Chef Jack’s flambé for Mrs. Doubtfire

Michael Dugan: 0:58

I want to welcome you to a special show with a special guest today Jack Stevenson. He has a creative culinary past including connection to the movie Miss Doubtfire, executive and sous chef roles at high end resorts spanning from Orlando, Florida to San Francisco, California. And a little over eight years ago he tells me he rode into Cannon Beach on a motorcycle and became the chef and owner of the Bistro on the Pacific Ocean. Jack, welcome to the show.

Chef Jack: 1:30

Thank you so much. It's wonderful being here. Very excited.

Michael Dugan: 1:33

I'm excited about this for our listeners around the world. I wanted to share a quick story. So at Thanksgiving time, my wife and I came down from Seattle, Washington, and we were on a short trip we didn't really have any family to share with Thanksgiving and it was just a tough time. So we grabbed a salad that night. I was craving dessert, you know, some kind of Thanksgiving dessert. So we looked around Cannon Beach. It's a small town on the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Northwest. We were looking around for a place just to get dessert. So I knocked on the bistro door and Jack answered. And I remember saying, Could we pick up a couple of desserts to go and he looked at me and he laughed. And then he smiled and he invited me into the bistro and that night was a very special night because they were having a community Thanksgiving celebration. Actually all I really wanted for my wife and I was dessert because we had had a salary at some other food and we were full but he said oh please you know help yourself. I had the most amazing cheesecake it was a raspberry cheesecake. It was absolutely delicious. I said, Jack, why don't you come on the show. And here we are today.

Chef Jack: 2:47

Yeah, that's exactly how it happened. But we welcomed everybody and we do it every year close on Thanksgiving, but we invite all the people in town who don't have any place to go or don't have any family. I do two big turkeys, the potatoes the stuffing and the gravy and people bring thing everybody knows everybody and huge family affair. We do it every year and the musicians come and play. They don't play for money they play for food. It's just a beautiful environment on Thanksgiving here.

Michael Dugan: 3:16

And how many people would you say you had that evening? 48 Wow... And so you had turkeys you had pies. You had cheesecake? You had salads. What are their dishes?

Chef Jack: 3:29

Oh, people brought the stuffing and few days out a week out. There's a bakery here in town that we really like so we were buying daily bread from them and cubing it up and the stuffing was made from them and then we had rolls delivered given to us from one of the other bakeries in town and cranberry sauces family made all kinds of salad, different kinds of sweet potato casseroles that people brought and, and baked brie for appetizers. People bring appetizers and so we're all drinking and you know we always get a case of red wine and white wine for those people who don't bring anything and you know, everybody just shares and enjoys it all it's such a warm feeding kind of frenzy.

Michael Dugan: 4:15

I could feel it walking in and I think there was also music too.

Chef Jack: 4:20

Yes, we had two groups of musicians playing that night. Richard T and Chelsea they played before dinner and then Michael and Jules played after dinner. It was so much yeah, all acoustics and Norwell they had an amp who was so loud in the air.

Michael Dugan: 4:35

And you know after that experience, I told my wife I said we have to come back for dinner. Well the next day or the day after I think it was Saturday we came in and I had this seafood fettuccine. You make fettuccine from scratch, I guess? And oh my gosh, with the prawns and scallops and if there was capers in there, and it was really good. And my wife she had the Vietnamese chicken, which was like a Carmel chicken. Yes, I've never tasted anything like that. And that was really, really unique.

Chef Jack: 5:08

It's really interesting. And one of the stories on that when I first started introducing my food when I took over Bistro. I was introducing that dish that night to my staff. One of my staff Tran is Vietnamese. She was born and raised in Vietnam and her family still lives back there and she came up to me and she goes, You know, I'm Vietnamese. She goes, I'll tell you if this is Vietnamese. She tasted it. I'm not kidding. She stepped back her eyes started welling up and she started crying. Oh my gosh, she runs into the dining room and gets on her phone, calls her mom in Vietnam, telling her about this dish and essentially saying, Hey, there's this white boy that knows how to cook Vietnamese. It brought her home. It reminded her of home so much. And let me tell you, she sold the heck out of that.

