“Without food, we would not live. Without good food, we would not live well.”
—Sean Hawes
When Sean Hawes was fifteen, he started taking cooking classes at Whole Foods. A chef from the Culinary Institute of America taught the courses and inspired Sean, who says, “I just saw what he could do with food and fell in love with it.” The instructor helped Sean find a connection to well-known Seattle chef and restaurateur Ethan Stowell’s restaurant Union, a fine-dining new American/Italian restaurant. Sean spent the next several years working his way through Seattle’s kitchens, learning and advancing as he went. In 2011, Sean met Manny Arce (see entry in Part 1), who asked him to come on as sous-chef and help open Poquitos, an upscale Mexican restaurant in Seattle. Sean says, “My favorite thing to cook is anything I have not cooked before. I love to play with new ideas, new ingredients, and new flavors. I practice this constantly at Poquitos. Most of my culinary background has been French and Italian food, so cooking high-end Mexican is all new for me. I am learning and growing each and every day.”
Sean got his first tattoo, a VW logo on his ankle, when he was eighteen. Super Genius Tattoo is located across the street from Poquitos, and Sean has gotten the majority of his ink there. All of his tattoos are pieces he has drawn himself. The only modifications the artist made were done to allow the image to better fit the curve of the spot on his body where he got the tattoo. The tattoo on Sean’s right forearm shows his hometown pride with the Seattle skyline and the caption “embrace the rain.” Sean explains the tattoo by saying, “It’s a dual meaning of embracing the hardships. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger … as well as that it always fucking rains in Seattle.” The stick figure on his right bicep is his “Kitchen Ninja” drawn to the same proportions as Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The tree on his right arm began as a tree, but Sean added crows that represent someone significant in his life who has passed away, making it “kinda like a ‘tree of life.’” In addition to the tree, there is an eight-digit binary code for the word “salt,” which Sean considers to be the most important thing in cooking. He says, “It’s a tribute to both my love of food and my nerdy side.” On his left shoulder are the letters “e v o l.” “It’s love backwards,” Sean says. “Kinda twisted but attributes to my past experiences with ‘love.’ It can be backwards and ‘evol’ sometimes.” Sean plans to continue to get tattooed. He hopes next to draw something inspired by the fixed-gear bicycle that he rides to work every day and the community of fixed-gear riders he has met. Whatever he ends up wanting, you know he’ll be across the street from Poquitos getting inked.
