Metropole is excited to announce the launch of Feast by Metropole, a whole new way to experience Metropole in the comfort of your home. “Feast began as an answer to restrictions on indoor dining, but as we started to ask ourselves ‘how do we extend our food and our hospitality into people’s homes,’ we realized that there were unique opportunities to engage with our guests in a completely new way.”
Now you can enjoy a restaurant quality meal at home with three unique programs… For those short on time but still looking for a quality meal to end your day, you can take the guessing game out of “what’s for dinner” with our easy to follow Heat & Eat Meal Kits. We do 95% of the work so all you have to do is heat, eat and take all of the credit. Or maybe you are looking for something a little more involved, like how to prepare a Risotto dish from start-to-finish or how to perfectly sear a steak. Learn about the how’s and why’s of cooking with our Needs More Salt Chef-led virtual Cooking Classes. Leave class with an understanding of why processes and techniques are the way they are so you can confidently use them moving forward. Plus, you can skip the trip to the grocery store – we’ll source the best of ingredients from the region so you’ll have everything you need to follow along. Need some help stocking the fridge? Eat the best of the season and region with Chef-curated Farm-to-Fridge CSA Boxes. From the basics (local bread, eggs and milk) to Chef boxes (meats, grains and produce), Metropole is helping to bring the same products we love and trust into your home.
Interested in learning more? Read below for 13 Questions with Chef Vanessa…
Why the name Feast?
VM: Feast implies a gathering around food. A feast isn’t just any old meal, it’s a special experience with a purpose. That’s what we’re trying to bring to people, an experience built around the act of cooking and eating and sharing the results with a people you care about.
What drove you to create this platform – virtual cooking classes, take home meals and farm-to-fridge?
VM: We understand that the way people interact with restaurants has probably changed for good, we want to be a part of building what the future of that interaction looks like. It’s an exciting thing to be able to completely throw out the old rule book and to try to create new types of experiences and means for people to engage with our brand.
Least favorite thing to eat as a kid (and do you eat it now)?
VM: Never met an olive I liked. Still won’t go near them with a ten foot pole. You’ll never see one on my menu.
What’s your favorite seasonal ingredient and way to prepare it?
VM: As cliché as it is, I’m not sure there’s anything more delicious than an end of summer tomato. One of the things I love about them is that they lend themselves to so many preparations and uses.
What’s it like being in Vanessa Miller’s home kitchen?
VM: Its pretty chill. Doesn’t get a lot of use from me, I do most of my cooking at the restaurant.
Do you have any fond memories of cooking together with someone in your family? Who/what inspired you to start cooking?
VM: I was never really into food as a kid, I was a really picky eater. It wasn’t until I moved to Boston and started seeing and tasting fresh seafood that I started to fall in love with the idea of cooking food myself.
Do you see yourself as a role model or inspiration to other young chefs?
VM: I certainly hope to be. There’s so much more to being a good chef than just cooking delicious food. You have to be a good leader, you have to have an entrepreneurial spirit, you have to thrive under pressure. Every day those are the things I try to work on, and I hope that others coming up in the industry can learn from my process of learning and growing.
Let’s talk about salt – how’d you come up with the name Needs More Salt for your cooking classes?
VM: It’s a kind of running joke for those around me that the one thing I say to other cooks more than anything else is “this need’s more salt”. One of the most simple but impactful things you can learn as a cook is how to season things properly, and so I find I’m constantly coaching people on their salt usage. If there’s one thing I hope someone who takes a class with me walks away with, it would be a new understanding of how to use salt.
What’s the best piece of advice you can give to someone new to cooking?
VM: Taste everything. Then taste it again and again and again. If you taste as you go, you learn the impact that different steps of different processes have on the taste of your final dish. Making risotto? Taste your rice before adding wine, then taste it after. Think the recipe you’re working from has too much spice? Add a little then taste, then keep adding and tasting.
Is there a tool in the kitchen that you can’t live without?
VM: A sharp knife is the most important tool you can have. Dull knives are dangerous (the sharper your knife the less you bleed), but they also make prep work take longer. Invest in a good knife and learn how to keep it sharp.
What do you look for when selecting ingredients?
VM: For produce I look for seasonality because ingredients harvested out of season will taste like shells of themselves. No asparagus in February. For proteins, it all comes down to smell, if a protein is fresh it should have a pleasant and not strong scent. Your nose will tell you if you’re working with something fresh.
You have only 5 ingredients in your fridge, what are they and what do you make with them?
VM: Eggs, butter, avocado, bread, salt. I’m making a soft scramble on toasted bread with sliced avocado. The perfect breakfast for me.
What’s the best compliment you’ve received in regards to your cooking?
VM: Any time someone says your dish is the best version of the dish they’ve ever had. There aren’t a lot of flavor combinations/means of preparation that haven’t been done before. So since a lot of what all chefs do is their version of classic dishes and combinations, its always nice to hear when yours is one of the better iterations someone has experienced.