Know your chefs interview series, episode 2.

Thierry Rautureau, affectionately known as the Chef in the Hat, sat down with the Monarch at his French-fusion bistro Luc – donning his namesake fedora and the warmest of demeanors. Rautureau, a James Beard award-winner and Top Chef Masters participant, has cooked for the likes of Julia Child and Francis Ford Coppola. He privileged us with a lengthy colloquy encompassing pantry staples, social justice and much in between. The French native now lives and works happily in Seattle’s Madison Valley with his wife of 29 years.

A: Are Rover’s and Luc the first restaurants you’ve independently owned?

TR: Yes. They’re the first restaurants of my own. We started in 1987. I wanted to go back to a normal life – normal life from LA. When you live in Hollywood and in Los Angeles for 5 years, you spend about 2 years trying to get out. When I first came to LA it was fun but it got old very quick. I wanted to have my own business, have a family. I got married a year before I moved here, and my wife and I were looking for a house and a place where we could have kids. We have two boys now; Ryan is 22 and Adrian is 18. They cost me the most money anyone has ever cost me. They are great kids, that’s why I can talk like that! One is in college in Hawaii, the other is in high school at Garfield.

A: So, you escaped LA. You came to Seattle and opened a restaurant. What was the process?

TR: There was a restaurant in Seattle called Rover’s and we came here to check it out. The owner wanted to get out of town – he hated it. So, we bought the restaurant from him. I had visited [Seattle] two or three times; I went back to LA and talked to the women who wanted to be my [business] partner. Then her and her husband and my wife and I moved up here. There were a lot of challenges for the four of us.  A lot of pressure. That was in August, 1987, 25 years ago.

A: Why Seattle? Why settle here?

TR: It’s where the car broke down! We were going west and we didn’t make it any further. (Laughs). 

A: What do you love about it?

TR: The reason Seattle is so appealing is that it looks much more like a moderate kind of life – in terms of having a business, a family, a household – all these ingredients that most of us go through life and look for. They look much more appealing in Seattle. I’ve been to Chicago, LA – I’ve been to different places. Seattle is a very attractive city.  It’s like a big town trying to be a city. Especially back in ’87, this entire neighborhood [of Madison Valley] – nobody wanted to be here. In 25 years this growth happened.

A: Do you live nearby?

TR: I live a block and a half away [from Luc]. I hate to drive. I have had a minivan for 12 years – it’s rusty. But I don’t care; I drive it like a Ferrari. I maybe use it once a month for catering or something. I really don’t have much liking for cars; I am not a big car guy.

A: Is that partly due to your French upbringing?

TR: It’s ‘cause I’m a cheapskate. I’d rather spend the money on vacation, on wine, on women (laughs). You know, you have a choice.  It’s like, 300 grand on a Ferrari, or a great life of going to restaurants with great dinners and wine. I prefer to spend my money on wining, dining, and other things.

A: You were raised in a rural farming community in France; Seattle is obviously not that, but we’re kind of obsessed with the farm-to-table mentality. What do you think of it? Is it a passing trend, or something that will change the way we eat in the long-term?

TR: Those are very loaded questions, because it’s not just a trend, at least not in my life – it’s something I’ve been doing for 25 years. When you say trend, I am already picturing all the things that word embodies, so I don’t want to go that route. It is a changing surrounding that we are going through. People are getting more aware of what’s happening out there. I think the younger generation is bringing new things to the table. Your education is different from my education. My luck is, I was born on a farm with nine cows, a horse, some chickens – but most people in America are not born on a farm, and if they are, it’s a thousand acres with some jet dropping chemicals on the fields. Anyway, I have always sought out the local farms and the foragers because I want to get my hands on fresh produce. There’s nothing better than something that’s just been picked out of the garden. Now there are quite a few people who get on the bandwagon and feel like they have to buy from farmers. They feel like they have to get a CSA box every week, even though they can’t cook their way out of a pot of boiling water. And too much of it ends up in the garbage – that’s a shame. But, it is still a supporting effort of sustainability. The most important part of it is knowing where [the food you eat] comes from and where it goes – that’s the complete circle of life. If you got your box of CSA from Full Circle Farm, you’re supporting local, you’re eating sustainably, and it’s great stuff. On top of that, if you learn to cook and use those foods, it is even more of a circle of life. It’s not sustainable to have people growing stuff and buying stuff if they don’t know what to do with it. Eventually they are going to stop buying, because they don’t know what to do with the food they have. People say, “I have 10 pounds of zucchini, or 10 pounds of tomatoes, what do I do with it?” – I say make some jam, make some soup,  – use it later when it’s cold outside. But when all is said and done, I’m extremely excited to live in this country where people will try anything.

