8 to 9pm- Arrive at work. Help breakdown dinner and transport goods to Palace Kitchen.
9 to 12am or 1 am- Attend to the needs of the artist and tour management. This includes icing down buses. I also have to get after show food which can come from anywhere form the Palace Kitchen to the Honey Hole or Mamma’s Pizza- in other words, any restaurant that is open past midnight that I have a menu to. I often have to set up a meet and greet area for friends and family of the different bands. This includes setting up beverages and snacks in the green room after the show.
Sometimes I have to lock everything down for a meet and greet with fans of the artist. These meet and greets have high security so I have to make sure all of our product and equipment
is locked up.
12am to 1am- Once the bands leave, I have to breakdown the dressing rooms. This includes removing all the product, washing the dishes, and generally putting everything away.
It’s usually quiet at the theater, except for the night time janitor and me. I haven’t experienced the ghost yet, but I’m still waiting.
Somewhere between 3-4 am I go home.
Editor’s Note: This is the third entry in our company blog contest “A Day in the Life,” intended to give our readers a peek into the workday (or night) life of our Tom Douglas staff.
Way to go, Pie! Serious Pie (there are two- Virginia and Westlake) makes it on the Slice list for the “8 Best Pizzas in the Pacific Northwest” on Serious Eats.
96,000 pretzels and counting….Team Brave Horse gives a great interview on Eater Seattle.
More news:
Look for asparagus prices to jump as reported by Oregon Live.com. Some Eastern Washington asparagus growers plan to plow up part of their fields to plant other crops. Despite the grower’s market and high prices for the consumer, asparagus is a work-intensive crop, and farm labor is more difficult to come by these days.
Many have reported on the flap over the California ban on foie gras, but the most thoughtful piece we’ve found (called “The R spot” for self “R”ighteous moralistic indignation) is this one by Mark Pastore from the SF restaurant Incanto’s website.
Autumn Martin’s new joint, Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery, is reported by Voracious to be opening in Ballard this month. Molten chocolate cakes in mason jars and boozy milkshakes! Can’t wait!
Don’t forget to check out our Blog Buddies to the right:
Joy of Cooking now has an online site! Check it out! (I met John Becker, great grandson of Irma Rombauer, at the SFA Symposium last October and he told me he was working on this.)
Do you ever cook when you’re angry? Check out this intriguing piece of food writing, “Angry Breakfast Eggs,” from Poor Man’s Feast.
6:15 am- Go to the basement of Paramount to begin day. Most of the bones of the operation were set up yesterday during the two hour preset- which includes setting up buffet tables and guest tables and chairs, setting up linens, chafers, toaster, breads, cereals, cold and hot beverages etc.
6:15 to 7:00 am- Brew coffee and put all breakfast out. In the meantime, entertain hungry truck and bus drivers while they wait for the food to be set out. Sometimes, they are grumpy but usually just happy to talk to someone new.
7 to 10:00 am – Breakfast is served. Refresh food, make to-order eggs for some guests, meet and greet management, brew coffee, brew coffee, brew coffee, brew coffee, and on and on.
During this time dressing rooms are assigned, and we begin the process of making them look like home. In addition, getting everything on an artist’s rider, we place linens, turn lamps on, towels, bars of soap, tissues, candles, and sometimes fresh flowers.
10:30am- Locals break. This can be chaotic. About 20 or so local union crew come downstairs to the catering room and drink LOTS of coffee and eat donuts.
10:30 am- 12 noon- Break down breakfast and head to Palace Kitchen to pick up lunch. Transition the buffet from breakfast to lunch. We also build deli, cheese and fixings platters as well as a salad bar, bread, condiment and dessert station.
12 to 3pm- Build dressing rooms. During this time we put everything in the dressing room that the artist wants. We also refresh lunch. Usually this is the time the artists come through. They stop by catering, say hi and grab some coffee and maybe some lunch. After that, they head to sound check and we get to listen, which is great at times and other times, well not so great.
