Critic Turned Cook follows former Seattle Post-Intelligencer food critic Leslie Kelly on her journey away from the keyboard and into the kitchen. Take it away, Leslie! Bruce Ryan of Shultzy's pub near the University of Washington in Seattle. I love wine. I started writing a column called "Grapevine" for the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, way back when there were 30-some vintners in the state. Now there are more than 600, many of them world-class producers. One of my greatest pleasures in being a restaurant critic was exploring the intriguing wines of the world, savoring the way wine made wonderful dishes taste even better. I once heard somebody describe wine as their favorite condiment. Couldn't agree more. But my knowledge of...
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Critic Turned Cook follows former Seattle Post-Intelligencer food critic Leslie Kelly on her journey away from the keyboard and into the kitchen. Take it away, Leslie! Leslie Kelly meets her sausage makerOh man, I love the sausage at Shultzy's, the popular pub near the University of Washington where I've been working. Especially the andouille, which is made with a super-secret recipe that owner Don Shultze got from a mysterious Cajun woman who walked through his door years ago and asked him to make her a batch. "She never came back, but I still use her recipe," he said. The sausage making process isn't so pretty though—the meat squeezed into casings that used to be known as intestines. Yeah. You've got...
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Critic Turned Cook follows former Seattle Post-Intelligencer food critic Leslie Kelly on her journey away from the keyboard and into the kitchen. Take it away, Leslie! Photograph from Yelp.com One of the things I love best about being in restaurant kitchens is the music that gets cranked in the back, the beat that motivatives like a double espresso. It's easy to go faster when you're chopping in time. Each of the kitchens in which I've worked has its own soundtrack. At Lola, it was hardcore. In the Tom Douglas pastry kitchen, it was a wild iPod shuffle mix worthy of inspiring dance moves. It cracked me up when "Beat It" came on as I was standing over a giant Hobart...
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Critic Turned Cook follows former Seattle Post-Intelligencer food critic Leslie Kelly on her journey away from the keyboard and into the kitchen as she trains at various Tom Douglas restaurants. Take it away, Leslie! Can I please see a show of hands among veteran cooks of who got their start working the dish pit? It's a dirty job, but a foot in the door. One of the more memorable passages in Soul of a Chef, the book by Michael Ruhlman, is the image of a young Thomas Keller sweeping floors in his first restaurant. Scut work is hard and humbling, but it builds character, right? Makes you appreciate your spot on the line. That's what I kept telling myself as...
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Critic Turned Cook follows former Seattle Post-Intelligencer food critic Leslie Kelly on her journey away from the keyboard and into the kitchen as she trains at various Tom Douglas restaurants. Take it away, Leslie! Jordan and Andy are seasoned brat jockeys at Shultzy's in Seattle. I’ve always hated running. Never once experienced that endorphin buzz that pushes exhausted bodies to sprint to a finish. Cooking on the line in a restaurant seems a lot like a race. There’s constant motion fueling the adrenaline charge that comes from multitasking to the max. You’re in the weeds and then you look up and hours have passed like minutes. In my years as a restaurant critic, I was blissfully happy sitting on the...
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