PORTLAND WINE WEEK 2024 FEATURE: CHEF Damian Sansonetti of Chaval

2024 Chef Feature
Written By Portland Wine Week
 

Sponsored by WINE WISE.

Good wine can encourage conversation, engage the mind, and electrify the palate. In all of these, chefs find a mutually beneficial relationship. Wine and food are partners in a foxtrot – as one flavor reveals itself, the other follows, textures and acidity and fruit all following each other in a back-and-forth game. As chefs create flavor experiences, they rely on sommeliers to create harmony at the table – through conversation, hospitality, and lastly, great pairings. This Portland Wine Week, we are highlighting a few chefs who get it, who see the terroirs represented in their wine program as just as important as the farms that grow their food. Chefs who take a guest-centered approach and appreciate wine, dinner and ambiance altogether to create an unforgettable experience. This series is brought to you by Wine Wise.

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Before Chef Damian Sansonetti was the acclaimed chef de cuisine at the uber-French Bar Boulud in New York, he grew up savoring his mother's and grandmother's cooking — from handmade pasta to grilled fish — while also learning how to cure meat and make sausages with his grandfather. A career in food was practically his birthright. After graduating from the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, Sansonetti worked at Nantucket’s Brant Point Grill and Pittsburgh’s Steelhead Grill, moving to New York to open Heartbeat in the W Hotel. Sansonetti met Daniel Boulud while working at Shallots in Midtown and eventually took a position at Boulud’s DB Bistro Moderne. 

Training rigorously under Chef Olivier Muller, Sansonetti became chef de banquet at Daniel and then sous chef under Jean Francois Bruel. Promoted to executive chef of Bar Boulud in 2008, Sansonetti was named a 2009 Star Chefs Rising Star. He met the already-acclaimed pastry chef, Ilma Lopez while working in Boulud’s restaurants, and the two eventually married and settled in Maine. 

Now ensconced in the burgeoning food scene of Portland, Sansonetti partnered with his wife (a 2014 Star Chefs Rising Star Pastry Chef and nominated in 2018 for a James Beard Award as Outstanding Pastry Chef), to open their Italian fine dining restaurant Piccolo and in 2017 Chaval. Recently, Sansonetti was a 2022 finalist for the James Beard Award, Best Chef Northeast and partnered with Lopez to open the bakery and bar, Ugly Duckling – now a pillar of the Portland all-day-cafe scene. Both locations have a fantastic wine list that effortlessly matches the atmosphere of each distinct restaurant. Chaval in particular, has some secret goodies hiding out in the wine cellar. Perhaps if you ask at the right moment, Chef Sansonetti will let you in on some of the city's best kept wine secrets.

Tucked into the West End, Chaval offers a seasonally-inspired menu with French and Spanish classics. Chef Sansonetti won’t take all the credit for the menus, he says that creating the menu is a full-house effort. “Number one, you have to be excited about it, you have to almost be like a little kid and want to have this passion for it and get excited about the seasons, the ingredients, the cooking technique, what you can do with it, how the wines will pair up with it. And if you have that passion, and you have that drive and that determination in that one for it, it comes off on the rest of your team and they want to keep doing it, they want to get creative with it too.” He’s not as interested in being the star of the show as he is constantly being in a state of learning, exploring and savoring.

“I grew up in a very, very large Italian family. And yes, the stereotypes are sometimes true. We'd love to eat! We talked about food, there was food always around the table. You go to my Nana's house – cookies were always on the table that she had just baked, very fresh. There was always something cooking on the stove. There was always something preparing to get cooking after the last thing came out of the stove. There was salt cod soaking and there was pasta drying, there were vegetables being grown or dried out or last night's bread being dried out overnight for croutons…” This sense of abundance is evident in Chaval’s atmosphere. It’s a place you’ll never leave hungry. Sansonsetti loves thinking about the food supply chain, and intentionally planning out how to get the freshest ingredients for each season of the year. This is something that his Grandma passed down to him, perhaps unintentionally: “I would see garlic down in the basement and think ‘why does grandma have garlic in the basement’? What is she doing with it? Now, I understand about garlic and how essential curing it is.” The techniques that his Grandmother knew to do that she had probably learned from her mother, who’d learned from her mother, so on and so forth, are now in play at Chaval. A place that feels equally like an Italian Grandma’s kitchen and a leader in groundbreaking, American cuisine.

Chef Sansonetti’s immaculate technique and eye for perfection is evident in his cooking but fortunately, he doesn’t take himself as seriously as he takes his food. He’s a true comedian, and hosts a riotously good time. We can’t wait for the utterly delightful experiences he’s preparing for #Portlandwineweek. You can find Chef Sansonetti at one of his upcoming events for Portland Wine Week or throughout the summer on the water for Wine Wise’s Chef Series: Wine and Food Sails.

Chef Series Wine & Food Sails with Chaval and Ugly Duckling:

Portland Wine Week is Presented by Wine Wise with Partner Sponsors Bangor Savings and Buoy Local.

 
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