3 to 5:00 pm- Break down lunch and pick up dinner at Palace Kitchen. This is when we have a big push to get all the dishes done, linens and beverages refreshed. Basically, we make the room look really nice because the artist will eat dinner there. Dinner is also the biggest meal of the day where we can serve up to 60 people. Everyone from the tour gets really excited because the food is usually the best they will eat all tour. We like to think we help make the artists put on a really good show with the help of delicious food and our hospitality.
8 to 9:00 pm- Dinner wraps up and we head back to the Palace Kitchen to drop off all of our dishes. Time for the late night guy to come in.
Editor’s Note: Jesse is taking a leave of absence to care for her baby. Her husband, Zach, has taken over backstage duties as the all day and night guy. (Zach used to be the late night guy for backstage catering.) Jesse is the second winner of our Day in the Life blog contest which gives readers a peek into the workday life of our staff.
Katie O here! This past weekend we talked about our opinions on the best burgers in Seattle, rhubarb recipes and I interviewed the lovely Manny Chou of Georgetown Brewery and Manny’s Pale Ale fame! PLUS! Tom challenges Thierry on his ability to make a tart tatine in 12 minutes. Our social media guru, Herschell Taghap, normally posts these radio blogs for me, but he’s busy gallivanting around Europe (poor Herschell) so I’m left to my own devices… which means at this moment I don’t know how to embed audio. So just click here to listen on KIRO’s site!
One last note: if you listen to the show and you want to support Manny’s fundraiser in honor of his friend Bob Hirsch, or to support the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Western Washington, don’t forget to head to the Nickerson St. Saloon on Monday May 14th to drink a pint of the limited edition Bob’s Brown Beer! I’ll be there too, so if you see me in the crowds, come say hi!
A typical day at work does not exist for me, as every single day is something completely and entirely different. You see I am an Event Manager in Catering, and nothing is every typical or static. If you have never worked in Catering, you have no idea how “morphic” and ever-changing things are. It is as if practically every day we create a new restaurant, kitchen, dining room, and experience. Very dynamic indeed. Nobody has the same section, the menu is always different, and the service style is always changing. I need to be a confident, self-assured team leader, able to quickly problem solve, satisfy the client, organize the dynamics of an event, and assure that all of the staff is working together to make the event happen as planned.
Catering allows me to work in & out of a variety of different and odd locations, both fun and extremely dynamic, interesting & unusual: beautiful, astonishing homes across the state, hospitals, rooftops, gardening sheds, back of trucks, office towers, yachts, beaches, islands, garages, theaters, laboratories, and parks, just to name a few.
I have worked with Global Titans of Power, political figures, billionaires, attorneys, celebrities, the President of the United States, actors, hundreds of brides and grooms, families at wakes, sports figures (who I typically cannot identify), dancers, gymnasts, burlesque performers, chefs, restaurateurs, authors, physicists, mimes, magicians, and surgeons.
Catering will assure that the unexpected WILL happen, and you just go into events expecting it: power outages, forgotten equipment and food, shortage of critical rentals off-site, diverting a river of horse urine heading for an outdoor kitchen, vicious animals, broken birthday cakes, sweltering heat and freezing cold weather (while working outside), catastrophic thundershowers while under a tent doing a multi-course dinner with water flowing on the ground, tents flying away, heaters not working, staff getting sea sick on a boat, things catching fire, and cleaning up un-countable amounts of vomit. These are just a few of the things which we encounter on a daily basis. Count your lucky stars when they all align and everything is hunky dory, because it doesn’t happen often! Always interesting and never a dull moment.
I mostly love the unknown and the problem solving. There is nothing more rewarding than to create a spectacular event, and then have the client say that it was one of the most wonderful parties they have ever been to. None of it could be accomplished though without the most amazing planning and sales team I have ever worked with and a great support team- from operations to the entire kitchen staff. The rest of my SWAT team includes an amazing bartending staff and top notch service team. We are a different kind of bunch, that is for sure! All together, we work to create Deliciousness with Graciousness under some of the most adverse circumstances- without the client ever knowing a fraction of what goes on behind the scenes of this wacky business. You either love it or hate it. I happen to love it!!
