Listen to Renee Erickson — chef-owner of four of Seattle’s most extraordinary restaurants and the author of a new cookbook — and you’ll hear her use one word more than any other: care.
“I want my customers to feel welcomed, to feel cared for,” Erickson says. “I want them to feel like they’re walking into a warm, inviting space, like a home.”
Erickson’s restaurants indeed seem to feel like home for so many in Seattle, but they’ve also earned a national reputation.
The Walrus and the Carpenter, an oyster bar with a Parisian vibe, was named one of the best new restaurants in America by Bon Appetit in 2011. In 2013, the magazine called it one of the 20 most important restaurants in the United States. With all that attention, the restaurant consistently has a two-hour wait for a table — on weeknights, no less.
At The Whale Wins, people return for lunch or dinner on a weekly (or daily) basis to sit in the spacious white room and wait for dishes like Hama Hama clams with dill, Serrano ham, fennel, brown butter and cream, roasted in the wood-fired oven. Barnacle, a tiny bar with fresh seafood dishes, charcuterie, cheeses and wine, changes its menu daily based on what is in season that moment. (Plan to be there on the day they serve octopus terrine with Ligurian olive oil and lemon.)
Even Boat Street Cafe, Erickson’s oldest restaurant, is filled with fervent followers, especially now that Jay Guerrero, formerly the sous-chef at New York’s Prune, is running the kitchen.
Erickson’s food — dishes with a decidedly French countryside bent, made with ingredients firmly rooted in the Pacific Northwest — is consciously simple. Lentil salad with nettles, mustard seed oil, currants and tarragon. Herring butter toasts with pickled fennel, lemon peel and parsley. Grilled whole favas over ricotta with honey, lime and Aleppo pepper. A tangle of roasted carrots and fennel, slathered with rose-petal harissa, atop a plate of thick house-made yogurt. Her food is warm, earthy and thoughtful.
“It’s the ingredients that are spectacular,” says Erickson. “What goes on our menus is what I was attracted to at the farmers’ markets. I don’t want to intellectualize food.”
One reason Erickson’s restaurants are so beloved must be the owner’s attitude toward her staff. Perhaps because they are treated so well, employees at Erickson’s restaurants seem to be just as warm and friendly as the food they produce.
“I’m … not a classically trained chef — actually, I’m not trained at all — so there aren’t a lot of rules about cooking in my kitchens,” she writes in the opening of her cookbook. “It’s more important to me that people are happy and comfortable than that they can crack an egg with one hand or slice a case of shallots in a minute flat. If I don’t want to do something, I don’t want to make someone else do it. I want my staff to have healthy lives and dynamic, interesting jobs that don’t entail someone hovering over them.”
As Jess Thomson, a Seattle food writer who co-authored the cookbook, said, “Renee isn’t like most chefs. In working with her on this book, it became immediately clear to me that she really does use a lot of care with the people around her. She treats them like family.”
Perhaps the reason Erickson, 42, is such an unusual chef is that she never expected to enter the restaurant business. In her early 20s, on the path to pursuing a graduate fine arts degree, Erickson started working in the kitchen at Boat Street Cafe, first as a waiter and then in the kitchen. Over time, to her surprise, she fell in love with restaurant life. “I had never worked in a place that was so hands-on,” she said. “It wasn’t a corporate structure. The camaraderie and the team effort on the line — we were all being creative. There’s nothing like it.”
Hooked on the life of a chef, Erickson still had no intention of owning a restaurant. So she was surprised in the late 1990s when the original owner of Boat Street, ready to leave the restaurant, asked her to take over the business. She thought Erickson would be ready for the challenge. And so, at only 24 years old, Erickson became a restaurant owner. Her father and brother built a patio and helped make repairs. Her best friend waited tables. Her mother made the desserts.
One weekend, shortly after buying the restaurant, Erickson closed down the cafe to remodel. She and her family and friends gutted and cleaned it, starting Saturday morning and finishing Monday night. They were open again for dinner Tuesday evening. A local restaurant reviewer called shortly after, confused. She had eaten at Boat Street on Friday, but when she returned for one more meal before writing her review, the place looked entirely different. Erickson explained, in a panic, that she had just bought the restaurant and was making significant changes. Could the reviewer please hold her review? The reviewer agreed and came back eight months later.
“It was really gracious of her,” says Erickson. “I was so lucky. No one can do that now. This was before cellphones, before Yelp, before the instant reviews. Opening my first restaurant now would be terrifying for the amount of attention I’d get.”
As Erickson wrote in the acknowledgments of her new book, “A Boat, a Whale &a Walrus,” “there is an ocean of gratitude upon which every restaurant floats.” That gratitude seems to infuse the dishes in her restaurants.
