Chef John Novi looks beyond the Depuy Canal House

valley vitals
a man, a plan, a canal house
Chef John Novi looks beyond the Depuy Canal House
By peter aaron ■ Photography by jennifer may
T
he wedge of locally grown radicchio is steaming. Just out of
the hot cast-iron pan, it rests on an airy cake of quinoa, its
cutlet-like breading a perfect shade of golden brown peeking
from beneath a layer of melted locally made bleu cheese. Inside the
mouth, it’s one astonishing texture and flavor giving way to the next:
the moist, salty tang of the cheese over the light and flaky stratum of
the breading, followed by the subtly bitter chicory crunch of the
cabbage and a forkful of the clean, hearty quinoa. The dish is accompanied by purée of fennel cooked with Japanese mirin wine.
This whole mini-epic for the palate and eyes is just one more
savory reminder of the genius that’s made John Novi, head chef and
owner of the esteemed Depuy Canal House in High Falls, a contemporary culinary legend for 41 years. The intrepid pioneer of modern
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Hudson Valley gastronomy, Novi is internationally exalted as one of
the key creators of New American cuisine. Once called “the father of
American cooking” by Time magazine and singled out by People
magazine for his “fearless and imaginative” approach, he’s an Old
World–schooled, epoch-making chef whose 41-year-old fine dining
and bistro offerings have earned his establishment acclaim by The
New York Times as one of “the most interesting and best suburban
restaurants in America.” Via their early years at the Canal House,
he’s launched the careers of such luminaries as wine gurus Kevin
Zraly (Windows on the World) and Steven Kolpan (Culinary
Institute of America), Roy Yamaguchi (Roy’s restaurant chain) and
others. And now, after all these years, he has his desire to move on
from the financial aspect of the business, which often interferes with
the profound enjoyment Novi experiences when designing recipes,
menus and engaging in the more playful aspects of cooking. “It’s
time for a new chapter,” says Novi, whose name, coincidentally,
translates as “new” in Italian. The future of this historic building is
his main concern, as Novi considers himself caretaker and steward of
the property. Novi is brimming with ideas on what the next incarnation of the Canal House might be, and he is passionately in discussion with local investors and officials to make something worthy of
the restaurant’s legacy come to fruition. But regrettably, the Canal
House, as diners have known it for decades, is now dormant.
Novi’s is a life that’s had many chapters. His father, a junk dealer,
moved the family upstate from Brooklyn in 1954 and started a
homemade frozen Italian foods business out of their house. Novi
worked as the company’s delivery boy during his high school years
and grew up cooking alongside his mother, absorbing the rich gustatory traditions of her Neapolitan upbringing. The family seized an
opportunity early on and opened a bakery and small Italian restaurant in a disused store the family had bought in the early 1960s that
quickly proved successful. (The shop closed after Novi’s parents
retired and is now the High Falls Café.) But this dalliance with the
restaurant world only fed his hunger. To Novi, a preservationobsessed Canal history buff then fully bitten by the restaurateur bug,
there was another structure in town that also cried out for a new life.
Enduring Love
Built as a tavern in 1797 by Simon Depuy, the two-story stone
Depuy House had been the central hub of High Falls, and played an
integral role in New York State’s development beginning in 1823
serving travelers and workers on the Delaware and Hudson Canal.
When Novi bought the place in 1964 for $4,500 with a loan from a
local wealthy Cement company owner, he was 22 years old. Novi
recalls the house was “Empty of electricity, heat or furniture, pretty
much just a shell.” He spent the next four years renovating and
redecorating the building, using salvage materials from Urban
Renewal projects happening in small local cities like Kingston and
Poughkeepsie. He did much of the restoration work himself, including the beautiful interior of the architectural award–winning, brickaddition kitchen he built on in 1974. His old kitchen was fully furnished with a $35 stove, a $15 sink and drain board and a shuffleboard made into a work table. The most expensive item was his $400
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My favorite thing to do is to load up
the walk-in refrigerator with
everything I’ve found and then think,
‘Hmm, what to do with all of this?
refrigerator, which came from another local establishment.
In 1968 he went to Angri, the village south of Naples his parents
were from, to work as a waiter and learn the trade from the masters of
Italian cuisine. “The hotel/restaurant chefs loved me because I was one
of the few people around who had a car,” Novi remembers, laughing.
“I’d give them rides into town or run errands for them, so they took
me under their wing and taught me what they knew. I had a photo of
the Canal House I carried around with me that I’d show them and say,
‘This is the restaurant I’m gonna open when I get back to America!’”
Which was just what he did, the following year, in 1969—although
the Canal House’s unveiling wasn’t exactly earthshaking and in some
respects was premature. “After five years the place still wasn’t finished,”
he says. “My hippie friends were camping out upstairs, and we were
using space heaters for warmth. But we opened anyway, and started out
doing private dinners for smaller groups.” The lead-up to the official
opening, however, simply gave Novi more time to develop the base
European techniques he’d learned into what others have called New
American cuisine but he prefers to call something else.
The Audacity of Cooking
“To me it’s just cooking without borders,” he explains. “Using food concepts from around the world as starting points, or points of inspiration,
and seeing where else I can take them—while using as much fresh local
produce, meats, fish, poultry, dairy and other ingredients as possible. I
source most of the ingredients myself, and my favorite thing to do is to
load up the walk-in refrigerator with everything I’ve found and then
think, ‘Hmm, what can I do with all of this?’” So goes his menu. Novi
loves to cook with fish and vegetables, however, one of his many customer favorites among his adventurous offerings is choucroute au
Champagne (“a hearty German knife-and-fork dish made by layering
fresh sauerkraut, equal amounts of onions, plus smoked pork hocks,
bacon, diced pork loin, kielbasa, sausages and pinklewurst with fresh
thyme, cooked in Champagne and garnished with sour cream”), another is the capriccio-style sake-cured salmon sliced thin and finished with
white truffle oil and lemon garlic aioli, along with the always-indemand, but less audacious, beef and steak entrées.
