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Tom Douglas [1958-0] American

Rank: 101
Chef

Tom Douglas is an American executive chef, restaurateur, author, and radio talk show host. He is known for winning the 1994 James Beard Award for Best Northwest Chef. On May 7, 2012, he won the James Beard Award as Best Restaurateur.

Business

Quote	Tags	Rank
I have an affinity for the old Seattle coffee shops, places like the Green Onion and the Copper Kettle, the classic kind of coffee bar - little places that served breakfast, lunch and dinner and have pretty much disappeared.		101
There's natural mentoring that goes on in my life every day.		102
Sustainability includes how you run your business, and my bottom line includes how you treat your people. Sustainability starts with your staff.	Business	103
My favorite way to cook trout is whole, bone-in, on the grill. The fish are stuffed with sliced lemons and herb sprigs, brushed with oil, and cooked over fairly hot coals until the skin is crisp and the flesh is moist and flaky. Go ahead and gild the lily by adding a sauce.		104
If you don't have the confidence in baking, commit to making the recipe three times. The first two, do it exactly the way I've told you to make it. Twice. The first time you'll screw it up. The second time it will come out pretty good, and then the third time, make your adjustments.		105
Sweet, delicious Dungeness crab is always a treat.		106
Pork is my friend.		107
Every cook I knows loves to make pizza.		108
The two things that are going to make you a better baker without even trying are a scale and a thermometer in your oven.		109
It's important that your shucked oyster is clean and pristine.		110
If you want something beautiful to put on the dinner table, pick up a sockeye, the salmon species with the most vivid red flesh.		111
I use ginger like garlic. I love it for steaming fish and making barbecue sauces or roasted chicken.		112
How can anyone live off of minimum wage?		113
It's just an American tradition to make sure people don't leave hungry. The worst thing is to have them say, 'Great dinner, but now I have to go get a burger.'		114
Support a small chef. Not these big chains... but support the people who are out there trying to do things right and working hard to do that.		115
Catfish's mild taste adapts well to a wide array of flavors, especially strong assertive ones, which is why you used to see it 'blackened' Cajun style on so many restaurant menus - a trick which soon became a tired cliche.		116
Some versions of crab cakes are mostly crabmeat lightly bound with egg, but I'm a firm believer that a crab cake should contain bread crumbs.		117
My own favorite way to cook and eat razor clams is to simply dredge them in a mix of seasoned flour and cornmeal, then pan fry them in butter until crisp and golden. Be careful not to overcook them so they stay tender, not tough and chewy.		118
One of my favorite ways to eat albacore is tuna poke.		119
Cooks are an undervalued, awesome profession.		120
I particularly like to make crunchy slices of garlic bread to serve with steamed clams.		121
When I wrote my cookbook, 'I Love Crab Cakes,' I asked some of my best chef buddies to contribute recipes.		122
Money is like manure: if you don't spread it around, nothing grows.		123
I'm just sick of food going in the garbage.		124
To shuck oysters, you'll need an oyster knife, a handy tool with a sturdy handle and a short, rigid blade which you can pick up for about ten bucks in a kitchenware shop or fish market. A quick trip online will yield any number of videos and slide shows with step-by-step instructions on how to shuck an oyster.		125
My wife and I decided to try and kick start our kitchens to a $15 minimum wage for cooks. I've probably had to go through and raise every menu price now by 50 cents because it took away my profit. I just underestimated what it was going to cost.		126
Tender and sweet, Manila clams partner well with a wide variety of foods - white wine, sake, beer, butter, leeks, fresh herbs, roasted peppers, olives, and wild mushrooms, to name a few.		201
In the restaurant business, there's the concept of pivot. Pivot to the stove, pivot to the refrigerator.		202
I don't know too many kids who ask to weed the garden.		203
For a group of friends or a family dinner, fish tacos are popular and fun to make.		204
There's a restaurant in Manhattan called Balthazar, and next to it is Balthazar Bakery. It's tiny, and it's very charming to have that little retail outlet to sell the house desserts and breads.		205
Catfish has a nice firm texture and mild flavor.		206
Most of the catfish you find at the fish counter has been farmed. Though I usually prefer to buy and eat wild fish, farmed catfish taste cleaner, without the muddy taste of their wild relatives.		207
It's always a good idea to chill your crab cake mixture for a few hours, or even overnight, before frying because they'll hold together better.		208
In my 'Big Dinners' cookbook, I recreated my mother's recipe for crab dip. The creamy dressing for this dip, made with mayonnaise, tomato paste, a touch of honey, sliced chives, lemon juice and zest, horseradish and Tabasco, is reminiscent of Thousand Island dressing.		209
There's something majestic about a 30-pound Chinook salmon roasted and served whole - people get excited when you present it with the head and tail on. It has beautifully browned skin and extraordinary bright red flesh when you cut into it.		210
