Matthew Lishansky of Upstairs on the Square dishes on vegans and the restaurant biz

January 18, 5:15 PMBoston Vegan ExaminerRyan Weaver

Previous Next

4 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Boston Vegan Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

   Matthew Lishansky of Upstairs

Matthew Lishansky, general manager of Upstairs on the Square, is one of the many friendly faces you'll often see when you ascend the wildly-colored stairs at this Harvard Square mainstay. A sometime improv comedian and fulltime food lover, Lishansky is the kind of host who's always eager to please and to put you at ease, even if you're a vegan diner who may not be able to try every item on the menu. 

Upstairs on the Square has been quietly establishing itself as a friendly place for vegans, thanks in part to an ongoing vegan dinner series co-hosted by the Boston Vegan Association. (See below for details on their next series, which begins Jan 29.) So, we decided to ask Lishansky for a little background on Upstairs' relationship with Boston's vegan community, and for a few tips on how vegans and restaurant folk can find common ground.

--
So what’s the history of the relationship between Upstairs and its vegan clientele?

We’ve been doing the vegan tasting the six years the restaurant’s been open. It’s always been an option there. [And] the president of the Boston Vegan Association came in with her husband, I believe for her birthday, and had the tasting. We just kind of talked them up, and it was a natural progression from there. It was a pretty symbiotic relationship.

I think the vegans in Boston appreciate our tastings because it’s not like, ‘Here’s your faux burger, here’s your faux…whatever, insert appropriate protein here.’ [Executive chef] Steve [Brand] does a really great job of choosing to say, ‘This is the vegetable that I want to showcase, and this is the preparation I’ve chosen for it.” So in that respect [vegans] kind of appreciate it, and they see that you don’t have to do over the old classics – you can create new classics.

Do you think your tastings with the BVA have encouraged vegan diners to come in to Upstairs at other times?

Well, we offer a five-course vegan tasting five nights a week. Every night that the Soiree Room is open, the tasting is available, not just during the [Boston Vegan Association] tastings. We don’t publish the vegan menu online, because it’s dependent on what we can get. Right now, vegans have it rough. It’s wintertime in New England. So really, the choices the chef has for doing [seasonal] food are limited, but I think he does a great job of taking what he has and coming up with some really creative things. 

What are some of the best-tasting vegan dishes you’ve made at Upstairs?

I love our strozzapreti. In Italian it means ‘priest-strangler’, and there’s a lot of funny verbiage around it. In Italy there would be these housemaids who would subsidize their rents by cooking for the clergymen in the rectory. It’s a wrapped pasta, so the wringing-out process would be described as the woman getting so stressed out by the demands of the priests that she would just strangle the pasta.

Anyhow, it’s just flour and water. And we have some beautiful cauliflower right now, so it’s done with some cauliflower florets, and it’s a nice simple dish. But the fact that we make the pasta in the morning is really kind of a nice treat, and I actually find myself eating it quite often, despite the fact that I’m not vegan. It’s a light alternative, but it’s filling, because it’s pasta.

We also have a vegan burger on our lunch menu that we make every day, and honestly, there’s more protein in that burger than in our sirloin cheeseburger. I think it has like something like 26 ingredients in it. It’s got everything from quinoa to whole lentils – basically everything but the kitchen sink. But it’s this beautiful option and I find myself ordering it all the time. One, because it’s so artisanal and two, because it fills me up more than the regular burger.

And the condiments – I am a huge sauce queen, and I can’t really imagine a life without mayonnaise, but they make this incredible vegan mayonnaise that’s constructed from pistachio paste, and they grind up these pistachios so much – they mortar and pestle it to the point where it just fluffs up, and it makes this awesome condiment.

What advice would you give to vegans who are wary of coming into a fine dining atmosphere, where so many cooks rely on butter and cream to make their best dishes?

Think outside the box, and know what you like. Whenever my servers come back – and I see it all the time, because I’m constantly expediting in the kitchen – the kitchen says, “well, ask them what they like to eat.” And the servers do that, and the vegans are completely turned around. They say, ‘No one’s ever asked me that before.’ Every kitchen’s always had a sort of canned response for the vegan issue. And our kitchen isn’t like that. What’s going to aggravate our kitchen is an indecisive patron who doesn’t know what they like, and ultimately backs up the board while they’re trying to decide, well, do I like potatoes or do I like tofu? These are things that you [should] know going in. The chef will certainly put his own spin on what you’re asking for, but that’s the fun of going out to eat instead of cooking for yourself, is seeing how someone else will interpret it. So be willing to have a little fun.

The one thing vegans sometimes balk at is the pricetag associated with something at Upstairs. It might be hard to [justify] how you can charge that for just vegetables. But I’d give a reminder to vegans that these chefs did go to school. This is a profession where people are educated, and they’re putting their knowledge to use to benefit the end consumer. And I think people need to be open to the idea that you’re getting something off-menu, so you’re paying not just for the prime ingredients but also for the ingenuity that goes into the dish. 
 
If you’re willing to know what you like and then ultimately have fun with it, then you’re in for a good meal.

What advice would you give to another restaurant that is interested in serving the vegan community?

As much as I don’t want other restaurants taking my vegans away from me…there’s a reason why we’re all still employed right now in this terrible economy. This is a pivotal time in our arena, where everyone needs to have a host-guest mentality. There are no “no’s” in this business. You need to be ready to serve everyone who comes in your door. So that form of, as [NYC restaurateur and hospitality expert] Danny Meyer puts it, “enlightened hospitality”, is what we should all be striving toward. 

I think the other thing that people forget to do in the restaurant world is simply ask the customer what they’d like. Vegans are very knowledgeable about what they can and cannot eat, in the same way as people who have allergies. In fact, one of our investors just [became] vegan. Someone we’ve known for 20 years just decided he no longer wants to have anything to do with animals. He came in the other night, and my sous chef was so excited about the prospect of having this kind of challenge. [The sous chef] looked around the walk-in, and he got this beautiful piece of tofu and was all ready to go with it. And the gentleman said, “I’m not a big tofu person.” So I asked him what he’d like instead, and he said, “I’d like these vegetables, simply done, light on the oil.” And we happened to have all the ingredients, and it was exactly what he wanted.

So what can we expect to see on Stephen Brand’s upcoming vegan menus at Upstairs? Considering it’s winter, will he be able to incorporate his love for seasonal ingredients into the dishes this time around?

In terms of seasonality, it gets more into Steve’s training at this time of year. In the summertime, you see so many things you can get right here in Massachusetts, it’s almost an easy out – because what’s more perfect than a tomato from Siena Farms? But in the winter, it calls for more training, and you can see what comes from Steve having trained in France, and it becomes more about how you can stretch your knowledge, more than how you can stretch your harvest. 
 

--

The next series of vegan dinners at Upstairs will be held on the following dates in the Soiree Dining Room:

Thursday, Jan 29

Tuesday, Feb 17

Tuesday, Mar 31

Cost: $49 for four courses

RSVP: 617-864-1933 or info@upstairsonthesquare.com