A tasty interview with Dominic Armato
Here at Cultural Zest, we’re all about culture – in the broadest sense of the word. And that sense also happens to include one of the most basic elements of any culture: food. Today, we’re featuring an interview that’s all about food, with Dominic Armato. Apart from being an established voice actor, he also maintains his own food blog, Skillet Doux. Let’s get eating… uh… questioning!
Most people probably know you as the voice of Guybrush Threepwood, but you also have your own site about food, Skillet Doux. If you had to choose at gunpoint between being a voice actor or a food critic, which would it be?
Definitely voice actor. Because the blog is a personal journal that I decided to make public at one point, and to make it private again wouldn’t change the enjoyment I get out of it. But I’d miss VO. Terribly.
How did you get the idea to write about food?
Going back about a decade ago, I started doing a ton of international travel for work. And not only did that give me a chance to spend a lot of time taking in foreign cuisines, but we also made it a point to get to some fine dining restaurants wherever we went. After a few years of this, I realized that I was forgetting things… places I’d been, dishes I’d had… and I really wanted to revisit them. So I started keeping a food journal. And when my (now) wife suggested that her family and some of our friends might like to read it to hear about the places we were going, I put it online. And it just kind of went from there.
You have a lot of mouthwatering pictures on your site that really show how great food can look. But in your view, what is the most important aspect of a dish? Flavour, presentation, or maybe something else?
Well, taste is king. And always will be. But that doesn’t mean that things like presentation are unimportant. Plus, our brains are screwy and even the most practiced of us can’t completely separate the two, so things like presentation affect taste. When you’re talking about restaurants, everybody knows what’s important to them – food, decor, service – in varying amounts. But my thing, and the driving idea behind the blog, is that the food is king and everything else is a distant second. A fabulous bowl of soup served to you by a snide waiter in a hole-in-the-wall joint is better than a mediocre bowl of soup in a pretty little restaurant with a friendly staff. It’s not a question of what’s better, it’s simply a question of what’s more important to me, and it would be disingenuous of me to write about anything else.
What’s your favourite dish?
Totally unfair. And impossible to answer. But if you want me to name just one of something, I’ll amend the criterion and say that the last dish that made me giggle (and there have been a number of them) was butter-poached lobster with roasted fingerling potatoes, Swiss chard, gooseberries and lavender foam that I had at Schwa in Chicago four summers ago. It’s been an unusually long gap.
Everybody knows food and drink go together like salt and pepper. What’s your favourite drink to accompany a meal?
The one that goes best with what I’m eating. It’s all fair game. Whatever brings out the flavors of the meal.
What tip would you give to all the people out there who want to eat restaurant-quality food, but don’t have the time (or think they don’t)?
Who want to eat restaurant-quality food at home, you mean? Don’t be intimidated, and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it. One of my biggest annoyances is this persistent myth that cooking good food is too hard or takes too much time. You can take a piece of fish, wrap it in parchment paper with some asparagus, olive oil and a couple of herbs and pop it in the oven a lot faster than you can walk around the corner to pick up a burger (not that there’s anything wrong with burgers). Pick simple things, learn to do them well, and go from there. One of my favorite things to make at home is pasta. Once the water is boiling, it rarely takes me more than 10 minutes, I rarely use more than six ingredients (pasta, salt, olive oil and two or three others), and my pasta is better than at least 95% of the restaurants out there. It takes a little bit of practice, but it certainly doesn’t take a lot of time and anybody can do it.
Care to share a recipe?
Sure.
Cavatappi with Sausage, Raisins and Turmeric Cream
Serves 2
½ lb. cavatappi
¼ C. golden raisins
2 Tbsp. olive oil
¼ lb. sweet Italian Sausage
2 Tbsp. butter
3 green onions
1 tsp. turmeric
¼ C. heavy cream
grated Parmesan cheese
To prep, soak the raisins in hot water for 20-30 minutes, then drain. Discard the dark green portions of the green onions, and thinly slice the white and light green portions. Remove the sausage from it casing and discard the casing.
