Well-Seasoned From Nose-to-Tail: Why Lord’s Chooses Its Salt Wisely

I’ve never before left a meal ruminating on a crouton. I’ve spent hundreds of hours over the course of my life examining the flakiness of a croissant, the bite of bucatini boiled al dente and the tender flesh of a baguette. But croutons, to me, have always been secondary to the salad itself—a sometimes superfluous addition to the contents wandering a plate of produce. That is, until I ate dinner at Lord’s.

Praised for vivifying the stale reputation of British fare, the one-room restaurant at 506 LaGuardia Place was already packed with patrons just an hour past its 5:30 p.m. opening on a recent Tuesday evening. Tealight candles and gold pendants illuminated the dim brick and evergreen space warmed by wooden floors, booths, tables and chairs. The interior was an overture to the meal itself: an evening in England. Like entering the din of a corner pub, the feeling was similar to the sun gracing Hampstead Heath on an overcast day: a break from the clouds, a dark ale, a Scotch Egg.  

London-born chef Ed Szymanski and Patricia Howard debuted Lord’s, their second ode to British dining, in fall 2022, following the 2020 opening of Dame (first as a fish ‘n’ chips pop-up for pandemic takeout and then as a full-service seafood restaurant in June 2021). Nearly two years later, Lord’s is a well-oiled machine, with a full house Monday through Saturday. 

Szymanski learned the ropes of the restaurant industry in kitchens with sizable meat selections on the menu. Raised by parents who loved to cook, he renounced the “high-flying career of asset management” in 2012 to apprentice (without pay) at London’s Pitt Cue for three chefs who each went on to earn a Michelin star. By 25, his aptitude for modern meat pies was not only earning him a paycheck, but also landed him an executive chef role at Cherry Point in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (The restaurant closed in 2020.) When it was time to open Lord’s with Howard (his wife and business partner), Szymanski wanted to bring more than just tasteful British food to Manhattan.

“It started from a desire to not waste anything and to show the American audience in the New York market delicious techniques. I didn’t want to be one of those restaurants that are French or Italian. I wanted to offer something a little different [as an] ethos for Lord’s,” the James Beard Best Chef semifinalist told Observer. “And it’s not like we’re mad scientists with a pig in the basement. It’s a seasonal restaurant that uses every part of the animal, lots of fresh vegetables and fish. It’s about putting life in the cooking and good soul in the restaurant—that’s the kind of path that the restaurant’s on.”

Summer inched towards autumn by the time I dined on Lord’s ever-changing, meat-heavy menu, and I was not only interested in the dishes, but in the culmination of how they came to be. In the first week of September, the dinner menu contained 17 dishes total (unlabeled starters, salads, mains and two sides). Eight of them featured red meat and foul, and seven seafood. The one entirely vegetarian option was a salad with romano beans, radishes and aged gouda, but more than half of the plates contained fresh herbs, peaches, tomatoes, cherries, leafy greens, eggplant, cabbage or collards. At least in the warmer months when produce is available, Lord’s isn’t as “meat-heavy” as it is a restaurant with heavy meats.

While Szymanski believes respect for seasonality, farmers, fishers and butchers to be some of the best ways to positively impact the food industry, the farm-to-table idea isn’t new. It has become a popular selling point for chefs and restaurateurs to appeal to customers, support local and lessen the carbon footprint from mass production and shipping. Plus, a radish harvested and served within days possesses crisp, peppery notes that one emptied from a plastic bag after being schlepped cross-country simply cannot rival. 

The farm-to-table atmosphere has become familiar—the airy bistro filled with wildflower bouquets from the farmers’ market, tins of artisanal baguettes and a foraged mushroom “steak.” This is not Lord’s aesthetic. Szymanski sets himself apart in the world of sustainable, seasonal dining with something a bit more hearty: nose-to-tail cooking. Coined by acclaimed British chef Fergus Henderson in his 2004 book, The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, the concept revisits the ancestral tradition of using every part of the animal in order to waste less and consume more nutrients. Once a fundamental, often sacred, principle of hunting and gathering from Mongolia to Africa to North America, western dining has strayed far from this philosophy. As of 2019, the U.S. has wasted approximately 40 percent of its food across households, retail and the service industry. The U.K. showed around 12 percent waste in the food service industry, but 70 percent in households.

