At its creation, the Brick Oven Bistro concept was simply to “take advantage of the fast food generation in terms of convenience and consistency, but with more eatable food.” To this day, a hallmark of the restaurant has been its insistence on preparing its dishes “from scratch”.
It’s hard to believe, but 2009 marks the 25th year that the Brick Oven Bistro has upheld its comfort food tradition of “slow food served quickly”. In return for its efforts, Boiseans have taken the iconic restaurant in the Center on the Grove, and its owners Stephanie Telesco and Jeff Nee, into their hearts…and its ever changing menu into their tummies.
At its creation, the Brick Oven Bistro concept was simply to, in Jeff’s words, “take advantage of the fast food generation in terms of convenience and consistency, but with more eatable food.” To this day, a hallmark of the Brick Oven Bistro has been its insistence on preparing its dishes “from scratch”. Says Jeff, “we probably have the smallest freezers of any restaurant in Boise.”
More recently, I’ve come to think of the Brick Oven Bistro’s culinary mission as “new adventures in comfort food”. Stephanie, however, thinks of it a bit differently. “We do regional American food, which can encompass a lot of things.” These things include a gumbo recipe (donated by famed New Orleans restaurant, Dooky Chase), Yankee pot roast, and more exotic regional fare such as crawfish etouffe. Even the Brick Oven desserts have a culinary pedigree: the triple fudge nut brownie is based on a recipe from Denver food diva, Pat Miller.
If you think that trading on the best recipes of renowned restaurants is culinary plagiarism, Stephanie Telesco would beg to differ. From her and Jeff’s perspective, when it comes to good food, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But it actually goes deeper than that…and closer to the heart of what the Brick Oven Bistro is all about. As Stephanie puts it, “It’s nice to have a culinary heritage; you’re helping to preserve a tradition of food that people are comforted by.”
While the core of the Brick Oven’s concept has remained the same for a quarter of a century, the number of soups, stews and desserts it offers has “expanded exponentially”. Says Stephanie, “we moved away from the simplicity of our earlier menu by taking on greater culinary challenges”. These challenges came naturally enough to Steph and Jeff, self-described “cookbook readers” who cook almost every night when they get home from the restaurant. Following their culinary muse has led to menu additions such as sweet potato star anise soup. I’m willing to bet that mom never set a bowl of that in front of you.
In a restaurant market filled with “killer concepts,’ the culinary mission of the Brick Oven Bistro has stayed the course for 25 years: prepare simple and wholesome meals that people once had time (if not the culinary skill or inclination) to prepare for their families…and to serve this food in an environment as unpretentious as the kitchen table. “We used to say that we cooked food the way your mother did,” says Jeff, “but these days it probably more closely resembles your grandmother’s cooking.” I’d have to agree; but then, I never recall my grandmother making a killer Hungarian goulash.
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