Elite Traveler Summer 2023

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Left and below An evening at Charlie Mitchell’s Clover Hill is more like visiting a friend’s home than a restaurant; Mitchell calls on fl avors from his childhood in his menus

CHARLIE MITCHELL CLOVER HILL, NEW YORK Although on the other side of the vast Atlantic Ocean, New York eatery Clover Hill also got the memo that casual is king in this new breed of fi ne dining. Hidden away in an unassuming but wealthy area of Brooklyn, the restaurant seats just 30 guests. Muddled seating, warm lamps and vintage portraits make a meal here more like visiting a close friend’s home than dining at a formal restaurant. “We want people to feel comfortable, and the vibe should be intimate,” executive chef Charlie Mitchell explains via video call ahead of service. “It’s not the classic, stu ff y fi ne-dining environment people are used to.” Having fi rst opened in 2019, Clover Hill encountered a few Covid-related bumps in the road before reopening for good in 2022. Mitchell actually started as a consultant for the then executive chef in the restaurant’s pre-pandemic iteration, but has now stepped up as co-owner. Mitchell’s culinary career to date has seen him take up roles in the likes of Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park and Ryan Ratino’s Jônt. His work at Clover Hill is a million miles away from the machine-like processes of restaurants like this, though. “When you’re somewhere like that, you only know your own section, and you have no idea what’s going on anywhere else,” he says. “In [Clover Hill’s] kitchen, there’s only a maximum of four of us, which means we’re really in touch with the food. Even if someone else is in on adi ff erent section, you can see what they’re doing and learn from them. It makes the food better and it makes the culture better.” The menu at Clover Hill fi nds inspiration in a multitude of places. The focus is on seafood, with Mitchell calling on dishes from his childhood to craft thoughtful yet subtly familiar fl avor pro fi les. His real culinary inspiration though, he tells me, is the craft of cooking. “I always want to get better, try new techniques and fi nd new ingredients.” In late 2022, Mitchell and his team’s e ff orts were duly rewarded with a Michelin star. For the chef, however, that fi rst Michelin star was more relief than anything else. “Getting a star meant that we knew we had some longevity,” he explains. “It also changed the clientele a bit, so we knew more people were coming to check us out because of that. Before, people would just turn up o ff the street and ask if we do a burger and fries. [The star] meant we could start to put more personality on the plate.” cloverhillbk.com

Charlie Mitchell’s signature dish “Last menu we had a rice dish with lobster, matsutake mushrooms and osetra caviar, which was as close to a signature as we’ve got so far. We change our menu a lot but I think we’ll keep the format of the dish — rice is never out of season but we will always change the fl avor combination around it. We’ve decided to always keep a grain dish on that course. In winter it might be tru ffl e — so deeper and darker — then in spring it will be fresher.”