Danny Delcambre And His Cajun Cafe In Pbs Spotlight

Danny Delcambre's big toes look like spoons.

This is important to note not because Delcambre is some 37-year-old foot guy but because Delcambre is a chef, a Cajun chef, and anyone who says he's Cajun is bound to be scrutinized by other Cajuns who want to make sure he's telling the truth.

"People from Louisiana who are real Cajuns, they like to joke. They'll come in and ask me questions, to make sure I'm authentic," Delcambre explains.

"We have a certain look about us. Yeah, this guy asked me once if I had square toes or round toes. I said, `They look like little spoons!' "

Delcambre is a handsome, friendly man with a big smile, and this is also important to know because it's how he got to be the country's only - so he claims - deaf-blind chef running his own restaurant, Delcambre's Rajin Cajun, in Pike Place Market.

The restaurant is included in a six-part public TV series about unique eateries in the U.S. that airs on KCTS-TV at 10:30 p.m. tomorrow. The series, "Listening at the Luncheonette," regularly airs at 2 p.m. Sundays.

Delcambre has Usher's Syndrome. He's been deaf since birth and is legally blind. Eventually, he will lose all vision.

He can see some now, sort of what a person with full vision would be able to see looking through a straw. Which means he can still cook and he can converse in American Sign Language.

Delcambre is in his First Avenue restaurant, a cozy, funky booths-and-counter place with chili-pepper lights, chili-pepper curtains and a crayfish bathroom-key chain. The food is as zesty as the zydeco that plays nonstop. At lunchtime, especially on Fridays, the place is packed. On this evening, it is half-empty, a foursome of friends in one of the booths, a couple at a table, some women at the counter.

Delcambre wears what his employees wear: black jeans and a deep-green polo shirt, the same color as the booth he sits in. He furrows his brow, strokes his beard, ups his eyebrows as he listens to his wife of eight years, Holly. She speaks for him, interpreting as he signs:

"I grew up in New Iberia (Louisiana). I always watched my mom and dad cook. The first thing I remember was how good the food tasted. I was about 10. I remember how she (mom Maryann) made things so good.

"I went into the kitchen and watched her make an etouffee. She showed me how to make a roux. And all Cajun children learn how to peel crayfish and crabs. One time I was in New York and I went to this crab boil and everyone was amazed how I could peel."

Delcambre, who went to a state school for the deaf, figured everyone ate jambalaya and etouffee and crayfish as he did, until he moved to Seattle - because of its reputation as a good place for the deaf - and ate something someone called "Cajun food."

"They'd have a dish but it wasn't Cajun. It wasn't seasoned. It was just spicy. `Cajun' means full of spices, but not really hot."

Delcambre studied at South Seattle Community College. He wanted a job in a machine shop, but as a deaf-blind person, he couldn't find full-time work..

By then, Delcambre had fallen in love with the college's cafeteria food, which is cooked by the culinary students. He applied to the two-year culinary program and also took an internship with Paul Prudhomme at his Louisiana restaurant.

When he graduated, he applied for work, but his only offers were washing dishes.

"People saw me as a disabled person. It was an attitude thing that I couldn't do anything about. I decided that if I wanted to cook, I would have to open my own place."

With the help of the Small Business Administration, Delcambre found a cafe for sale at the Market. To prove to the bank he could do the job, he worked alongside the previous owners at the cafe and cooked Cajun dinners without pay, securing a following of diners. He secured a loan after three months. He then remodeled the place, hired a mostly deaf staff and came up with a logo - a picture of him signing "delicious." He opened the restaurant three years ago.

His success, Delcambre says, had to do with his smile. People liked it. They liked him. They then encouraged him to stay in business.

There are about 2,200 places to eat in the city. About running his own, Delcambre says: "I'm able to be independent. I like teaching people what Cajun food is all about. I like proving people wrong."

The restaurant is revered by the city's deaf, the regular customers and the children who come here on annual school field trips. Delcambre has become a role model for those who are young and deaf.

Business folks, tourists and even President Clinton also like the food.

The favorites are blackened chicken (adults will whine if it's not available), chicken and sausage gumbo, and red beans and rice with andouille sausage.

About his beans, Delcambre says: "I cook them very, very slowly. I can feel when they're ready. I don't even have to taste them. It (feels) like stirring mud.

"My beans are good," he says. "They have a following."