“I had no ink until that point. I’m someone who doesn’t sign up for pain.”
—Duskie Estes
Duskie started at Brown University as premed but eventually graduated with a prelaw degree in 1990. She realized that law was not her calling either and took the first semester of her junior year off to explore her passion for cooking and attend the California Cooking Academy. When she returned to Brown to finish her degree, she took a job as a pastry chef at Lucky’s, which featured wood-grilled rustic fare, and the owners’ other location, Al Forno, in Providence, RI. This was Duskie’s first taste of a professional kitchen. Duskie says of her time as a pastry chef at Lucky’s, “It was a line position because the desserts were all made to order—folks ordered their desserts when they ordered their entrées. That meant everybody ordered dessert because it was so special. I made cakes, soufflés, crepes, tarte tatins, and even spun ice cream to order. I got a taste of the adrenaline rush I adore to this day.”
After graduating from Brown, Duskie moved to Washington, D.C., to work for Robert Kinkead at 21 Federal and, after it closed, at his new restaurant, Kinkead’s, when it opened in 1993. Soon after opening, the restaurant was named one of the “25 Best New Restaurants in America” by Esquire magazine. Duskie started in the pantry and finished as Kinkead’s lead sauté cook. Eventually Duskie felt the pull to come back home and returned to San Francisco for a short time before moving to Seattle in 1994. There, Duskie took a job working for famous Seattle chef Tom Douglas (James Beard Award winner, 1994). She was his corporate sous-chef for all three of his restaurants—Dahlia Lounge, Etta’s, and Palace Kitchen—for three years. Despite all her culinary success, Duskie was still thinking about returning to law school when she was offered the executive chef job at Palace Kitchen. She decided to work at Palace Kitchen, and has never regretted her decision to become a chef. During her two years as head chef at Palace Kitchen, she was voted Citysearch’s Seattle Best Chef in 2000, and Palace Kitchen was rated as one of the top five Seattle restaurants in 2000 by Gourmet magazine.
While working for Tom Douglas, Duskie met John Stewart, her now-husband and business partner (see his entry in this part). Duskie says, “I was John’s boss, but when we started dating, he had to get a job somewhere else.” The two married in 2000 and, in 2001, opened Zazu Restaurant & Farm in Santa Rosa in a spot that they found while in California for their wedding. When she saw the spot, originally named the Willowside Café, Duskie made a passing comment to her mother that if she and John ever owned a restaurant, this is what she would want it to feel like. Not long after the wedding, the restaurant went up for sale, but Duskie was eight months pregnant so she couldn’t fly down to see the space or negotiate the deal. Not knowing enough about the location, she made a low offer that was refused. But the day they returned from the hospital with their first child, there was a message on their answering machine accepting the offer. “It happened all very fast. We moved down here with a three-month-old baby and opened the restaurant within a month.”
In 2002, Zazu was named a “Top 10 Best New Restaurant” and was listed in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Top 100 Restaurants” in 2003, 2004, and 2005. San Francisco magazine also rated the restaurant as one of the “Top 50 Restaurants in the Bay Area,” and the accolades continued to pile up. Based on the buzz the restaurant created, Duskie was chosen to compete on Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef in Seasons Three and Five.
In between competing on her seasons of The Next Iron Chef, Duskie kept herself busy winning other competitions. There is a nationwide pork cooking competition called Cochon 555, where the winners of each regional competition compete at Grand Cochon in Aspen, Colorado. In Napa, up against teams like Thomas Keller’s Bouchon that had deep pockets and PR teams behind them, underdogs Duskie and John never expected to win, yet in 2011 they did just that. Duskie says, “When we won that, it was a total shocker…. We were in T-shirts [instead of chef whites], and we didn’t even have enough labor to send so we got our plumber to come help.” They were so certain they wouldn’t win, that John joked that he would get a crown tattoo if they managed to pull off a victory and were crowned the king and queen of pork. After they won, John remained true to his word. Since they won together, Duskie felt she needed to get one as well. It is her first and only tattoo.
Zazu focuses on whole-animal cooking, showing respect for the ingredients, and wasting as little as possible. In addition to the restaurant, John and Duskie raise heritage-breed pigs and offer the meat for sale through their company Black Pig Meat Co. You can purchase the bacon for this dish and several other great cuts from www.blackpigmeatco.com.
