Chef Studio: What others say

Portland Monthly

Cook This Now

Cooking from the French Heart

The Chef’s Studio: A place to learn how to cook, or simply polish up your rusty skills in the kitchen. Robert Reynolds is Portland’s expert in all things delicious, French… and Italian too.

Posted by: Teri Gelber on Jun 15, 2011 at 10:00AM

Robert Reynolds no longer has a restaurant, but his culinary chops are right up there with our nation’s best.And when it comes to French cooking, he’s the go-to-guy in Portland. His Portland atelier, the Chef Studio, is a kitchen, a table, and lots of utensils and books, where inspiration and knowledge are top shelf.

I first discovered Reynolds in the 80’s when I lived in the Mission District. Back then, pre-dot-com San Francisco was a unique place, buzzing with bohemians. A few blocks away from our flat was a tiny jewel box of a restaurant called Le Trou. I took regular walks to peek through the window and watch the chef chopping away, getting ready for the nightly meal. I would study the menu posted on the door, and dream about going there one day. Sadly, I was a struggling art student and never made it to dinner there. Little did I know that years later I would share a different city again with this talented chef, Robert Reynolds.

Lucky for me, when I moved up to Portland, a friend invited me to dinner at the Chef Studio, Reynolds’ cooking school and atelier. That night I had one of the most delicious meals ever. Robert cooked and served the two of us six beautiful courses, pouring wine and champagne as his sauces simmered and the fish roasted. Not only did I fall in love with his cooking, but I fell in love with his heart and soul. To me, the best cooks are the ones that strive to make others happy. Egos don’t really have a place in the kitchen, because as any good chef will admit: there’s always more to learn. So even if you think you know your sauces inside and out, or your knife skills are good enough, there’s always more to discover. That’s what the Chef’s Studio is all about.

Sessions start @ 9 AM and end @ 3:00 PM
Robert will explain methods, techniques, physics, and chemistry to produce delicious food.
Kitchen work is hands-on, and closely supervised.
Each day’s menu is enjoyed at table and paired with wine.
Each session will have only 6 students.

The Pleasure of Cooking for One - Judith Jones

excerpted from blog: “Remembering James Beard (April 2010)

The first morning of the IACP Conference we took a Being James Beard Tour in downtown Portland and although urban growth has swallowed up the outdoor market where Jim and his mother shopped, the memories still remained. Robert Reynolds, who has sometimes been called the poet chef of Portland, read passages that he had selected from Epicurean Delight at each stop and I could see that he was deeply moved connecting with this man he had never really known before.

The last night of the Conference I had the good fortune to eat at Robert’s very special restaurant, Chefs Studio. The place consists of one room large enough to accommodate a dozen or so at a big table. Votive candles were lit and strewn across the white paper-covered dining table, set for fourteen with big glasses awaiting good Oregon Pinot Noir. On three sides the rough walls consisted of exposed beams and a few posters while the remaining wall was open to the kitchen. There we could watch Robert and his crew of four performing their ballet, adjusting flavors before carefully plating each dish.

From start to finish the food was superb, exactly what Himself would have loved. All the dishes were based on the season’s bounty: freshly gathered morels, tangy ramps and radishes and radish leaves, young spinach greens molded into little vegetable timbales, tiny berries and slim stalks of early spring rhubarb. The only item that had traveled from afar was the grass-fed lamb from the Southwest. As we were relishing its good, pure-lamb flavor, we talked to the rancher who had nurtured the herd—a young woman who clearly loved her calling—and we all exchanged sample bits of our life in food, ending with more stories about Jim.

To me that evening at Chefs Studio was the highpoint of the IACP Conference and I wished that there could be more of this kind of sit-down dinner where people could get to know each other and experience the regional products. Meanwhile I look forward to a visit again in a few years when the dream of the James Beard Public Market that is being planned will have become a reality and I can wander through the stalls and visit with the vendors and learn more. I hope I’ll find some cod cheeks to bring home.

Oregonian

San Francisco Bay Guardian

Excerpted from February 2010 ( to demonstrate the point that no matter what else has gone into the space occupied by Le Trou, it is still referred to as Le Trou space. R.Reynolds)

A score or so years ago, the corner of 22nd and Guerrero streets was one of the gastronomic hotspots of the city. (A score, as we will all recall from our civics class parsings of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, is 20 years.) On one corner stood, from 1989, Arnold Tordjman’s eclectic and imaginative Flying Saucer, replete with neon flying saucers in the windows, while across the street was Robert Reynolds’ Le Trou, which from the early 1980s offered a monthly rotation of regional French cooking. By the early 1990s, a glam trattoria called Mangiafuoco completed the triad.