Michael Dugan: 6:00

That is an amazing dish. My wife loved it. Everything was delicious. Take us back a little bit. When did you first discover food because when I interview chefs, there's always this moment. There's always this dish. There's something that happened that said you know, either I want to be a chef or want to learn to cook or something like that. Can you take us back to your childhood a little bit in maybe where you might have been connected?

Chef Jack: 6:24

When I was a little kid I got on to and watching and love watching the galloping gourmet. Oh, okay. And he always made it look so much fun to cook and my mother was always an amazing cook. She embraced that with me and she said and watched the galloping gourmet with me since then. I just always loved to cook you know, I always have a thing for it. But when I was in high school like cooked dinner for the family, one of the first recipes I ever did was out of the galloping gourmet cookbook. It was called Lamb Andrew had Grand Marnier in it you marinated well. I misunderstood the recipe, and I put so much g Grand Marnier in it. It was inedible. Nobody could eat it since then, you know, I'd always had a thing about food. I always loved doing it and cooking and just kind of had a feel for it.

Michael Dugan: 7:15

Do you think at an early age she thought you wanted to be a chef or did you go through another path?

Chef Jack: 7:22

At that time I there was no consideration of being in the food industry. I went into the Air Force for 13 years when the time the cold war was ending. I didn't want to go to work for the people I was working for. And my mother really encouraged me to go to culinary school. So I decided to once I got to culinary school. That's when I really felt the passion for being in the industry. That's where it started. And the very first restaurant I worked at, they were so cool. It was a restaurant that just opened a year earlier. To all the chef was from shape and ease all the cooks were from shape knees or mosses or all these great restaurants in the Bay Area. Oh wow. There were things they did that. I don't think any culinary school could ever teach or show you. It was just an amazing introduction to the type of food that I wanted. To do.

Michael Dugan: 8:22

What kind of things can you describe or think back to some of them?

Chef Jack: 8:27

Some of them? Yes, I remember the first time there was a dish that I had to cook a fried spinach leaves baby spinach , we deep fried the spinach and we put it in the bowl and we tossed a little balsamic vinegar with some salt. And that was the veg on the particular dish. It was you know who who would ever ever come up with that kind of thing. But one of the things that always stuck with me in the culinary world was no two plates shared anything. You didn't get the same starch. On every entree with the same vegetable or the vegetable medleys that you see, that always stuck with me because to me what I learned it was so important that every dish on the menu was its own entity of ethnicity and textures and flavors that stuck with me. That's what I do here at the Bistro as well. No, no two plates sharing anything.

Michael Dugan: 9:23

That's fascinating. Can you take us through a little bit of your culinary journey, and you have a very interesting background and I'd love to understand or have our listeners understand kind of where you came from after cooking school. And what that path was like?

Chef Jack: 9:41

You know, you think about things. You start off as a line cook. You're making minimum wage and kind of doing your thing and the restaurant I was at. Bridges was my first place and I was there for three and a half years. I really learned food I learned techniques and I learned flavor combinations and there was a lot of Asian influence with them as well. The owner of the restaurant was Japanese and he wanted to bridge the east and the west I was there for about three and a half years. And by the time I left, I was the interim chef. The chef had left to pursue other things. I wasn't ready to really take over I mean, I only been in the industry, but a friend of mine I was in school with was the Executive Sous chef for the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco and he we kind of follow each other and he asked if I wanted to come and take over banquets at the Grand Hyatt. I didn't know anything about banquets, but I felt if I was under his wing, everything would be okay. So I left and I went to that and banquets is a whole nother realm in the professional kitchen industry. So I was at the Grand Hyatt for three and a half years learning banquets and learning how that whole process work. And I actually rewrote the entire banquet menu for the Grand Hyatt during that three and a half years. When we were done with that my wife she was from the Orlando area. She was in the catering and conference services part of Hyatt and you come down on vacation and we met a bunch of people and they were looking for something at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin I presented my information with the menus I had done. They started a whole new Department of high end banquets for the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin and when I got there, the standard menus for all the hotels was steamship rounds, chicken breast roast turkeys roasted ham.

Michael Dugan: 11:38

That sounds boring.

