To this day, I still make a big pot of this chili quarterly.
Some days we would sell out of the giant batch we made fresh daily - but I knew I could always grab a bowl the next time. Those were good years, and I remember fondly at the end of the shift helping myself to a big bowl of the black bean chili for which they are so famous - and I never tired of it. I also learned about production, and how you couldn’t lose accuracy as you picked up speed. How to balance the acid in a finished dish. How to extract maximum flavors from vegetables and legumes through roasting, sauteeing, blanching or grilling.
Everyone on that staff was so generous in teaching me all that they had learned in their cooking careers. I loved all the various stations at Greens, and I couldn’t have asked for a more respectful, compassionate crew.ĭeborah Madison had since moved on, but Annie Somerville was the Executive Chef and a guy named Jay ran the kitchen. When I graduated from school, I started working there full-time and over the next two years I worked my through the various stations: prep, saute, pizza, brunch baker, salads/appetizers, soups/stews, grill, and then finally cooking for their fancier prix fixe menu. You see, about twenty five years ago I had the pleasure to be one of the cooks there I started out doing kitchen prep at Greens part-time as I put myself through a San Francisco cooking school. Greens Restaurant’s Black Bean Chili is that dish for me. They spell comfort, familiarity and a happy co-existence with your gut, and you’ve made it so often that you can crank it out in your sleep. I guess some homemade dishes just resonate with you - and so year after year you return to them. It’s funny when you find yourself eating almost the exact same dish you made decades ago.
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