Chef 'Blew Their Collective Socks Off'

Ever wonder what the staff at uber-fancy restaurants get to eat at the start of their shifts? Now, you've got the chance to take a peak inside the dining rooms of world-famous eateries in a new cookbook called "Come in, We're Closed."

Surprisingly—or perhaps not, for those who know his cooking—local chef Doug Flicker's Piccolo is featured alongside 24 legends like Mugaritz, WD-50, and Morimoto, according to CityPages.

Traditionally, high-end restaurants serve a meal for their staff, prepared at the restaurant's expense, just before dinner service begins.

It's a tradition that harkens back to the days of mansions filled with butlers and maids, but it's no dog's dinner that winds up on the plates of servers and dishwashers today. The Heavy Table snagged a spot at a press dinner at Piccolo to advertise the new book, and here's what they had to say about Flicker's cooking:

At Piccolo last night, Flicker made slow-cooked red beans with ham hocks, cast-iron cornbread with maple-bacon butter, Mr. Pickles’s pulled pork, Johnny Two Socks’s barbecue sauce, a celery root and almond slaw, collard greens with salt pork, and a vat of soft, sweet, cinnamony apple crisp. He made these for a group of local food writers and blew their collective socks off. Flicker may be from Rochester and he may plate his dishes at Piccolo with the tiniest tweezers ever manufactured, but he does a mean impression of a true Southern pitmaster.