Chef Jack: 11:39

Yeah. But that's what banquets were back then. And I came in and I introduced this whole new level of food that could be done fields and a sauces and we did my food, never got lids put on them. And we had an army of waitstaff, and as the dish was made, the waiters would serve it. And we did up for my food. We did up to 1500 people. We had just had an army. I learned so much from all of that. Then I became the Executive Sous chef for the entire property. And I'm moving really fast here. I wanted the money. You don't make a lot of money, but I kept striving to get farther up the chain. And now I'm the Executive Sous Chef and then I can be the executive chef. And what I realized then was happening was I wasn't cooking really anymore. I was managing a property of $80 million a year food and beverage. I realized, you know, it wasn't the money that I was aspiring to because I had the money and it wasn't what I wanted. So after five years down there, I decided to leave and went back to San Francisco and I took over as the Executive Sous chef for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel there. And I was the chef du cuisine for their premier restaurant of Silks. Now I'm able to cook and now I'm learning another level of food presentation flavors concepts. That was really a lot of fun being there. That taught me quite a bit then I left the hotels after a few years there. I took over as regional executive chef for a large corporate company managing approximately 60 Restaurant cafes throughout Northern California. Oh, doing the Google food services, the Intels, you know the apples and all all those big fortune 500 companies. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work. After a while I really hated it because they didn't want me to cook anymore. It became babysitting and data inputting. I got to where I really didn't like it. And so we parted ways. And I took a couple months off to detox and did motorcycle trips and such

Michael Dugan: 13:56

Where did you go ? Oh man, we went out like coming up into Canada. We ride over all over Utah. You know trips up and down California. And just getting out there. How I ended up at the Bistro was after a few months I have to find a job. And I started realizing you know, I was in my upper 50s in age and I started finding that because of my age. I wasn't getting the job offers. It was a struggle for a while and one day I decided you know I need to create my own income speaking with my family who all live up in the Northwest they talked me into coming up into Oregon, and I said well as can only be on the coast. I took a motorcycle trip up looked at a number of restaurants up the coast that were for sale. And I rode into Cannon Beach and I love the town. I had an appointment with the owners for the bistro the next day, and I came in that night they didn't know who I was. I was telling them I was on a trip to Canada and this was a stopover and the next day the owners graciously sold the bistro to me. I was excited. I wanted to do a venue like this and I was able to do food that nobody else could tell me what I could or couldn't do. I didn't expect the bistro to become as well known or at the level of service that we became it kind of worked its way on, but that's how I came here. That's how I own the bistro and we've owned it for over six years now. That's amazing. One of the things you've highlighted was some work that you did with Mrs. Doubtfire. And I guess being sous chef at Bridges.

Chef Jack: 15:41

They came looking they were scouting for a restaurant in the Bay Area that had a wall of some sort in the middle of the dining room. As you know in the movie, Robin as Mrs. Doubtfire jumps over this wall. As he's racing to get to wherever to the table. Okay. And they came in and they wanted a couple of us is basically what we did was we did the food styling. So when you see the waiters carrying food, my friend Michael and I, who was the pastry chef there, we were back there putting together you know, piles of potatoes and meats and things and you didn't want to eat it because everything had to be where it wouldn't spoil, you know, so gravies were made out of kitchen bouquet and cornstarch and potatoes had no dairy in them, you know. And then after about three or four days, we'd make the plates and kind of look like people were eating off of them. You know, so as you're watching the movie, their plates go down and with food and we did all the food styling, which was a lot of fun and then we'd make you know, egg rolls for the staff and we'd put them out there and Robin would be you know, eating them and the film crew and and all that. Then one day, the director Chris Columbus came to me and he he asked if I wanted to be in the film. I said, sure. He asked me if I can make a big flame safely. And I said, Well, of course I can. And so you see me in the film, when Mrs. Doubtfire starts coming down the line to put the pepper on the plate. I had my own cue he would go Jack and then action. And then when he said Jack, I would throw these chopped tomatoes in a pan of hot oil and we make a big quick flame, you know? And the very first time I did it, I turned around and im peeking out the camera going hi mom. and you you know cut, cut cut. Jack can't say hi to your mom. You can't do that. We just continued on. But I made the dish with the prawns that Pierce Brosnan eats and chokes on I remember that. And the first time I made it, it was this beautiful dish and Chris Columbus he says to me says Jack we have to be able to see the prawns very distinctly so I remade it. It was a great time and to see everybody and it was Robin's birthday. So we made Michel the pastry chef he made pies and we were cakes. We would go over and hang out do nose kazoos on night after the film filming we'd sit and drink beers and do nose kazoos with them and it was it was a lot of fun.

