Chef shares earliest memories from father's famed restaurant kitchen and a signature dish
The fondest food memories can often be tied to a time spent sharing a meal with family. And for some, an early taste of their dad's cooking can become a catalyst to a career in professional kitchens where they continue to craft new takes on their father's food -- evoking memories and sparking new culinary inspiration.
Acclaimed chef Larry Forgione has often been hailed "the Godfather of American cuisine" for his role shaping the way Americans eat after starting the farm-to-table movement. But his role as a father helped his son Marc Forgione hone his own skills and passion for cooking from a young age, leaving a lasting impact and creating a unique bond.
Father-son chefs reflect on restaurants, recipes and kitchen memories
"For me, I just always I thought it was very cool -- I've always been attracted to the restaurant business. Even as a young kid I remember coming into the kitchen and literally feeling like I was in Disney World," Marc Forgione told "Good Morning America."
Chef Forgione recalled some of his earliest food memories were in the kitchen with his dad, who had him stand on a box to "clean lettuce or cut strawberries."
"My dad worked a lot back then so it was a big treat to spend some time in the kitchen," he said.
Whether Forgione was perfecting his dad's seasonal cuisine, working at famed New York spot An American Place or tapping his father for tutelage on opening his own successful slate of restaurants, the father-son dynamic has been a storied success.
Forgione specifically remembered cooking one of his father's riffs on a dish beloved by James Beard, called "asparagus in ambush," at the restaurant. "It was like a creamy morrel sauce with a slice of housemade black pepper brioche, Crowley cheese and Smithfield ham, which is crazy that, like, 35 years later, I can rattle those ingredients off," he said with a laugh. "I've done multiple renditions of that dish over the years."
"I don't think I realized at that time how special the ingredients I was working with were, or how kind of monumental the restaurant was at the time," he continued. "Not everybody has you know, pasture-raised lamb and wild morels and all that kind of stuff ... Once I left I realized how special and how lucky I was. Because the beginning years were very constructive. and who I am now, that's what I do, even to this day."
The chef has made his business a family affair with his dad as a trusted menu consultant and soundboard for new ideas and his sister as the general manager at his restaurant Peasant.
"I'll text him or call him or write him about an idea about a dish or something that we're doing as a special -- and he'll respond with, 'You know I did that in 1988,'" Forgione said. "It's something that happens more than you'd think. I think everything that I do has An American Place as inspiration in it."
One Fifth, Forgione's popular Italian restaurant in New York City's bustling Greenwich Village, was a years-long goal in the making that he said drew heavily on his father's heritage. "My grandfather was 100% Italian," he said.
"We've always talked about, as a family, opening an Italian restaurant because we've been cooking Italian our whole lives," he said of the restaurant. "We just never had a restaurant to showcase it. So it's been so much fun for me, my father [and] my sister -- it's been like in our DNA the whole time and now we finally get to do it."
Forgione, father to Sonny, added that One Fifth follows "in our typical forger own fashion" with local and seasonal influence -- "Like how Italians would if they lived in New York."
Forgione recently opened up his newest project, Forge, a new restaurant at 30 Hudson that replaced his eponymous spot on Reade St. in Tribeca.
As the Forgiones prepare to celebrate Father's Day, the chef shared one of his father's signature dishes, cedar planked fish, for families to try at home this weekend -- in true fashion, from An American Place.
Chef Marc Forgione's Cedar Planked Salmon
4 6oz skinless salmon filet
4 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons Dry mustard powder
Salt
black pepper mill
Pastry brush
2 soaked untreated cedar shims
2 lemons cut in half
Butchers twine
2 bricks
Instructions
Melt the butter with the mustard powder in a pot.
Light a wood fired or gas grill. Char the planks on a grill and set aside to cool.
Brush the salmon with the butter and season with salt and pepper on both sides. Do the same with the planks (on one side).
Tie 2 salmon to each plank securely, leaving at least 2in borders at ends of plank.
Put bricks on the grill as far away from each other as the planks are long. Place the planks, fish side down on the bricks and slowly roast until cooked through (about 10min).
Let rest for 1min, remove string.
Squeeze lemon and serve on the plank with whatever is in season.
An earlier version of this story was first published June 16, 2022.
