Chef Michael Brown Opts for Variety and Versatility

Usually chefs only think in citrus terms of oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit, but when Michael Brown attended Sunkist's Citrus Célébré in February and tasted all the varieties, he was amazed how varied the flavors were from one another.

As corporate executive chef for Metro Restaurants Inc., Tucson, Ariz., Brown oversees the menus for nine restaurants and already felt like he used a lot of citrus. But he immediately saw ways to incorporate more. "I was most impressed with oro blanco," he says. "It had a flavor not as tart as I was anticipating, so I could replace oranges with it in a food preparation."

Brown says he likes the versatility of the menus he works with in the restaurants, which he helped to build nearly nine years ago. "I opened all the restaurants and designed the menus and kitchens."

The cuisine types range from American to Southwestern to Pacific Rim, so rather than focus on one cuisine, Brown considers himself a generalist. His first restaurant job was as a line cook at a country French bistro in Sparks, Md.

After attending Baltimore International College School of Culinary Arts, he worked in various restaurants, including Center Club in Baltimore; the Clydes Restaurant Group based in Washington, D.C.; and the Radisson Hotel in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Brown says he gets his menu ideas from magazines, bantering with other chefs and from reaching back to menus he did 10 years ago.

Three or four times a year he runs an item usage report on each of the menus. He looks at the items in the top five percent of sales and determines if they are doing all they are supposed to do. Then he looks at the bottom five percent and evaluates if he should replace or rework them.

When Brown returned from Citrus Célébré, he saw a menu item he could rework immediately. "We have a grilled orange roughy we prepare with citrus vinaigrette. When I got back, I realized we were lazy. I changed (the vinaigrette) to an orange beurre blanc and added citrus salad to the plate," he says.

With the Southwest menus, Brown realized that he didn't need to limit the citrus use to limes as he had been doing. "It would be just as interesting to open up the door to orange on the menu," he says. "I could see an ancho chile and orange flavor profile that would work well together."

His Pacific Rim restaurant already serves a tangerine and chile wok dish. "I never thought about it before, but any chile will marry with any citrus, really," he says.