Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Playing With Food [SideBern’s Chef Asbel Reyes Uses His Culinary Powers For Good, Not Evil]

Posted Apr 30, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 30, 2009 at 12:39 PM

A year ago, I got a chance to work a shift as a kitchen slave at SideBern’s in Tampa. Until you’ve worked in a professional setting, you really have no idea of how the various personalities come together to work as a team to produce your food.

One of those was Asbel Reyes, whom executive chef Chad Johnson called the kitchen’s “crazy genius.”

It seemed like he could do it all. Break down a monkfish? Not a problem. Work the saute station? Are you kidding? Cook something sous vide? He’ll have that for you in a couple hours.

It also seemed like Asbel, and I say this with respect, was a madman.

“The night you worked there,” Reyes told me recently, “Chad came up to me at the start of the shift and said, ‘Did you have to pick tonight to quit smoking?’ I had so much Red Bull in me, I was shaking.”

My favorite part of the story came during a moment when Reyes handed me a bowl of shiitake mushrooms to clean.

He picks one up, looks me in the eye, says nothing, then twists the mushroom so that the cap detaches from the stem. The cap, he puts in one pile. The stem, he puts in another.

He looks me in the eyes again, does that thing SWAT teams do in movies when they silently point at their eyes with two fingers to communicate which direction they’re going to move. He then points to me, points at the mushrooms and then walks back to his prep table.

Message conveyed. Mushrooms capped. Words saved.

So when I heard that Asbel would be doing a molecular gastronomy demo at Chefs on the Loose in Tampa recently, I jumped at the chance to see him in action again. Especially since I figured he was back on the nicotine.

Assisted by Allison Beasmart of SideBern’s, Reyes started the evening making White Russian Fritters using liquid nitrogen.

The technique: mix cream, vodka and Kahlua, put it into an aerator and then spray the whipped mixture onto a fork that rests inside the bowl, just deep enough to be frozen into this:

Brittle, delicate, light. Damn if it didn’t taste like a Wild Russian.

Tasty and fun. My favorite pairing.

Here’s a video showing how he did it. The last 15 seconds are my favorite.

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The rest of the night, Reyes went on to show how to make ice cream and Dippin’ Dots with liquid nitrogen, how to freeze-dry lobster into a dust that could be made into a cous cous, and how to use a syringe to make balsamic vinegar into a caviar that could be served with salad.

Reyes said that almost every plate that goes out to a table at SideBern’s has at least one component that has been made using molecular gastronomy techniques. The idea is to make it so seamless that it blends with food cooked using conventional methods.

You can peruse the photos I shot of that night by clicking here.