to cook!”