Chives: A Savory Second Act in Lakeville
Posted by: Dan Shaw
Posted on: Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Comments
Had dinner last weekend at Chives and I want to congratulate the Wilburns on a beautiful spot to eat. As a serious cook and baker myself I know how much love and effort chef/owner David is putting into his new endeavor. As a full time resident of the area I want to do all I can to make sure the restaurant is a big, fat success! I have only great hopes and good wishes for all concerned. It is for this reason only I will offer some feedback.
For the most part the experience was wonderful. The drinks were good, the service was great, the room is pretty. Thank you for this! The food, however, could use some tweaking. My main worry is that the chef is just trying too hard. Besides the obvious potential for burn out, what with making his own bread, pasta, ice cream, etc etc, the creations got a 10 for ambition but only a 5 for execution; and sometimes less than that. The asparagus risotto was as bland as warm water. (I don’t mean to be cruel; I truly mean to be helpful). The lasagna was a bizarre, overly rich concoction (pesto pasta sheets?) that seemed to be grabbing for too many elements without a game plan. The onion soup gratinee was flavorful but the onions could have been caramelized longer and the cheese quickly coagulated into a glob that just became impossible to navigate without a little chainsaw. The salads were lovely and fresh, however, and I applaud their resolve to use local ingredients, although the mahi-mahi and other fish items clearly (and confusingly) flew in the face of this decision. The bread was oddly sweet and made me wonder why a chef would even bother baking if the product isn’t significantly better than the output of first-rate local bakers like Richard Bourdon?
I always wonder why local chefs don’t realize that so many of the diners who can afford a 75.00/person dinner are generally pretty sophisticated eaters with lots of experience in the panoply of extraordinary New York restaurants. Why try to compete with that experience here in the country? The week-enders are coming up to relax - not to have a Per Se-type of dining experience. (especially if quickly disappointed in the comparison). The locals - whose support during the week and in the winter are crucial to a chef’s success - often just want a simple dinner; not an elaborate “occasion” meal. Unfortunately neither of these groups is going to be satisfied by the menu, as it exists, at Chives. Why not imagine a restaurant with simple comfort food, done really well?
I am not suggesting Mr. Wilburn forgo his love of food and his talents at the stove. I am not suggesting he start serving burgers, chicken and pasta primavera. No! No! No! There is a whole world of sophisticated yet unpretentious comfort food. Braises come to mind, and there are hundreds of ways to braise every food group, from mains to vegetables to desserts. Letting the slow merging of a few ingredients create a natural fusion is not only cost effective and labor effective, it is extraordinarily comforting and delicious. Other “slow” foods, gigot de sept heures, for instance, let the honest flavors of locally-grown products shine in a way that is unpretentious as well as sophisticated. I could go on and on, but you get the drift…
Again, I mean only to be helpful to a chef that has a clear talent and love for his new life away from finance. I hope than when he tires of knocking himself out with over-ambitious I-just-graduated-from-cooking-school energy, he will turn to dishes that are a little less show-offy, more humble yet every bit as sophisticated.
I wish the Wilburns only the best of luck with Chives, and thank them for giving us all another promising local dining option.
Full Article
Chef/owner David Wilburn with his wife, Sally
When you hear that a former New York investment banker has opened a restaurant, you don’t expect to find him behind the stove. But David Wilburn, who spent twenty years at PaineWebber, is in the kitchen six nights (and days) a week at Chives, his four-month-old restaurant in Lakeville, CT. Though he’s been a serious gourmand and weekend chef for 25 years, Wilburn is still a businessman, and he wasn’t about to let an amateur run his restaurant. So he enrolled in the 14-month program at the Center for Culinary Arts in Shelton, CT, before opening Chives. “Cooking school was the most fun I’d ever had as an adult,” he says. Wilburn used his teachers as his advisory council for the restaurant, asking their advice about kitchen design and operations. He even hired a classmate half his age to be his executive chef. 
Wilburn and his wife, Sally, who runs the front of the house, envision Chives as a white tablecloth restaurant with serious food but no pretensions. “We expect people to come in jeans,” says Sally, who worked as a paralegal in a white-shoe law firm when they lived in the city and took charge of the restaurant’s decor. “We decorated it as if it were our living room,” she says, noting that she splurged on Brunschwig & Fils curtains and Ralph Lauren paint. “We tried dozens of yellows and it was the best.”
David’s passion for cooking is reflected in the complex flavors he brings together in dishes such as prawns with grilled fennel salad and green-and-yellow zucchini “tartar” ($11); seared blackfin tuna and soba noodle salad that comes with both candied and pickled ginger($12); crispy-skin organic salmon with a saffron cream sauce ($24); spring-pea ravioli with mascarpone, pine nuts and fried spinach leaves ($18). “I spent two weeks coming up with that dish,” he says. To encourage diners to order appetizers, the Wilburns include a green salad with every entrée.
Like all eco-conscious, community-minded foodies, the Wilburns try to buy as much as possible from local sources. “We’re so happy Sky Farm in Millerton told us they will have lettuce in three weeks,” says Sally. “We get our free-range chicken from Herondale Farm in Ancramdale and we buy grass fed beef from Whippoorwill Farm in Salisbury.
Besides baking all of the restaurant’s bread and desserts (like the profiteroles, left), David also makes his own pasta and ice cream. “On Saturdays, I bake the English muffins for our Sunday brunch eggs Benedcit—nobody does that,” he boasts. Sally shoots him a forgiving look and says wryly: “And we may find out why.”
As restaurateurs in a town where they have lived for more than a decade and where their two younger children attend the regional public high school, the Wilburns expect that there is, at most, only two or three degrees of separation between them and their customers. Says David: “We feel like we are hosting a dinner party in our home every night.”
Chives
2 Ethan Allen Street, Lakeville, CT
860-435-8893
Dinner: Thursday - Tuesday 5:30 - 9:00; café until 10; bar until 11:00
Brunch: Sunday 11:30 - 3:00
Closed Wednesday
