Nearly 400 years after the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic, Top Chef Boston celebrates Thanksgiving with an era-appropriate challenge – and they enlisted the help of Mayflower descendents (12th and 13th generation, respectively) Dave Gilson of the Herb Lyceum in Groton and his son Will Gilson of Puritan & Co. in Cambridge. We spoke to the Gilsons about what it was like enjoying Thanksgiving as their (literal) forefathers did, the farm-to-table movement and whether there are any more television appearances in their future(s).
Boston Chefs: Tell us about your Top Chef episode.
Will Gilson: The one we’re on is where everyone goes to Plimoth Plantation and they have to cook with only things that were available during that time in history. So, only open fire, only with ingredients that were available locally or that the colonists brought with them. The contestants had to make an entire meal out of that.
BC: So, did you get to eat any of the food?
Dave Gilson: Oh yeah, we ate a whole meal.
BC: And how’d they do?
Will Gilson: I’d say we had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving. I obviously don’t want to say all the contestants did great, or one did better than the other, because that would give some of it away, but we had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving. Essentially we were sat at a table with some other Mayflower descendants and some Wampanoag Native Americans.
BC: Who was the source of information about which ingredients were available at that time?
Will Gilson: The people at Plimoth Plantation. There are food historians there and they can paint a pretty clear picture of what life was like and I think they did a great job of providing them (the contestants) with a spectrum of what was available during that time and also how they would have been able to cook things. As a chef I think you get used to what you’re around every single day, the state of the art equipment that are custom designed to fit how you cook and then to take that out of the equation and to be put in what’s pretty much medieval styles of cooking is a pretty awesome challenge.
BC: So obviously you both have long deep roots in the Boston area, what does it mean for either of you that Top Chef has come to Boston?
Dave Gilson: Well for us, the meal at Plimoth Plantation was a great chance for us to celebrate our heritage. It was a gorgeous day and here we were walking along with the Native Americans and chatting. I hope there are many more to come, but it was really one of the greatest highlights of my life. It was really a lot of fun to do it together.
Will Gilson: I hadn’t been to Plimoth Plantation since I was like ten and now it holds a different place in my memory so it was great to spend a day there and the weather was perfect. And as far as where I’m at, I think Top Chef coming to Boston is great and I think it helps shine a bit more on the culinary scene here and it’s pretty rich in its history not just going back to Plimoth Plantation but some amazing chefs have helped put Boston dining on the map and I think we get looked over when it comes to the depth and the range of the culinary scene here. People think we’re all fried clams, chowder and lobster rolls, which we have and they’re all delicious but we have some nationally talented and worldly talented people here and I think it gives Boston a chance to show that.
BC: If you were designing the quintessential Top Chef Boston challenge what would it be? How could a contestant impress you?
Will Gilson: For me, it’d have to be shucking clams. I don’t think that’s done in many places and I think that’s one of the hardest things to do. You can really mess up a clam real quick if you don’t know what you’re doing. I think fishing as well, having to really go out there and actually catch your food. There’s nothing that turns you into a compulsive gambler like being a chef, a farmer or a fisherman.
BC: Dave, what about you? Anything they could do to impress you?
Dave Gilson: Yeah, weed the farm (laughs). I guess it would be going out and harvesting what you grow. It’s so funny that everything is farm-to-table” now, but ever since Will was 15 we’ve always just sort of done it this way. At Plimoth Plantation, they farmed to eat and to survive. Now we farm to dine and here in New England that’s what we do, and that’s what good restaurants do, so the challenge would have to have that harvesting element.
BC: The challenge that you were a part of was kind of a farm to table challenge, and both of you have a really interesting perspective on that. Could you tell us what both of you think about the trend and how being in New England effects that?
Will Gilson: The more attention people pay to this kind of thing and the stronger connection they develop with farms is great for the farmers, the farming community and the overall food.
Obviously, it’s easier for my dad and me to be farm to table because we have a farm. We joke when people ask us if we’re farm to table, we say, “well, we have a farm and we have tables.” I think that’s one of the things that gets difficult. Like when gastro pubs were the hot thing for a little while, people didn’t really understand what they were all about. It was just a great way to call yourself a pub and offer really good food and charge more for your food and maybe gloss over the divey-ness of your pub. This falls along the same lines of people just sort of call themselves “farm to table” because there are people who are like: oh I work with produce from local farms. But you really have to be willing to make those commitments where you won’t serve things out of season.
But being a slave to the radical seasonality of Massachusetts can be difficult when you’re a restaurant that’s open twelve months a year. I think it’s very good to be able to be part of the movement that’s farm to table, but as consumers enter these restaurants they have to be willing to ask the questions and be informed about where things are coming from. We spend a half an hour with our staff every day during the growing season about where the food’s from, who it was grown by, the water where we get our seafood from and being able to pass that information on to our guests is really paramount to what we do. Just calling yourself “farm to table” because some guy got you a pig one time, is really not what we’re all about.
Dave Gilson: Here at Herb Lyceum we’ve always had that connection to the food’s source. It’s a little different here than at Puritan & Co. We’ll have a set menu, and the chef comes out after each particular course and says, “This is your particular dish. This is how I put it together. This is why I did it that way and the ingredients and I hope you enjoy. And we have that freedom and it’s that interplay, William has to do that through talented wait staff, luckily we have the opportunity to do it directly chef to diner.
BC: Will, you’ve never done TV competition wise right?
Will Gilson: No I haven’t. I try to stay out of it. There was a time when Louis DiBiccari and I were going to apply to Top Chef and go down to New York and do the interviews and do the whole shebang and when we got down there we realized that unless they were going to put us both on there, together and we could bicker on screen and have competition amongst the both of us, we weren’t going to do it. So that’s about as close as I’ve really come to it. Over the past few years my focus has been dedicated to trying to make my foot print with this restaurant and at the very least keep it open. So I’ve focused more of my attention on that than on television.
BC: And we’re glad you do. Although it’d be fun to see you on TV.
