How One of the Midwest's Best Chefs Preserves the Taste of Summer
All photos by the author.

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Food

How One of the Midwest's Best Chefs Preserves the Taste of Summer

It’s hard to keep up with Tory Miller—the chef behind Madison's Sujeo, Graze, L'Etoile, and Estrellon—when I join him at the farmers market, where he scoops up hundreds of pounds of produce to preserve at his restaurants.

It's hard to keep up with Tory Miller. Literally. We're at the Dane County Farmers' Market in Madison's Capitol Square, and he's weaving in and out of stands so fast that I lose him again. His thick, black-framed glasses and Notorious B.I.G. T-shirt help me spot him again, hugging vendors and waving to passersby. His three-person team is trailing closely behind, wheeling with them two large wagons that are becoming increasingly full. The fact that this is the nation's largest producer-only farmers' market, complete with more than 300 vendors, doesn't make the task any easier for me in navigating the honeycomb, sunflowers, and cave aged cheeses we encounter. Miller, however, knows his route like the back of his hand.

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It wasn't always that way. "Odessa would take me around the market, and I'd be like, 'How will I remember all of these people?'" he recalls, as we walk across the street from the market to his restaurant Graze for a caffeine break. Inside it's swarming with brunch-goers, while a sidewalk coffee stand has a line 15 people deep. "It took me about two years, but now—13 years later—I know their names, their kids' names, their dogs' names, and all about them.'"

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Chef Tory Miller (center) at the Dane County Farmers' Market. All photos by the author.

When I last saw Miller it was nine hours prior at L'Etoile, his fine dining French restaurant that neighbors Graze and landed him with a Best Chef Midwest title in the 2012 James Beard Awards. He acquired the restaurant from chef and sustainable food champion Odessa Piper in 2005, and since then he has opened up three more ventures: Graze, a gastropub with farm fresh fare; Sujeo, where Miller showcases his Korean heritage, and Estrellon, his latest undertaking that features Spanish-inspired small plates. No matter the cuisine, they share a common thread: Miller's unwavering dedication to local purveyors. Every Saturday he and his team are up early—6:30 AM, to be exact—to make several trips between the Capitol and Graze, where they unload the wagons before turning around again for the list's remaining items.

All photos by the author.

Today that list is bigger than usual. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of L'Etoile, and, as such, a celebratory dinner for 140 of its closest friends, farmers, and cheesemakers is in order. Therefore, Miller needs mixed greens. We make our way to Creekside Farm's stand, where Miller sources them from friends Chris Fenendael and Mark Kupper—when he can. "Yes or no?" Miller shouts to Mark as we approach. A few suspenseful seconds pass before he responds with booming enthusiasm: "Yes!"

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Miller's smile widens. "You never know if they're going to have them," he says to me as he examines a truck-full of bagged leafy greens. "Three years ago they flooded and almost lost everything, so the next year I said, 'Everything you grow, I'll buy.'" Miller honors his word today, topping the wagons off with so much of the stuff that they're ready to again be unloaded. I assume that by now, we must be wrapping up for the day. "Oh, no," Miller confirms. "We've only made it less than halfway."

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Three hours later we're back in the kitchen of Graze, where Miller's team has already been at work organizing the purchases and readying them for distribution at his other restaurants. Through the kitchen and past the offices is a storage space complete with a blast freezer, which Miller uses to keep several of the most quintessential tastes of spring and summer, from apricots to rhubarb. "Right before market started we used the last bit of rhubarb we had from last year," Miller says. "This freezes everything to a rock-solid degree in less than three minutes, so you never damage the cell wall."

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A few rooms over is a walk-in cooler, where stacked trays are lined with that morning's findings, including donut peaches, watermelon, and heirloom tomatoes. While many of these items will hit the restaurants' menus tonight, not all of them make the cut immediately.

"The first thing we think about is how well the individual ingredients save and whether we can dry them or freeze them," he says. The next thing they consider? Practicality. "It would be super weird to pull out sweet corn from the freezer in January, so we generally only put-by fruits," he says, using a colloquial term for preservation. Today that means blueberries, of which Miller bought 100 pounds an hour earlier. "We'll typically break those out in January in a gastrique or something that would go great with duck or foie gras," he says.

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When it comes to jamming, of which Miller is particularly fond recently, it's all about the items that might not stand so well on their own. Take, for example, red currants. "You don't just eat a handful of them because they're so sour on their own, but cherries and peaches are items you can put on the plate as-is," he says. Vegetables aren't left entirely out of the long-term equation: Miller pickles ramps and green beans, in addition to blanching and shocking nettles, beet tops, and turnip greens for purées that he will then freeze for pasta dough and fillings for the winter months.

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After working in the cramped—albeit lauded—New York kitchens of Eleven Madison Park and Judson Grill, Miller realizes that his team's current put-by capabilities, thanks to the 14,000 square feet they inhabit, is a luxury. "What's trippy is that a lot of restaurants want to do these things, but they just don't have the room to pull it off," he says.

And while square footage never hurts, sometimes it's about looking beyond the kitchen doors for answers. Harmony Valley Farm, which Miller has been working with since his start at L'Etoile, supplies him throughout winter with everything from onions and potatoes to carrots and rutabaga. "Otherwise, we simply wouldn't have room for it," he says. "They use a root cellar for storage, and when we get the ingredients and wash them, they're pristine—it's pretty amazing."

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It's relationships like those that help ensure Miller is one of the most recognizable—and most friendly—faces of Madison on Saturday mornings. Back at the Capitol another purveyor waves hello to him and beckons him to her stand. Though Miller can't stop now—he's on a mad mission for anise hyssop—he reassures her of his return. "I'm coming back soon for the honeycomb, and we'll get everything—I promise," he says, throwing in some Packers pre-season commentary.

And though early morning market outings ensure his Saturdays run anywhere from 17 to 18 hours long, it's a schedule Miller wouldn't think twice about changing. "Coming out here and talking to these guys and seeing the community is really rad—it's like a festival," he says. "My other favorite thing about coming here is that feeling of suspense. What's going to be here? Is there going to be something new? Nature doesn't have a schedule, and I dig that shit, man."