YOU ARE INVITED!
SSTA is proud to announce our 2009 Celebrity Chef line up for our bi-annual Chef’s dinner to benefit Make a Wish Foundation of Seattle. This year we welcome back Tom Douglas, a mainstay of Seattle cuisine. In addition, we welcome Eric Banh of Monsoon, as well as Ethan Stowell of Tavolata, Union and How to Cook a Wolf. For dessert, we are delighted to have Garrett Melkonian of Dalia Lounge combining his talents with local gourmet ice cream maker Empire Ice Cream for a special treat. Please come with your appetites ready, and remember Register early! www.pnwsta.org
Tom Douglas is an American chef, restaurateur, and writer who won the 1994 James Beard Award for Best Northwest Chef. He has helped to define Northwest cuisine starting with his first restaurant called Dahlia Lounge, which opened in 1989. This was followed by Etta's Seafood and Palace Kitchen, which was nominated for Best New Restaurant by the James Beard Foundation in 1996. More recently he opened a Greek restaurant, Lola, and a pizzeria named Serious Pie. He lives in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, USA, with his daughter and wife and business partner Jackie Cross. Tom is the author of "Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen", named Best American Cookbook by the James Beard Foundation in 2001, "Tom's Big Dinners" in 2003, and most recently "I Love Crab Cakes!". He battled Masaharu Morimoto in an episode of Iron Chef America, hosts a talk show on KIRO radio and has visited Emeril Live.
Restauranteur Award: Chef Ethan Stowell
Biography
In the last five years, chef Ethan Stowell has brought three restaurant concepts to the Seattle dining scene, and his fourth is opening imminently. His restaurants share local, seasonal, Italian-inspired character, but differ in space, ambience and size. Stowell says that Seattle is a good environment for young chefs and restaurateurs—and he has helped create that environment through Union, Tavoląta, How to Cook a Wolf, and now Anchovies & Olives. Stowell is a self-trained cook who credits his family kitchen for his culinary roots. Stowell’s parents ran the Seattle ballet; once he realized—at a mercifully young age—that he was a terrible dancer, Stowell took up food instead. He climbed the ranks at a family friend’s catering company before heading to Atlanta to work at Seeger’s. Back in Seattle he worked at Nell’s and The Painted Table, all the while picking up catering gigs on the side with the aim of building a loyal following and finding potential investors for the restaurant he knew he wanted to open. It worked out: one of his clients was the owner of the building that now houses Union. Stowell opened both Tavoląta, a more casual, hip Italian eatery in Belltown and the 30-seat How to Cook a Wolf in Queen Anne in 2007. Anchovies & Olives is slated to open in late winter of 2009 in Capitol Hill. No small feat, Stowell got national recognition when he was named a 2008 “Best New Chef” by Food & Wine magazine.
Eric Banh of Monsoon
http://www.monsoonrestaurants.com
At Monsoon, Banh artfully merges the traditional flavorings from his native Vietnam with the bounty of the Pacific Northwest, and neither component is overshadowed by the other.
— JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION
Fine Alsatian and German Rieslings in a Vietnamese restaurant? What a match they make for the artful cuisine of Monsoon, on Capitol Hill, where the Banhs, two siblings from Saigon, have created a hip cafe with real soul.
— GOURMET MAGAZINE
Garrett Melkonian
If you didn’t have a chance to taste one of Pastry Chef Garrett Melkonian’s exquisite banana cream pies at Etta’s during Dine Around Seattle in the month of March, you’re in luck! Individual size banana cream pies are now available at Dahlia Bakery: flaky pastry shell, a thin layer of chocolate ganache, light -as- a- feather banana pastry cream, caramelized banana, whipped cream and shaved chocolate on top! Come on by and check out more new items like Root Beer Float Cupcakes!
Tom Durchman of Empire Ice Cream
Empire Ice Cream is not only a stickler for using fresh, local ingredients, right down to the sugar it sources from Idaho sugar beets, but these guys are also the mad scientists of ice cream, setting the bar high for all those ice cream making artists that now follow in their footsteps.
http://www.seattlepi.com/food/366524_icecream11.html
