He has partnered with the Skylark Diner in Edison to upgrade and update its dinner menu and tweak the execution of other dishes wherever they might be improved.
The aim is to create what he and owner Constantine Katsifis are calling a new category of dining. They don’t have a name for it, but they say the intent is "to converge bistro quality food and diners."
Fine Dinering, anyone?
There are two other important pieces to the puzzle. One is sommelier Courtney Smith, a young but experienced veteran of New York restaurants including Cru. She has assembled an intriguing list of 100 wines priced mainly from $20 to $100, with a few ringers just for fun, like a 2005 Meritage "Opus One" from Mondavi-Rothschild, for $220.
In a diner? Well, yes. Though not wearing a tastevin, Smith will be on the floor of the Skylark every night, from about 2 pm until midnight or later, just talking up wine, gathering comments, and showing a nifty book she put together with very readable tasting notes, photographs and a biography of the vineyard and vintners for each wine.
The other significant addition is baker Walter Grohs, who held that position at the Ryland Inn under Shelton. Judging by an onion focaccia and a rustic white bread of his I tasted this morning, the man can flat-out bake. He’ll be doing everything from the hamburger rolls to pies and cakes.
Smith and Grohs are full-time employees of the Skylark. Shelton, whose title is Guest Chef, will be on premises more-or-less full-time for about the next six months. He has adapted about 150 of his recipes for the Skylark, and will continue to raise the kitchen staff’s comfort level with preparing them.
At any one time, about 50-60 Shelton dishes, divided between starters and main courses, will be on the Skylark’s lunch and dinner menus, though if you want to eat Thai-roasted garlic shrimp or Vietnamese pork sticks at 10 in the morning, that’s fine too.
It should be mentioned that the Skylark was not your average diner even before Shelton came on the scene in June. (His menu debuted in September.) The fanciful Jetsons-Meets-Hullabaloo retro architecture is a hoot, but not so over-the-top that that the place lacks gravitas, or gravy, as the case may be. It has plenty of customers and is part of a group, headed by CEO Katsifis, that includes the Colonial Diner in East Brunswick, the Americana Diner & Lounge in East Windsor, and the Pines Manor banquet and reception hall in Edison.
Shelton and Katsifis have known each other for years, and their collaboration began with a phone call from the CEO to the chef last June. That month, while in Chicago for the restaurant trade show, they sat down over dinner at Charlie Trotter’s esteemed establishment and started talking. When they got up, they had a plan, or the beginnings of one.
For Shelton, "One of the most dogging problems we have in New Jersey" is finding really good food at a reasonable price at a place that is kid friendly. "I’ve been puzzling how to do this," he says. "Because the diner is open 20 hours a day, it’s possible to superimpose these dishes of mine without adding overhead and very little additional labor."
Hence the reasonable prices ($7 for a plate of garlic shrimp with a cucumber salad, $23 for a New York strip steak au poivre with hand-cut fries. Both of those I tasted today, along with a bunch of other things, and everything was very good, even though we started the tasting at 10 in the morning.
And Courtney Smith was there, serving a wine matched to each course. Who says we food writers don’t go that extra yard for our readers?
In Part Two of this post, I’ll talk more about the food and the philosophy behind it.