THE CHEF WOULD RATHER FISH
Dogs, it has been said, tend to look like their owners, often sharing personality traits. Ned Baldwin — chef and fisherman — doesn’t have a dog; he has a boat: a seaworthy and dependable 27-foot Eastern. It’s a traditional lobster-boat design, and most assuredly not what you’d call flashy.
“When you get down to it,” Baldwin says, “it’s a floating pickup truck, a 1985 Ford F-150 with bench seats and manual windows.”
Like his boat, Baldwin, who is 48, isn’t particularly flashy, either. His restaurant, in an out-of-the-way corner of Manhattan, is called Houseman, a name he chose in celebration of home cooking. He earned his toque under the cooking legend Gabrielle Hamilton at Prune, where he started as a Sunday brunch egg scrambler and worked his way up to chef de cuisine. Like his mentor, his