Her nurturing attitude also shaped the recipes in her cookbook. “She is open to the possibility of changing a recipe for home cooks,” Thomson says. “She knows that not everyone has a wood-fired oven at home, so the recipe in the cookbook will have to change. She wanted these recipes to have the sophistication of the restaurants but work for everyone at home.”
Unlike some restaurant cookbooks, which seem primarily concerned with documenting a professional approach and burnishing a chef’s reputation, “A Boat, a Whale &a Walrus” is organized for the home cook. Based on meals for particular occasions — “Sundays at Home,” “New Year’s Eve Party,” “Wild Foods Dinner,” “Fourth of July Crab Feast” — the recipes are arranged the way people truly cook. Instead of a chapter full of appetizers, followed by 12 salads and then all the meat dishes in the book, this cookbook contains menus for celebrations, the occasions when a day full of lingering in the kitchen with friends seems like joy. The meals sometimes call for specialty ingredients, especially if you live outside of the Pacific Northwest.
But mostly, this is a book of mussels, preserved lemons, anchovies with chili butter, marinated olives and strawberry shortcake to be served on the few weeks of the year that wild strawberries are sweet. Filled with casual, breezy photographs of pickled chanterelles and long tables filled with the remnants of happy gatherings, it’s a cookbook for the kitchen, not the coffee table. (It’s also strikingly modest for a restaurant book: Erickson includes beautiful portraits of many of her staff but only a few images of herself.)
After 12 years of standing in front of the stove, Erickson rarely cooks on the line in her restaurants anymore. “I have employees I trust,” she says. She oversees all the restaurants, though, and she’ll step in at Boat Street if an employee gets sick. She brings on new cooks at the recommendation of people with whom she already works. Every new hire cooks on the line for a week, often with Erickson there, to make sure it’s a good fit for everyone. “There has to be a connection,” Erickson says.
When there is, the connection extends beyond Erickson and her team and to the customers eating the wood-fired roast chicken with sorrel pesto or Totten Virginica oysters with champagne mignonette laid before them. “I feel really fortunate to be doing what I am doing,” Erickson says.
In the food, in the happiness of her staff and in the beauty of the cookbook she created, it shows.
Boat Street bread pudding
1 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup bourbon, such as Buffalo Trace
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4 cups heavy cream, plus 2 cups for serving
1 large baguette (about 1 pound), torn into 1-inch pieces
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
3/4 cup bourbon, such as Buffalo Trace
Pinch kosher salt
14 ounces canned sweetened condensed milk
For the bread pudding: Soak the raisins in the bourbon in a small bowl; let them sit at room temperature for 1 hour or up to 1 day. Drain, reserving the bourbon for the sauce.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Have a deep 9-by-13-inch baking dish at hand.
Whisk together the eggs, granulated sugar, orange zest, vanilla extract and salt in a large mixing bowl until well blended. Stir in the 4 cups of heavy cream; once that’s incorporated, add the bread pieces (you can use day-old bread) and drained raisins, making sure that all the bread is coated. Transfer to the baking dish.
Place the baking dish on a rimmed baking sheet (to catch any drips); transfer to the oven and bake uncovered for 1 hour or until the top layer of bread is nicely browned, the edges are bubbling and the center of the pudding is firm to the touch. Let cool.
For the sauce: Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Gradually whisk in the confectioners’ sugar; once the mixture is smooth, add the reserved bourbon (from soaking the raisins) and the 3/4 cup bourbon. Increase the heat to medium; cook for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally; this step will burn off just about all the alcohol.
Add the salt, then whisk in the sweetened condensed milk, stirring for another minute or two until the sauce thickens. Let cool.
When ready to serve, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Scoop the bread pudding into individual shallow, ovenproof bowls or ramekins. Drizzle each portion with a generous amount of sauce. Place the bowls on a baking sheet; bake for about 5 minutes or until the sauce is bubbly. Serve right away, topped with an indecent amount (about 1/4 cup) of the remaining 2 cups of heavy cream.
Make ahead: The sauce can be made 3 days in advance, covered and refrigerated.
Makes 12 servings.
Celery root and celery leaf salad
Peel of 2 preserved Meyer lemons or regular preserved lemons, homemade or store-bought, cut into julienne (very thin strips)
Scant 1 cup creme fraiche
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon minced shallot
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon poppy seeds
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
3 baseball-size celeriac, peeled (about 2 1/2 pounds total)
1 cup walnut halves, toasted (see NOTE)
1 cup picked celery leaves (from the heart of 1 bunch celery)
2 teaspoons poppy seeds
3/4 cup fresh pomegranate seeds (arils)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Flaked sea salt, such as Maldon
For the vinaigrette: Combine the preserved lemon peel, creme fraiche, lemon juice, shallot and poppy seeds in a food processor; pulse until the solids are finely chopped. With the motor running, gradually add the oil to form a creamy emulsion. Season lightly with salt. Transfer the dressing to a large bowl.
