Skip navigation
On the Cutting Edge Favorite 5 Food Finds: Thomas John

On the Cutting Edge Favorite 5 Food Finds: Thomas John

Tahini and wasabi are easily acquired in quantities large enough to be included in Au Bon Pain’s dishes, but the chain’s executive chef, Thomas John, still can’t find one ingredient in the state and volume he desires: hearts of palm.

“You get those canned ones,” John says, “but the fresh ones from Hawaii make a great salad.” However, he’d need “thousands of pounds” if the hearts were added to a dish at the 262-unit bakery-cafe chain based in Boston. ABP also operates kiosks, nontraditional locations and a catering business.

John, who is also ABP’s senior vice president of food and beverage, incorporates out-of-the-ordinary elements in dishes “to keep the adventurous foodies going,” he says. However, he teams such oddities with more familiar foods to “balance it out with stuff that people know.” So dishes appeal to diners with widely diverse tastes.

FAST FACTS

JOB: executive chef and senior vice president of food and beverage, Au Bon Pain, BostonCAREER HIGH POINTS: serving as chef of Mantra when the Boston restaurant was named one of the Top 75 Restaurants in the World by Condé Nast Traveler; being included in a Best New Chefs list compiled by Food & Wine; rolling out Au Bon Pain’s line of hot sandwiches baked in parchment paper and the Portions selection of small plates, including desserts, all under 200 caloriesTYPICAL BREAKFAST: fried-egg sandwich on toasted ciabattaFAVORITE SNACK: grilled flatbread pizza; rice and a sauce, like pesto or tomato; Au Bon Pain’s Brie Cheese PortionsBEVERAGE OF CHOICE: water and Au Bon Pain’s French Roast CoffeeINGREDIENT YOU’D LIKE TO FIND BUT CAN’T: fresh hearts of palm

For example, he adds a touch of wasabi to a smoked wild-salmon breakfast sandwich with Neufchatel cheese smeared on a dill-onion bagel. When that item was launched, sales exceeded expectations. In the dish, the wasabi acts like horseradish, cutting the rich fish while offering slight heat and some intrigue for diners looking for food adventure in the morning. But the wasabi’s heat is also mild enough not to offend more conservative palates. There’s also a touch of ginger in the sandwich.

Similarly, Asiago cheese crisps—crackerlike discs made out of cheese—add a unique flair to the chain’s roast beef sandwich with romaine lettuce and Caesar salad dressing.

During his four years on the job at Au Bon Pain, John, who had been the celebrated chef of the upscale Indian-influenced restaurant Mantra in Boston, not only has introduced ingredients new to the quick-service industry, he also has rolled out cooking innovations for the segment. He launched, for instance, a line of en papillote grab-and-go sandwiches. For those he uses the classic French method of cooking and serving them warm in parchment paper.

Comparing his work as an executive chef to cooking at a fine-dining restaurant, John, who was trained at the highly regarded Oberoi Culinary School in India, says he has less contact with customers now.

“Although your food is consumed by a million people every week, you don’t get the feedback right away,” he says. “There are so many different challenges here, and there is such a big learning curve.”

“To be honest,” he adds, “I haven’t had the time to miss it” because he’s so busy rolling out many different dishes.

Ancho chile

One of Au Bon Pain’s upcoming rollouts, scheduled to debut in January, is a chicken sandwich with a cold ancho chile sauce on Farmhouse bread with red onion, crushed black beans, sliced tomatoes, romaine lettuce and a bit of guacamole. John describes ancho, a dried poblano pepper, as “not very spicy,” adding, “There’s a bit of sweetness to it and a very mild paprika flavor.”

This chile sauce “is slow-cooked and has a thick consistency,” John says. “It is mild and very well-rounded and tastes great with anything. While we were playing around with it, we would put it with anything and everything.”

The sauce also is being tested in a spicy quinoa and roasted-vegetable wrap, and it is prepared with sautéed garlic and onions, cumin, oregano and tomato purée.

