"Grays pay culinary homage to the Bay"
The Gazette, by Bernice August
November 16, 2001

Ellen and Todd Gray are passionate about food. His regionally-inspired creations and her food savvy have won kudos for Equinox, their restaurant a block from the White House.

"If you're going to work this many hours in this business, you'd better do something that your heart is in and that you love," she affirms.

Theirs is a mixed marriage: She's a Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and University of Maryland grad from Chevy Chase; he was raised in Fredericksburg, Va. With Todd as chef and Ellen as general manager, the couple, both then 34, opened Equinox in 1999. The name, like the restaurant, pays homage to the seasons.

Equinox made Gourmet's, Esquire's and the Washingtonian's Best New Restaurants its first year and was featured in several Wall Street Journal articles focusing on small business.

"The first year, Todd and I felt like two kids who had stolen their parents' car and were out for a joyride in the middle of the night, going down Connecticut Avenue," Ellen Gray says. Their son Harrison, born shortly after the restaurant made its debut, added to the giddiness.

"The second year was really about cultivating our staff so we didn't have to be here 100 percent of the time. Without them, there is no Equinox," she asserts.

Equinox garnered accolades that year, too, from Bon Appetit, Conde Nast, Washingtonian and the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington.

Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsma sums up the attraction: "I always look forward to a meal at Equinox. Its chef-owner, Todd Gray, serves seasonal American food that is very much to my taste, reflecting an imagination grounded in classical training."

Todd Gray was nominated for RAMW's Chef of the Year in 2000 and 2001. The brightest feather in his cap this year is his James Beard Foundation nomination as Best Chef Mid-Atlantic, the culinary equivalent of an Oscar nomination.

The chef packs a lot of experience into his 36 years. He fell in love with classical European training at Virginia's La Petit Auberge. Following graduation from the Culinary Institute of America in 1989, he worked for four years for La Colline's Robert Greault, one of the country's few master chefs (a rigorous professional certification). Gray took his talents next to Roberto Donna's Galileo, rising in seven years from saucier to its first American-born executive chef. Gray was in charge in 1996 when Galileo won the James Beard Award. He supplemented these with stints at The French Laundry and Daniel.

"I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to do those things and I try to share that training experience with my guests and my staff," he says.

Coupling French technique and American delivery is a natural style for him, he says. "But then again, that's what all owner-chefs are about. That's why we're all different. Roberto's [Donna] Italian, Jeff Buben is a little southern and Todd Gray is mid-Atlantic.

"I'm proud of it, especially now with the American flag flying."

"It's about being local and appreciating our roots," Ellen Gray adds.

When the Grays were choosing their restaurant concept, they studied the Chesapeake Bay area.

"Chesapeake means great seafood bay in Algonquin," she notes.

They researched old cookbooks, found colonial recipes for fish and game, Algonquin corn recipes, cookie recipes like gingerbread stars and Talbot family jumbles, even retriever biscuits (dogs love them).

"We wanted authenticity and regionality," she declares.

"It's kind of fun to go back and take good historical stuff and rework it," he adds.

Since many of the recipes were originally verbal, measurements were imprecise. They took a lot of adjusting and tasting. She likens them to her grandmother's recipes.

"I learned to make gefilte fish from her and I couldn't tell you to this day, how many cups of carp or whatever, but I can just do it. Same with matzo balls."

Chef Gray is far more precise. His tasting menu (four courses for summer, five for other seasons) reflects the seasonal market basket, changing subtly week by week. He does this to provide frequent diners with new dishes, new experiences, he says.

"It's good for the staff; it's good for the customer because my kitchen staff gets to learn. They don't get as complacent as they normally would running the same menu each quarter or each season."

"Every week the menu's dated and I tweak one thing. So you'll see something new every week."

At the start of fall, Gray adds three new dishes one week and a couple more the following, so things will continually trickle up. During the course of a month, the kitchen will find 10 to 12 new dishes on the menu.

