Ask most restaurants what oil they cook in and you will not get an answer. At Shamrock, Executive Chef Alex Ginter is happy to tell you: no seed oils, and he has thought carefully about what goes in their place.
When the kitchen pulled seed oils from the menu, the swap turned out to be simpler than people expect. “Using healthier oils like avocado or olive oil tends to be a one-to-one ratio,” Chef Alex says. “So when you are measuring, you do not need to change anything. It is an easy change with no drawbacks.” A cook can move from canola to avocado oil without rewriting a single recipe.
The Details That Matter
The oils do behave differently once they hit heat, and that is where a good cook pays attention. Avocado oil bakes a little softer, so a cake or muffin comes out more tender. “For the most part, when baking, the softer the better,” Chef Alex says, though he will adjust a recipe when a firmer result is the goal.
Heat tolerance is the bigger difference. Olive oil carries flavor beautifully but has a lower smoke point, so Chef Alex adds it toward the end of a dish or blends it with butter. Avocado oil is the opposite: it holds up to roughly 520 degrees, well above the 400 to 470 degree range of most seed oils. That higher smoke point is what gives a steak a proper sear and even color instead of a dull, burnt edge.
Where You Taste It
The payoff shows up across the menu. The fries are cooked in beef tallow, which stays stable through service and carries a savory depth no neutral oil can match. The New Zealand venison gets the clean-fat treatment too, seared hot in avocado oil so the crust forms without the fat breaking down.
Butter, olive oil, avocado oil, and tallow cover nearly everything the kitchen does. Each one is chosen for the job it does best rather than for what is cheapest to buy by the case.
The Philosophy Behind It
From the philosophy of our founder and naturopathic doctor, none of this is about fear of fat. It is about quality. “Fat should not be shunned or cut out of your cooking and diet,” she says. “The brain and nervous systems thrive with good fats. You need to respect the meals you are cooking and choose the higher-quality options. Fat is not the problem. The fat quality is.”
That standard is why the kitchen will spend more on the right ingredients and skip the shortcuts most restaurants take without a second thought. When you sit down at Shamrock, the fat on your plate was chosen as deliberately as the beef.
Reserve your table at shamrockwcb.com.