Quinoa

Speaking of the South American grain quinoa, John says, “We started working with it last year because of the growing popularity of it in fine dining.”

John also is testing quinoa as a warm breakfast cereal similar to oatmeal with honey, toasted walnuts and cinnamon in ABP’s business-and-industry locations. It is priced about the same as oatmeal. His on-site consumers may visit up to three times a day, “so that is why we have a lot of LTOs,” or limited-time offers. John says he aims to enliven flavors each season. Grains work well any time.

There are a lot of sweet and savory applications for quinoa, he explains. Also in the pipeline is a quinoa salad served cold with black beans, sun-dried tomato pesto and spinach.

Au Bon Pain’s salads are made at the store levels, breads are typically baked at an Au Bon Pain commissary and proprietary sauces are produced by outside vendors, John says.

“Quinoa is not very expensive,” John adds. “Initially, I thought it wasn’t recognizable. But it has done well.”

Besides being a “very nutritional grain,” quinoa is easy to source, he says.

“It was abundantly available,” he adds.

Whole grains

Also plentiful and healthful, whole grains have found favor in John’s larder.

“It started with health initiatives, which are big at Au Bon Pain,” he says. “We wanted to improve the quality of the carbs and come up with more whole-grain and multigrain products.”

The trick is to keep the whole-wheat flour white, he says, adding that “people may be turned off when bread is brown.” His white whole-wheat flour includes about 25 percent whole wheat and is used in such items as a whole-wheat chocolate croissant that is currently in test in “a small market.”

“You will not realize it’s whole wheat,” John says.

In fact, at the point of purchase for the croissant, “we do not say it is healthy,” he says. “But I assure you that you will get maximum pleasure out of it. It is an indulgence. It doesn’t have less calories.”

So what makes the pastry more healthful?

“Your body processes it slowly,” John says. “We do have a halo of having fresh and healthy food. We do not say we are a healthy restaurant. We understand if you make it absolutely healthy, it wouldn’t taste good.”

But guests see a benefit and pay more for the new chocolate croissants, which carry a 10-percent-higher price tag than the traditional pastry.

Despite a smaller portion and higher price, the Chocolate Wheat Croissant is selling well, says general manager Sissy E. Nunez-Valdez of the ABP Port Authority store on Eighth Avenue in New York City, where it’s being tested at $2.89. She says guests notice the differences in size and price.

Nevertheless, she’s a fan of John.

“He believes in what he does,” she says, “and I wouldn’t put anything out that I don’t believe in.”

Nunez-Valdez, 42, who has been at her job in New York for three months, confirmed her confidence in John’s intuition by noting that she has shed 30 pounds following a strict diet and consuming much of ABP’s Portions selections since moving to her new location. The brand-new grandmother moved from the Boston area.

Hazelnuts

Compared to other nuts, hazelnuts are “more expensive—one and a half times more than almonds,” John says. “But you don’t need as much of them,” because of their full flavor.

Plus, hazelnuts are unique, he says.

“Walnuts, almonds and peanuts are used too much,” John says, “and we thought they were kind of passé.”

So this fall hazelnuts appear in seasonal salads, cookies and dressing. A monkey bread that John describes as “small pieces of dough stuck together with a hazelnut paste and caramel” was offered as a recent LTO.

Tahini sauce

While looking for an accompaniment for a yet-to-be-released baked falafel wrap, John was won over by tahini, or ground sesame seeds that are traditionally added to hummus. At the same time he was developing a grilled-chicken sandwich with grilled eggplant that was slated for a summer 2009 launch. It turned out the tahini tasted great on the chicken sandwich as well, and that product is now scheduled to debut systemwide before the falafel.

“Everybody loved the tahini sauce,” John says. “We played with it so that it suits a more broader palate. Normally, it has a little bit of bitterness in it. So we toned that down with olive oil, lemon juice and a little bit of chickpeas.”

Hide comments

Comments

  • Allowed HTML tags: <em> <strong> <blockquote> <br> <p>

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Publish