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Spruce Bruce
On the eve of the 16th annual Boston Wine Festival, chef Daniel Bruce, its ‘guiding personality,’ explains his recipe for success
BY TAMARA WIEDER

DANIEL BRUCE believes strongly in the old cliché, "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." That’s why you won’t find much in the way of change at the 16th annual Boston Wine Festival, whose program refers to Bruce as its "guiding personality." "The festival sells out every year for the past 16 years; why would I ever want to change something like that?" boasts Bruce, the chef at the Boston Harbor Hotel’s Meritage restaurant and one of the festival’s founders. "People that want to make changes for change’s sake sometimes lose track of what made things successful."

Fair enough. Clearly Bruce and his event are doing something right: the Boston Wine Festival is the oldest of its kind in the country, featuring multiple food-and-wine events weekly for three months. From intimate winemaker dinners to gala celebrations, the festival showcases the work of winemakers from all over the world — not to mention the culinary skills of chef Bruce, who hasn’t repeated a single dish in the festival’s history.

Q: The program for the Boston Wine Festival calls you the festival’s "guiding personality." Tell me what that means.

A: Guiding personality means that the Wine Festival is really about the winemakers and me getting together and me tasting the wines, coming up with the flavors to enhance both the wine and food experience.

Q: How has the festival evolved over the years?

A: I always say there’s a lot more things that are the same than different. What’s different about it is when we first started, [it] was very hard to get the top winemakers in the world. We started with 13 the first year. Now we have no problem getting 40. In fact, we have a wait list of people wanting to get in, and these are the top winemakers in the world. So that has changed dramatically. And that change, actually, happened after the first two or three years, once the word got out that we approached this festival seriously, that it wasn’t the chef coming up with whatever he considered "star food" — it was me coming up with food that’s going to work with their wine. Let’s face it: these guys put a lot of work into their wine. I want to showcase that wine.

Q: So does it feel like your food is playing second fiddle to the wine?

A: Absolutely not. That’s not at all the way the Wine Festival works. It’s the interplay of wine and food, it’s the marriage of the two, it’s how they both work together in the dining experience. I don’t come up with the food and then the wine happens to work or doesn’t work. The wine comes first. From those tasting notes on those wines, I come up with dishes that are going to work, and flavors that are going to work. I don’t really consider it matching at all anymore; I consider it part of my palette of flavors that I work with. I’ve sort of evolved way past the point of, "Oh my God, how am I going to make this Central Coast pinot noir work with this tuna?" It doesn’t work that way.

Q: What about this year’s festival are you most looking forward to?

A: We’re talking 16 years of festivals. For me the challenge always is to keep it fresh. I don’t repeat my dishes, after 16 years, and I take a photo library and a written menu history of every single event. So there’s never a chance I would repeat a dish. I don’t find it that difficult, because every wine is different. That doesn’t mean I’m going to use lamb only once in 16 years; how I prepare it is different. But everything else I would say is the same.

Q: There’s been a growing number of food-and-wine festivals in Boston over the last few years. Do you look at other festivals as competition?

A: We sell out every year, so it doesn’t matter. I think they probably look at our festival and see how successful it is. I mean, the Meritage restaurant is the restaurant that came from the Wine Festival. There’s not another restaurant like it in the city that goes to the extent of matching wine and food, to the point that the food menu reads like a wine list. I’m not even aware of any other wine festivals in town anyway. I didn’t even know there was one, to be honest with you.

Q: Boston’s restaurant scene has grown a lot in the years since you’ve been cooking here. How would you rate Boston as a dining city now?

A: I think it’s world-class now. What there was when I first arrived in Boston, what was there? Jasper’s and Panache, which was Bruce Frankel’s place over in Cambridge, which has had 10 resurrections and is now Salts. When I first came in, Bruce Frankel, Jasper White, Lydia [Shire] had just started. There was just a handful. I could count them on one hand. Gordon [Hamersley] had just started out. There’s been tremendous growth since then. There was a time, 20 years ago, that you’d have to go to Europe or a big city like New York to have a great dining experience. Things have changed now, dramatically. And Boston is a beneficiary of that.

Q: When did you first know you wanted to be a chef?

A: As soon as I could reach the cupboard. Always.

 

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Issue Date: December 31, 2004 - January 6, 2005
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