It’s a warm day in August, and Charlie Trotter pops into his test kitchen wearing a fresh pastel shirt and plunges into a cooking demonstration with characteristic zeal. One swipe of his hand and his hair is ready. “Sorry,” he deadpans to his waiting staff and a television production crew. “I just got a call for an interview with Mad magazine.”
His reference to that Baby Boomer bible of irreverent humor is apropos, given the effect that a demanding three-week production schedule can have on gray matter. Yet, the seemingly indefatigable chef radiates lucid energy with just a few days to go on the production of his nationally syndicated cooking show’s second season, shot entirely on site at his Armitage Avenue restaurant and the new $350,000 kitchen built next door.
While this chef is certainly famous, the food is the real star of his show, “Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter,” which starts its second season at 2:30 p.m. Saturday on WTTW-Ch. 11. The 26 new episodes also will air on more than 200 other PBS stations.
From the temporary “cave” near the front door, director Robert Bates watches three video monitors that display images from three cameras. Camera one, manned by director of photography Brian Kimmel, supplies the mouthwatering close-ups of Trotter’s food as he puts it on a plate, but also can add shots from the high ceiling thanks to a large dolly. Behind camera two is Jerry Neuman, who captures head-on shots of Trotter as the chef talks directly to the home audience from behind the kitchen counter. Camera three is stationary, self-operating and positioned directly over the stove.
“Bob doesn’t approach this like a typical TV show director,” Trotter says. “He’s more of an artist and he’s very aware of content. He sees this as putting together a small film as opposed to putting together a cooking show.”
In fact, Bates sees it as a mini-documentary of Trotter’s unmatched skill at running a business of the gastronomic kind–and of the ideas that keep it dynamic and exciting for diners.
That perspective makes Bates a perfect fit, because Trotter will not ham it up for television. “(The production) has to be here,” Trotter says. “It’s going well and I think we’re really staying true to what we do at the restaurant. My comfort level is like this (he raises his hand toward the ceiling) compared to the first season. It took me eight or nine shows last time to begin to understand how to keep my energy up in this dead space where it’s just you and the camera and silence, and then make a connection with the camera as much as possible.”
Food crew
At Bates’ side is sound and video engineer Tom Zimmerman, who spends most of the day in front of an equipment stack with enough screens, knobs and buttons to make a curious toddler deliriously happy. It is Zimmerman who notes dryly upon a visitor’s arrival that “you can only stand just so much lobster,” a reference to Trotter’s insistence that the food he prepares for the show not go to waste.
During videotaping, Bates wears a headset and whispers into the ears of the similarly equipped cameramen on the other side. “We’re just recounting our recent drinking exploits,” he explains. Actually, he is suggesting camera angles and depths, or asking Kimmel and Neuman to get certain shots that he knows will be valuable in the final edit.
“OK,” Trotter continues, rubbing his hands together in contemplation, “we’re going to do slowly braised beef stew?”
The chef gains momentum as he goes through the ingredients with care, picking up their containers, swirling them around a bit, savoring the aroma, chopping imaginary greens in the air and psyching himself in a way not dissimilar to a runner who visualizes the race before him. Next to Trotter is Sari Zernich, a veteran member of his restaurant staff and the person who is responsible for the smooth transition of award-winning cookbook recipes to the more ephemeral television medium–and to home cooks who don’t have truffles or foie gras handy.
“So, we’ll slowly braise the beef, then we’ll add mushrooms; that doesn’t seem like very much,” Trotter says. “Are they whole or cut in half . . . I cook off some chickpeas with a little garlic and stock. Do we use them as they are or puree them?”
As it is for every dish, Trotter reviews the home stretch; the chickpea puree will be poured around the edges of the plate, cooked down carrots then are placed to jut out from the puree, the stew is placed on the plate and some herbs are added. “That’s about it,” he says.
Everyone returns to their positions, Bates asks for quiet, counts down from three and, yes, softly says “action.” Trotter nails this demo in one take; the production averages two per dish. Seven demonstrations are completed on this day; sometimes it’s fewer.
“This is not being faked in any way,” Trotter says. “And it may look extremely complex, but we can take an idea, completely deconstruct it and make it simple. We don’t have to use pigeon breast; we can use chicken breast. We don’t have to use black trumpet mushrooms; we can use button mushrooms. It’s achieving the same thing (as in the restaurant), but it’s simple and doable.”
Teamwork
It bears noting that a big part of the on-camera authenticity is the off-camera work of Giuseppe Santori, normally the restaurant’s sous chef, and former Trotter staff members who came back to help out. Because many of the dishes actually take hours to complete and Trotter will not cheat by as much as a minute, Santori–who works from the patio–and the guest chefs back in the restaurant kitchen do much of the preparatory work, often a day in advance.
“A lot of people could just shoot a show like this live and walk away from it,” Bates says. “Many do. There’s a big difference in the way we approach this show versus what the Food-TV network does. We live with this production. Every show will take about a week to edit. That means another six months or more in post production after we’re done here.”
Trotter understands, too, that he could have flown to New York, the self-proclaimed fine dining capital of the known universe, walked onto a “kitchen” set that is literally rolled into a hermetically sealed studio, juggled a few rutabagas for entertainment value, talked about a “half cup of this and half cup of that,” and taped a season’s worth of shows in two or three days. But he won’t even let the prepared dishes in his cookbooks be photographed until the food tastes exactly right.
“His approach is original,” says Dan Soles, WTTW’s director of broadcasting. “His restaurant is a Chicago institution and having Charlie Trotter back can only enhance our Saturday schedule. Even in the opening theme, there is a certain sophistication. It has an attitude and feel that makes it stand out from standard cooking show fare, and there’s a lot of that out there. There’s no question that a good production makes a difference and people don’t realize how arduous a good production can be.”
All that jazz
If you saw the show in the first season, you know the half-hour begins with an introductory film collage that takes Chicago’s pulse at night from various locations. That dovetails with on-location footage of Chicago jazz musicians doing their thing, which ties into the show’s title and a key concept that Trotter wants to impart to his home audience: Cooking and food preparation are a lot like jazz improvisation and can be far more than simple consumption.
So maybe it’s not surprising that the show is entirely unscripted, which is why everyone gathers around the kitchen counter for those “talk throughs” before Bates and his crew record the moment. They never really know what Trotter is going to do in front of the camera.
Second takes can sometimes result from Trotter’s improvisational spirit and a jerked camera trying to keep up, but more often they stem from overt glitches, such as the gourmand flies that would not be denied a piece of the action.
Hey, if you were a fly, where would you eat lunch: at the fast food chicken place down the street or Trotter’s?