Michael Dugan: 18:20

What is a nose kazoo? I've never heard of that.

Chef Jack: 18:23

Well, it was like a kazoo. You know what a kazoo is Yeah, but a nose kazoo you it was shaped differently and you attach it to your nose. Robin had to show us how to use it.

Michael Dugan: 18:33

Oh my gosh. You got to hang out with Robin. Yeah.

Chef Jack: 18:36

He's talking about the whole time they were. They were drinking beer with the nose kazoos. Yeah he came in afterwards. And so we're doing these nose kazoo. You put it up your nose and you start blowing. But it was a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm in the movie. I have my eight seconds. of big screen time.

Michael Dugan: 18:53

I interviewed another chef out of New York while he worked in New York who worked for Buddakan. And he was on chopped and he was telling me a story about how a lot of celebrities like to come and film at Buddakan you know, they that was their restaurant of choice, probably similar to they were looking for a specific thing. Yeah. And it sounds like Bridges really had that. So that's, that's a really cool story. So thinking back along your journey. Are there any chefs that you admire any chefs that you studied under that you want to give a shout out to?

Chef Jack: 19:27

Well, I have to be honest with you. The first chef I ever worked with was Alison Negron. She was the chef executive chef for Bridges, okay. And she really took me under her wing and really taught me and inspired me. One day she came to me and she says, I want you to start making all the soups. I said okay, and I would research soups, and I'd make soups and this one time I made this kind of a Spanish style soup that had a little heat in it. She comes back to me and she goes, have you tasted the soup? And I said, Yeah, of course. She goes well, it's too spicy. I said, Oh my gosh. Well, I took a spoonful of it. I didn't think it was that hot without saying a word. She goes away and she comes back with a whole bowl of the soup. And she hands me a spoon. She goes, I want you to eat this whole bowl of soup. And by the fifth spoonful, my mouth was burning. And that's when I realized one sip doesn't tell the whole story. And that's when I learned how spices they build as you eat them out for sure. And she taught me all of those types of things and she really, really wanted me to succeed. That's who I think she was the most important one. There was one other chef that inspired me in a different way. His name was Kurt. I can't remember his last name. He was the new executive chef for the Grand Hyatt. And when I first got to the Grand Hyatt I was under a Swiss chef I didn't know anything about banquets. They kind of told me. Oh, you do this to this to this. And then Kirk came on on board. We were at a manager's event that night and maybe I'd had a little to drink and I was late coming into work the next day and I was like oh I'm okay. You know, thinking to myself, and I came in and he read me the riot act like nobody had ever before. He gave me a list of things that had to be done each day before I was to leave to go home. That list was prep sheets. And menus and it was taking me 15 hours a day to get all this done. But is what he did for me was I learned time management. After six months of this. I had whittled that 15 hours down to six. I use my time wisely to get done what I had to do and with a discipline that I feel is required by any successful chef. I was able to get to where I am now. And I would not have been able to grow in the industry if I did not have that discipline and understanding of time management.

Michael Dugan: 22:16

That's an amazing lesson. We can all use that discipline and an understanding I would say. So let's move on to one of my favorite sections is let's get cooking. Can you describe the type of cuisine that you specialize in? At the bistro?

Chef Jack: 22:33

There's not any one cuisine that I do. I'm inspired by my past to do we have Asian and influence. I do things you know that people don't expect my clam chowder. Everybody does clam chowder, my clam chowder. I started with a Japanese dashi.

Michael Dugan: 22:52

I tasted that. I knew it. I knew it was in there. Umami. Definitely.

