Word: overtoned
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...thick white bread for the traditional top-split hot-dog buns in this classic New England sandwich. Before setting out samples--one on grilled bread, another toasted--he has gone through half a dozen iterations, playing with the dressing and the proportions of bread, seafood, tomato and lettuce. Overton loves the grilled bread, but Cook wants to wait until he can try it with a top-split hot-dog bun before moving it forward in the menu competition. "You can only get those on the East Coast," he says. "I know it will probably taste better...
...delicate Thai eggplant, slivers of bamboo shoots and baby bok choy. Ismail has toned down the fish sauce, and instead of the rougher texture of ground fresh coconut, his curry gets a silky smoothness from coconut milk and chicken stock and an almost grass green color from cilantro puree. Overton raves but doesn't have a place...
...want Marchan to finish cooking it in the sauté pan and then assemble the layers. His lasagna looks messier than the chef's version. Okura checks the clock. "Eight minutes," he says. "Eight minutes is a long time on a busy night." Even worse, "it's a little mushy," Overton says. No one is sure why--the last-minute pasta change?--but that may have ended its chances...
...When Overton or one of the R&D chefs has a new idea in mind, Okura usually begins in his cookbook library, consulting cooking bibles such as Escoffier and Larousse Gastronomique and masters ranging from Julia Child and James Beard to Thomas Keller and Wolfgang Puck. "If David suggests something from Thailand or Argentina or Costa Rica," Okura says, he will talk to chefs with that expertise. "We will get to the core of any cuisine, any culture." Okura and his chefs may experiment with abandon, but they have a deep appreciation for the rules they're breaking...
Summer rolls without mint; puttanesca without anchovies. Those are the compromises that have made the Cheesecake Factory such an inviting target. One critic derided the "something for everyone" aesthetic as "a repository for all other corporate-restaurant concepts." Overton can live with that. "We just try to be really good, with strong flavors," he says. "Authenticity isn't anything that we really care about." He's ready for the purists who will complain that the cured meat in a new pasta amatriciana really ought to be guanciale, made from pork jowls, rather than pancetta, pork belly. "You know what? Most...