While the United Nations regards excessive meat consumption, particularly beef, lamb and shrimp, as a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, one may argue that if you’re going to serve meat, serve all of it. As a meat pie maven, living by the nose-to-tail philosophy is one way Szymanski limits waste in his kitchen. It’s the carnivore’s take on sustainability. 

At the same time, the chef carefully selects products from people, farms, businesses and purveyors that grow and process impactful ingredients. He has spent time developing relationships with suppliers to procure artisanal products that align with Lord’s principles of using more, wasting less and choosing wisely. Some joined him and Howard as guests at their wedding in May 2023. 

He also works directly with farms that deliver a whole animal for his kitchen to butcher in-house, homemade sausages and pork belly, all of which require a great quality salt to come into play.

Salt, a natural mineral from evaporated ocean and sometimes lake water, has been used for food preservation since at least 2000 BC, the first documentation of which was in Egypt. Naturally, it has a prominent place in a kitchen that uses the whole animal and finishes its croutons—fried in butter to create a crunchy exterior without penetrating the warm, marginally tender interior—with flakes processed in a sustainable salt house 26 feet from the sea in Cornwall, England.

“Salt is the original preservative. You’d butcher a pig at the end of summer and eat the parts better consumed fresh over the next weeks, and then preserve [the rest] for winter when there were no vegetables. Along the way, people figured out these things tasted better; things like prosciutto. Prosciutto is essentially nose-to-tail, and salt is a key component in that process. I can’t take credit, but I am happy to be a beneficiary of [those] discoveries,” Szymanski told Observer.

Maintaining a trusted network of suppliers was how Szymanski became one of the first U.S. restaurateurs to use Cornish Salt (in addition to Maldon, another small-batch, widely distributed English salt). Founded by an archaeologist and run by a conservationist and engineer, the salt has a pronounced flavor that comes from the unique geology of the cliffs on Cornwall’s southernmost coast. Cornish Salt also aims to minimize environmental impact by merging traditional salt-making with innovative extraction methods—maintaining the equilibrium of the sea’s salinity levels. Its salt house runs on renewable energy.

While Cornish Salt’s story aligns with his philosophy, Szymanski didn’t choose it solely for that reason.

“I let the proof be in the pudding and always taste the product. I make sure I taste [the brand’s story] in the flavor. I don’t want to sell our guests stories; I want to sell them deliciousness,” Szymanski said.

While salt’s source and harvest methods may be more often overlooked to the layman than, say, a bursting heirloom tomato picked during peak season, it is—to a great chef— just as essential, and far more versatile. 

“Salt brings out the intrinsic flavor in all foods. We use salt to garnish everything. It’s in the ice creams, the crumbles and desserts. It makes food taste more like itself. We use fine salt to dissolve and crunchy flakes and crystals to provide garnish and bite,” Szymanski said.

The chef uses Cornish Salt’s regular and smoked flakes and crystals wherever they are best suited. In late summer, the menu is driven by bright produce, in addition to the rotating meat pie; this one contained ground duck with chanterelles and a cherry jus. The raw scallops with nectarine and marigold were lively and delicate, with an unexpected depth from the crushed smoked salt. The croutons—the feel and flavor of which still linger in the caverns of my bread-loving soul—were not an afterthought but a fundamental component in an heirloom tomato salad. They were paired with unbroken basil leaves and cured eel from a small farm in Maine, another testament to Szymanski’s diligent sourcing practices. 

And the Oysters Kilpatrick (ordered individually at $5 per oyster) were a nod to the English seascape herself. On a bed of stones like dusky bluffs, the brine and salt balanced with guanciale and a jammy mignonette of shallot, brown butter, Worcestershire and malt vinegar. Well, maybe not entirely the embodiment of a day at the beach, but at least the way Szymanski would imagine it.