For the salad: Use a mandoline or sharp knife to shave the celeriac into wide, 1/8-inch thick slices, adding them to the bowl of vinaigrette as you work, and coating them so they don’t turn brown. Stir in about three-quarters of the walnuts, crushing some of them with your fingers as you work.
Transfer the mixture to a large platter. Garnish with the remaining walnuts, celery leaves, poppy seeds and pomegranate seeds. Serve at room temperature, drizzled with oil and garnished with the flaked salt.
Make ahead: The dressed celery root, without the walnuts, can be refrigerated for up to 4 hours in advance; bring to room temperature before serving.
Note: Toast the nuts in a small, dry skillet over medium-low heat for a few minutes, until fragrant and lightly browned, shaking the pan as needed to prevent scorching.
Ingredients are too variable for a meaningful analysis.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
Roasted carrots and fennel with rose petal harissa
3 ounces dried guajillo chili peppers, stemmed (not seeded)
1 1/2 ounces dried aji amarillo chili peppers (also sold as aji mirasol), stemmed (not seeded)
Just-boiled water
2 1/2 tablespoons caraway seed
2 tablespoons cumin seed
1 tablespoon coriander seed
1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed
About 3 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon dried rose petals (see headnote)
10 to 12 tablespoons lime juice (from 4 to 6 limes), or more as needed
1/4 teaspoon rose water (see headnote)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for storing
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt, or more as needed
2 bunches medium carrots (6-inch carrots, about 12 ounces), trimmed but not peeled, cut in half lengthwise
2 medium fennel bulbs, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices through the core (core is not discarded)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
2 teaspoons crunchy sel gris (gray salt)
Flaked sea salt, such as Maldon or Jacobsen, for finishing
1 1/2 cups plain European-style whole milk yogurt, or Greek yogurt thinned with a bit of olive oil, for serving
For the harissa: Combine the chili peppers in a medium pot, adding enough of the just-boiled water to cover them. Bring to a boil over high heat, then remove the pot from the heat and weight the chilies with a smaller pan to ensure they’re all submerged. Allow them to sit, covered, for at least 2 hours or until they are soft. (Depending on the chilies, it might not take that long; just make sure the skins are soft.) Drain; reserve the soaking water.
Combine the caraway, cumin, coriander and fennel seeds in a large saute pan over medium heat. Cook for a few minutes, stirring frequently, until they are toasted and fragrant, and some of them begin to pop. Transfer the spices to a plate to cool.
Once the spices have cooled, transfer them to a food processor; pulse until the spices are ground almost to a powder. Add the garlic and rose petals, and pulse about 10 times to form a dry paste.
Working in two batches, and wearing gloves if you’re sensitive to spice, add half of the soaked chilies to the food processor, along with any water that comes along for the ride. Add half of the lime juice and half of the rose water; pulse until the chilies are finely chopped, stopping to scrape down the sides and top of the food processor bowl as needed. (This might take 3 or 4 minutes total, so be patient. You’re looking for the texture of small-curd cottage cheese.) If the mixture seems too thick, add some of the reserved cooking/soaking water, about 2 tablespoons at a time, until the mixture moves easily in the food processor.
Once the chilies are finely chopped, add half of the oil and half of the salt; pulse until well incorporated. Transfer to a container with a tight-fitting lid; repeat with the remaining harissa ingredients, adding the processed mixture to the container.
Taste for seasoning, adding a little more lime juice and salt, as needed. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 day before using. To store long-term, scoop the harissa into pint jars, pour a thin layer of oil on top and refrigerate for up to 2 months. The yield is a generous 3 cups.
For the vegetables: Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.
Arrange the carrots and fennel on a large rimmed baking sheet (be sure to space the vegetables evenly on the baking sheet; you want them to crisp and brown, not steam). Drizzle the vegetables with half of the oil, turning to coat, then sprinkle with the gray salt. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the pan and turning the vegetables halfway through, until the vegetables are tender and well browned. Allow the vegetables to cool to room temperature.
Combine the remaining oil with 2 or 3 tablespoons (to taste) of the harissa in a large bowl. (If your harissa is especially thick, you might need another tablespoon or two of oil, just so it’s thin enough to coat the vegetables.) Add the vegetables, turn to coat them evenly with the harissa mixture, and season lightly with the sea salt.
To serve, smear the yogurt on a serving plate. Pile the vegetables on top and serve at room temperature, drizzled with oil.
Make ahead: The dried chilies for the harissa need to soak for at least 2 hours and up to 1 day. The harissa needs to cure in the refrigerator for 1 day before serving; it can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 2 months. (You’ll have quite a bit left over after you make the carrot-fennel recipe.)
Makes 4 to 6 servings
All are adapted from “A Boat, a Whale and a Walrus: Menus and Stories,” by Renee Erickson with Jess Thomson.
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