Chef Steven Jacobson, C.I Shenanigans Brewery, Spokane, WA
 Where are you from?It takes a lot of drinking to understand where I'm from (laughing). The jist of it is that I'm adopted, and I was adopted in Las Vegas. You grew up in Las Vegas? Pretty much as a kid. My parents divorced in the 80s. My dad remarried and we moved to Duncanville, Texas and my mother stayed in Las Vegas. When I got to Texas, I was there from 15-18, people asked me if I was raised in a hotel (laughing). When I graduated high school I went into the Marine Corps for a few years, when I got out I went to Vegas. What did you want to be when you were a kid? It all goes back to the first things I encountered. I was a big fan of radio as a kid. You get more details, or you did back then, versus how reporting was done on TV. I could conjure up the images in my mind, and fell in love with radio. I thought I wanted to be a radio DJ. College was after the Marines? That's a funny story. When I graduated from high school, my grades weren't so great. My dad said he wasn't paying for college unless my grades were better. He then tells me a Marine recruiter was on the way over. (Chuckles) That's exactly how I decided to enlist in the military. When I got out, I went to college in Florida and studied communications hoping to go into the field. It was when I realized you don't make a lot of money in that field that I began to look at other things. I always cooked as a kid and my mom was a pretty good cook. Who influenced your attitude about cooking? I had a great influence. One summer my parents sent me to Mercer Island, Washington, to my aunt's. I'd never seen so much green in my life up to that point. My grandfather was one of the lead people for Chrysler (30s-40s) and my grandmother learned how to entertain for guests. She often had to cook dinner for 15-16 people on a moment's notice. My aunt (her daughter) used to help prepare the meals. After she completed college (she was an architect) she moved to Washington and also became a gourmet cook. She had four kids and everything was cooked from scratch, I had never been around that, other than going to my grandmother's for Thanksgiving or Christmas. My first meal at her house was Beef Bourginoune, I had never had anything like that. I took a taste and the flavors just exploded in my mouth, it was so good. Is that your most memorable food moment as a child? Oh, no, about a month into my stay, rhubarb started to come into her garden. I had no clue what that was at the time. She was going to make strawberry rhubarb pie and told me if I helped her, I could be her taste tester. I cut the rhubarb and even made the crust. We then made vanilla ice cream from scratch, it really was fun. The best taste experience was the pie, without question. Do you feel that was the jump start for your culinary career? My attitude about food changed dramatically after spending time with them. I learned to appreciate so many flavors and learned about all kinds of ingredients. Yeah, I guess it was, I never thought about it like that before. When I got back home, I was shocked at how bad food tasted. (Laughing) My poor mother, I walked into the house and I have a TV dinner coming and she's all excited because Hungry Man had just come out. She also had Banquet chicken, but she did make the mashed potatoes from scratch. (Laughing) She was so happy about the chicken and I took one bite and only ate the potatoes. She was devastated and asked why I wasn't eating my food. I had never been a problem eater and went on to explain Aunt Virginia's food. She immediately got on the phone to my aunt as said, "What did you do?" (Laughing) From then on my assignment was to help her make dinner. She'd buy a chicken, we'd look for a recipe and try it. If we liked it, we would take it out and put it into a scrap book. We made all kinds of cool things. Your first stage was under your mother (Laughing). I know, she looked at me like I had three heads. Tell us about your time in Texas before you went into the Marines. It was a culture shock, but it's where I learned about barbecue, another one of my loves. We were outside of Dallas, and I really started to learn more about food when I lived there. I worked at the local skating rink to earn money, and then go to different restaurants. While my friends were buying CDs, I was trying to find the best, let's say steak, and that would be my mission. Not normal for a 16 year old boy, that's for sure.  Did you have formal training in cooking?I did later. I was a mechanic in the Marines and I fit about as good as a square peg in a round hole. When I got out of the Marines I could either get a job as a Police Officer, a Fireman or a job in a kitchen. Free food was very attractive (Laughing). I immediately took a job as a dishwasher at a place called Commander's Palace. I was in New Orleans at the time. My mom said I was being a vagabond at the time. I pulled into Louisiana and stopped there not knowing it was a 5 diamond restaurant. I had no idea what that meant. You moved to the top of the line for dishwashers all waiting to get in there. (Laughing) I had no idea though (Laughing). They asked me if I could speak any Creole, and I'm like, "What's that?" They told me I was hired. I asked why they had asked that and they said, "Because nobody would talk to me and I'd do my job!" I lived in a little apartment, really a hovel, down the street from Commander's Palace where some of the cooks stayed. It was hilarious. Who was the head chef at that time? It was Emeril, but he was about to leave. I had about as much contact with him as I have had with the Pope. I stayed about a year, and one day a grill cook didn't show up. They asked me if I knew how to work the grill. I admitted I helped my dad in the backyard and he (the sous chef) said, "Come over here." I don't why they kept me, I burned fish and steaks, the first night I thought I was going to quit. All the hair from my elbows to my hands was bascially gone. I didn't complain, I just kept working at it. Eventually I learned the station, it took me about a week. I had to learn how to test temperature by touch, what the