A: Why do you think a lot of Americans don’t know how to cook?

TR: Because they cut home-ec classes about 30 years ago. Teach people how to mail a bill, change a light bulb, and cook something. Stews, pasta – just a few things, so you can be sustainable and live out of your own apartment, as opposed to always eating out. I mean, I shouldn’t be talking – I own a restaurant – but a lot of people eat out every night of the week. Who doesn’t want to do that? It’s such an entertaining part of life. You know, people say they don’t have time for this or that, but I seriously think that with a bit of knowledge, it becomes much easier [to cook] than people think it is. I always tell people, you can do bulk cooking in your house. You can make your lunch for the whole week. When you’re cooking, spend an extra hour, and you’ve got food for the whole week. Make a big batch of caramelized onions and use them for the whole week. Eggs are another thing. People don’t eat omelets for dinner [in America] but in France it’s very common  – at least in my house it was. We were pretty poor and we didn’t have meat on the table every day, but we always had vegetables. We grew all the vegetables in our garden. When I was a kid, my parents never bought a vegetable in a store. They would look at the vegetables in the store and think, “What the heck? It doesn’t taste like anything – what is that?”

A: If you could do something to change the way people eat in Seattle, what would you do?

TR: I would tell them to hire me and start a curriculum to teach home cooks how to do the basics. I don’t mean a cooking class like, “Ok, today we’re going to make scrambled eggs and caviar,” like we have at Rover’s; that’s great but who the hell cooks eggs with caviar at home?

A: So, a domestic Cordon Bleu?

TR: Yes, exactly!

A: I’ve heard that you have cooked for some famous people. Did any of them make you nervous?

TR: The people that made me the most nervous to cook for were other chefs – they put pressure on you because they know what you know, plus maybe they know more. For me, it is always such an excitement to cook for someone I have a huge amount of respect for and who has given me a chance to cook for them. A few of them have come in the restaurant. There have been some local celebrities who’ve come in, like Bill Gates – people like that. Oh, and Peter Gabriel – that was exciting.

Rautureau waves over a server and asks him to send the salmon tartines and potato soufflé. 

A: French cooking doesn’t seem to lend itself to vegetarianism and veganism. How do you accommodate people who don’t eat animal products?

TR: The clarification needed is that vegetarianism isn’t really suitable for French fine dining.  When most French people go out for a fancy meal, they want to eat what they can’t afford to eat at home. The most common French person – although it is changing now – eats a lot of vegetables during the week. When I was growing up it was definitely that way. When they go out on the weekends, they are not looking to have carrots and salad; they want to have foie gras and caviar – stuff they don’t eat at home. That would be my reasoning behind Americans saying, “We went to a five-star restaurant and didn’t find a vegetable.” For many years, and you can still find this to be true, bistros didn’t serve many vegetables. Eating out [in France] is not going to be like your everyday diet. Of course, things are changing. It’s inevitable. Nowadays, the ritual is that we are supposed to be very busy people. No time to cook, no time to spend with our kids. It’s funny when you look back and think, “I can’t believe my mother was opening a can of beets.” I hear that from people. These people today, they have to do different things in life; it’s a different era. Many people are running the rat race. There’s a tremendous amount of change. People feel like they have to make money. On top of it, if you go to college, you’re freaking broke for the rest of your life. It costs thousands and thousands of dollars. If you’re 22, you don’t have that kind of money. And all you have is a piece of paper that says you’ve graduated from college, no license or experience to get a real job. It’s a very serious problem, impairing youth and their future. People are totally abusing the system by charging so much. It’s outrageous.

A: You’re heavily involved in Food Lifeline. Why is that important to you?

