Shannon Overmiller, Majestic Cafe, Alexandria, Va.

A Dining Trend That's Here to Stay

Call it what you want: back to basics, locavorism, the Slow Food movement, farm to table—it’s part of the not-so-new order of cooking and eating that involves whole ingredients sourced locally to make the freshest, tastiest food possible.

But is there anything new that can possibly be said about this nationwide trend? Washington-area chefs Scott Drewno (The Source by Wolfgang Puck), who was the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington’s winner of the 2010 Chef of the Year, and Shannon Overmiller (The Majestic), think so.

In fact, they say this is the year the movement goes from fad to institution.

Washington Flyer: How have restaurants around town reacted to sourcing locally?

Shannon Overmiller: Obviously, there has been a strong movement toward natural and rustic food—you catch it, you cook it, you eat it. But things have moved in the opposite direction, too, and there’s the molecular stuff going on and experimentation with futuristic and scientific preparations using chemical techniques, processes and equipment to get the production chefs want.

WF: But they’re doing it with fresh and local ingredients—that seems to be a big difference. So now that this idea is planted firmly in chef and consumer consciousness, where does it go from here?

Scott Drewno: We’ll see more pure food as opposed to 27 different things on the plate or chefs adding so many elements to the dish that they lose what they were trying to achieve.

WF: Is it a fine-tuning of these slow-food principles?

SO: Yes. Restaurants will try to make things from scratch—even condiments. As people become more aware of where their food is coming from, seasonality is going to become stronger and a major force in all cooking.

WF: Will there be a specific food that becomes a must-have on every menu?

SD: I think it will be something off the beaten path and not as well known, like trotters [pigs’ feet] or chitlins [pigs’ intestines].

WF: Well, that will make soul-food fans happy! What direction will your restaurants take?

SO: I want to make the plates a little neater and more refined. Our menu is all about comfort food, and we will always have dishes like our meatloaf. But we’ve been experimenting with different nationalities that are not too far off of our style of cuisine. This winter, we’re thinking about doing an Asian-style fried fish with a soy and ginger sauce. We’ve always had a grilled orata, so we’re going to experiment with a whole fried fish, which we’ve never done before.

SD: My focus lately has been on traditional Chinese dumplings. Our mission at The Source has always been to take traditional Asian dishes and modernize them for fine dining. I’ve been working on how to re-create dumplings while maintaining their fundamental Chinese integrity.