Austinist Interviews: Chef David Lebovitz

We wanted to quit our day jobs and steal yours the moment we heard about your Chocolate and Bakery Tours of Paris, as well as week-long chocolate tours of Europe. Have the tours provided any unexpected events?

Too many! Wandering the streets of Paris, you always find the unexpected, which is sometimes fun. (Please note the word 'sometimes'...) It's considered 'pas correct' to eat on the streets. Instead, one should sit down and eat like a civilized person. But on a walking tour, that isn't possible, so we'll often greedily enjoy our chocolate snacks outdoors on the sidewalk. Invariably someone will come along and give us a knowing 'thumbs-up' look with their eyes, or say something, like "C'est bon, mais oui!" ("It's good, isn't it!") Guests get a kick out of it since they think Parisians are uptight. But when it comes to food, they're anything but.

You've traveled through Austin on your culinary journeys - what are your favorite things about the city?

I adore Austin, and every time I go and teach at Central Market, I ask them if they'd hire me. It's such a great supermarket, probably the best in the world, so that's certainly on my list of favorites things. I also like, ok…love, the chicken-friend chicken at Threadgills. The chairs have wheels since it's almost impossible to push yourself away from the table afterwards without them!

I'm also a big fan of Mexican food, something we can't get in Paris, so I always go to the little café on Congress that I forget the name of. The food is okay, but the atmosphere is terrific. This trip I can't wait to go to Teo for ice cream. We've corresponded and I've heard great things about it. Anyone care to join me?

Austin is a big sustainable foods town. What attracted you to sustainable foods, and how do you make them so much fun?

To be honest, I just look for food that tastes the best. In most cases, the best happens to be the things that are grown locally, raised by people who really care about what they're doing. I don't think it's possible to compare a basket of rock-hard strawberries from Chile with the little delicate ones from a local farmer in terms of aroma or flavor. Same with peaches. A great peach, hand-picked just at the moment of ripeness is a beautiful, perfect thing. And when your ingredients are good, there's little you need to do to them.

In my book, The Perfect Scoop, most of the recipes are very simple. The Chocolate Ice Cream and Sorbet just depend on very good chocolate and cocoa powder. One of everyone's favorite recipes, the Strawberry Frozen Yogurt, is simply strawberries, yogurt and sugar. What could be easier than that?

For great cooking, the shopping is just as important at the preparation. And the same thing goes for desserts, including preparing ice cream and sorbets, as well. It's not about fancy equipment or ingredients, it's using your senses when you shop. Including common sense!

What should we be carefully and creatively throwing together for dessert on our next big romantic date?

Well, since it's summer, I vote for anything red: tangy raspberries, luscious strawberries and slices of juicy, red-skinned nectarines all tossed together with a touch of honey surrounding a big icy scoop of something like Mango Sorbet or something more surprising, like toasted coconut ice cream. Isn't there something sexy and romantic about an element of surprise?

We won't argue with that!

images courtesy www.davidlebovitz.com