Working in restaurants is the only job Jake Eberle ’02 has ever known. He started at the bottom: washing dishes at Joe’s Boathouse in South Portland, Maine, when he was 16.
While he was in college, Eberle worked summers at Joe’s, and then, after he graduated with a degree in religion and a concentration in French, Eberle enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, where he elevated his craft to an art.
After interning in France at a Michelin-starred restaurant and working for nearly 10 years with some of the top chefs in New York, Eberle grew restless. He met Stanislawa Prenkiewicz, whose Polish diner in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn needed new life. It was a lucky break. Although Prenkiewicz stayed on as a silent partner, Eberle’s vision and talent drive the restaurant.
Opening its doors in September 2014, Le Fond started strong. Condé Nast Traveler named it one of the best new restaurants of 2014, and the Village Voice recently chose Le Fond as the best French restaurant in the Big Apple. And while Eberle waits for his first star, the Michelin guide calls his cooking “crisp, clean, and comfortingly classic.”
Eberle’s food is a modern interpretation of classical French cuisine, which is comprised of four main parts: protein, sauce, accompaniment, and garnish. By design, Le Fond, which means “the stock,” is a small operation where Eberle can pay attention to details. He plans the menu, receives the deliveries, does the prep and all the cooking, and, like every good restaurateur, finds time to come out of the kitchen to visit with his guests.
Eberle works at Le Fond six days a week. When someone asks him how he spends his day off, he says simply, “I cook.”
9:34 a.m.
Eberle checks his daily deliveries to ensure that only the highest-quality ingredients are used in his dishes.
10:12 a.m.
A typical morning finds Eberle sitting at Le Fond’s bar, running payroll and marketing plans, going over the day’s prep list, and reviewing the menu to ensure that everything is in place for the evening’s service. Eberle changes the menu seasonally but makes small weekly adjustments based on available ingredients.
10:52 a.m.
Eberle skins, debones, and portions the morning’s delivery of monkfish.
11:28 a.m.
In preparing a sauce for the monkfish, Eberle cooks fennel, carrots, and celery in a liquid that will later be reduced and mounted with butter. “Other cooks may blanch the vegetables separately and discard the water, but I want the flavor from the vegetables to stay in the dish,” says Eberle.
3:41 p.m.
In his unending quest for the best ingredients, Eberle walks a few blocks to the Bedford Cheese Shop, where cheesemongers who share his passion for great food advise him on his options.
5:02 p.m.
Adam Friedberg of AP Wine Imports visits Le Fond to offer samples of French wines. Friedberg knows his producers personally and can give Eberle both a history and a manufacturing process for each wine.
7:21 p.m.
Plating a dish requires as much attention to detail as cooking. Eberle’s mantra is neat, clean, and organized. The chef uses tweezers to arrange the final garnish.
7:38 p.m.
Eberle comes out of the kitchen to visit with the evening’s guests.