the publican pantry

The ingredients that we’re always reaching for evolved from the idea that you start with really great product and then use great tools to enhance that flavor. So here’s our go-to list. If you have all this stuff—and none of it goes bad if you store it properly—then all you need is a perfect piece of fish or meat and some fresh vegetables, and you have dinner.

Nowadays, you can find some of these things (especially finishing salts, oils, and spices) at just about any store, especially specialty shops. To help you out, though, we’ve included our favorite purveyors on this page.

Espelette Pepper (piment d’Espelette): One of our absolute favorite ingredients at The Publican. It’s like paprika, but smokier and richer. Aleppo is like the poor man’s Espelette. We get a declassified version (it’s an AOC product) that’s way cheaper but still has about 99 percent of the same flavor and texture as the fancy stuff.

Finishing Vinegars: We primarily use two that Erling Wu-Bower is obsessed with: a 12-year-aged moscatel grape vinegar and 25-year-aged sherry vinegar. Aged vinegars, including saba and aged balsamic (two other favorites of ours) are more “round” than lemon juice, and a little softer at the edges. Every one of our cooks has these two bottles at their station, and most go through it all in one service. We also love Agro di Mosto, a balsamic condiment, or thin saba, which balances the bite of chicories with its sweetness.

Fishy stuff: Fish sauce, shiro dashi, and neonata (see this page) for their salty, umami flavor.

Hardwood charcoal: Not really a pantry item, but we prefer using this when we grill because it burns hotter and cleaner.

Herbes de Provence: For marinating or seasoning just about anything, including bread crumbs.

High-quality black peppercorns: We’re hardcore black pepper guys. (Unless we’re cooking with other peppers like red pepper flakes or Urfa pepper because peppercorns can’t compete with them.) We get great, oily tellicherry peppercorns and use them on just about everything.

Hipster peppers: Urfa, Marash, and Aleppo for smoky spice—and because no one said you have to finish every dish with black pepper.

Honey and sugar in the raw: To balance too-sharp vinaigrettes, infuse with spices (see this page), or season root vegetables for roasting to balance out any bitterness.

Indian dried coriander seed: Super-floral; we have a whole vinaigrette dedicated to it (see Watermelon and Sungold Salad, this page).

La Boite spice blends: These are less pantry items and more actual ingredients, but we’re using them for just about everything in the kitchen. More about these on this page.

Lemon juice and olive oil: The essential duo. Always freshly squeezed lemon juice. Store the olive oil in a cool place.

Nut oils: Hazelnut, walnut, pistachio, Austrian pumpkin seed, because olive oil shouldn’t get all the credit. Store nut oils in the fridge.

Pickled, cured, and preserved: Great capers, caper berries, anchovies, olives, and preserved lemon because no one said you have to use purely salt to flavor a dish.

Salt: We use sea salt for everything except seasoning blanching and cooking water. We use kosher for that and enough to make the water taste salty, like the sea. People tend to under-season blanching water, which is a mistake because we don’t want the water to just cook the vegetables, we want it to season them, too. We use Maldon salt as a finishing salt.

Wine: Make sure you don’t cook with any wine you wouldn’t drink. Crappy wine makes crappy food.

the anti-tweezer manifesto

The Publican is a revolt against the fussy, the frilly, and the frivolous. From the beginning, we’ve been set against the notion of precious, perfectly plated food—which has its place, just not at our table—and Michelin star-chasing. So what do we stand for? The celebration of great product, great cooking, great wine, great beer, great friends, and most important, collaboration—the belief that no idea is a bad idea. To me, a beautiful piece of California white sea bass that we cook perfectly and don’t do much else to is much more interesting than some sous vide baby carrots and a pesto made from their fermented and dehydrated tops. I’m not in the least bit concerned that all our food is essentially big piles of brown stuff. And if you take a look in our kitchen, you’ll see we’re using the tweezers God gave us—our hands.