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Research and development branch:
The Manor Born

A lot of people ask us, just what the hell are you doing back there in the lab.  And then we take them back there and they realize there is no fancy equipment, just a bunch of eager young cooks and some pens and spoons.  The lab is a state of mind. It’s a lab of ideas.

We call it The Manor Born, as this is simply the logical endpoint of Room4Dessert and by extension my whole career.  It is our density, but more importantly our destiny to have a little room for ideas to work on and bring you the flavors, textures, temperatures, and stories that we have been obsessed with, either by instinct, practise, or some otherworldly combination of both.

Many times we are asked how we come up with ideas for new dishes, new snacks, new petits fours, new desserts, new drinks, new categories of same…

Well basically the answer is easy, if not exactly simple – or is it simple but not exactly easy?

In any case, we like to start with an idea, and work our way through our library of ingredients while developing new techniques.  (In the current sitch, we have to start with seeds and nurture our plants before we even have anything to cook with.)  We hesitate to bludgeon you to death with technique, but maybe just slip your socks off with joy and delight – never provoking for the sake of provoking but just painting the corners, looking for the absolute truth in the elusive and evanescent corners of the plate.

We may be inclined to invite you back to check out some of the things we are working on, but who knows, it might be a while before we get it together.