GREEN ZONE Matt Chasseur and Ashley Fees Chasseur met at Chicago’s Alinea and opened Pêche in Palisade, Colorado, in 2019.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineThe pork belly at Pêche arrives at the table still sizzling in a small cast-iron skillet, nestled against a sunny-side-up duck egg. The waiter then instructs diners to mix in a bowl of fresh greens that wilt after absorbing pork fat and heat. The dish reminds me of a spinach salad recipe from my childhood, in which just-cooked, bite-size pieces of bacon and spoonfuls of bacon fat, still warm, were tossed with raw spinach to dress and slightly cook the greens. In dishes like this at Pêche, chef Matt Chasseur has sourced something deeply familiar from our collective consciousness, excavated elemental flavors and textures, then radically improved them.
Pêche’s gargouillou, an homage to Michel Bras’s version of the dish, makes use of local, seasonal produce.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineChasseur and his wife, Ashley Fees Chasseur, opened the restaurant in August 2019 in Palisade, Colorado, a town of 2,736 people on the western edge of the state, less than an hour from Utah. Travelers are used to finding small-town culinary treasures like Pêche outside the U.S.: osterias in the hill towns of northern Italy that outdo anything in the cities, Michelin-starred roadside establishments dotted across rural France or gourmet tapas joints in Basque country. America’s rural towns have many things going for them, but with few exceptions, they’re not known for fine dining. Most great “rural” American restaurants are close to a major city—think of the French Laundry or Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Pêche is not: Although the small city of Grand Junction is less than a half hour down the road, Denver is about four hours away.
The restaurant, at left, on Palisade’s Main Street.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineDespite this, Pêche has managed to survive—even thrive—at a time that’s proven cataclysmic for many restaurants. Part of this owes to the Chasseurs’ talent, but there’s also something in the approach Pêche takes to its employees and to the surrounding community. Pêche didn’t adopt this approach because of the pandemic, but it happened to prove salvational in the face of the crisis.
Matt and Ashley, both 36, met at Chicago’s temple of culinary modernism, Alinea, where she worked in the front of the house and he was in the kitchen. Matt eventually became chef de cuisine under head chef Grant Achatz, watching the restaurant earn three Michelin stars. Matt and Ashley loved the discipline, tenacity and uncompromising integrity of Achatz, whom they worked with as he battled stage 4 cancer of the tongue. What they liked less were 60-to-70-hour workweeks that made it a challenge to go for a run or a hike, never mind raise a family.
A greenhouse at Pea & Posy, which supplies Pêche.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineThere’s a well-trodden path to achieving work-life balance in the restaurant world: Owners get a new place up and running, make it profitable, then gradually allow others to take over daily operations. But the Chasseurs loved cooking and getting to know their customers. What’s more, they didn’t want a better balance just for themselves, they wanted it for their entire staff. An obsession with work—and overwork—has penetrated the upper echelons of the restaurant industry so thoroughly that the idea of a world-class restaurant that doesn’t demand total devotion from head chefs and line cooks is almost inconceivable.
HAPPY VALLEY The Colorado River runs through Palisade, providing irrigation to local farms that cultivate peaches, wine grapes and other produce.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineThe Chasseurs realized that it would be harder to create the work culture they wanted in a place like Chicago or New York, where rent eats up much of the profit. So they searched for a small town, closer to the sort of environs where Matt grew up in New Hampshire, or Ashley in Iowa. When the space Pêche now occupies became available, they drove down to have a look at the setting and decided to open there.
“We want people to be able to be great at their jobs,” says Ashley, “but also to take advantage of where we are: to hike, to run, to bike and to get out in nature all the time.” Matt’s time at some of the top kitchens in the world helped make this happen: He cross-trained his entire kitchen staff so that every cook could do every task, made sure the workload was evenly distributed and organized kitchen labor as a series of focused sprints. He even discouraged the typical practice of chefs arriving very early to prep for dinner, insisting they work fewer hours but more efficiently.
Fresh-cut local flowers bound for the restaurant.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineDriving into Palisade, where the Colorado River flows, feels like finding a cool glass of water after traversing the parched brown desert that surrounds it. Part of what convinced the Chasseurs to open here is how the town is the breadbasket for the region, with peach trees (hence the name Pêche), wine grapes, tomatoes and herb gardens. It’s also surrounded by natural features that make it a mecca for hikers and mountain bikers. The Colorado National Monument—steep canyons bisected by hiking trails and populated by bighorn sheep—is not far.
Pêche opened in the late summer of 2019. The Chasseurs figured that six months of off-season would allow them to hone the menu in preparation for a busy 2020. As they followed the news of pandemic-related closings across the country in March, the couple started to think about what they’d do if Colorado shut down. They secured a food truck permit and began planning what to sell. Then word came down on March 17 that all restaurants in Colorado had to end dine-in service. They immediately decided to find a way to stay open.
Matt Chasseur’s steak frites, made with prime rib eye, is Pêche’s most popular dish.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineTo start offering delivery, they contacted a local Nissan dealership to borrow a vehicle. The chef-owner of the restaurant that preceded them, Hiro Izumi, volunteered to be their delivery person. The Pêche dining room became a playpen for the Chasseurs’ two daughters. Within a day of shutdown, Pêche was back up and running, offering a new daily menu, sometimes selling meal kits for takeout and consolidating inventory into one freezer and refrigerator so they could reduce electricity costs. The aim wasn’t profit, it was survival. “We had to make sure there was a restaurant our staff could come back to,” says Matt. The model the Chasseurs had adopted, with relatively low overhead and locals as their most valued clientele, turned out to be agile and resilient. While they had to lay off 20 employees at the height of the pandemic, they later hired back 18.
PLATE EXPECTATIONS One of Pêche’s signature dishes: Lamb loin and lamb kofta with cauliflower and naan bread.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineCustomers started tipping on meal kits, even though the Chasseurs tried to dissuade them, saying that they were the owners and didn’t work for tips. People kept leaving gratuities, and the couple decided to pool the money and use it to provide meals to first responders, grocery store employees and other essential workers in the area.
When Colorado announced that it was allowing restaurants to reopen at the end of May, the Chasseurs invited their staff back to work. They cleaned up their backyard storage space and turned it into a patio, spread out tables along Main Street and opened their doors. Guests flowed in.
RINSE AND REPEAT Radishes from Blaine’s Farm, one of the local growers that supplies Pêche with fresh produce.
Photo: by Kyle RM Johnson for WSJ. MagazineThe Chasseurs soon realized Covid-19 was having an unanticipated effect: Residents of prosperous areas across the West and Southwest who normally might have jetted off to Umbria or Catalonia for the summer were sticking around to explore America. What these diners found at Pêche—in dishes like lamb loin with lamb kofta, or flatbreads with ricotta salata and fresh local peaches—was more sophisticated than what they’d been able to cook at home but also felt comforting and familiar.
In the late summer and fall, Pêche had its best weeks since opening. “The springtime was scary,” Ashley says. “We didn’t know if the restaurant would make it. But we were fortunate to experience this our first year. It made us realize what we need to survive.” The Chasseurs seem relieved to have parted ways with the ethos of most fine-dining establishments. “This experience has forced us to probe everything and figure out what is essential,” says Matt. “It’s important for us and our staff to have a life outside of the restaurant. That doesn’t just make people happier, it also makes the mood at work so much better and the mindset so much clearer.” •
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December 08, 2020 at 08:30PM
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