Marc Orfaly's Restaurant L and recipe

By Sandra Miller
Back Bay Sun
Will Louis of Boston stay on Newbury Street or not? They closed “for a break” last week, but are open again. Nobody’s saying at their corporate office, but chef Marc Orfaly pays it no mind. His Restaurant L is busy creating a constantly changing menu customized for shoppers.
“People get a financial forecast that’s like the weather,” Orfaly said. “It scares people to not go out. I think people are going to go out, but they are ordering things they are familiar with.”
At Pigalle, Orfaly creates familiar but challenging terrines of duck confit and foie gras and cassoulets. At Marco, he serves authentic, simple, and flavorful Italian cuisine, with house-cured meats and flavorful pastas like orecchiette with homemade sausage and broccoli rape.
For the recently opened Restaurant L, which has its own entrance on the side of the Louis mansion, Orfaly designed its sleek and stylish look to match the streamlined lunch-crowd menu.
“I kinda got acclimated with the clientele and what they want in this economic climate,” said Orfaly. “As a chef you want to say, ‘This is my menu, this is what I want you to eat. At Pigalle, it’s chef-driven. Here, it’s more concept-driven. But here, it’s more of a straightforward menu. As a chef I have plenty of room to do different things.”
That being said, he’s making sandwiches and lunchtime meals such as chicken Milanese, and the burger are selling pretty well, said Orfaly, who only has one menu for lunch and dinner. “It’s light and fast food, simple things,” he said. “It’s actually hard to nail a bowl of linguini, because you have to get it just right, their expectations are high for lunch.”
A rotating menu of cheese and wine at a stand-up bar in the dining room was filled with the day’s choices of pecorino, stilton, and ashgout chevre, as chosen by bar manager Dennis Cargill. “That’s his playground,” said Orfaly. The cheese bar has no seats because that is a European style to match the background of many of Louis shoppers, he said.
Still, he’s playing around with different ideas. “I want to do a pig roast, Asian style,” he said.
Orfaly is known for his adventurous style, which was nurtured as a little kid when his first dish was oven-ready burritos. “I burned myself,” he said. But it didn’t stop him. “I realized that I was a masochist.” What better training for a budding chef?
He was a short-order cook at the Boston Sail Loft to finance his drum equipment while studying under the likes of noted jazz drummer Tony Campbell and others at Berklee School of Music. At some point, the two interests crossed paths, and he realized his career was headed more toward chicken drumsticks than the wooden kind. “They’re both very physical,” he said with a shrug.
He developed alongside Chefs Todd English and Barbara Lynch in Boston and Joachim Splichal and Nancy Silverton in Los Angeles, and opened the French-driven Pigalle in 2000 with his wife, Foley, and his Italian concept, Marco, in the North End in 2005; both earned plenty of recognition.
“My dream was to have a small mom-and-pop kind of place with really good food, great service, and reasonable prices,” Orfaly said.


Recipes:


Orfaly was talking to a friend at Matt Murphy’s when he decided to add duck to his Pigalle menu, and as a special at Restaurant L.
The half of a duckling is divided into two portions, which he prepares in different ways: cofit and ham-style.
“Duck is a great menu item, and is one of my favorites to work with,” said Orfaly. “It is extremely versatile. You can use 100 percent of the animal -- skin for fat, carcass for stock, liver for foie gras, and its awesome neck has meat for ravioli.”
First take a Peking duck and remove breasts and legs. Preparation will take a few days.
Think that takes too long? “A true confit is an old school method,” said Orfaly. “Real confit you leave in fat a month, then reheat it to crisp it up.”
Leftover confit can make a great breakfast, too, said Orfaly, who recommends a duck hash, or served over a warm frisee salad with poached eggs.
For the ham version, he was inspired by an Irish brine used at Matt Murphy’s.
“I thought it might be fun to do a duck ham,” said Orfaly, who marinates the duck breast overnight in a brine of water, salt, ginger, vinegar, garlic, chili, and kefir lime leaves.


Duck Ham
Ingredients:
Peking duck legs
Salt
Pepper
crushed garlic
thyme
juniper

Preparation:
• Season flesh side of legs with salt, pepper, crushed garlic, thyme, and juniper and let marinate overnight.
• Score skin on duck breast, reserve all duck skin and render fat for confit legs. The bones can be reserved for stock or soup.
• Recrisp in non stick pan, slin side down, until skin is crispy and heated through.

Confit Duck
Peking duck breasts
Salt
Rice wine vinegar
Garlic
Clove
Bay leaf
Lemongrass
Kefir leaf


Prepare brine for breast
• In hot water, dissolve salt, then add rice wine vinegar, garlic, clove, bay leaf, lemongrass, and kefir leaf.
• Place duck breast in brine up to 48 hours.
• When finished let air dry, uncovered, overnight.
• Lay duck legs flat in a roasting pan, cover with duck fat or pork lard. Bake in a 200 degree oven for about 10 hours or tender. Let rest and slice.


Blot duck with paper towels, and then twist out the thigh and breast bones, which should come out cleanly. If not, recrisp and sear the meat until tender.
Place atop jasmine rice laced with coconut milk, and creamed Brussels sprouts, with a glass of Riesling or Gewürztraminer, or a really peppery Shiraz, said Orfaly.
The bartender Cargill recommended a Carr Royale, an Italian version of a Kir Royale with St. Germain, fresh grapefruit, Prosecco, which he concocted for the wedding of Howie Carr’s daughter, who is Cargill’s former co-worker

Restaurant L
234 Berkeley Street
Reservations are recommended
617-266-4680.