"I'll slowly phase that in and by the time we get to December, we're already thinking about winter dishes, of course. I think it's good to keep the menu rotating," he says.

If he could change it and hand write it every day, he would, but he admits that is not realistic in a restaurant this size.

"I always thought it would be fun to present a chalkboard of ingredients to people. This is what the chef is using today: squash, potato and chanterelles! That's kind of the way I like to approach it and people appreciate it."

The proof of the pudding

A lunch-time Historical Tasting from the Chesapeake Bay shows what Equinox is all about. Everything is from a 100-year-old recipe book. Each course has been given the Todd Gray treatment. The menu features little crab soup and Tidewater clams, honey glazed quail with Indian fritters and chanterelles, wild rockfish filet with butternut squash puree and fried okra, roasted pork ribs with Granny Smith apples and Calvados sauce.

Dessert is a tippler's torte, a cake recipe from the lower Chesapeake that the chef has tweaked to take on "a little more of an haute delivery." He praises his pastry chef Lisa Scruggs. "She's been so wonderful in executing the twisted ideas I give her sometimes."

Earlier this month, Taste DC.com's myriad wine-lovers gamely feasted on maple glazed quail with potato latke, frissˇ and green peppercorn quail jus; breast of Muscovy duck with celery root purˇ, Bartlett pears and red Swiss chard; Cervena venison medallion with baked forest mushroom risotto, root vegetable mirepoix and red wine, topped off with cheese, fruit and nuts. Each course paired with wines.

At the end of a dinner for 10 in Equinox's private wine room, a man eyes Scruggs' chocolate donut holes with peanut butter Anglaise, an imaginative pairing of two old favorites.

"What could be more American?" he asks.

A woman takes a spoonful of the ambrosial chocolate praline crunch with bittersweet chocolate sauce.

Asked how she likes her dessert, she replies, "Do you remember the scene in 'When Harry met Sally?' "

Knowing nods -- no further explanation needed.

The circle of life

"The most fabulous circle of life revolves in and out of this restaurant," Ellen Gray says. "The greatest thing about Equinox is the farmers are lined up at the back door, taking the shiitake mushrooms off the truck, driving in from the Rappahanock or the Chesapeake or wherever. And you've got the congressmen, the senators and the White House staff [coming] in the front door."

If people could just see how wonderful the local economy is and that the food they are eating was literally pulled out of the ground three hours ago, they would realize that we can sustain local farms, she asserts.

The argument is familiar. Alice Waters pioneered it at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Gourmet magazine's top U.S. restaurant.

"Alice Waters is the grandmother of it all for us. She really opened the whole country's eyes," says Ellen Gray. "Waters said, 'It can be grown; it can be done.' "

For the Dec. 21 Winter Solstice Farm Dinner winter, Equinox will turn to the Amish-Mennonite farmers of the Tuscarora Valley, its suppliers.

"We support local farmers, obviously there a huge part of our culture and for a very good reason because -- no farms, no food. We believe in that."

The Grays will create a farmers market with demonstrations and crafts in the garden room and outside on the patio.

"I promise hot apple cider to everybody who braves this winter and comes down here. It will be fun," she says.

Before Equinox, her career was in wholesale food marketing in New York and Washington, D.C. In 1997, she inaugurated a cooking school for Fresh Fields Whole Food Market which attracted 300 students and 100 chefs over the course of two years.

The commitment to education continues. Chef Gray is on the board of D.C.'s Marriott Hospitality High School for culinary vocational arts. Both are involved with educating at risk inner city youth through the organization First Book.

Closer to home, they have set up their own Equinox classroom offering seasonal instruction, wine education and family classes. (Their own 2-year-old recently baked his first cookies). Saturday's session, "Being Thankful," deals with food that exemplifies the coming season.

Thankful for their own good fortune, the Grays are giving back to the community. They serve as co-chairs for Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation. The spring fundraiser that fights hunger attracts the best chefs in the metropolitan area. The Grays are in their element.

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