But these sorts of convergences, like all magic, tend not to last too long. A city’s tectonic plates shift. …   These successors are good restaurants, but they are not as compelling as the restaurants they replaced.

Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the Le Trou space.

Portland Spaces

May 2008 issue, by Jon Hart reported on five Portland kitchens. In the section called The Franco File” he wrote, “Many of his students are chefs themselves, whom Reynolds coaches to become more confident in their skills and, most important, to think on their own.”

Northwest Palate

September/October 2008 issue of NORTHWEST PALATE with photos by Ben Root. Robert shares the cover and the feature story with Vitaly and Kimberly Paley. The Paleys hired Robert as the writer for their new book, “PALEY’S PLACE COOKBOOK, Cooking in the Northwest,” to be released mid-October. Read and find out why we are so jazzed.

Portland Monthly

January 2007, review by Camas Davis wrote “Kitchen Existential” a piece about Robert’s quest to elevate the culinary consciousness of Portland: A tale she tells in four recipes.

November/December 2006, Susan G. Hauser wrote “A Fish Tale” explaining how Robert Reynolds’ Fish Soup Like a Tidal Pool came to be.

Seattle Magazine

Cynthia Nims, April 2007

Chef and teacher Robert Reynolds established his Chefs Studio in Portland inner East Side neighborhood this year with a program that caters to culinary students and avid home cooks in an intimate setting. Reynolds offers 8-week classes for those with serious culinary interest. Expect an excursion or two to farmers’ markets and other gastronomic spots, plus visits to the studio by local producers including farmers, cheese makers, winemakers and chefs, plus plenty of time for hands-on cooking instruction. Reynolds’ own culinary roots are deeply associated with France, where he studied and taught cooking for 20 years. He was also chef/owner of Le Trou, a small French restaurant in San Francisco from 1982 to 1996. His program is infused with the distinctive French sensibility, helping students appreciate seasonal nuances in the kitchen. With his focus on regional foods and local food producers, it makes for a delicious lesson in the connection we all have to the larger community of food.

Reluctant Gourmet, Blog

www.reluctantgourmet.com/blog/pasta-recipes/how-to-make-risotto/

STUDENTS

♥ Julie Languille comments on her website http://www.dinnersinaflash.com/articles.html after attending Robert’s class on Whidbey Island, Washington in March 2008

♥ John Taboada, Navarre restaurant, Portland, Oregon – “Robert taught me to cook,”

♥ Chris Riley, “Robert’s classes are excellent. Not only do you get to transcend your daily ritual by immersing yourself in fine food and cuisine, but you engage with the place we live.”

♥ Dean Towers, Chef, Houston, Texas – “I didn’t want to go to cooking school to simply be an institutional cook. I wanted to learn everything about food. Studying with Robert, I gained a deep understanding of the art of cooking.

♥ Lara James, “I don’t know if I wrote this yesterday, but I felt giddy after my class yesterday. I don’t think it was the wine. I think it was a combination of the joy of learning, the sounds, the smells, the movement of the kitchen, the conversation…the tastes…it was where I want to be.”

Colleagues

♥ Bruce Carey, the Carey group of restaurants, Portland, Oregon – I think a resource is Robert Reynolds, a great talent and the owner of an intimate and very sophisticated cooking studio. Look into it at www.thechefstudio.com

♥ Hsiao-Ching chou, Seattle Post Intelligencer – “All those who are lucky enough to share a kitchen with him agree he is a teacher who can make a professional chef or a home cook reconsider what he or she knows about cooking.”

♥ Chris Moore, Cafe Rouge, Berkeley – “Robert is mindful, both as chef and teacher. With a nod to tradition, he strengthens technique, encourages passion, realizes creativity and develops the very conscience of the cook.”

♥ David Sarasohn, The Oregonian – “When Reynolds is in the kitchen, it’s an occasion to mark talent and dexterity.”

♥ Rob Siedeman, Cooking School of Aspen, “Absolutely one of the most impassioned instructors, with teaching skills to match.”

♥ Edward Epse Brown, Teacher, Author of Tassajara Bread Book – “Robert is a fine companion in the kitchen; knowledgeable, amusing, attentive.”