Horseradish is one of those perk-me-ups. You can use it in a cocktail sauce, you can bread fish with it - it loses its punch when cooked. It's a 'What is that?' flavor. It adds depth of flavor to things.		211
It's really fun to have a convection oven, even it if it's a little convection toaster oven. It really changes the way you bake.		212
Customers are more friendly when they've had a meal.		213
When I eat oatmeal, I'm hungry by 10 A.M., but pho is a great way to start the day.		214
It's hard to legislate what people eat. People are getting fed up with being told what they can and can't do. It boils down to personal responsibility. People need to read labels, do their research and act accordingly.		215
The one thing I could do with my eyes closed is my Grandma's schnecken.		216
I pay a living wage, I believe in healthcare, I declare all my income, and I don't cut corners.		217
Some of the best things you do are the things you don't do.		218
I don't answer my phone in a restaurant.		219
The simplest way to prepare Dungeness crabs is to boil them in the shell and set them in front of your guests with crab crackers or crab hammers, cocktail forks, and plenty of napkins.		220
Oysters, such as Dabobs, Quilcenes, Westcotts, and Willapas, to name just a few, are often named after the place they are harvested.		221
Who doesn't love digging into a plate of crab cakes or going after a chilled cracked crab with crab cracker, cocktail fork and a plastic bib for protection?		222
In some cities, McDonald's rules, but Seattle is ruled by teriyaki joints.		223
The lakes in Washington State give us tons of crawfish.		224
Over the years I've tweaked my stuffing recipe many times, adding a variety of ingredients like sauteed wild mushrooms, dried cherries, fresh chevre, toasted hazelnuts, chopped ham hock meat, and other taste treats.		225
Farm to table is a personal choice.		226
Summer in Seattle allows me to indulge in some of the region's top culinary delights - I'm talking about wild king salmon and fresh, ripe Washington stone fruits and berries like cherries, peaches, plums, and blueberries.		301
Spooning a seasonal fruit relish onto a plate of grilled king salmon is very much my style - flavorful, straightforward, and unfussy. I also like the way fresh, ripe fruit balances the richness of the salmon.		302
Another way I like to barbecue king salmon is as a whole fish stuffed, literally to the gills, with sweet onions, sliced lemons, and summer sage.		303
When I was young, I would make my parents breakfast in bed on Saturday mornings.		304
I was driving around the country when I was 19 and happened to run out of cash in Seattle, so I settled here.		305
Be sure to read a recipe all the way through before you cook. The time it saves you in the long run is invaluable.		306
I'm much less shy in conversation than I am on my own.		307
I eat out at least once every day.		308
I have a good flavor memory.		309
I was $4,000 short on my first payroll.		310
I want to do the basic things, like putting my daughter to bed. It's the sweetest thing.		311
The best meal I was served was ribollita, an Italian bread soup at the Castello di Ama winery in Tuscany. I usually hate ribollita, and the people I was traveling with thought I was crazy for ordering it.		312
I crave my mom's Sloppy Joes.		313
Every time you make a fruit crisp for me, you are my favorite person in the world. It's something delicious and warm, right out of the oven. I mean, what more could anyone want? And all you're doing is taking the best fruit of the season, putting a crumb topping on it and putting it in the oven.		314
Mastering one recipe is better than mastering too many. Learn something and own it, and you'll feel so much better about it. You'll have more confidence if you've made it five times, and that confidence adds so much fun to cooking.		315
I love being able to help promote Seattle to travelers worldwide.		316
Utrip makes it easy for travelers to experience the destination highlights that most interest them, be it food, art or history. Just like a culinary experience, every palate is different, and Utrip is all about personalizing travel for their users.		317
I think about sustainability all the time, whether it's with fish or farmers in Eastern Oregon.		318
Disappointing cakes have often been sitting out too long. They should last just long enough to have the last pieces the next morning with coffee - who doesn't love cake with coffee?		319
I would say a full-time waiter in a high-price house could easily make $75,000, $80,000 a year.		320
Entrepreneurial people are never satisfied.		321
When I was a kid and my mom made tomato soup, she would cut buttered toast into squares and float them on top of each bowl.		322
I try to eat in one of my restaurants every day, and I eat out in another restaurant every day. It's what I do.		323
I love restaurants from top to bottom.		324
I'm kind of fat.		325
I would love to see McDonald's pay more money.		326
I think that people need to stand up with their backbone and not go to places where they feel like the workers aren't taken care of.		401
When you watch 'Shark Tank,' everything is about off-shore this, off-shore that.		402
I know Jeff Bezos because I cater at his home.		403
I'm a compassionate person, so if a product is 15 percent more than what I typically pay, and I see the purpose, I'll foster that kind of sustainability for the farmers/fishers.		404
My dad never explained anything growing up.		405