TR: I have been involved for many years. I [got involved] the first or second year I lived here. To me, it’s impossible to fathom that somebody in America in 2012 would go hungry. Going hungry in this country is a joke. Forty-percent of the crop grown in this country goes to waste because it can’t get picked up. Numbers like that are crazy. There is enough food to feed everybody. The problem is we have this very strong belief by many, “I’m lucky because I work my ass off and I can feed myself.” I am not talking about spoon-feeding somebody and teaching them how to be lazy.  We’re talking about feeding a kid who’s 14 and too ashamed to go to the food bank because it’s not cool – it would imply that he’s poor. Ever been to a food bank? That sucks, man. It’s very cool that there are food banks, but your pride takes a hit. It takes a lot of nerve. Being broken and on the street must be the most horrific thing for a human in the society we live in today. It must be the hardest thing to come back from. I think it would be easier to come back from two broken legs than to come back from being on the street. One of the biggest reasons I am involved in hunger relief is an experience I had in Los Angeles in 1982. [I saw] a young woman on a street corner with two small children – really small, maybe two and five – clinging to her. She just stopped on the corner and started sobbing. It really caught my attention. I went to her and said, “Can I help you?” She started telling me her story. She had a college education, an MBA. She met this guy, married him, had two kids, and the guy up and left overnight and emptied the accounts. She was out of her apartment in 60 days, nowhere to go. She said, “I’ve been looking for a job everywhere. I have been running the streets and going to the missions and food banks, trying to get a bed before they close for the night.” But when you don’t have an address or a phone number, it’s hard – and this was the 1980s; you didn’t have cell phones or the Internet to help you [find a job]. It was a story that was repeated over and over  – especially in downtown LA.  I started paying attention. I started getting involved; I wanted to help – try and help people that were in such bad luck. She was a perfectly capable woman, was trying to figure it out, and there was no help for her. Sure, there were a few places, but when there are 150 people [in line] ahead of you, and you’ve got two kids, it’s just a horrific nightmare. That really started me on the path of wanting to help – especially with hunger, since food was my field.

A:  Obviously, food is the way you support yourself and your family, as well as serve the community, but what is your personal mantra on dining?

TR: I never eat enough. No, just kidding. When I first met my wife 29 years ago, I remember the first few times we went out. She would be like, “Can I have a piece of (whatever I ordered)?” I would be like, “Oh, I’ll order you one, but no, you can’t have mine.” I was super possessive of my food. Now, if you put me at a table and the people with me don’t want to share, I’m pissed. I’ve got try everything. I love to try food. It’s not about the quantity but it’s about what’s on the plate – the composition. We are very blessed in Seattle. So many small restaurants are chef-owned. Places like Tilth, Terra Plata – there’s a huge movement towards that. But it’s much harder to make money that way; nothing brings money like volume. When you have a small restaurant it’s up and down. But I think the [small restaurant movement] makes Seattle so attractive, culinary-wise. At the same time, people ask, “Do you think Michelin is ever going to come and review Seattle?” I’m like, I sure hope they never do.

A: Why’s that?

TR: It distracts from reality. The beautiful thing about Seattle is most restaurants are accessible to all. And if you start bringing categories, you’re going to start making lines of separation between restaurants – and they are not always well-deserved. You know, one guy judging everybody? Eh. But then at the same time you have Yelp! (Laughs). 

A: Any other thoughts on Michelin?

TR: I am a Frenchman and I know all about the Michelin system. It’s in Europe a lot, in Japan they use it a lot – in America it’s in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago. When the results come out there’s a lot of bitching and moaning: “I can’t believe this guy made it in, I can’t believe that guy didn’t.” This one restaurant I know in New York didn’t get a rating because they were doing too many covers a night. That’s ridiculous. This is America. You can’t blame a guy for too many covers. If he’s doing well, who cares? It’s just a different kind of criteria.

A: Americans are generally open when it comes to food, but we also get stuck in the this-is-the-way-it-ought-to-be-done mentality. What is your opinion on cultural rigidity in cuisine?

TR: Every culture is like that. Ever see a Frenchman come to America? They say, “Oh – but it’s not like at our house.” It’s like, no kidding, that’s why you moved 10 thousand miles away. You know, there is a reason why you moved! You should at least try and embrace the culture. But, that’s a personal thing. For me, I try and embrace different cultures. I have a radio show with Tom Douglas and he cooks from the seat of his pants. He was never classically trained. And I was totally classically trained; I was told, “This goes like this, that goes like that.” And then I came to America and people like Tom encouraged me tremendously to not put so many barriers around food and call the b.s. where it needs to be called. The problem with classic training and tradition is that often you’re not told why you’re doing what you’re doing – you are just told to do it.

A: Where were you classically trained?

TR: I started in Anjou, France, about 50km from my hometown. I come from a small town of 2,000 people and I moved to a big town of 50,000. I was 14 years old. It was an internship, but it was more like slavery. It was horrific. It was literally and physically abusing and degrading. Oh my god – it was terrible. I would never, ever do that to others. If you don’t want to teach somebody that you are supposed to teach, don’t put yourself in that position. What the heck is the purpose of that? It’s the saddest thing that gets repeated over and over from generation to generation – it doesn’t have to be that way. To me, it wasn’t the actual working that was horrific, it was the guy in charge. He would just slap me around, throw pans; he would do things to the women working at the hotel. Disgusting.

