January 27-February 2, 2005

food

Big Fish, Little Fish

Peak Time: Damien Guermont, son of chef Claude Guermont, is ready for Philadelphia's opinion: "I've always been a mountain man. High plains. Big hills. I can take it." Photo By: Michael T. Regan

If you Philadelphians take pleasure in critiquing a newcomer, sushi chef Damien Guermont asks you to bring it.

by A.D. Amorosi

You don't need me to tell you that Philadelphians will eat the outsider alive. To a man, they're caustic, critical bastards who, like sharks, wait to hear the flow of blood in water so to pounce on their prey.

Beyond mean-ass arts and sports fanatics, the worst of the teeth-baring lot would be the Philadelphian foodie. The wrath of this foodie knows no bounds: Ceremoniously arrived, internationally renowned sorts get ignominiously drummed out of town — which is not to say local chefs are spared crushing criticism. (So unabashed has been the rancid reporting on bad local cooking that I've heard chefs considering military service.)

What is needed, then, is an out-of-towner whose skills are intact but not fully formed — a man or woman with a skin tougher than leather and an idea neither entirely foreign nor familiar to all diners.

Enter Damien Guermont.

Aiming to prove himself in the city arena, Guermont just opened Cha Cha Sushi under the aegis of restaurant conceptualist Jay Ellis (of The Mansion and Tragos). It'll serve a mix of Latin and Japanese spices square in the middle of the Rittenhouse area.

Good fucking luck.

"I've heard about this city's reputation," says Guermont. "But I've always been a mountain man. High plains. Big hills. I can take it."

"He's tough," says Ellis, who found Guermont after interviewing a handful of veterans. "But he's friendly. That's important, what with the fact that Cha Cha Sushi is a cozy environment with a form of social dining that mixes everything from unique entrees to fondue desserts. Damien loved every bit of every challenge."

Though he has no deep, long biography to speak of, Guermont, 30, is no novice. While the rural Poughkeepsie, N.Y., native started cooking for real after working as a baker in the plains of Montana (after a stint studying architecture), Damien is actually the son of French master Claude Guermont, chef-owner of Le Pavillon in the Hamptons, a former teacher at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and an author of The Norman Table. "The legend looms large," says the younger Guermont.

Rather than follow print by print in dad's footsteps, Guermont learned by simply observing everything — all foods, all preparations. Instead of pointing out a particular dish or style learned from the master Guermont, Damien claims pop's gift was simple. "The coolest thing he ever taught me was that you have to know how to clean a pot before you can cook in it."

Guermont went back and forth between school, cooking and baking — the latter giving him necessary discipline in precision — before settling as a chef. "Cooking, once upon a time, used to be simpler. You kept adding ingredients until it was right." Now, he says, it compares to pastry arts in its precision, "both in terms of the beauty and the taste. That's why most good chefs don't like to bake: There's too much precision in the preparation before it goes into the oven."

Guermont never had a favorite style of cooking. Despite being a European-influenced chef with global interests, he refused to be categorized by taste or cuisine. Rather, he kept himself pure and open, claiming that any chef worth his salt has been using spices from all over the world rather than waiting for a trend. That's how he adapted so quickly to something he had never tried: Japanese and Latin American mixology.

"I had never really cooked anywhere of note. I had never executive-cheffed. This would be my chance to shine on my own," says Guermont of the happy accident of Cha Cha Sushi. "Jay was looking for something and someone new. He likes an adventure. I like an adventure."

Rather than test the cuisine of the similarly themed Samba Sushi of Manhattan, Guermont relied on his sense and his understanding of each culture. "Take seaweed and wasabi out of Japanese cuisine and beans out of the Latin culture: It's the same. Fish. Coriander. Lemon. Lime. Ginger. Mint. Garlic." While Latins use passion fruit to cut the fishiness of seafood, Japanese chefs use rice wine and soy. So, believing the merits of his approach is "in the technique," he has put together a menu of untraditional ceviches and powerfully seasoned fish dishes mixed in with chipotle and mango sauces, and more.

"It takes courage and confidence to cross over those lines," says general manager David Savidge. "He's nuts." That makes him perfectly Philadelphian.

Cha Cha Sushi, 38 S. 19th St., 215-751-9888.