Take Root's Elise Kornack Challenges Convention, And Herself, At Every Turn

Richard Martin•

The medium, for Kornack, is now a few fresh ingredients, expertly combined, into dishes that blossom well beyond the sum of their parts. When I dined for the first time at Take Root on a dark wintry night in December, I expected the usual tasting-menu array of seasonally appropriate root vegetables, braised meats and warming flavors. This is not what I got. After that dumpling, out came an oyster, its brine cut with bright citrus from a Meyer lemon, its texture enhanced by mustard seed. Yes, squash, potato, beet and sunchoke appeared in the middle courses, but in playful contrast on the plate were (respectively) mint, trout roe, kumquat and eucalyptus.

When she delivered a plate with cabbage and lobster, she also shared a memory of her New England upbringing.

Hieronimus, her partner in life and in the restaurant, runs the beverage program and also knows how to throw the occasional devastating curveball. I was expecting a pairing with biodynamic wines, for example, but I wasn't expecting a pairing to include beer; for one course, she poured a Belgian sour ale from gypsy brewers Grimm that also surprised my palate.

To put it simply, in a way that might please Kornack herself, this was not the precious market-driven set menu place I was expecting. Sure, I'd read the glowing reports. In Bloomberg Business, critic Tejal Rao wrote, "Kornack's style is distinct, beautiful, sharply focused. Each dish seems to invite you to examine only a few ingredients very closely — and enjoy them thoroughly."

For all the accolades and chatter, Kornack's cooking is ultimately personal and thoughtful rather than flashy or stylized. It's a refreshing approach, and one that puts her at odds with the wizards of the city's other heralded tasting menus, where foams, trompe l'oeil and technique are part of the show.

In Which I Back Into A Delicate Question

As special as Take Root is, it's hard, as a writer, to ignore that it's part of a subtle movement where young chefs with artistic proclivities are dictating the menu for dinners, with few if any choices allowed. But still, I probably shouldn't ask my variation on the old "What makes you different?" question. Halfway through it, Kornack cuts me off. "Oh, we've been to all of them, the ones you're probably thinking of. Atera, Blanca, Luksus," she says, rat-a-tat–like, then adds that she and Hieronimous have yet to try the highly touted Semilla. "When people come in and talk about the other experiences, we say the thing is, on paper, yes there are similarities, but there's literally nothing alike. If you've been to Blanca or Atera, Take Root and Luksus, there's really nothing about those four experiences that are at all alike. It would be like comparing the Spotted Pig to Carbone and saying, 'Well, there's an Italian influence and they're both kind of fun places to be.' Well, they're completely different perspectives on those experiences," she says. Ultimately, she says, competition isn't a factor, and she's not angling to be thought of as part of some vanguard. "We're really private people, and we're doing our own thing."

That thing has clearly resonated, given that securing one of the 12 seats at Take Root has become almost impossible. Part of any great restaurant's allure is that the diner gets an extrasensory thrill just sitting there. The food has to satisfy, of course, but decor and vibe, people-watching and other factors influence the experience. Surely, diners' anticipation mounts as they maneuver the brownstone back streets of Carroll Gardens up this nondescript block that dead-ends at the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, mostly devoid of businesses save for this storefront dining room. The space is disconcertingly residential; even though it's filled with subdued, stylish touches, it almost feels like you shouldn't be there.

"I feel like it pushes most New Yorkers out of their comfort zone," Kornack says.  "As a chef, you're always a little bit trying to do that. Whether it be through an ingredient, or through a plating, or through a preparation or through your environment, you're trying to push people a little bit into an experience less so than just a restaurant. We have a lot of restaurants that you can just go dine and have the same experience. Being intimate in some way was part of the intention. We wanted people to feel just a touch uncomfortable before they started eating. So they're like, 'Oh, okay, I need to settle, relax. I'm in good hands; I can handle it.'"

One of Take Root's courses on a recent menu, a raw anjou pear, hollowed out and filled with liver mousse and finished with juniper berry salt.

"So many chefs choose that path, and that's totally viable, and a lot of them have looked at what I'm doing and scoffed at my schedule, or what I'm doing or how I'm doing it, and that's totally fine because I made the choice to do this, and my intention was to prove to people that I can get a Michelin star, I can be on Adam Platt's list ... and also see my wife, come home for dinner at nine o'clock on Monday night if I want to. That was important to me. It sounds snooty, and as a young person it sounds, I'm sure, probably even worse. But it's really just a good intention. I'm not trying to undermine anybody or make it seem that you don't have to put in your time — that's not it. There's just different ways of doing things, different paths to take to get to the same result. This is just the one that I wanted to do."

Clearly, she's not angling for an executive chef gig in Manhattan, and if she has plans to open a more traditional restaurant, maybe go for that second Michelin star, she isn't saying. Asked if they get approached about doing something on a bigger scale, she shoots back, "We're approached nonstop," but she's cryptic when pressed for details.

"How can we do this, but reach more people, and not lose what this was? We're taking the steps to take the steps, because we know what we want to do, but we're making sure that before we do that, there's plenty of things that are set out beforehand that will maintain the same integrity of what we're doing here," she says, and then finishes with what is surely becoming the mantra of her young career. "It's definitely going to be difficult, but I think we're up to the challenge."

Take Root, 187 Sackett St., Brooklyn, NY 11231, 347-227-7116, take-root.com

Read more FR Interviews on Food Republic:

Recommended