Chef Spotlight: Colt Taylor of The Essex Restaurant in Old Saybrook, CT

Colt Taylor's culinary career was inspired by his family and their love and respect for quality, local ingredients and tradition. After graduating from the University of Vermont, Colt was eager to develop his culinary creativity and enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. After graduating, Colt spent time traveling through Europe and upon his return to the US, began working in New York City alongside some of the country's best-known chefs, including Alfred Portale and Eric Ripert.

His first role as executive chef came in 2011 at the iconic New York restaurant One if by Land, Two if by Sea. By 2014, under Chef Taylor's guidance, the restaurant was awarded its first ever Michelin star. Soon after, Chef Taylor moved to his hometown of Essex, CT, to pursue his dream of having his own fine dining restaurant. He opened The Essex in Centerbrook to rave reviews and accolades, including the 2019 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence and New England's Best New Restaurant in 2018. In 2021, he moved The Essex to its new home in downtown Old Saybrook, and expanded his popular Mexican restaurant, Los Charros Cantina, into its former space

Both The Essex and Los Charros Cantina, are fully sustainable, focusing on the food chain in a localized region to bring a modern sensibility to American cuisine derived from the ecosystem's nuances of authentic New England cuisine. For Chef Taylor, the excitement is about turning fresh, local, seasonal products into unique dishes and serving them in a comfortable, relaxed setting.

Another outstanding feature of The Essex is the fermentation program, which involves planning ahead with house fermented miso, fish sauces and kimchee, utilizing a multitude of Asian techniques in abundance with local terroir-focused flavors.

An outdoorsman and lover of the land, Chef Taylor works closely with the farmers, fishermen and foragers in the surrounding landscape to highlight the ecosystem of the Connecticut River from shore to valley. Native corn, tomatoes, dulce seaweed, razor clams, squab, juniper berries and wild blueberries as inspiration for his ever-changing menu with local cheese, dairy products and herbs.

He lives in Old Saybrook with his wife, Katharine, and his twin sons.

Broadwayworld had the pleasure of interviewing Colt about his career and The Essex Restaurant.

What was your earliest interest in cooking?

I was fortunate enough to have some wonderful influences and unique opportunities to cook a young age. My aunt was an incredible baker, and my mother practically raised us on broccoli rabe and linguini with clam sauce. I started cooking when I was about 7, experimenting with breakfast and eggs, and it grew from there. In high school, was the one who always cooking after a late night out with friends. I got my first kitchen job at The Saybrook Fish House before it shut down, followed by Dock & Dine. I cooked throughout college and just continued following my passion and playing with flavors and techniques until I diving head first into the career.

Who were some of your career mentors?

The kitchen is a unique environment, predicated on a lot of comraderies as well as intricate and militaristic hierarchies. Many of my closest peers and friends became my "band of brothers," from Joe Mizzoni, Adam Brick and Craig Leickfelt, to the Gotham crew of John Sully, Josh Gripper, Adonay Byrnes and more.

I was fortunate enough to attend the CIA in Hyde Park, where I met my most impactful influence, Dominick Cerrone, for whom I worked as a teaching assistant at the Escoffier restaurant post graduation. Dominick, who was the opening chef de cuisine of Le Bernardin and the famed chef behind Le Chantilly, Le Périgord, and Le Cirque, helped to instilled in me a sense of peacefulness and gratification. He was a music major in college back in the 70s, and he likened the kitchen to an orchestra, and the chef as the conductor. He always told me, "A chef makes beautiful food without ever touching it." This stuck with me, creating a passion for always teaching and learning.

What culinary styles have influenced your career?

My time in New York City was very influential from a global standpoint, whether it was the rustic elegance of Babbo and my foray through pasta making, or my obsession with seafood from Le Bernardin, with injections of Japan and Thailand. Being in Miami opened up the world of tropical flavors - Caribbean and Latin American, Peruvian, Cuban and Brazilian. In Los Angeles I gained a deeper understanding of the importance of intense seasonality of produce, and delved into Korean and Mexican flavors. Respect for the product above all else seemed to be the backbone of everything I was fortunate to be a student of. As far as styles, I've learned how to immerse myself in different cultures to get to the core of a cuisine, study the ingredients and techniques, and apply them different ways. For example, working at Gotham Steak at the Fontainebleau in Miami, I discovered unique ways of cooking with koji and Binchōtan.

No one person could ever encapsulate all food knowledge. It's a lifelong journey. The important thing is to constantly add to your inventory, show respect for a food's roots and history, and take a unique perspective when creating. The simplest example is citrus. We know oranges and lemons and limes. But how much does a dish change by substituting out that flavor and replacing it with sudachi? Cooking over charcoal is something most of us know well, but how does that flavor and finished dish alter when using a Pok Pok or Binchotan charcoal? We discover through constant studying, trial and error, and experiences.

What do you consider the most distinguishing features of your work as a chef?

Food aside, my most distinguishing feature is the team I'm able to cultivate, due to our approach to management and teaching. People are generally concerned with the life of the food on the plate, and rightfully so. But what about the people who prepared that food?

Finding potential and patiently teaching staff engenders loyalty. Compensating people fairly for their work doesn't make a restaurant unprofitable. Those of us that see the industry's problems are advocating for those whose voices go unheard. Just as today's restaurant industry jargon increasingly centers around organic, local, green and environmentally conscious food practices, we are also part of an exciting and emerging movement to fundamentally change the unfair and often illegal working conditions that prevail in our industry. All of the employees that make up this restaurant family put in long hours, and work hard out of a sense of pride they feel in their work. We need to support all of our workers through patience and understanding, equality, and fair pay.

What are your favorite meals?

Really incredible fresh baked bread and salted butter wins every time (Yes as a meal!). But in the past few years, I've tried to answer the question as it's asked... often. Simply put, it all depends on everything around me. The environment, the temperature, the company. I love tuna or salmon poke, obsess over it, but i don't want it in a snowstorm. Likewise, a good bowl of ramen stands out above most (kotteri style tonkatsu), but I'm not looking for that in July. So I always come back to the one meal I will always crave. Fresh baked amazing bread and butter with sea salt.

Tell me a little bit about your restaurant for our readers.

The Essex is a modern, American restaurant in the heart of Old Saybrook, CT. We recently moved from our original location in Centerbrook. it's an intimate space, with an open kitchen. Here, we take a deep dive into the cuisines of different cultures and find ways to incorporate them into classic dishes. We have a fun and unique way of looking at dishes that we all know and love, flipping them upside down in our approach and paying respect to their roots. Our signature Clam Chowder encapsulates that point of view. The finished soup evokes familiar tastes and feelings of a simple New England clam chowder, with potatoes and mirepoix, clams and a touch of cream. But the foundation and technique in the soup traces its way back to Japan. We make our own koji through fermentation for the base, and follow a very Japanese foundation of a white clam soup, but it's finished like a New England chowder. We eliminate pork altogether, focusing on local seaweeds from Maine, like dulse, to give it that smokey umami rich back drop, and then we serve it, with respect to the French technique, in the same style as consommé Bocuse with a puff pastry lid. We even sourced the classic lion's head soup terrine as the original French soup does so it evokes nostalgia.

The Essex Restaurant is located at 247 Main St, Old Saybrook, CT 06475. For menus, hours of operation, and more information, please visit https://www.theessex.com/ or call 860.237.4189.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Colt Taylor and The Essex Restaurant

To post a comment, you must register and login.