Chef Jack: 22:58

Yeah, the umami. Most people don't know what it is I love that. I caught that. what they're tasting, but they know it creates this richness of flavor and depth that you don't get in anybody else's clam Yeah, everything that you read on the menu is what you will chowder and my cioppino again, the same thing with lots of ginger. I do very western food, you know, my filets are prime and I do them with the potato souffles and pork chops with those lentils with different things. There's not one that I choose one ethnicity. What I can tell you is every dish is its get, what you will taste, what you will feel. You'll have five own world as I spoke of earlier of ethnicity, textures, flavors, scents, everybody, anything on here, totally satisfies whatever you want. And people ask me well, or my staff, they go, Well, what's your favorite dish? Or what's your favorite dish on this menu? And I tell anybody, that if it wasn't my favorite dish, it wouldn't be on my menu, and it makes them just pick what they want. What you read on my menu is what you're going to get. I don't confuse flavors. I don't confuse blendings of different ethnicities and my tagline here at the restaurant is food without confusion. different flavors on the plate. You'll find that all of them work harmoniously together, and that's the fun of it. I also make a point on my menu, I do things that people aren't going to do at home, whether it be technique or knowledge. People come to this restaurant, they're going to get something that they are not going to be able to do at home. There to me is a destination. And that's what I look for. As a chef going out to other restaurants. Of course, I can do pretty much anything, but just the point of a restaurant does things that people aren't going to be able to do at home. That's to me is the point of going out to dinner.

Michael Dugan: 25:13

I agree with you. You know I would always joke with my wife or on dates before we got married that she would watch me and I would spend 20 minutes 30 minutes reading the menu and she's like you cook everything in your head. Because I would just cook every single dish in my mind and say, what's it really going to taste like? You know, and then eventually I'd order it and she'd of course say well, I'll have that. So the last thing is, do you have any special message for us? How can we support you and the community at large in Cannon Beach?

Chef Jack: 25:45

Those are hard questions. Because I don't think of myself like that. It's hard for me I'm I don't boast about my own food. I just want people to come and enjoy. This industry people have to have a passion for what you know, and what you're able to do. Something I think about often in this industry, the hardest things to do, are the simplest things well. Make the best mashed potato make the best cream soup, make the best sauce and practice and practice. You can make the best mashed potato anybody has ever had. Go to the next thing but have a passion for it. Do the simplest things well, too many I feel trying to branch out to areas that they aren't familiar with. And I think people when they come to restaurants, they have to understand that a lot of what we do is experimenting you know, we may throw a dish out there and just to see what the reaction is going to be and if it's not the best then it doesn't sell. People have to understand that what we do. It has to be with passion and true love.

Michael Dugan: 26:53

And our last question would be how do our listeners find you? I'm coming into town now. How do I get there? It's small town.

Chef Jack: 27:00

We're on the north end of hemlock Street in Cannon Beach 263. It's a quaint little place where a little offset off the street. You can find us on Instagram, our Facebook and our website. Or websites pretty amazing. It's thebistrocannonbeach.com Take a look at us. If you have any events you want planned, we're very first at doing weddings and rehearsal dinners. Bring on a big group of people and that's how we would find us I suppose. And from what I understand, we're quite the word of mouth around town. We get a lot of guests that go six different places we went to in town said you guys.

Michael Dugan: 27:40

Have to say I've been to Cannon Beach a few times and you definitely have one of the top restaurants in town and you also have live music. That's the other reason.

Chef Jack: 27:49

We do we have live music every night. They're all locals. We really support the music arts. Our restaurant is full of beautiful art from galleries around town. We

Michael Dugan: 27:59

Jack, thank you for taking the time and sharing actually sell quite a bit of art out of the restaurant because people sit in, they can envision it in their home versus on a wall with a spotlight on it. So we support all the local artists. We support the local musicians. We support the town in any way that we can. The town has been gracious to me. They accepted me with open arms and they have treated me and JJ very, very well. We're truly blessed to be able to do what we do in a town like this. your story with us and I am very excited to come back to Cannon Beach and try somewhere your food.

Chef Jack: 28:40

I hope so. And thank you so much for thinking of us. We're we were just so blessed that you walked in looking for dessert.

Michael Dugan: 28:47

I know it's it's an incredible story.