The Culinary Adventures of Traci Des Jardins

Do you eat brussels sprouts now?

Yeah love them.

Do you remember the first thing you cooked on your own?

I used to make chocolate chip cookies with my mom when I was three.

Your restaurant Jardiniere has been open for more than a decade- with new restaurants opening all the time, what do you do to keep the menu current and relevant?

I have handed over a fair amount of the creativity to my chefs at Jardiniere. They have a lot of input. That helps to keep things changing and moving. My chefs in general are people who have worked for me for a long long time. That's part of it. As I was just saying to my staff, "If you are not going up you are going down." We are constantly looking for ways to improve ourselves to do new and interesting stuff. We talk about it in management meetings and really work to keep the restaurant fresh. We did a redo when the restaurant was ten years old. We started these Monday night prix fixe dinners for $45, that feature foods from around the world. We are doing Yom Kippur break the fast- on Mondays we do off the wall stuff that we wouldn't normally do. I guess that's how we keep it fresh.

When we met, you were just about to leave for your trip to Mongolia? Did you find a boar?

We did not kill a boar. We killed a roebuck which is like a small deer. We did not get a boar- we saw some one day, but were not able to get one.

Did everyone make a different recipe with the roebuck meat?

That's kind of what we did. There were five of us chefs. We broke down the animal and each of us took a different part and did something with it. It was a total collaboration. It was really fun.

How was the meal?

It was delicious. The animal was freshly killed. It definitely could have benefitted from hanging for a a few days or a week, but it was our last day in camp so we had to eat it that night. The meat was really, really good.

What were your impressions of Mongolia?

It is stunning. It is really, totally other worldly like no other place I have been.

Do you have another culinary adventure planned with this group of chefs?

We don't have one yet on the books, but we talked about going wild pig hunting in Spain. We talked about lots of things when we were on the trip. I think I am going duck hunting at the end of October with Loretta Keller.

In December the Ritz-Carlton Highlands, Lake Tahoe is opening. You are opening your new restaurant Manzanita in the hotel. How did you get involved with that project? What are your plans for the restaurant?

I had always wanted to do a ski mountain restaurant. I am an avid skier. It has always been something that is really interesting to me. I was approached by the Ritz-Carlton. They wanted a signature chef restaurant. We started talking. It was a good fit. That's how the project came to be. As far as the food goes, we wanted to have an urban feeling to it. The restaurant is going to have an urban look, pretty sophisticated as well as the hotel. The hotel rooms are modern. The restaurant will be sophisticated, but not formal. There are no tablecloths. It will have an end of the ski day kind of feel to it. I want the food to appeal to people who have been exercising all day. Pizzas, pastas, rustic roasted meats, big casseroles, the kind of food you want to eat after a day of exertion. We will change the menu seasonally, using local products from around the Lake Tahoe region.

Have you started meeting the farmers and growers in the Lake Tahoe area?

Yes and there are a lot. The Sacramento Valley is close. It is a rich agricultural land. There are also growers in the lower foothills of the Sierras and in the Reno area. We have access to really good product.

Next week you are coming to Los Angeles for the 27th Annual American Wine & Food Festival benefitting the Los Angeles chapter of Meals on Wheels. Did Wolfgang Puck call you personally to invite you to participate?

No he did not, but I have known him for a long time.

What will you be making at the event?

I am going to make marinated, cured Monterey Bay sardines on escabeche. I am also going to make Liberty Farm duck meatballs sliders with a fresh fig compote. It is a pretty exciting event. Everyone makes really pretty booths, a lot of elaborate displays. It's a lot of fun.

Do you work with other non profit organizations?

I do a lot of philanthropic work. I do a lot of work for SOS: Share Our Strength, the international hunger relief organization. I have chaired their fundraiser in San Francisco for the last five years. I was on the board for eight years for an incubator kitchen in San Francisco called La Cocina. It is basically helping low income women, who are getting started in food service businesses providing them with infrastructure and a commercial kitchen to work in.

Your first restaurant job was with Joachim Splichal in Los Angeles. How long did you live here?

All together I lived in LA for about five and a half years.

What is your favorite thing about LA?

The light. I love the way the light looks there. There is something about it. It is probably why they shoot so many movies there. That is my favorite thing about LA.

Do you have a favorite place to eat here?

I love to eat sushi when I am in LA. There is a lot of really great sushi there.

Do you have a favorite LA sushi bar?

I don't. Mary Sue Milliken is one of my best friends. I usually just hang out with her. She has a great house in Mar Vista. When I come to LA honestly I don't go to a lot of restaurants, but we do go out for sushi. She goes to the farmers market we hang out at her house with her family, sit by the pool, cook, and just have a good time.

What is one brand new ingredient that you have found lately to incorporate into your food? Or something you like, that you hadn't really used before?

Nothing new, but I have come to this revelation about this whole heirloom tomato craze. We have all these beautiful different color tomatoes. I remember when they first started to show up a long time ago, everyone was kind of crazy about them. They look great on plates. You can do all kinds of cool stuff with them. Now there are these type of farming that a lot of people are doing here in Northern California called dry farms tomato farming. They grow Early Girl Tomatoes close to a water source, but they starve them of water. The roots go really deep. They are the most delicious tomatoes. Now I have come to the conclusion that, I am totally over the whole heirloom tomato thing, all I want is those dry farm early girls.

The 27th American Wine & Food Festival benefitting Meals on Wheels is October 2-4. Meet Traci Des Jardins on October 3rd at the event at Universal Studios Backlot, 5-11pm.

To hear more about the Mongolia hunting trip listen to Evan Kleiman's interview with Mary Sue Milliken on KCRW's Good Food.