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Novi maintains the Depuy was the first local spot to feature duck
“served in sections; sautéing the breast and slicing it rare while making the leg and thigh confit. The menu would read ‘Duck Two Ways’
for that. On the first day we opened we had octopus, which we did
as a cold salad, since it was summer: cooked octopus, sliced thin and
combined with Italian parsley, garlic, extra-virgin olive oil and
lemon, served with sliced ciabatta bread soaked with tomato and
topped with Pecorino cheese. That was a big hit with the older people in the community, who had grown up with something that no
one else around here was making. So the word started to spread.”
But, thanks to one customer in particular, the word would soon be
spread much farther.
Eight months after the establishment opened, The New York
Times’ Craig Claiborne—the dean of American food critics—happened to stop in with seven other Times writers and chefs. Blown
away, he gave the Depuy a raving, four-star anointment, saying of
Novi, “[He’s] incredibly innovative and inspired. I don’t think you
could categorize his cooking. It’s really his own nouvelle cuisine.”
The rustic farmland house instantly became ground zero for the
Hudson Valley’s rebirth as a major restaurant destination and a prime
stop on the worldwide culinary itinerary, drawing chef-fans and
celebrity diners like Aidan Quinn, Debra Winger, Liam Neeson,
Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro (who even got married on the
premises). DeNiro is a fan but not yet a friend says Novi after Novi
blurbed his remarks about the wedding to People magazine.
In an age where chefs are the new rock stars, Novi is the culinary
equivalent of Tom Waits: influencing many of his greater-known
peers but never courting the limelight nor receiving the celebrity they
so often bask in. He’s remained free to do what he wants, boldly
combing tastes, textures and colors in ways few others dare to conceive of. “John could easily be as big as Wolfgang Puck or Alice
Waters, who started doing New American cooking shortly after John
opened in 1969,” says Kevin Zraly, who worked at the Depuy from
1970 to 1976. “He’s incredibly attentive to details, and not just with
the menu and the service. He really strives to keep the historic ambience of the building in place.”
“He had the building listed on the National Register for Historic
Places two years after opening. Say, if one of the doors needs a new
knob, he’ll go out and search through antiques stores looking for just
the right one from the right period—he won’t just go to Home
Depot and buy one. But he’s an artist first, not a showman, which
translates so beautifully to the plate. He’s had his chances to go the
TV-chef route, but it’s not his style. He’d rather just cook.”
But being a freewheeling pioneer, Novi’s naturally had his share of
experiments gone awry. “There was one time I got this idea of adding
gold leaf to a locally made cheese,” he recounts. “So I took all of this
gold leaf to Harpersfield Cheese Farm in the Catskills and had them
mix it into their cow’s milk cheese base. What we didn’t know was
that after a certain amount of time aging the cheese the gold oxidized
and faded into the cheese. Which kind of defeated the purpose.
I wanted gold to be visible as strikes.”
The Next Chapter
Undaunted, however, Novi continues to explore, using ingredients
from farmers involved with sustainability. His one local joy is his
involvement with RVGA—the Rondout Valley Growers Association,
where he serves on the board as a charter member. He sees his influence with this group of farmers as his avenue for promoting diversification for them to fearlessly grow foods that are grown in other
parts of the world but can be adapted to grow in the Rondout Valley.
He also lords over quite a land compound in High Falls, owning not
only the Depuy, but also the remodeled barn behind it (which serves
as his home and office), the adjacent New York Store 1880 building
which houses the Last Bite Café and,
directly across Route 213, the 1860
Locktender Cottage, which offers
charming overnight accommodations. The Depuy Canal House
restaurant has another restaurant
called Chefs on Fire bistro located in
the downstairs wine cellar; The COF
bistro specializes in gourmet brickoven pizza from the only known
underground brick oven. Both restaurants are now for lease preferably or
for sale.
“Ultimately, if I had my way I’d
stay on as a consultant with investors
or a new owner,” muses Novi, who is
also a composing pianist and an
accomplished painter whose creations
adorn the interior of the Depuy. “I’m
also looking to move into designing
world-class kitchens and menus, and
working
as
a guest chef at well-known kitchens in
the U.S. and abroad. I’d like to finish
my cookbook and my memoirs, and
conduct eating and cooking tours of
Italy. And I’m really excited about doing private cooking lessons, or
house parties where prospective customers buy a bag of fresh local
foods and have me turn the ingredients, [previously] unknown to
me, into a great dinner to feed their guests that day or night.”
“So there’s a lot of things I’ve been wanting to do for a while,”
Novi says, perhaps a touch wistful as he looks back on his decades of
experience. “And now seems like the time to start doing them. I’d
love to keep the kitchen I have now, but it’s part of whatever the
future is for the Canal House in someone else’s hands. I love the
Canal House and would have enjoyed making it better, but the times
do not want me to stay. I have no desire to move away, though. My
children and grandchildren are here, I’ll never stop cooking for them
or my friends.”
For that, Hudson Valley area diners will surely breathe a collective
sigh of relief.
DEPUY CANAL HOUSE
103 Main Street, High Falls
845.687.7700 depuycanalhouse.com
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