A: If you had $10 to either cook a meal or spend at a restaurant, what would you make or where would you go?

TR: If you go out with 10 dollars, you’re not going to go very far; if I was not able to cook and had to buy something, my first choice would be pho.  You can do so much with it: you get the base, the broth, some fresh herbs, the sauces, and some meat, and you still have money left for something else. I tell my son in college: buy a whole pork shoulder, cut it in fourths, and roast it on the barbeque. You can put some in the freezer, some you slice really thin, and then on the days when you just can’t cook or don’t want to, you can get some pho and add the meat to it. It’s the cheapest way to do it. Or you can eat the pork with just Dijon mustard – delicious.

I am a big believer in farmer’s markets. If you go at the end of the market, say to a farmer: “Hey, these two tomatoes don’t look so good, I’ll buy them for half the price.” Or, If you go towards the end of the day and tell the farmer, “I’ll help you put your stuff away for half a case of tomatoes,” he will be very happy to have help; he’ll give you the tomatoes, some watermelon, and you’ve just got fresh produce for half an hour of work.

Also, there is so much meat available that doesn’t cost much. One day I did a meal for four people for under ten bucks. You know what I did? Cube steaks. Nobody wants to buy cube steak thinking they are buying a steak – it’s not a steak. But it’s still a cut of meat. You take that, cut it into smaller cubes, and make a quick sauté with a couple of caramelized onions, and you’ve got a really great beef stew on your hands. For under ten bucks you can buy two of those, an onion, a clove of garlic, some vegetables – whatever is in season – and you can sauté the whole thing and make a wonderful pasta.

A: What is in your pantry at home?

TR: In your cupboard, you should always have pasta, a can of good plum tomatoes, spices and all that, and olive oil – but keep it in the fridge if you don’t use it very often. Olives are in my fridge all the time. I like Moroccan green, cured black – it doesn’t take a lot but you need good olives.

Now, my recommendation for a single person: If you want to make sure she doesn’t run away when you bring her home, check this out – you need to have a bottle of champagne in the fridge at all times and a box of frozen shrimp in the freezer. She comes over; you make a pasta with sautéed shrimp, garlic, tomatoes. If you have little chocolate truffles in the freezer they will keep for a while, if you can resist eating them, pull them out and serve them with the rest of the champagne. Yahoo, baby!

The food arrives, a plate of bruschetta-like salmon and goat cheese tartines sprinkled with capers and herbs, and basket of nearly translucent potato ‘soufflés’, fried golden. 

TR: These are called potato soufflé.

A: How do you make those?

TR: You don’t want to know. You’re not going to make them. It’s a three-frying process. You slice the potato lengthwise, fry them at 300 degrees and turn them constantly so they poach. I used to make those in Chicago, from 1978 – 1981, every Monday morning from 10 until 2:30 – a weeks’ worth.

A: Do you give this job to the guys in the kitchen you don’t like?

TR: Yes! I should (laughs). No, you need somebody who pays attention and likes to do it. It’s a pain – some crumble and crack; you waste some potatoes. But when they are perfect and done correctly, it’s beautiful.

A: What’s in the smoked salmon tartine?

TR: Crostini brushed with olive oil and capers, goat cheese, fresh herbs, and arugula. They are really good capers from morocco. They are more expensive but they taste better and they last longer. They are expensive because they are a pain to pick, but they’re delicious.

A: Are there plans for another restaurant?

TR: [hesitates] I am always looking.

A: What else is on the horizon?

TR: We’re doing Kitchen Circus! We started this contest: as a home cook only – no professionals – you enter a video [of yourself cooking] on the Kitchen Circus Facebook page, and you get a chance to cook one course of a three course meal for 45 people. It is three Tuesdays in a row, through the first three Tuesdays in November. We had about 60 entries, and [after the first round] we had about 19 people left. We just interviewed them yesterday, and now we are down to 9 contestants – three guys and six women. The idea is that people come in and book the reservations for those evenings – it’s 75 bucks for three courses and wine pairings. Guests are going to pay for food made by these people, and at the end, the cooks are going to come out into the dining room and the guests are going to vote for their favorite cooks. The winner will go on to the December 4^th final dinner. We would like to make a movie out of it. It’ll be called Kitchen Circus, ‘cause it’s a circus when everybody gets in the kitchen. All we’re missing is some fireworks!