Bring a big pot of water to a rolling boil, throw in a big fistful of salt (get it nice and salty!), and boil the cavatappi until al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, heat the olive oil to a large skillet or small pot over medium-high. When the oil is hot, add the sausage and fry, breaking up the sausage as much as possible, until it is cooked through and lightly crisped around the edges. Remove the pan from the heat and allow it to cool for 2-3 minutes. Add the butter to the pan, and return it to medium-low heat. When the butter is melted, add the sliced green onion and cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes until the onions soften. Add the turmeric and cook, stirring, for a couple more minutes. Add the cream and continue cooking until the cream has thickened slightly and reached a saucy consistency. Remove from the heat, stir in the raisins and salt to taste.
When the pasta is done cooking, drain and add it to the sauce, toss the pasta and serve with Parmesan.
Would you ever consider presenting your own TV show about cooking and/or food?
Are you offering? 
Yeah, of course I would. But I have no plans for anything so ambitious at the moment.
If you had the opportunity to hand out 3 Michelin stars, who would you give them to?
Michelin stars are a funny thing. They’re awarded to places that meet a very, very narrow set of criteria. And don’t get me wrong, the restaurants that earn them are stunning. But I’m adamant that great hole-in-the-wall joints, great casual restaurants and great fine dining restaurants are all equally valuable. So to make a point, I guess I’d award one to a favorite from each category. I’d award one to Alinea, because Grant Achatz isn’t afraid to push the boundaries, but he does so in ways that are very thoughtful and purposeful. I’d award one to FnB, a casual joint that cleans things up enough for the Scottsdale crowd, but keeps the focus on the food, which is comforting, accessible, and deeper than it might initially appear. And I’d award one to Grace Garden, a humble (I’m being kind) Chinese joint hidden in a dingy strip mall in Odenton, Maryland, where most of the people walking in the door used to order kung pao chicken or orange beef, until it turned out that the guy manning the wok was one of the best authentic Cantonese and Sichuan chefs in the state. But those are just the three that strike me at the moment. I could easily sub in tons for any of them.
What would your ideal restaurant look like?
Like it should be closed by the health department. I exaggerate, but I’m making a point. Though I value all levels of cuisine equally, nicer places don’t need a champion. Jean-Georges Vongerichten doesn’t need me to tell people that his food is incredible. But that run-down Mexican joint on the other side of town where the cook puts an exceptional amount of care into what he does and makes the best damn cemita north of the border? Those places need champions. Because without champions, they disappear. And when they do, the loss is just as great as it would be for the four-star joint in the nice part of town.
And as a dessert, a question that is about video games after all. Do you ever play cooking games like Restaurant Empire or Cooking Mama? What’s your opinion on them? And if you could create your own food-related video game, what would it be like?
Cooking Mama, yeah. But the game itself doesn’t really have anything to do with cooking. It’s just random minigames wrapped in a cooking package, which is great and I enjoy it. Actually, there was an old PS1 game from Japan that I got my hands on and loved. I don’t even remember the name. But you ran a little restaurant, and when orders started coming in, you had to start preparing them. You had to use the analog sticks to whip up the tempura batter, boil the noodles, chop the fish cake, ladle out the soup, pour the beer, flip the takoyaki, etc. etc. And you had to be quick, or the orders would pile up and your customers would get pissed off. And the only way to get everything done quickly was to multitask. You could step away from one task to do another. But you had to coordinate the timing, or those gyoza might burn while you were chopping the carrots. And you could save time by waiting until multiple orders for a dish came in and cooking them all in one batch. But if you waited too long, that first customer would get annoyed and walk out. It did a great job of capturing the frenzy of a real restaurant kitchen, and you had to have the same dexterity, timing and ability to multitask that you’d need in real life. Great concept, great execution. Wish I could remember the name of the game.
Thanks a bunch, Dominic! And to our readers: if you decide to make Dom’s recipe, let us know the results! Or if you have an awesome recipe of your own to share, feel free to contact us about that as well, and we might publish it!
[...] adventure game. Also I’ve been hard at work on my new magazine, where I’ve published a fun interview with Dominic Armato, who’s not only a great voice actor but also a food enthusiast. We also reviewed the latest [...]
You’ve done it again, nice interview!
Cheers!
[...] make use of it some more. I have no idea how to review food though – I’d rather leave that to the experts. I would consider reviewing wine, but I haven’t taken a course on that. So that leaves beer. The [...]