Diner 2.0

Grazin’ in Hudson

by Peter Barrett and photographs by Jennifer May, November 30, 2011

Just as most marriages depend on a firm grasp of football trivia, diner food relies on our enduring national appetite for affordable, comforting fare. It’s not normally a cuisine that we associate with the sort of refinement (and price tag) that often attends the farm-to-table label. And while the upper echelons of the market drive food trends that eventually become ubiquitous (sun-dried tomatoes, anyone?) it’s vitally important that local eating be inexpensive and demotic enough for all to partake. Enter Grazin’, a diner with impeccable locavore credentials.

“It’s a sound concept, and we’re really proud of it,” says the 35-year-old manager and cook Andrew “Chip” Chiappinelli. “I want you to come in and enjoy the food, but I also want you to care about the sourcing.” Almost all the ingredients come from within a dozen miles of the diner. Chiappinelli grew up in his CIA-trained Father’s Italian restaurant in Westchester. “Some of my earliest memories are of standing on a milk crate doing dishes because someone called in sick, or of layering eggplant in the parmigiana.” Despite his culinary upbringing, he says he never imagined running a restaurant until his Parents-in-law Dan and Susan Gibson persuaded him and their daughter Christine to relocate and work with them.

The Gibsons own Grazin’ Angus Acres, a grass-fed cattle farm in nearby Ghent. “They kept asking me ‘when are you going to move back up here with our daughter?’” After a decade working as a corporate IT director in Manhattan, and wanting to start a family, Chiappinelli says it finally seemed like a good idea. He went to work as the sales rep for Grazin’ Angus, running the greenmarket stands in New York City for two years before they decided to buy the Columbia Diner on Warren Street in Hudson earlier this year. The restaurant reopened as Grazin’ in October. Built in 1946 (assembled, actually, from two halves that came up the river from New Jersey on barges), the classic structure has all the chrome and formica that one requires from such an establishment, and a large jukebox, playing a steady stream of vintage rock, greets visitors as they enter.

The endeavor got off to a rocky start; eleven days before opening, the cook quit, so Chiappinelli was interviewing new candidates with just a few days to go. During a soft opening for friends and family, which Chiappinelli describes as “a disaster,” their plumber suggested that they hire his daughter, Amanda Finkle, who now works alongside Chiappanelli in the kitchen. “She had experience cooking grass-fed beef, and we think about food the same way,” he says. “We’re a burger joint, and she can really cook a burger.” Grass-fed beef has a narrow margin for error, and overcooks easily, so servers encourage customers to try eating meat one shade pinker than they’re used to. “We’re always a little sad when we see orders for well-done,” Chiappinelli says; “really good, clean beef has no business being gray all the way through. This beef was raised in my back yard.”

“I’m not sure it would be the same place if I hadn’t spent the two years learning about animals and humane farming,” he continues. “I became a zealot about raising animals the right way.” As a result, Grazin’ is the first restaurant in the country to be certified as Animal Welfare Approved. AWA is the most comprehensive and transparent certification available; farms must be small, independent, and family-owned, and the requirements for feed, housing, pasture, and veterinary care are detailed and extensive. Every animal product served at Grazin’–meat, eggs, and dairy–comes from an AWA certified farm. Chiappinelli explains that this limits the amount and number of products they can serve: “We don’t have bacon for Sunday brunch because we can’t get enough of it, so we make our own pork sausage and offer that instead. Organic means nothing with meat; it only means the cows’ grain is organic, not that they have pasture or any quality of life. And beef is about grass, not grain. ‘Certified Humane’ isn’t much better, because it was created by big ag for big ag, and it costs the farmer a lot to get certified [as does organic].  AWA doesn’t charge for their certification.”