In economic terms, coming up with multiple dishes from one
animal makes it possible to cook on a budget without sacrificing
quality. It also induces creativity: Hellen, who designs tasting
menus for tables who order one of his whole animal dinners,
constantly develops new dishes to keep things interesting. “I like
to do something unique,” he tells me. (His walk-in is a vegetarian’s
chamber of horrors: shelves piled with lamb’s brains, twelve kinds
of house-made charcuterie, a pig’s head, and so on.)
Most important, though, stretching an animal is good on an
ethical level. It’s a way of honoring the animal by using all of its
parts. And ethics is something that Hellen thinks about when
buying meat for the restaurant. “Emotionally, if an animal is
stressed when it dies,” he explains, “the muscles tighten. Plus
there’s so much other stuff in industrial meat, it’s really bad for
you. You should only buy meat that’s raised ethically.”
As ethical as he is when it comes to buying his meat, he’s
hardly a well-behaved schoolboy when it comes to what he does
with it. Never mind the competitions he has with his fellow chefs
to see who can eat the grossest part of the animal (he’s eaten pig’s
eyeballs); Hellen can whip leftover meat into something so
decadent, you’d never know it was made with kitchen scraps.
Take, for example, his Leftover Lamb BLT made with lamb left
over from the leg. He compresses the meat overnight so that it
stays together when he sears it, then he places it on bread
slathered with homemade mayo and topped with lamb bacon and
the obligatory lettuce and tomato. He presses it all in a waffle