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The Silk Road Restaurant and Catering
100% Local515 South Higgins Avenue
Missoula , MT 59801 (view map)
Open Seven Nights A Week
5pm – 10pm
Details
Missoulian, March 3, 2011
Classics as tapas: Silk Road restaurant reinvents dishes from around world
Abe Risho knows a good idea when he comes across one: a spicy dish conjured one day, a snapshot of the perfect event on another, or perhaps the perfect name.
Somewhere between steps onto a Grand Central Station platform to board the New Haven Line, and the trancelike rocking of a train in motion, the words of musical sage Bob Dylan spurred an idea for Risho three winters ago that he couldn't quite shake.
"I was reading Dylan's autobiography ‘Chronicles,' and in one of the passages he was talking about where his artistic inspiration came from - that he was trying to re-create old classics to make them new and interesting," Risho remembers.
Risho could relate to the concept of reinvention. As he gathered together experience in New York - post-culinary school - he had often envisioned turning classic dishes from the U.S. and other countries into something new and exciting.
Tapas, he thought, would be the best way to repurpose those dishes on a large scale.
As the train neared Westchester, Risho dipped his head back into the pages of the book, and the idea smoldered.
***
In the winter of 2009, Risho was back in Missoula after a two-year stint cooking in New York - first in the kitchens of Trump Tower, then for noted restaurateur Rafael Palomino.
One night, he and brother Sam Risho set about finding a name for the catering business they wanted to start. Both thought The Silk Road was a great moniker for the movable feasts of parties and weddings. They also thought it embodied the style of cooking loved for so long by their entire family.
Days later, as Abe drove alone across the New Mexico desert, his brother called with news that the former 515 restaurant kitchen was available, and that its owners were willing to give them a good deal for the space if they would also cook for theater-goers.
"I remember being adamant in saying that I didn't want to open a restaurant - that it was too much work," says Risho, who thought the space too big for their needs.
Sam asked him for a quick list of menu items, and he recited a list of 17 dishes from memory as he blazed across the desert.
Many of those dishes had already been created - between Dylan page turns - in the miles that separated New York City from Westchester.
Booked for a wedding shortly thereafter, Abe, Sam and Sam's wife Elise opened a bank account under the name Silk Road Catering, bought a business license, signed the Hip Strip lease and the trio set about remodeling.
They opened in a quick three weeks' time in May 2009 - both as a catering outfit and a restaurant.
Wine lists and food inventory grew from deposits taken for events booked for summer, but the three hoped the place would stay busy enough to order food again on a Thursday, and pay vendors on the following Monday.
Risho remembers a lot of hand-wringing in that first month.
"I seriously don't know how we did this," Risho says and laughs. "Our first month's power bill was $2,000, but we managed to pull it together and have been busy ever since."
***
Whether a tender halibut baked in a clay pot accompanied by caramelized onions and tomatoes, then bathed in a coconut pomegranate broth from the Ivory Coast, or potato gnocchi sautéed in olive oil, pancetta, tomatoes and chilies, and topped with Romano cheese from Italy, or spicy skewers of beef tenderloin in a Japanese nine-spice Togarashi sauce, Risho follows in the footsteps of his globally inspired father.
Many of the dishes featured on the menu are nods to Ray Risho's much-loved restaurant Perugia - a place where Abe learned to cook and managed a kitchen long before heading off to Johnson and Wales College of Culinary Arts in Denver.
"Steak Togarashi was actually on my father's menu at Perugia, so the skewers on the current menu are a piece of Perugia," Risho says.
Choice is abundant on Risho's international menu, which originally only offered dishes that spanned the Silk Road - from China to India, Afghanistan, Persia and Greece - but now offers a continental ethnic sampling.
"Sam's and my joke is, ‘From China, to Persia, to Greece - to Boston,' " says Risho.
Four times a year, ballots are offered to 3,000 diners and catering clients on an e-mail list. They're asked to select dishes proposed for the next menu from categories such as "clay pot cooking," "pasta" and "from the garden."
Voting has been so popular, it's spurred "house favorites" and "best-ofs" and has assured a kind of ownership that keeps tables full weekday and weekend nights.
Among fan favorites on the 33-item global tasting menu: tenderloin with Togarashi sauce , Chesapeake-style crab dip, fried ravioli with lemony-ricotta and goat cheese, and truffle fries.
"People just get set on what they like and you can't deny them," he says.
The rest of the dishes are pure Risho - an amalgam of things he's envisioned, very likely in his travels from one place to another.
Missoula Independent, July 8, 2010
Best New Restaurant
The Silk Road
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