Life, Liberty, and the Prociutto of Happiness: Making it in the Restaurant Business Draft 2

“Next!” Nationally acclaimed practitioner of Charcuterie, restaurant owner, author, and teacher, Brian Polcyn, stands at a table in the front of his classroom at Schoolcraft College sampling and critiquing the work of his students.

His gruff low voice booms from the gut of his meat belly out over the classroom of culinary arts students in the unmistakable accent of a Detroit native. Students come up periodically to present their work. He cuts off a piece of sausage and hastily puts it in his mouth, tossing the hot meat roughly with each chewing motion.

Meanwhile three of his students hold down the sausage stuffing machine, between panic and triumph. Other students slide around the kitchen, turning sideways to fit through small spaces, and lifting raw meat concoctions overhead as they avoid colliding with one another. There are 18 stainless steel prep areas in the middle of the room, surrounded by stoves, ovens, large walk-in fridges and sinks. The classroom smells of salt and cured meats, slabs of raw cuts laying all over the place, being dressed and stuffed and flavored by the students: sausages of cow and pig, jerky, fish, pork chops, and stuffed chicken breasts, but mostly sausages, piled in coils, or in long strings draped over pieces of equipment. There was nowhere I could stand and feel like I wasn’t in the way. In an environment where it was easy to feel like a burden, Chef Polcyn really made me feel like a guest.

Student Brian lands a smoked trout on the altar of critiquing.

“Smoked fish? Ok, watch this, she’s going to grade you. Whatever she says goes, and do not be nice.”

“I want you to ask yourself, is it pleasant to east, first and foremost?”

It was.

“Ok, is it too salty?”

No, it wasn’t.

“Is it moist?”

Ehhh it was a little dry.

“Ok, so here’s someone who doesn’t know a lot about food, but this is our customer, right? So we have to listen to her. So for a score of 1 out of 25 what would you give him?”

I gave him a 24, but Polcyn is cheeky.

“If I liked him I would do 24, but I don’t like him, so I’m gonna go 23.9.”

When he’s not grading, Polcyn barks his way around the kitchen, critiquing sanitation practices, fixing broken equipment, and cutting cured meats for sampling from the transformation room, where salted meats have been hanging, aging for years.

He was nice enough to take me in there, apparently a huge honor, “I’m taking you in my transitional room where I take no one. Not even my students. They’re all like ‘Who is this girl?’”

The transformation room was like a stainless steel version of a smokehouse from Little House on the Prarie. To the average person, it looks like a bunch of hanging, moldy ham. But this is Charcuterie. Charcuterie is the art of curing and preserving meat without cooking it.

Polcyn speaks of Charcuterie as common sense. The refrigerator has only been around for about 100 years, but people have been eating meat forever. Polcyn doesn’t just worship meat, but the fat, Polcyn learned in Italy, is where the flavor truly lies. He always has the fat-a-phobics chant “Fat is flavor, Fat is our friend, We love fat!” or tells them to “Praise the lard!”

But how does this carnivore reconcile the vegetarianism of so many of his customers?

“I don’t have a problem with it… I don’t see the importance of it, I mean you need a certain amount of fat in your diet, and I think animal fat is the best”.

Ironically, he shares his office with a vegan, and they seem to have agreed to disagree.

His space-mate made two good cases for veganism: most illnesses stem from meat consumption, doctors advising their patients to stop eating meat, so why wait until you get to that?

“He makes a good point. I hate it when he’s right”

The second reason being the land used to feed animals could feed people instead.

“Oh shit, I hate it when he’s right”.

He recognizes vegetarianism as an important value to some of his customers, taking methods of cooking meats and making them with vegetables. A terrine is typically a meatloaf style casserole wrapped in additional meat such as bacon

“I adapt the principle of the ancient craft of Charcuterie and apply it to the modern American menu. In my mind, I’m honoring the tradition, but I’m also thinking about the contemporary palate of my customers. Yeah, I know it sucks. It’s an oxymoron. It’s like saying jumbo shrimp… vegetable terrine”.

