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Articles by InFocusMedia

All articles re-printed here with the permission of InFocusMedia,
www.infocus-zine.com and By Debbie Kwiatoski

A Conversation with Ric Orlando

By Melissa Everett for www.infocus-zine.com

Chef Ric Orlando, the owner of New World Home Cooking, is one of the Hudson Valley’s most inventive and articulate entrepreneurs.  Conveniently situated between Woodstock and the Thruway, New World offfers gourmet fare in a style honored by Metrolands as “best category-defying restaurant.”  The everyday diner might just as well be there for an organic hamburger, an entree of ecologically harvested fish, a specialty such as shrimp with andouille sausage or lemon-grass chicken wings, or a decadent dessert like bananas flamed in dark rum.   A popular business meeting spot, New World is also a mecca for fans of “Slow Food” --  a social and cultural movement to reclaim the ceremonial, aesthetic side of eating as well as expressing a commitment to healthy, locally produced food.

Orlando started working in restaurants as a teenager,  “back when it was economically viable to play punk rock and work in a restaurant so you could eat.” He experimented with writing, publishing and sales jobs before committing to the business.  The son of a working-class Italian family in New Haven, he gravitated to the Yale side of town and then to Boston.  There, he “ got into a little think tank  of Harvard and MIT people who learned how to drink wine, eat pate, and have political discourses while working in places like the Harvest in Cambridge, one of the earliest high end restaurants to use whole, local foods as the basis of a gourmet eating experience.”  He and his wife, Liz Corrado, came to this area to be closer to family, “fell in love with the mid-Hudson Valley and started analyzing ways to make a living with food.” 

Chef Ric, now 43, still spends at least fifty hours a week running the restaurant.  Employees describe him as perfectionistic but inspiring.  With the remaining twenty hours in his work week, he has emerged as a leading educator about nutrition and the political economy of food, or why local organic food is worth every penny it costs.  He’s working on a cookbook and seeking national sponsors for a  series, “Ric Orlando’s TV Kitchen,” now showing on WMHT, Channel 17, in Albany.  He wove the themes of food, education and inspiration together in an animated phone interview:

How does your way of running a restaurant affect the bottom line? 

In America we have a tainted food supply because we think we need it to be as cheap as possible.   The whole-food method makes an operation more labor- and skill-intensive. We have a lot of  high salary people in the kitchen, which is great because there’s less dependency on me.  We have a lot of small suppliers which means running around. Our cost for food is higher than an ordinary restaurant would pay.  However, I’ve developed a price point  that I know people are comfortable with:  dinners mostly in the teens, appetizers in the single digits.   New World Home Cooking was never designed to be an over-the-top, foie gras  experience.  It’s more peasant-inspired. That lets me get more creative -- although I risk turning into my grandmother.

Do you mainly hire people who share the vision?

The management team all shares the vision.  Some of our servers probably have cars full of McDonald’s bags, but if they don’t smirk, it’s o.k.  We are also on guard against hiring purists. If a customer asks “how is the venison chop?” and the waiter says “I don’t know, I’m a vegetarian,” that’s a problem  too.

What’s your perspective on protecting the farm economy in the Hudson Valley?

Agriculture in this area depends crucially on more organic, specialty and value-added farming, because those products bring in 2 - 4 times the price of more conventional produce.  The basics are being taken over by conglomerates -- the celery, lettuce, and cabbage.  Market support and promotion are also important.  It’s a good thing for successful restaurants to promote local farms by putting names of providers on menus.

What about ordinary restaurant-goers do create a more earth-friendly food system?

Lots.  You can reduce your dependence on takeout.  You can also ask restaurants not to use those little portion controlled packets of butter, sugar, and  jam, which add up to tons of solid waste.  Some of this  is driven by health departments, but ask them to change what they can.  We’re service businesses, so we do listen. 

What’s your experience of  “Slow food,”  as a social movement?

The most interesting thing to me is the way that it crosses political lines.  It brings together two elements in the society who have a lot of things in common and don’t know it -- wealthy conservative people, especially those with large real estate holdings who have been involved with food, such as big wine companies, and very progressive cutting edge food producers who are conservative in their own way, in that they are resisting the trend to processed food and synthetic soil.

What does success look like to you?

Staying alive. You don’t get rich owning a restaurant unless you have no conscience or many restaurants.

Beyond that, success is modeling a healthier approach to food.   It’s common to think that there’s a polarization between altruism and success.  In my view, to get mom and pop thinking differently about food, you have to be successful and visible.  I want restaurants in strip malls offering sandwiches made from wild trout instead of from chickens raised in boxes.

The theme of my TV show is “We want clean food.” I have the audience chant that!  Every show starts with a 5 minute rant on some aspect of food systems, eating and health, like the difference between sea salt and processed salt, an animal raised in a pasture versus in a box, the trace nutrients and their impacts on health.  One of my early rants was about touching your food.  Buying an organic chicken and making 3 different meals from it -- a soup, an Indian dish, a snack.  Or running your hands through piles of raw beans, or kneading dough.  People need this dimension in their lives.

Food and energy are the essential issues facing our society.  These two industries permeate everything we do. Both have high environmental impacts, and both can be done differently by entrepreneurs who think about the public interest.

Melissa Everett is author of Making a Living While Making a Difference and Executive Director of the Sustainable Careers Institute (www.sustainablecareers.com).

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