What's interesting here is that the writer interviewed several Northwest chefs, who comment on the idea of a "Northest concept restaurant" and how that would translate to cities not in the Northwest.
When you discuss Pacific Northwest food with Tom Douglas, beloved Seattle chef and restaurateur, one word keeps popping up — pristine. If it's fish, where was it caught exactly? By what method? How do the fishermen handle it when it comes aboard? And how does the purveyor handle it once it hits dry land?
Then, Douglas says, you take that pristine ingredient and get out of the way. He points out that when he was on Iron Chef, he beat Masaharu Morimoto using a simple recipe of salmon poached in butter.
Cory Schreiber, whose Wildwood restaurant in Portland, Ore., was one of the first to focus on Pacific Northwest cuisine, is less smitten with the concept. "You can't transpose it," he says. And he doesn't understand why anyone would try.
"Part of it is that the product doesn't transport well. Most of it is very perishable. The mushrooms, the fish — the obvious ones — aren't really meant to transport," says Schreiber, whose family has been in the Pacific Northwest oyster business since the mid-1800s and ran a cherished roll-up-your-sleeves restaurant in Portland called Dan & Louis Oyster Bar.
"And it's a non-transferrable experience," he adds.
Check out the entire article here.
RELATED: Bruni reviews Wild Salmon
[where: 98101]