Co-author of Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, Michael Ruhlman, wrote about a conversation he had with Polcyn about the beginning of his love for Charcuterie:

“My Polish Grandma, my fathers mother, made Kielbasa every Christmas and Easter. Then my mom took over the job. We didn’t have any money so everything we used and used well. We’d grind the meat and season it. The next day we’d stuff it, tie it into big rings, hang the rings over a broom handle on chairs, put the dog out, and set the kielbasa in front of the fire overnight.

“But this romance with Charcuterie didn’t start until my early twenties, when I went to work at the golden mushroom, outside Detroit, for Milos Cihelka, a Czech immigrant, my mentor and one of Michigan’s great Chefs. I’d been cooking for five or six years and thought I knew something. But when I started grinding meat and smoking sausages for Chef Milos, I realized how little I knew. I was also fascinated by the process. I got to work early and left late. I took notes like crazy.”

Now Polcyn has an army of his own students learning from him. Polcyn describes the culinary world of apprenticeship as a responsibility to teach the next generation everything he knows.

“I expect my students to go out and teach the same, just like I do”.

He pokes at his students, and they poke right back. There’s a lot of sassiness in the classroom of Brian Polcyn, but mostly there’s respect.

Even though Charcuterie is a required class for a culinary degree at Schoolcraft, all of the students enjoy the class. “He makes it so much fun” said student Joline, a middle aged DJ on the radio, looking to do some catering work once she graduates.

Polcyn returned to teach at his Alma Mater after writing his book, and opening and closing two restaurants, and opening a third which is still owns: Forest Grill in Birmingham. His other restaurants include Five Lakes Grill in Milford, MI, which he turned into Cinco Lagos, a Mexican restaurant when Five Lakes was starting to fail. But he sees these opens and closes as normal fluctuations in the restaurant business, that have all amounted to his success

Not only has Polcyn become Nationally acclaimed in one of the toughest professions, he has done it all in the state of Michigan, independent of cities with established taste and demand for his skills. Though he attempted to cut back on complexity of menu items in order to have more time with his family, the demand in the restaurant grew to credentials that ultimately had him written up in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, nominated for a James Beard Award, Restaurant of the Year in Michigan, showcasing his talent amidst his natural and feasible habitat: “I got nationally recognized as a chef in that little community where I could raise my family and just be open for dinner. I could go coach soccer practice at four o’clock and be back at the restaurant for dinner service because it was only five minutes away. I’m a very successful business man, very successful chef, Nationally acclaimed, financially stable, I make a lot of money for being a cook. That’s not bragging, that’s fact”.

Polcyn’s accomplishments are a testament to his skill and acclaim he has built in the field, all while being a father.

Son Dylan attests that if his Dad had hauled the kids out to New York or Chicago, he would be a star on the food network right now. Why not? Because of the values that distinguished Polcyn from other chefs and the sacrifices he has made throughout his life for his family.

“For me, being a chef and married to the same woman for over 30 years, and raising five children, in this profession is more of a challenge than cooking in Michigan because the business that I’ve chosen is very demanding. What time of day do people eat dinner? Oh, in the evening… so what time of day do I work normally? Oh, yeah… see, I work when everyone else plays”.

Dylan is equally charismatic and vibrant, eager to talk about his Dad: “Every Chef is divorced. I mean every chef. The fact that they’ve made it for so long is crazy.” Dylan also recalled the absence of his father through the childhoods of his older siblings father through his childhood than his two older siblings who had a weekly ritual of watching Saturday Night Live and making grilled cheese at midnight, because that was the only time he was home.

His co-author also wrote that this craziness is not uncommon for a chef:

“It’s in the nature of the chef to accept with cheerful willingness a workload that is completely impossible. It’s a matter of pride and personal challenge, even taking on a third job when too full time jobs are really already just a little too much. And a chef does this not wineingly or with a sigh, but rather with a breezy immediate response: sure.”