difference was between a good fish and a bad fish, I did not work a night shift for six months (they were open for lunch at that time). I learned the basics like bechamel or hollandaise sauces, I didn't know I was making them, I just knew them as one made with chicken stock and the other was a yellow breakfast sauce. When I got to culinary school they were shocked I knew how to make those sauces. Nothing in that restaurant was brought in frozen except the ice cream and the ice cubes. It's classic French and everything was made from scratch. It was a great learning experience even though I didn't appreciate it at the time. I evenutally learned every station there. The place ran like the military and they loved my background. There were no tickets, everything was a call back. That's how they do it in France, and that's how they do it there. After one summer in New Orleans, I decided it was too crazy for me there. (My apartment had no air conditioning.) I decided to turn to more humidity and turned my motorcycle to south Florida. Where did you go to in Florida? I saw an advertisement: Do you want to be in radio? At a community college in Davie, Florida, right off Alligator Alley. I had a little bit of the GI Bill and I started doing that. At that time I took a job at Quarter Deck Grill in Ft Lauderdale. I had no idea what volume was until I worked there. We would do 2-3,000 covers a day on a week day, the weekends we'd do twice as much! The fish mongers would come to the back door of the restaurant and the kitchen manager, who wasn't a chef, would determine if it was worth buying. Sometimes it was still wiggling! They'd bring them in whole, and I can't emphasize enough how big these fish were. They were massive and we'd break them down. That was the best training. Steaks too, but there wasn't a lot of beef in Florida. That's interesting you say that because we have cattle farms all over Florida. I know, most of it was shipped out. At that time I didn't know what conch was and they'd bring it and octopus too, whole. Long story short, I was still doing radio, on air and commercials, and working there, not realizing that my passion was really food. Then I got a job at Ruth Chris's Steak house and learned a lot there. When did you decide to leave radio and commit to becoming a chef. When the radio station manager told me I wasn't bringing in enough radio ad revenue for them to keep me. He said I should consider another career. I knew I wasn't going to be a DJ unless one of the ones there died (Laughter). When you look at your cooking style today, what would you call it? Comfort food. I've done the fine dining. When I left Ft Lauderdale, I moved to Chicago. People still shake their heads when I say that, going fom 84 average degrees to -3 degrees in the winter. I started working part time at Mon Ami Gabi and Umbria (now L2O), both were in the Beldeford-Stratford Hotel. |  I had a chef pull me aside and tell me I was a pretty good cook. He said, "I know this school in New England and I can put in a recommendation for you but you have to qualify. We'll write a letter of recommendation for you and when you do your first internship you can do it with us. We'll guarantee you that.Yeah, I went to Johnson and Wales first, they couldn't get my name right (Laughing). CIA was more younger kids and at that time I had just turned 30, I felt uncomfortable. When I looked at NECI I knew that was it. You're cooking every single day, the chefs are in your face, and you get a real appreciation for world food there. If you don't, you're out, it's a hard school, at least it was to me.I went to that school right after 9/11. I was so entrenched in what I was doing, but I was just a cook. I started taking everything seriously. My first internship was at the Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. This is so bizarre. At the time you were working at the NECI restaurants, I (Elaine) was working for the State of Vermont and we would lunch there. You and I were in the same place at the same time and didn't even know it. That's really funny. (Laughing) I worked the whole time I was there, either at Sarducci's or the Capital Plaza. Oh my God, you worked for Dorothy Korshak, owner of Sarducci's, an old friend of mine whose children were friends with my children! I'm talking to you in Las Vegas (at the time of this interview) how small the world really is. I worked there for 2 years and learned a lot from them. They wanted to hire local people, but when someone wasn't there I'd fill in. I have a sneaky suspicion that we met while you were working at Capital Plaza when Gourmet Girl wasn't even a glimmer of an idea. We loved their Sunday brunches which you prepared.  When I graduated I was recruited by Chateau on the Lake in Branson, Missouri, and immediately took the job. Then I was recruited by a Delaware company that handles food for sports arenas. They help with the opening of the Springfield Stadium, home for the Cardinals. I intereviewed at Busch Stadium with their corporate chef and showed up in a Cubs hat. Chef Ralphe said, "I'm not a sports fan but I'm finding this funny right now. Lucky for you I'm the only one with the influence on whether you are hired or not, these people would throw you right out." He said, "You either have balls of steel or you can cook. Let's see if you can cook." I cooked my ass off and they hired me immediately. What I didn't understand is that those jobs last a season. When the season ended they were going to lay me off. I immediately went back to Chicago and started working a little bit at Brasserie Jo, Mon Ami and Umbria. Then I was recruited by an equipment company, but was getting really burned out. I was workin 75-80 hours a week. I wasn't dealing with it well and just took a break, kinda of a sabbatical, but I did work for this equipment company. There are Greek families and Super Greek families, the owners were super Greek. Let's talk about where you are in your career right now. I love slow food, but I really like the farm to table approach. I love slow cooked meats. I like walking into a restaurant and smelling either a roast or a chicken cooking. I prefer