Culinary arts meet fine arts every night at dinner at Chez Philippe. Keith Clinton, the chef de cuisine at the restaurant in The Peabody, collaborates with local artists and craftspeople to create unusual custom-made vessels to hold his food creations.
“Guests ask about all the pieces — tableware, plates, and bowls — we’re using for our food,” Clinton says. And he tells them, “This plate was specifically designed for this food and this food only.”
As he puts it, “It’s a way for us to support our local makers and our local arts scene and for us to showcase beautiful dining, in general.”
Clinton has had about 20 custom pieces made. “Maybe 60 percent of the menu is on custom-made, locally made ceramics and locally made woodworking things. I text these makers with an idea. And usually that idea is really vague. I’m not the best at describing what the finished product is. I show them the shape of this thing I want and they end up bringing me something even better.”
The artists are good about “rolling with it and coming up with something so beyond my dreams,” he says. This is their area of expertise. “So, I trust them.”
Customer reaction to the tableware is positive. And, says Clinton, “I’m loving that the guy is picking up on this plate and this spoon and I can tell him the name of the man or the woman who made it.”
Clinton began using custom-made tableware about a year and a half ago. He’d seek out artists at craft fairs and farmers markets, buy a couple of their pieces, and, if he liked their style and what they were making, he’d say, “Let’s create together.”
One of the artists was Blake Conner from Dirt Studios. Clinton needed something to hold his spear-shaped savory beignets stuffed with chanterelle cream and shaved truffles. “You can’t really put it on a plate because it rolls around. And we needed a vessel to get it to the table without it rolling around.”
He sent Conner a “very crudely drawn” picture of what he had in mind — a little doughnut-hole-shaped piece with more rounded edges. “And then he sketched out some stuff and sent it back to me. I said, ‘Let’s make a prototype.’ He made one and I ordered 20.”
Conner also makes little cornet holders for Clinton’s smoked potato and caviar. It was “a very human process to get this conical shape. What was difficult was trying to make them all the same size,” he says.
Clinton also enlisted ceramicist Stephanie Turner to make pieces, including “a flat plate that didn’t have beveled edges. A lot of plates have the big rim. We wanted something flat that way, but when we put a spoon on there, it elevated what was on it,” says Clinton.
He wanted the piece for his New York strip dish with foraged morels and local lettuce tendrils. “I was fascinated with this idea. She was able to make it come to life.”
Sometimes, Clinton’s culinary creation begins with the plate instead of the reverse. “I want to do something with this plate and I want to build on it.” He also looks locally for unusual tableware. “I’m spending my off days going to antique malls and estate sales trying to find decanters.”
Clinton has had many opportunities to imagine new vessels. “Right now, I’m on my 83rd menu change. We change the menu a lot.” And, he says, “A lot of these things have a lot of crossover and multi-use. I can use them three or four different ways.”
Clinton, who drew and painted when he was in high school, feels like he’s still doing that but “just in a different way. We’re just trying to tell our story. And part of the way we do this is creating the dishes that go underneath the food. And that’s important to us, as well.”
Since Clinton has been at Chez Philippe, the restaurant has been awarded the AAA Five Diamond Award, the highest award in the AAA Diamond Program.
Another one of Clinton’s high points is the upcoming birth of his second child. His wife, Meredith, is having a baby daughter in October.
