As co-owners of the Swoon Kitchenbar in Hudson, husband-and-wife team Jeffrey Gimmel and Nina Bachinsky spend their days cooking, eating, shopping, sleeping, and watching subtitled French movies of Michelin three-star chefs together. They even finish each other's sentences.
"We spend a lot of time together," Bachinsky says.
"Every day," adds Gimmel.
Gimmel's love of cooking came from his family, whose daily routine revolved around the questions, "What's for lunch?" and "What's for dinner?" As a boy, Gimmel and his family vacationed in the tiny Rhode Island beach town of Matunuck, and he spent his summer days digging clams, catching fish, and prying oysters from the rocks to cart home to his grandmother. "She made everything delicious," he says.
After attending culinary school in Providence, Rhode Island Gimmel studied in the South of France with Roger Verge at Le Moulin De Mougin, where he was influenced by the "food of the sun" style of cooking. This approach to food, he explains, celebrates vegetables and olive oil as main ingredients, as opposed to serving them on the side. After Gimmel returned from Europe, he cooked at several restaurants in Manhattan, most notably the acclaimed Michael's. It was there, eight years ago, that he met Bachinsky, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, ballet dancer, photographer, and pastry maker who was destined to become his wife and cooking partner. True to their current form as a couple, Gimmel was head chef and Bachinsky was rolling pastries.
After tiring of city living in 2000, the couple traveled to New Zealand to study artisanal winemaking and to upstate New York to learn cheese-making, before following Gimmel's roots to Nantucket, where they opened a catering company. After a few years of cooking for the transient world of seaside holiday-goers, they relocated to the Hudson Valley, where Bachinsky spent her childhood. When the space occupied by Brandow's in Hudson became available, Bachinsky and Gimmel grabbed it and opened Swoon Kitchenbar. With its embossed tin ceiling, taupe tapestries, ochre walls, a wooden bar, abundant plants, and towering dried flower arrangements, Swoon is both comfortable and elegant without feeling stuffy. The restaurant is named a "kitchenbar" for its 22-foot bar, created from steel and an antique wooden beam, situated in the front of the restaurant enabling the lunch chefs to cook and serve from the front while leaving the actual kitchen free for dinner preparations.
 Jeffrey Gimmel and Nina Bachinsky—chefs, co-owners, husband-and-wife. |
"Modern, progressive American cooking has become about borrowing from around the world. It's normal to use Asian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European spices," says Gimmel. At Swoon, the flavors of Spain, Turkey, Italy, France, and America meet and, when appropriate, become entwined.
Seasonal produce is imperative. "I always have a steak on the menu, but the sides will change. In winter you might find caramelized Brussels sprouts and sautéed turnip greens, while in summer I love to serve a big bowl of chanterelle mushrooms from the Pacific Northwest," says Gimmel.
Bachinsky laughs while describing the uproar last spring that followed their removing Brussels sprouts from the menu after they were no longer in season. "People went crazy, they were freaking out," she says. "Who knew Brussels sprouts had such a following?"
Lunch is casual at Swoon. Daily soups unsurprisingly have a seasonal theme, and there are plenty of salads, including such seared spiced skirt steak served with green beans, roasted beets, goat cheese, arugula, and pesto vinaigrette; and Asian-inspired barbeque duck with Napa cabbage, greens, and cilantro. The most popular lunch item is the Cuban panini featuring roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, and chipotle mayo. Other paninis include a tempeh Reuben with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing; and a spiced rubbed chicken with roasted peppers, fontina, avocado, and bacon. There are also plates of finger food—including a plate of country pate, mixed olives and pickles, and grilled vegetables; and cottage chips that are ripple-cut, par-boiled, deep-fried, tossed with hand-ground Middle Eastern spices, and served with a yogurt-cilantro dip. Brunch items, served on Saturday and Sunday, include duck confit with hash browns and poached eggs, omelets, and crab cakes, rather than standard pancake-and-waffle fare.
Gimmel is responsible for Swoon's extensive wine list, and when talk bends in this direction, his eyes light up.
"Wines are his passion," Bachinsky explains.