(Editor’s note: This is the first winner in our contest, “A Day in the Life.” All Tom Douglas staff are eligible to write a post that gives the reader a peek into their workday life.)
Joseba Jimenez put on a cooking demo for the bakers at Dahlia Workshop. We made empanadas with various crème Catalan recipes, and Chinese egg custard tarts (made with duck eggs) with lemongrass and young ginger. We also learned about tropical fruits, such as sweet tamarind, in the photo above. The sweetness stems from the stem! Which is the part you are seeing in the photo.
Water chestnuts (in photo above.) Yum. Tastes like starchy coconut.
The pink one is dragon fruit.
In the photo above you can see durian, water chestnuts, dragon fruit, and cherimoya.
(Editor’s note: Formerly of Seattle’s Harvest Vine, Joseba Jimenez has spent the last 3 years living and cooking in Thailand. Recently, he has been giving a series of cooking demos, for both European and Thai techniques, to the Tom Douglas chefs and cooks.)
I’m probably the last of the food-obsessed in this town to finally make my way to Ma’ono- the reinvention of Spring Hill Restaurant into a “Fried Chicken and Whisky Bar.” It had to take courage for the owners, Mark and Marjorie Fuller, to move forward with this risky step- transforming the highly-lauded, upscale Spring Hill that had earned its place on all the “best of” Seattle restaurant lists into a casual joint centered around (what used to be Monday only) fried chicken- totally changing the menu, the concept, and even the name.
But it works. In fact, it’s brilliant. Make no mistake, I loved the old Spring Hill menu. But it is a challenge for one fancy-pants-chef-small-plates-fine-dining restaurant to distinguish itself from every other, especially in a recession economy. Ma’ono on the other hand is absolutely unique. It ties together all the strands of Mark’s personal history: his Hawaiian roots, his expertise with Seattle’s local food scene, and his major- and I mean major- chops as a fine dining chef. A highly accomplished chef cooking casual grub with the same attention, deliberation, and care as fine dining while telling a unique personal story- in my mind that’s what’s hot– that’s what’s modern right now.
Ma’ono’s cool little menu- the star is the fried chicken with Asian accompaniments- rounded out with pork buns, saimin noodles, kalbi short ribs, stir fried pea vines, a steak, and a few other items- served in this sleek, upmarket, bar-centric room, the menu and the space together create a sophisticated urban vibe- as if you’re dining in a place like Manhattan. Also, although there are no communal tables at Ma’ono, there’s a communal feeling to watching that big paper-lined platter of fried chicken going to out to every single table. It’s like eating choucroute at Brasserie Lipp in Paris where everyone from the impeccably suited businessman to the tattoo-ed hipster to the little kid is enjoying eating the same thing you’re eating. Kind of a nice feeling.
We started dinner with the manapua- steamed buns filled with bbq pork. In these Momofuku- crazed days, you might call the steamed pork bun a cliche. Except that these are possibly the best Asian-style steamed pork buns ever. The buns are soft and pillowy and look blandly innocent. When you cut them open you find they are crammed full of luscious tender sweet tasting pork. Be sure to dip your bun in the shoyu-chili dip because the spicy heat balances the sweet perfectly.
Next, the star of the show, the platter of fried chicken (don’t forget to reserve your chicken when you make your reservation; Ma’ono fries 30 chickens a night). It is, as anticipated, crisp crusted outside, properly salted and seasoned, and juicy delicious inside.
Ma’ono used to offer the chicken either as the original version, or tossed in one of two sauces. These days, they don’t toss the chicken in sauce (though they will on request), but just serve Mark’s famous fried chicken accompanied by bowls of the two sauces: a hot Chinese mustard with honey and a spicy Korean chili sauce. With the chicken you get a bowl of steamed rice showered with crushed dried seaweed, and a jar of Ma’ono’s kimchi. The kimchi is terrific: spritzy and fresh tasting- not overly hot or overly pungent.
Because one fried chicken is more than enough for 2 people, we’ll be able to enjoy the chicken again at home tonight, cold, which TDR market-teer Katie O says is the best way to eat it. Though if we hadn’t reserved a chicken, maybe we would have ordered less food and had room for Garrett’s banana cream pie and popcorn ice cream! That’s my only regret- no dessert- but we’ll be back soon.
