Loose Leaf Notes

~ The following was published in The Floyd Press newspaper on May 6, 2010.

At Natasha’s Market Café you might find a purple pansy in the middle your chicken strudel, but only if pansies are in season. The floral garnish, both decorative and eatable, is a reflection of the restaurant’s gourmet sensibility and its farm-to-table approach.

Located on top of the Harvest Moon Food Store in a sunny gallery setting, the cafe is Floyd’s latest new eatery, serving lunch from Tuesday through Saturday and dinner Thursday through Saturday. With a menu that features locally produced food, the café boasts ample seating, a wine and cheese bar, an outdoor deck, and the culinary creations of its owner, Chef Natasha Shishkevish.

Shishkevish, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in D.C., was originally brought to Floyd by way of Ohio by the Chatteau Morrisette Winery, where she was head chef for two years. Trained in French cuisine at the Culinary Institute of America, she was the chef at Oddfellas for five years, before leaving to run her own catering business. Over the nine years that Shishkevish has been cooking in the area, her talent for blending the right mix of delicate flavors in dishes from a wide variety of cultures has earned her a following of fans.

“I was born to do this,” Shishkevish said. But it didn’t always seem that way. As a young girl she was anemic and not interested preparing or eating food. “I would only eat three things,” she remembered. Shishkevish says she wasn’t allowed to bake in her mother’s kitchen because she was too messy and rambunctious. Today, her high energy enthusiasm works in her favor in keeping her growing repertoire of dishes fresh and inventive. “I’m an Attention Deficit chef. I have to keep myself interested,” she joked.

When Shishkevish was a college student majoring in theater and directing, she cooked her first chicken but left the plastic bag of innards inside, which prompted her sister to buy her a cookbook for Christmas. While going through the book, trying out recipes with a friend, her interest in cooking was born. She started gardening and soon realized that she was reading more gardening books and seed catalogs than novels and school books. A member of the Culinary Institute of America Board of Directors and owner of a bar where Shiskevish worked as a bartender advised her, saying, ‘Natasha, you need to go to school. You talk about food way too much.’ Shishkevish took her boss’s advice and took her cooking to the next level.

“I want people to eat real food at affordable prices,” Shishkevish said over lunch: strips of panko crusted natural chicken breast with marinated potatoes, red onions and hardboiled eggs on a bed of organic greens. Committed to fostering a sustainable local economy, she purchases food from local growers and The Harvest Moon Food Store, as well as from Floyd’s grocery stores. Breads, crackers, desserts, and sausage are made from scratch in the café kitchen. There are daily lunch specials and the dinner menu changes constantly.

Like the flavors Shishkevish mixes in her dishes, the café atmosphere blends elegance with comfort. The servers, hand-picked and trained by Shishkevish, are attentive. Large framed windows looking out onto the open sky and hills of varying shades of green invoke a feeling of spaciousness. The banquette seating against one wall – long upholstered benches accented with throw pillows – add to the relaxed dining experience and seem to invite conversation, the sipping of wine, or lingering over dessert. Hikers and bikers, locals and out-of-towners are all part of the café mix.

Business has been good and the first weekend of being officially open was booming, Shishkevish reports. She’s excited about upcoming cooking classes she’ll begin teaching, beginning the second Wednesday in June. Sauces, sushi, and a class on cooking with natural beef are some of the slated class offerings. “We take requests,” she said, adding that anyone interested can sign up by calling (745- 2450) or through the cafe webpage (natashasmarketcafe.com), where a menu and a more extensive resume of her chef experience can also be found.

Natasha’s Market Café is also on Facebook. A recent mouth watering Facebook entry reads like food poetry and says it all: “We’re flooded with beautiful local shiitake mushrooms and asparagus this week; maybe a risotto cake with a shiitake mushroom ragout, an asparagus salad with blood orange vinaigrette and more wonderful lamb shanks from Border Springs Farm.”    ~  Colleen Redman