Professional chef and master butcher Blair Machado brings his pork and seafood pop-up, Hamfish, to Väsen Brewing this Friday, Dec. 1 for a “Roadside Seafood” five-course beer dinner.
After spending the past few years on the road, Machado and his fiancé put down roots in Williamsburg this winter. From this home base, the Richmond native and Virginia Commonwealth University alum plans to work with longtime friends like Väsen, and to forge new connections with Old Dominion chefs and makers, like Gloucester, Virginia-based Big Island Aquaculture.
“Their oysters are so buttery,” Machado says of Big Island’s bivalves. “I usually use Rappahannock — and I love them and what they’re doing —but being officially relocated here, I’m able to work with more farms and I’ve been blown away.”
Machado cut his teeth working in Northern Virginia and Richmond restaurants, like Can-Can, before moving to Charleston, South Carolina in 2011. There, he worked at esteemed establishments like FIG and Indaco and took over as executive chef at beloved neighborhood spot, The Park Café, in 2015.
He started food pop-up and sustainable butcher consulting company, Farmstead, in 2019 and had months’ worth of events lined up when the world shut down.
While Machado knew he would have to “bob and weave” during the pandemic, he certainly did not have “heritage hog farmer” on his 2020 bingo card. But he’s sure glad he landed there.
“Working on the farm was the first time in 20 years I was able to step away from the kitchen and have space to deal with my demons,” says Machado. “The owner challenged me to take care of the livestock. When you have over 150 animals to care for, regardless of your problems in that day, you have to deal with what is in front of you.”
When Machado left Comfort Farms in Milledgville, Georgia, he decided it was high time to lean into the freedom a nomadic chef lifestyle allows. He kept his suitcase packed, picking up work on small farms from Georgia to Maine.
It was on a farm in Maine where the idea for Hamfish really took shape. Most of the farmers working alongside Machado were pescatarian, he says, so instead of using the open-fire kitchen onsite to cook up barbecued meat, like the whole-animal butcher was wont to do, he would instead drive to Portland and get the freshest seafood possible for dinners on the farm.
“I treated the seafood similarly to what I do with meat, curing and brining and smoking it,” says Machado. “We made some fun stuff; one day when I was cooking one of the guys said, ‘Oh, chef is ham-fishing again.’ And it stuck.”
Diners will get a taste of this ham-fishing on Friday. “The menu features some of my favorite meals from the seafood shacks and stalls I visited up and down the east coast,” says Machado. “But I’ll be reinventing and tweaking the dishes using products from Richmond and South Carolina.”
Courses include an oyster chowder paired with a Väsen pale ale; tuna crudo with beet agrodolce, horseradish and crispy onion paired with a New England hazy; Väsen Lights-battered cod with French fries and (naturally) Duke’s tartar sauce paired with the same light lager; and a ribeye with lobster ravioli and creamed spinach paired with a rose lager.
Dessert will be an homage to a Maine sugar shack brownie sundae. “It will be this really gooey grandma-style brownie with whipped cream and caramel sauce paired with Väsen’s Golden Walrus stout,” says Machado. “The beer is 100% chocolate on the first sip and then it mellows out to this very clean, crisp stout. It’s an out-of-this-world pairing.”
Tickets for the Hamfish x Väsen Roadside Seafood dinner held on Friday, Dec. 1 are $100 and can be purchased online.
