The story of how each ingredient ends up on a restaurant plate often goes untold. For his latest book, The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food, Andrew Friedman goes behind the scenes of Wherewithall, a Chicago restaurant that closed in 2023, to discover how the ingredients in a particular plate of food arrive at the table.
Lloyd Nichols holds a Brandywine tomato that will end up on a plate with dry-aged strip loin and sorrel. Photo by Andrew Friedman.
The dish in question is a dry-aged strip loin with tomato and sorrel. Friedman begins his journey on the kill floor at Slagel Family Farms, an operation run by fifth-generation ranchers. He describes the dignity that goes into raising and slaughtering livestock and explains the surprising expenses, including providing an on-site office for a USDA inspector.
"For anyone who thinks restaurant meals are expensive, there are things you would never think of that small purveyors have to pay for out of pocket," Friedman says.
Author and podcast host Andrew Friedman has previously written about the Bocuse d'Or and the free spirits behind American cuisine. Photo by Evan Sung.
He rides shotgun on a delivery route for Nichols Farm with Marc Hoffmeister. At the farm, Friedman meets Lloyd Nichols who grows the Brandywine tomatoes used in the dish. The process stretches from winter to summer because he grows them from seed.
As Friedman spends time with Hoffmeiser, who admits he would never have enjoyed an office job, he sees his passion for his work, something he notices in everyone he encounters in the industry.
"The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food" painstakingly follows ingredients from the farm to the dining table. Photo courtesy of Mariner Books.