"Food is meant to go with wine," Gimmel says. "Each tastes better when paired properly."
In Swoon Kitchenbar's cellar, where wines are kept in a temperature-controlled room, Bachinsky points out another of the couple's passions—making artisanal foods. Wrapped meats hang on the wall, including pancettas, salamis, and lomo—pork loin, made Spanish style by rubbing it in hot paprika and cayenne, curing it in salt and sugar, and aging it two months. The meats are then sliced paper thin and served on a plate with large green and tiny black olives, pickles, coarse ground mustard, toast, and frisee dressed with a splash of oil and vinegar. Only in Italy can be found cured meats as soft and delicious as Swoon's freshly made lomo.
 Pastry chef Nina Bachinsky chopping quinces for quince tarte tatin at Swoon. |
As Bachinsky rolls out pastry, then peels and slices quinces for her quince tarte tatin (served with hazelnut ice cream and apple caramel), she describes how each of her desserts includes at least three separate components. Cheesecake, for example, is served in an oval shape, on a layer of chocolate mousse, beside a ball of pineapple-rum sorbet, and topped with a spiral-shaped gingerbread cookie. "Multilayered flavors make the experience more interesting and dynamic," Bachinsky explains.
It's impossible to say who is influencing whom, but, like Bachinsky's desserts, Gimmel's dishes also feature interesting juxtapositions of flavors. On a recent wintry Sunday I tasted examples of the couple's layered creations—each sample paired with a complimentary wine.
I began with chanterelle toasts topped with slices of duck liver (not foie gras, though Gimmel does serve it on occasion) and a sprinkling of fresh leaves of lemon thyme, which transported me for a moment from the cold, snowy streets that lay outside Swoon's windows to my garden at its peak last July. A crisp and clean 2003 Henri Clark Bourgogne Blanc ($12, available by the glass only) washed away each bite so that the intense flavor could explode anew in my mouth until, regrettably, I was finished. Next, I reacquainted myself with the sous-chef's preserved Moroccan lemons, this time as a garnish atop a fillet of Maine cod cooked to a light crunch on one edge, and to perfect tenderness inside. The fish rested on a bed of white beans, in turn placed on a circle of mouthwatering eggplant that was drenched in a spicy tomato sauce and dotted with chunks of merguez sausage. The pappardelle pasta I had watched Gimmel make arrived in a deep, white bowl—the wide strips embracing organic shitake and oyster mushrooms and delicate Old Chatham sheep's cheese, and topped with an exquisite mushroom sauce. My final entrée was a mound of golden squash risotto covered with dark green Swiss chard, and topped with braised lamb shank which crumbled at the slightest pressure into a pool of red juice.
To fully understand Bachinsky's power with a mixing bowl, sugar, and cream, my dining partner and I allowed ourselves a sampling of desserts, starting with the famous cheesecake with the unforgettable accompanying pineapple rum sorbet, and the autumn pear Napoleon, which came layered in the delicate and delightful fashion Bachinsky had described. However, it was the Sardinian dumplings I couldn't stop eating, despite having already eaten too much. Traditionally, says Bachinsky, these dumplings are filled with young pecorino cheese, fried, and drizzled in chestnut honey. Bachinsky's versions are smaller than the Italians make them, and are served with a scoop of frozen lemon mousse, beside wedges of roasted quince, and ringed in a circle of a balsamic reduction sauce. As I ate the dumplings while seated across from Bachinsky and Gimmel, and sipping one of Gimmel's favorite dessert wines, a 2002 Chateau Soucherie, Chaume, 1er Cru, Layon ($52/bottle), the half-circle shaped morsels seemed a perfect memento from their honeymoon.
At the end of my meal, after a full day chopping, baking, and sautéing a few feet apart, separated only by a stainless steel counter, the couple parted momentarily after Bachinsky announced she had to go home to retrieve a loaf of kalamata olive sourdough bread baked that morning from a 23-day old starter. She promised to return to the restaurant, and planted a quick kiss on Gimmel's lips.
"See you soon," he said, with a twinkle in his eye.