Q&A: John Critchley, Urbana Restaurant

As part of San Francisco-based Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants’ “Chef’s Summer Celebration,” the chain’s Urbana Restaurant in Washington, D.C., is highlighting local and sustainable seafood. Kimpton’s 53 restaurants and lounges are celebrating the summer with new local and seasonal cocktails and culinary offerings from 25 to 31 July.

Contributing Editor Christine Blank talks with John Critchley, executive chef of Urbana Restaurant, located at Hotel Palomar on DuPont Circle, about the restaurant’s use of local and sustainable seafood.

Blank: Which seafood items are you highlighting during the “Chef’s Summer Celebration” week? 

Critchley: We are doing a three-course seafood menu. We are starting with farmed oysters from Rhode Island, Maryland blue crab soup, and local rockfish that is pan-roasted and then finished in the oven with olive oil and herbs.

Have you always been a proponent of local, sustainable seafood? 

Yes. I opened Kimpton’s Area 31 restaurant in the Epic Hotel in Miami, and that was very well known for providing local seafood. Area 31 is a fishing zone, and we based our menus off of that. 95 percent of our seafood was local. Two years ago, we got involved with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program and we use the organization as a guideline. It is not a perfect science and the information changes every day. At least we get good, solid information and we can make our changes [accordingly]. I came here last year and wanted to bring the commitment to sustainable seafood here.

Which local, sustainable seafood items do you like to use at Urbana? 

I am trying to get things from the Mid-Atlantic and even the North Atlantic. Our scallops are coming from New Jersey and our local Maryland black bass is the most popular right now. We are getting golden tilefish from the Mid-Atlantic and grilling the collars from them. There are only two per fish, so it has to be a special. We also have a shellfish stew; we are using clams from Rhode Island, calamari from Point Judith, R.I., mussels from Maine, and shrimp from the Gulf, all stewed together in a citrus broth. We just put a whole fish on the menu. We find whatever fish is good each day; it could be a snapper out of Florida, a bass, a bronzini, or something else.

Is using the whole fish a fad, or a lasting trend? 

We added that this summer and we are going to do whole fish for a long, long time. It is a very old technique that people may have steered away from because of the bones. Now, people aren’t too afraid of eating fish with the bones in them or with the heads on. People understand that it does create a better fish. A snapper that could be dry when the fillet is sautéed is coming out plump and moist and succulent. 

Which supplier or suppliers do you rely on to provide sustainable seafood? 

For some fish, we work with Samuels and Sons, a company out of Philadelphia that has great resources for getting high quality fish.

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