Over 50 years of making more!
Spotlight: Chef Renee Erickson on Seattle, Creativity and Her New Cookbook, Sunlight & Breadcrumbs
If you ask Renee Erickson if she ever thought she’d become a James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur and cookbook author, her answer will probably surprise you.
“I fell in love with restaurants. I loved being there and, slowly, I worked my way into the kitchen. It was never really a goal, but just where I ended up. Thankfully I loved it all.”
Renee first “fell in love” with restaurants when she took a job at the lauded (and now, sadly, closed) Boat Street Café to help pay her way through school. What was supposed to be a temporary gig turned into a life-changing opportunity when, in 1998, Renee was offered a chance to buy the restaurant.
Five years later, the Café was relocated to its new home on Western Ave, just a few short blocks from the famous Pike Place Market–with its bevy of stores and vendors that are as intrinsic to the Market’s history as the Market is to Seattle’s.
Places like DeLaurenti Food & Wine, an Italian food and wine shop where you can find artisan meats and cheeses; City Fish, one of the oldest continuously operating fish markets in the country known for their fish-throwing vendors; and, of course, Sur La Table.
Boat Street’s proximity to the Market and Sur La Table was no coincidence.
The new location gave the restaurant–and Renee–direct access to Pike Place Market’s fresh-as-can-get ingredients and bustling foot traffic as well as Sur La Table’s seemingly endless supply of top-of-the-line cookware and gadgets.
It’s a place, Renee tells us, that holds many fond memories from her days at Boat Street:
“I have always loved this store. I loved being overwhelmed with the towers of kitchen tools. It was a place I went to learn about new tools and things that I didn’t know I needed. Being in the market made it feel even more special.”
But as a Seattle native, her passion for food comes from her love for the Pacific Northwest and its endless supply of fresh ingredients.
“I grew up in Woodinville, a small town (then) and we lived next to the woods.
We spent time picking berries, gardening, and fishing for salmon and crab in the summer. It was a really special way to get to know food in the PNW. It was the 70s and 80s, so we had our fair share of casseroles and other classic things of that time, but we were lucky to also have gorgeous vegetables from the garden and more Dungeness crab than any young person would want.
Looking back on it, we were very lucky.”
In fact, as far as Renee’s concerned, the ingredients are what makes Seattle’s food scene so exciting. When we asked her to name the best local ingredient she’s ever eaten, her response was “impossible to answer.”
“So many things,” she says. “From perfect strawberries, roasted Dungeness crab and a crisp melony oyster in March from Hama Hama… I could go on. It’s all seasonally dependent.
Ideally that’s how we should all be eating when possible.”
Seasonality and sense of place is something near and dear to Renee’s heart. It even inspired her first cookbook—A Boat, A Whale & A Walrus—which drew widespread acclaim and put Renee, and the Seattle culinary scene, right in the national spotlight.
“I feel like I am always looking at things that are beautiful and often right in front of me. Sunlight, shadows, nature, animals… the life that surrounds us.”
We asked her what she hoped readers would take from the book and her answer was simple: “I hope they try things that are outside of their comfort zone—using a mandoline to get paper-thin vegetables for the CSA Slaw, roasting a leg of lamb for friends, making flatbread.
Really just to reconnect or connect with the creativity that resides in all of us. To take away judgment and just make.”
When Renee isn’t cooking, she’s still finding ways to channel that creativity.
Whether it’s painting, throwing clay, practicing photography, gardening or hosting dinner parties, you’ll always find Renee ‘just making’ the most of every moment and every day.
Hungry for more? You’ll get a chance to meet Renee and get a signed copy of her new cookbook, Sunlight & Breadcrumbs: Making Food with Creativity & Curiosity!
Follow the links below to register for the event at either our Seattle (9/26) or NYC location (10/3)!
Register for the Seattle Book Signing Register for the New York City Book Signing
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