Pacific Rim Flavors Play To Seattle's `Inner Intensity'
Chef's Special is a monthly feature profiling Northwest chefs who share some of their signature recipes with you. Look for it in The Seattle Times Food section on the last Wednesday of each month.
Chef: Emily Moore.
Restaurant: Theoz, 1523 Sixth Ave.; 749-9660. Lunch Monday-Friday; dinner daily. She's also executive chef of Baci Catering.
Rim of fire: The volcanic Pacific rim of the Americas and Asia, and the foods of these regions, intrigue Moore. The new downtown restaurant's menu reflects those foods, especially ones of Indonesia, Malaysia and western South America.
Rim of fire II: Chili peppers heat up the cuisines of many Pacific Rim cultures - one of the food links that fascinates Moore, former chef at The Painted Table. Peppers season several Theoz dishes.
Outwardly mellow, inwardly intense: That's what Seattleites are, believes Moore, who's been one for about 15 of her 40-some years. "People here deal with the rain. One of the intensities is that they go inside themselves." They're thinkers.
Seattle obsession: "The whole country is fascinated with Seattle and Seattleites and how we tick," and it's given local restaurants a hiring boost. When Theoz advertised for help, top-notch people applied from around the country. Result: "All the people on the (cooking) line are either very experienced or CIA (Culinary Institute of America) graduates."
Too bland: That was San Diego, where Moore grew up. "I left San
Diego as soon as I could, at 17, because it was too mellow," perhaps because of the endless blue-sky weather. "My friends and I liked to read, discover things, go to movies, talk. San Diego was bland. It still is. . . It doesn't support great restaurants" or an intellectual atmosphere, she says.
Art and food: They've intertwined throughout Moore's life. She studied ceramics for a year at the University of California, Berkeley, then was a ceramics artist and teacher in several cities.
Yoga, ceramics and bread: Moore taught the first two and learned to make the third - and much more - in a tiny town in northern British Columbia, where she lived for a time with her then-husband.
Music's lure: This drew her to another turn in career plans. Deciding to seriously study her long-time love, the cello, she headed back to school, at the University of Idaho.
North to Alaska: A summer job found her cooking at a mineral-exploration camp in interior Alaska, so remote that supplies had to be dropped in by plane and bears were frequent visitors. She did the same thing the next summer in Southeast Alaska. "I started to cook my brains out," whipping up seven-course gourmet meals for the workers. By now, she was hooked for good - almost - on the cooking life.
Full-fledged chef: She was that for three years at a Portland restaurant but was so heartbroken when it closed she made another career change: to running a TV camera. After training, she got a camera-person's job at Seattle's KING-TV. "But I really, really missed cooking," so returned to the kitchen to stay.
Another opening, another show: Theoz is the 10th restaurant she's opened. Another was The Painted Table.
Still reading: "I usually have three books going at a time." Lately, though, she hasn't had much spare time: In the three weeks just before and after opening Theoz, she took no days off.