Leading Competition -- The Four Seasons' Sous Chef Is A Rising Star

May 16, 1993

John Hinterberger

I HAD HEARD ABOUT Brooke Vosika, a leading Seattle sous chef, long before I actually met him. And, when I did meet him for the first time, it was a long way from home for both of us.

A chilly hour before sunrise, on a dreary morning in Paris, we met at a loading gate in the Charles de Gaulle airport. We both had that ashen look of persons nine hours out of their accustomed time zones.

He was cheerful, however, as he should have been. Vosika was, for the next few days, playing the role of culinary backup quarterback. He would most likely be sitting on the bench during a highly prestigious international gastronomic event. But, sitting on the bench or not, he was glad to be on the team.

Vosika, executive sous chef at the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel in Seattle, had entered the prestigious American Culinary Gold Cup, Bocuse D'Or, competition several months earlier. He had cooked against some of the best chefs in the country. And he had placed second.

Placing second at that chefs' contest in Chicago made him the U.S. backup chef for the worldwide competition held every other year in Lyon, France. And for Vosika, it was a considerable professional triumph.

"It puts your name out there," he said. "Every serious, classically trained French chef in America would notice - and so would many of the chefs around the world."

The public rarely gets to know the names of sous chefs, executive or otherwise. But they are tracked by their professional peers. They are the second echelon, the emerging talents in a field where changes at the top can come quickly and where young, imaginative new leaders are in demand.

Vosika began cooking before he had finished high school.

"I was 15," he said, "and working after school as an apprentice carpenter. One of the jobs we were working on was a small restaurant remodel. I watched what they were doing and it looked like it was more interesting, and more fun, than what I was doing. They asked me if I'd like to go to work there, and I did. I never regretted it."

He finished high school (in Philadelphia) and enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, N.Y. "I finished the two-year course and was voted one of four "most likely to succeed.' "

Fifteen years later he was second in command of the second-largest hotel in the Four Seasons chain - Seattle - having already worked his way up through hotel kitchens in Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

It's a tough occupational road. The work is difficult, the hours brutally long and not always creative, and the pressures range from high to enormous.

"I started as a `commis,' a helper, under the legendary executive chef, Doug McNeil in Washington," he said. "and in six years rose to sous chef."

Sous means "under," or assistant, in French. But in restaurant parlance and practice, it can be confusing. Sous chefs can be second-in-command but they usually run things. An executive chef can run an entire restaurant kitchen but commonly will have one or many sous chefs in charge of various functions. For example: At the Seattle Four Seasons-Olympic, separate sous chefs head up the bakery and different dining-room menus and kitchens.

What then is an executive sous chef? He or she is the individual in a large operation that the other sous chefs report to and coordinate with. The ESC would then report to the executive chef (Kerry Sear here) and stand in for him in his absence.

"It's almost like conducting in music," he said. "You have to learn how to orchestrate."

Vosika moved from Washington to Chicago as restaurant chef for "Seasons," that hotel's fine dining room (comparable to the Georgian here) in 1988. He and his wife, Giacinta, and their two children, moved to Seattle in 1990. A year later, he captained the Four Seasons team in the 1991 Canadian Competition and brought home a silver medal.

Why competition, I thought, that gray morning in Paris as we waited for a bus to Lyon. Isn't this business tough enough? I phrased the question recently to Vosika as he prepared a specialty wine dinner at the Four Seasons Olympic.

"It was always important to me to be challenged," he said. "And competitions are becoming a bigger part of this business. You can spend weeks getting ready and preparing and then put everything on the line in six hours of incredibly intense work."

He was working on a soup for an Arrowood Vineyards dinner scheduled for the following night: Sea Scallop and Snow Pea Bisque with Mint Tempura and Tobiko Caviar (an adapted version is on page 8). It would be followed with teardrop-shaped rolled fillets of Alaskan halibut surrounding a New York state duck foie gras and a mousse of bok-choy leaves.

The main course? Truffle and Potato-Roasted Tenderloin of Beef with a Bone Marrow Flan and Cabernet Braised Escargot and Butternut Squash.

It would be sauced with a veal jus, "finished with watercress and stone ground mustard."

These are not the kind of dishes one picks up from a few years in a hash house; neither are they effete, snobbish pretensions to food as art.

"Taste the snow-pea bisque," he said, offering a sauce pan as he placed grilled scallops in a warming oven. "I get the intensity of flavor by incorporating the leaves from the pea vines in with the rest of the vegetable in the blender. And we will garnish the outside of the plate with vines and leaves from the plants, so that the customer will know where it came from."

He dipped fresh mint leaves in a tempura batter and swiftly deep-fried them, then floated them over the rich and creamy light green bisque with its island of cross-grilled scallops topped with the red Japanese caviar.

What brought him to Seattle?

"The Fours Seasons," he said, referring to the hostelry, not the climate, "and the seafood. One of the first days we were here, Kerry (Sear) took us for a walk through the Pike Place Market. We still go there, walk through and see what's available, and make our menus up according to what we find.

"The seafood out here really is exceptional. Snapper that we can buy for $3 or $4 a pound, I would have paid $14 a pound for in Chicago and been grateful to get it."

I recalled Vosika strolling through the markets of Lyon several weeks ago, noting the ingredients of his chosen calling, watching what others bought and what they did with it. It was all part of the accumulated wisdom and craft of his profession, one that is not well understood.

He has worked and studied the fine art of food for more than 15 years. He just turned 31.

John Hinterberger's food columns and restaurant reviews appear Sundays in Pacific and Fridays in Tempo. Chien-Chi Chang is a Seattle Times staff photographer.

SEA SCALLOP AND SNOW PEA BISQUE WITH MINT AND TOBIKA CAVIAR 4 servings 2 tablespoons butter 1 pound sea scallops (save 4 for garnish)

1/2 onion, chopped 1 large shallot, minced 1 medium clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves 1 1/2 cups dry white wine 1 cup whipping cream 1 cup half-and-half 32 potato pearls (made with white potatoes and petit vegetable scoop)

1/4 pound snow pea vines or snow peas 1 ounce Tobiko caviar (Japanese flying fish roe) 16 mint leaves Salt and white pepper to taste 1. Heat the butter over medium heat in a 2-quart saucepan. Add the scallops (all but four), onion, shallots, garlic and thyme. Stir all ingredients until they just start to lightly brown. 2. Add the wine and boil down until reduced by a third. Add the cream and half-and-half; simmer for 20 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally. 3. While the bisque simmers blanch the potato pearls in boiling water until tender. Remove with a slotted spoon. Add the pea vines and wilt thoroughly. Remove and chill in cold water. Drain the peas and place in a blender with 2 tablespoons water. Pur(ACUTE:)ee. 4. Sear the remaining scallops in a hot pan for a minute on each side. Place one in each of 4 soup bowls. Top the scallop with 1/4 ounce of the caviar and sprinkle with mint leaves and potato pearls. 5. Strain the scallop soup into the blender over the pur(ACUTE:)ee of pea vines. Season with salt and white pepper and blend 30 seconds. Pour into the warm soup bowls.