Tom Douglas spilled the garbanzo beans on Tom and Thierry’s radio show last Sunday about tentative still-in-the-works plans for a falafel joint adjacent to the Paramount Theater, and Allison Scheff of Seattle Magazine’s seattlemag.com swiftly picked up the news, followed by a post by Allecia Vermillion in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine’s Nosh Pit.
Our upcoming Tom Douglas Summer Camp made it into the Huffington Post!! Quite a compliment that Tom’s name is mentioned in the same sentence as the late great James Beard, with James Beard being credited as the grand-daddy of Pacific Northwest food and Tom as the “modern father!”
Seattle’s popoular Molly Moon has a brand new ice cream book out, as reported by Rebekah Denn on All You Can Eat.
Sad news for Seattle. Two iconic restaurants are closing. Chez Shea in the Pike Place Market will shutter its doors, again reported by Rebekah Denn. Le Gourmand is also closing, though it has been given a bit of a reprieve and will remain open until June 30 as reported by The Stranger.
Did you know that our very own Tom Douglas and the fabulous “Chef in the Hat” Thierry Rautureau have a weekly radio show called “Seattle Kitchen” on KIRO? We’ll be posting the show and its brief synopsis here on the Tom Douglas Family Meal Blog every Monday, so keep your speakers cranked to “11″ or your headphones at arms reach for great insight into the Seattle restaurant scene and beyond!
This week on radio show: Tom Douglas talks about a new Middle Eastern restaurant he says is doing everything right. Plus, the Tom and Thierry discuss how to make a recipe truly your own and debate who can cook a better rabbit.
I had the pleasure of hosting a great range of our company’s bartenders from the most seasoned of veterans to the barely-of-legal-age for a cocktail pow-wow. One of the highlights of the meeting included some serious tinkering with the Margarita.
The Margarita discussion included comparisons on the following: triple sec vs Cointreau, fresh lime vs sour mix, Sauza tequila vs El Jimador.
The group immediately agreed that fresh squeezed lime juice was the only way to go and we continued from there. One important thing to emphasize about the juice is to pass it through a fine strainer to eliminate pulp for a cleaner style cocktail.
One of the first things we noticed is that Cointreau has a significantly lower sugar content than triple sec. This factor makes for a less balanced drink while only using the 3 ingredient formula of tequila, lime, and orange liquor. We experimented by cutting the Cointreau margs with a few drops of simple syrup which made for a more well-rounded cocktail. The other factor to think about while deciding on your orange liquor is cost. Cointreau is almost 6 times more expensive than triple sec.
In the great tequila debate, Sauza blanco came out as the popular winner, though I was in the minority that enjoyed the El Jimador. It has a bit more spice to it and overall more punch. I thought it made for a more complex cocktail.
Some may ask, why not use nicer spirits? I believe that if you’re mixing lime juice with your booze, you need only to reach a certain level of sophistication: 100% agave is the minimum benchmark. Price comes into play again. No need for an expensive Anejo tequila or Grand Marnier, though if you feel like splurging a reposado won’t be totally muted by the other ingredients and Centenario is my absolute favorite.
Salt is all about personal preference. Some like it, some don’t. I say rim half the glass, that way you can choose on a sip by sip basis.
So the result was this: for a simple, delicious, and fairly inexpensive Margarita use a 2:1:1 ratio- blanco tequila, triple sec, and fresh lime, shake vigorously, strain into a salt rimmed glass filled with ice and find a sunny patio.
Welcome to Family Meal, a blog that examines all things new and noteworthy in the world of food, wine, and dining.
At family meal, otherwise known as staff meal, there’s no hierarchy; you’re breaking bread with your friends. For those 30 minutes, everyone is equal- and hungry. Family meal is our version of the water cooler- but with better food.
I’ll be sharing my thoughts, tips, and observations, and, in the spirit of family meal, I’ve invited our creative, energetic staff- everyone from line cook to bartender to bookkeeper- to have a say. I hope you’ll add your own comments and join in the conversation.
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