Chefs hit the right notes at Reverie Kitchen in Branford

BRANFORD — When Paul Staley, the celebrated chef and owner of Branford’s Reverie Kitchen, was growing up in Madison, he had a paper route. One Thanksgiving, he folded a menu for rolls and pies into each New Haven Register. Soon, his customers were asking if he could make them the same for Christmas.

“I used the money I earned to pay for cooking classes with Jacques Pepin,” said the genial 53-year-old, who went on to hone his skills at the Culinary Institute of America, then worked as a sous chef in all-world restaurant Nikolai’s Roof in Atlanta, where the five-course prix fixe dinner once had a one-year waitlist.

“The food was elevated,” Staley said with palpable enthusiasm on a recent afternoon at Reverie Kitchen, the Branford Hill bistro with the sublime cuisine and the improbable location alongside a cleaners, one story below a nail salon, and amid a throng of fast-food joints.

“We used everything with the best ingredients. We were constantly pushing the envelope,” said the Madison resident, who was also a pastry chef at Robert Henry’s (now Union League Cafe) in New Haven and once cooked for Pope John Paul II.

That meant crazy hours, but that was OK. “It was about the layers of the flavor, the difference in textures,” he said, amid the strains of a cello concerto and the aroma of freshly baking bread in the muted lighting of the warmly furnished space. “There was always something on top of something on top of something.”

If that sounds like a tedious exercise, for Reverie Kitchen it’s a creative enterprise. “We try to make the simple and ordinary extraordinary,” said Diana Staley, Paul’s older sister and Reverie Kitchen sous chef, using as an example their roast beef sandwich.

“It has sauteed onions and tender leaves of Savoy cabbage and horseradish sauce and thousand island, the best roast beef you can buy, and very thinly sliced high-quality Swiss cheese on a brioche roll that we bake that morning,” she said. “And it’s perfect every time.”

That might sound unlikely, until you consider Diana’s background.

Before joining her brother in the restaurant industry with Madison Chocolates in Madison and Splash American Grill in Guilford, and before he taught her the food business while laid up in the hospital in 2010 for six months, the former pro tennis player worked in advanced systems at Pratt & Whitney, applying coatings on F14 fighter jets and B2 stealth bombers.

“If you didn’t get the coating correct on a part, it had consequences,” said the spirited 54-year-old, who was also a world-class squash player at Harvard and is fluent in five languages. “That’s why I’m an absolute fanatic about consistency. We’re going to make the salad the same way, the roast beef sandwich the same way, every time.”

Paul agreed. “It’s not complicated,” he said. “You just gotta hit the notes. We coach each other constantly to hit the notes. When you hit the notes, people respond to that.”

Take the Eggs Benedict and Eggs Brigadier, among Reverie Kitchen’s breakfast entrees. (They’ve been serving breakfast and lunch since opening in October 2016; due to high demand, they recently introduced a dinner menu.)

“Most people don’t make the right hollandaise,” Diana said. “It’s too watery, it’s too lemony. But the big thing is to poach the egg perfectly. To do that, you need the freshest egg.”

Count Branford’s Cindy Payne a fan. “You wonder how eggs can be so much better than all the eggs you’ve ever had,” she said.

It’s all part of Reverie Kitchen’s mission of providing fresh gourmet dining from scratch.

“We’re not container people, we’re not freezer people,” Diana said. “We really love to see what’s fresh and then we come up with a recipe around it. We have a bevy of different farmers and suppliers that we regularly tour in search of that.”

That might be French green beans, carrots or Yukon Gold potatoes that Paul “perfectly cooks,” as Diana put it, for the New England Pot Pie.

“The vegetables are never overcooked, the sauce is velvety, and there are chunks of chicken that melt in your mouth, and just a fabulous piece of puffed pastry on top,” she said. “We make the puff pastry ourselves rather than use a gelatinous gloppy pastry and it has just this beautiful poofy puff.”

Paul first saw chefs making their own puff dough at the four-star Copper Beech Inn in Ivoryton while working as a busboy there in high school. “I was taking notes,” he said. “It was unbelievable.” He was also working mornings at La Cuisine and afternoons at Friends & Company, both in Madison.

Given Paul’s early experience baking cakes and pies — and his unalloyed lifelong passion for creating dreamy confections — it’s only natural that Reverie Kitchen perhaps shines most brightly in its otherworldly desserts.

It’s not just the flaky croissants and Danish made with a Swiss reversible sheeter that laminates the dough with an ethereal glaze. It’s the creamy gelato prepared in small batches daily with flavors that range from mango to pistachio to peanut butter. And the truffles the New York Times took pains to mention in its review of top Connecticut chocolatiers.

“This is all I’ve ever wanted to do,” Paul said. “To have a shop with a varied menu at a comfortable price that people can come to and come back to knowing they’re going to have good service and a good time and great food.”

So is it fair to say it’s a dream come true?

“More like a Reverie Kitchen,” he said with a smile.