that to a quick service type of environment. I've done it most of my life and really enjoy it. What's the most important thing in running your kitchen? I want my cooks to learn what it's like to appreciate food. It's very hard for me to hire somebody who doesn't aspire to do something else. I want people who are culinarians, people who are excited to go to the next level. You're supporting their goals and that's commendable. Do you have a favorite seasonal ingredient? That's a good question. I love tomatoes when they are in season. To me eating a tomato in the middle of winter is almost sacreligious. I really adore heirloom tomatoes and so many are disappearing. I'm not a big fan of dried spices, unless it is something like annato seed or saffron. I'm a huge fan of garlic and have been playing around with black garlic. What culinary trend do you embrace? Sous-vide is limited. I tried it, I like it, but to me it makes everything taste the same. I want to isolate flavors, not have someone tasting the essence of the chicken or fingerling potatoes that were in the same bag. So are you saying you embrace that trend or it works for some things and not others? I'm more of a classic chef. I like things the way I was trained to do. Having gone to NECI, when I think of fresh vegetables, I think I have to blanch it first then cook it. I don't hate sous-vide, it's good for certain things. There are some chefs that have taken that to an extreme. You cannot sous-vide everything. That's like fusion. I was eating with a highly respected chef, I won't name names, but I was a guest (part of the entourage) at a restaurant that called itself fusion~Asian and French fusion. He said, "One, I don't know which part is Asian they're doing, because there's a huge area to say Asian or French. Two, is this chef a master of both? If he's a master of both then there isn't a problem with the fusion because he understands the taste, the flavor and texture of each culture and knows how to blend those foods." To do fusion just to throw those flavors together is just not the right approach. Then they believe their own press that they can do it well. Your 'chef'' stated it perfectly. Is there a cuisine that you won't or can't cook? It has to be sustainable. I like shark fin soup but you'll never catch me making that. I see those images on the Discovery Channel where they cut the fins off and dump the sharks back in the water, they're laying on the bottom of the ocean floor, and it hurts my soul. It's not something that I want to do. I'm not an environmentalist guy running down the street saying don't eat this and don't eat that. I'm a chef, I don't get into those waters so to speak, but I'd like to be able to serve that fish again. People are becoming more educated about sustainability. But there will always be those that don't care about that, they just want that culinary 'high' experience. Is there a kitchen gadget that you wouldn't part with? For the non-commerical kitchen it's my knife. Without my knife I'm basically nothing. What do you like to eat at home? Anything roasted, even vegetables. Do you have a favorite moment you'd like to share. The only time I was ever in a room with Julie Child was in New England Culinary. When she came in, it wasn't for a demonstration, she was friends with the founder of the school. She was talking about American food, how far it's come along with American wine and how they go together. She really talked about James Beard which  enticed us to listen even more. We're so entrenched with the classics, you have to put her on the same level as anybody else, that's my opinion. Then she said, "By the way, I want you to know, even if you're vegan or vegetarian I still appreciate you but I am a card carrying carnivore." (Laughing) Even the vegetarians in the class were laughing at that.What's the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you in a commercial kitchen? It was at New England Culinary. We were doing the cookies for the Montpelier Vermont Retirement Home. There were about 500 residents and it was Neiman Marcus cookies. None of our containers that hold ingredients are labeled. You are supposed to know what's in there. At La Brioche it is a real bakery so you start at 2 a.m. I was exhausted having worked at Sarducci's that night, having had opened at Capital Plaza that day. Instead of adding sugar, I added salt. They bake up just that same as if you had added sugar. When I looked at them they looked fine. We sent 1000 cookies to the retirement home on a Sunday morning. I never tasted one of them. It was one of the biggest culinary lessons I ever learned. I get this nice lady who called and asked to speak to the chef. I went and got Chef Dan, not someone you easily forget at 6'6" and 350 lbs. He very calmly says to me, "I've got some cookies coming back that I want you to taste." I asked why and he said that he was told the cookies tasted 'hot.' He said, "I don't recall there being any pepper in Neiman Marcus cookies. We're in Vermont and we don't put pepper in anything. Something leads me to believe that you put a wrong ingredient in these cookies." I said okay and we'll try them. I took one bite and spit it out. I was mortally embarrassed. A hard way to learn to always taste what you make before it goes anywhere. YES! A huge lesson. That's why you go to a school like that, you're cooking for real customers. I really felt bad, some of those people weren't supposed to have sodium and I'm sending them salt cookies. Which book has impacted you the most? I own about 3600 cookbooks at this point. I'd have to say James Beard's " Beard On Food." He had such an inane taste memory. Is there a food you can't bring yourself to like?  Fiddleheads. I don't understand Vermonter's obsession with fiddleheads. Sugar on snow is another one.Last meal.... 3 courses...go... I can have 3 courses? Nice. 1st course - Blueberry pancakes made with freshly milled flour, fresh buttermilk and Maine blueberries. 2nd course - Maine Lobster made in a lobster pot with drawn butter. 3rd course - A dessert that was made at Umbria with Belgian chocolate that was infused with fresh cherries. |