I don't have any interest in being a chef without being on the business side of things, or vice versa, because if you don't make money at the end of the month, you're going out of business.		406
Sometimes managers are a little shy to criticize another manager or another operation.		407
I've been taught by everyone I've ever worked with.		408
I can't stand it when restaurants don't have a sense of place in a city. When I'm in London, I want to know I'm in London. When you're sitting in my joint, you know you're sitting in Seattle.		409
Alaska Airlines and I have a lot in common, so coming together to delight travelers with savory, high quality food from the Pacific Northwest made sense.		410
If you just feel lazy and don't want to cook, then don't cook.		411
I think you owe it to your kids to teach them how to cook - you know, self-survival.		412
One-pot meals make a lot of sense... because so much of what people hate about cooking is really the cleanup, the mess, the grease.		413
I can't believe how many people don't have time to cook but have time to watch football and 'The Voice.' They're certainly making a choice.		414
We've become such a restaurant society.		415
I didn't go to university. I didn't go to culinary school, barely made it through high school.		416
I was once made honorary mayor of my hometown of Newark, Del.		417
If deep-frying catfish, try a dredge of seasoned flour and cornmeal and add some bacon fat to the oil.		418
The key to great fried squid is 'flash-frying' in hot oil for only a few minutes, which keeps it tender.		419
Often we eat squid fried, so it's fun to grill it for a change. To grill squid, slice the cleaned bodies open into two flat pieces and thread them, along with the tentacles, onto skewers, then grill quickly over a direct fire with the coals as close as possible to the grate, turning the squid several times.		420
Thanks to the abundance of shellfish in Puget Sound, Washington State is the largest oyster producer in the country.		421
Albacore tuna has a mild flavor that's delicious served raw or seared briefly on the outside so that it's still rare on the inside.		422
A chunk of seared albacore tuna, salted and peppered, then seared rare in a little oil in a hot skillet for just a minute or so per side, is the perfect addition to a savory plate of fried rice. Just slice the tuna across the grain and fan those mild, meaty slices over the top of the rice.		423
I'm not exactly the best capitalist ever.		424
Razor clams are large, oblong clams, although not as big as geoducks.		425
My longtime friend Steven Steinbock, who has worked with me for more than thirty years, is a master at panfrying fish and seafood.		426
Maybe there are too many restaurants. Maybe some of mine need to close. So be it. I'll live with the market place.		501
Most of America doesn't pay dishwashers $10.		502
The state of Washington calls tips 'wages.'		503
The classic Italian green sauce, salsa verde, is easy to make and especially nice in the spring when bunches of fresh herbs start appearing in the farmers market or in your garden.		504
Salsa verde is delicious with trout or most any fish.		505
Ling cod is a mild-flavored and somewhat delicate fish that takes well to poaching, braising and pan-roasting.		506
After being cooked, ling cod tends to bleed out some moisture, so, before serving, let it rest a few moments on a plate. Once the moisture has been released, you can carefully pick up the fillet with a slotted spatula and transfer it to another plate for saucing. This way, you won't sog out your beautiful sauce.		507
Spanish chorizo is a spicy cured sausage that's especially tasty with clams.		508
While it's typical to find steamed clam recipes which include a bit of bacon or sausage, you might not think of adding shredded ham hock, but it's another way to pair the lusty, smoky flavor of animal fat with the briny ocean flavor of shellfish.		509
Every chef has his treats. By that, I mean bits and pieces from things you're working on - crusty little cake trimmings, ends from a brisket, collars from a salmon, scraps. But they're snacks to me, and I eat them right off the cutting board - maybe too much.		510
I'll never understand those greasy little deep-fried wings most bars serve.		511
If you're going to start a fire, why cook just one chicken?		512
Cooking with your kids is a remarkable exercise to let them in on the purchasing part of the process - kids love to shop, and its great to take them to these ethnic places where people don't always speak the language.		513
I don't ever preach to people.		514
Steaming is a great way to cook any firm fleshed fish, but it's often overlooked by the home cook.		515
Sweet Washington cherries and Walla Walla onions are two of my favorite local treats.		516
The flesh of king salmon, which varies in color from white to pink to red, has a high fat content, making it perfect for grilling.		517
Around the time I opened my second restaurant, Etta's, I had just finished judging at the Jack Daniels World Invitational BBQ Championship in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Back home in Seattle, my goal was to recreate the sweet and smoky taste of that BBQ using our local wild king salmon instead of pig.		518
Coho or silver salmon are very common and easy to get for a good price.		519
At the fishmonger, choose fish with bright scales and clear eyes.		520

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