Fish: Butchery and Classic Cooking Techinques

This class is a mix of hands-on cooking and demonstration; it culminates in dinner served with wine and beer.

Fish butchery doesn't have to be intimidating! Chili Montes will help us get this essential skill down to a science. He'll teach us his techniques for fabricating a whole flat fish and a whole round fish, cleaning squid, and deboning sardines. We'll also learn the best practices for serving raw fish ("crudo") and a few classic cooking methods like poaching and slow-roasting.  

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Poached calamari salad
Grilled Sardines
Petrale Crudo
Slow-roasted Salmon

Served with salad, bread, butter, and seasonal fruit

Chili Montes is the Butcher Buyer for the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, where he has played a part since their first opening, having worked closely with Sam Mogannam at his San Francisco restaurant, Rendezvous du Monde, in the 1990s. Chili’s experience as a chef at Bay Area institutions like Tiburon’s Corinthian Yacht Club and San Francisco’s Cypress Club gave him a deep understanding of fine dining and exceptional service.  After a brief stint opening The Public in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood, Chili returned permanently to Bi-Rite in 2006, and has lead the butcher team ever since. From grass-fed beef in Uruguay to heritage turkeys in Iowa to salmon fishing in Alaska, Chili has traveled extensively to understand the farms and ranches that raise and harvest Bi-Rite’s proteins; for the past decade, he has shared his deep knowledge of responsible production practices with staff and guests.  Chili combines his passion restaurant-quality food and service with his love for cooking and sharing Good Food to increase the availability of high quality ingredients for all.