This story was excerpted from Bryan Hoch’s Yankees Beat e-newsletter. To learn the total e-newsletter, click on right here. And subscribe to get it recurrently in your inbox.
NEW YORK — Bernie Williams had a knack for making it look straightforward on the baseball subject, patrolling middle subject and drilling line drives with grace. His second profession has seen him strike all the fitting chords on stage as a jazz guitarist.
Within the kitchen? That’s a step exterior of the four-time World Sequence champion’s consolation zone. Williams is all the time up for a problem, although, which he proved by lately becoming a member of Chef Adam Sobel at Bourbon Steak at Essex Home in New York for a function with MLB’s “Off the Plate.”
“I bear in mind being a younger Minor League participant; first, second 12 months within the Minors,” Williams stated. “There have been 4 or 5 individuals to an residence. We didn’t have cash to exit and eat each night time, so we simply went to the grocery retailer to get an entire bunch of stuff. I used to be appointed the cook dinner for the group. Whether or not it was good or dangerous, we must eat it, it doesn’t matter what.”
If solely Williams — and his roommates — had entry to Sobel again then. The chef’s first tip: don’t “Bern, Child, Bern!” the meal.
“I grew up in Puerto Rico, so I’m extra a fan of Latin American delicacies,” Williams stated. “I lastly realized how you can make rice, baked beans, a little bit pork shoulder.”
This time, Williams labored as a sous chef, serving to put together a Nova Scotian lobster pasta that Sobel promised would change into “your new go-to dish at dwelling when you could impress.”
Williams had the fitting coach: Sobel, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, educated beneath legendary cooks together with Gunter Seeger, Charlie Trotter, Daniel Boulud, Man Savoy and Michael Mina.
Sobel, who seems regularly on tv, stated Williams is his favourite Yankee. His fondest baseball reminiscence: sitting within the Yankee Stadium bleachers for Williams’ dwelling run in Sport 5 of the 2001 American League Championship Sequence vs. the Mariners.
“If I may do something,” Sobel stated, “there’s two issues. One can be to hit a 99 mph fastball after which play guitar like Derek Vans. That will be my superpower.”
Williams helped Sobel with the latter, jamming on rhythm guitar on the restaurant earlier than serving dinner for Sobel and Yankees radio broadcaster Dave Sims.
“I don’t actually get star-struck — [but] Bernie is my favourite Yankee,” Sobel stated. “I get to cook dinner for superb, unimaginable individuals on a regular basis. I cooked for Barack Obama’s twentieth [wedding] anniversary.
“However the one time I used to be left speechless at a desk as a result of I obtained starstruck was with Derek Jeter. I don’t know what occurred to me. He’s superb.”
