Seattle landmark Canlis welcomes fourth-generation restaurateur
Talk about a chip off the old block: Tall, slim and charming, Mark is a serious soul possessing a wry sense of humor that should hold him in good stead as he steps into his role at Seattle's landmark fine-dining restaurant.
And what exactly is that role? "I'm the 'new guy,' " he says. "For two months I've been training with our sommeliers, taking a wine course, working five nights a week. There's so much to learn. I'm meeting people who knew my grandfather — people who've come to Canlis once a week for 50 years, and they have so much to teach me."
Before returning to take his place in the family firmament, Mark earned an ROTC scholarship and a degree in hotel and restaurant management from Cornell University. After four years in the U.S. Air Force — where he rose to the rank of captain — he views his service career as "one of the greatest things I've ever done." He also sees it as an appropriate stepping-stone to his present managerial position.
"Whether your mission is dropping Navy SEALs behind enemy lines, or helping people celebrate their 50th anniversary, the job's the same," he says. "It's about people, about leading them."
Transitioning from one form of service to another, Mark spent a year and a half in New York City ("A great place to live and work — for a year and a half"). There he apprenticed with restaurateur Danny Meyer at Union Square Grill and lived through the controlled chaos that marked the opening of his much-applauded barbecue restaurant, Blue Smoke.
When asked whether he views his homecoming as the passing of the torch, he insists, "You wouldn't ride into Camelot and ask King Arthur and Guinevere to step aside. I'm not here to take over, I'm here to join the Round Table, to work with them, to be a part of the family" — a family, he says, that extends to both employees and guests. "The restaurant's been doing what it's been doing for 53 years. I've been gone for 10 of them. I'm like the long-lost son."
He's also the middle son. Brother Matt, 31, is a pastor living in Scotland. Brian, 26, followed Mark's footsteps at Cornell and is now serving as an Air Force officer.
"Mom and dad have never put pressure on us (to go into the family business)," says Mark, speaking for himself and his brothers. "It was never a given, and it's not a birthright. Whatever we wanted to do, there'd be no discouragement."
The Canlis brothers try to take a "sibling trip" each year, Mark says. And on a recent mountain-bike excursion in Scotland, they found themselves talking about the roads their lives have taken, and, inevitably, about the restaurant that bears their name. When talk turned to Mark's upcoming return to Seattle, the brothers entered into a somewhat heavy discussion.
"For us, Canlis isn't just a restaurant," Mark says. "It's a way of life. And we're all just excited that we have the opportunity to see the legacy continue."
Laughing, he adds, "We ended up talking more about what kind of whiskey collection we wanted to add to the Canlis wine cellar than about what my coming back to Seattle really means."
As if his new job weren't enough of a life-change, young Mr. C will mark a special occasion of his own in November: his wedding to fiancé Anne Marie Ventola, whom he met on his first day in New York. Unlike many suitors who've gone before him, Mark did not propose at Canlis: He proposed on the fire escape of his New York City apartment on the day Anne Marie would fly to Seattle for the first time. And for those inquiring minds who want to know: The couple will not be holding their wedding reception — which will be an intimate family affair — on the premises. As for the rehearsal dinner, they've been looking at a number of small Italian restaurants. "It will be our way of honoring both of our family legacies," Mark says.
Tom Douglas' family legacy was the inspiration for his second cookbook, "Tom's Big Dinners: Big-Time Home Cooking for Family and Friends" (William Morrow, $32.50), due in bookstores next week. The big man's big passion for food, family and his friends comes all wrapped up in this party-hearty volume, an invitation — and introduction — to the joys of cooking Big.
As one of seven children whose mother, Mary, made a career out of putting three square meals on the table every day, Tom learned early what it means to eat family-style. "I loved that family feeling around the dinner table," he said last week as he headed home to fix lunch for his wife, Jackie Cross, co-owner of the Dahlia Lounge, Etta's Seafood and the Palace Kitchen. "I grew up with a big family, which we don't have." (Their daughter, 13-year-old Loretta, is their one-and-only.) "I loved the whole dinner-table thing: talking politics, talking boyfriends, talking trash."
Talking is exactly what he does, often, with friends like Cavatappi wine-maker Peter Dow and his family, and wine merchant Michael Teer (who appear in the photo on the new book's cover).
Cooking for a crowd, says Tom, is a lost art. "People have smaller families and they're scared to cook for more than two or four people, but I encourage them to do it anyway. If not every week, then once a month."
In addition to 13 menus (among them a "Pike Place Market Menu" and "Pop Pop's Winter Solstice"), complete with before-meal noshes and after-dinner beverages, "Tom's Big Dinners" provides tasty tips on entertaining the Tom Douglas Way. With its do-ahead steps, wine suggestions and reminiscences of meals savored with family and friends, the new cookbook is as much a love story as a recipe-collection.
Written in collaboration with his wife, Jackie; his longtime restaurant-kitchen-collaborator Shelley Lance; and his good friend and fellow chowhound, Ed Levine, Tom's Big Dinners is a fitting companion to "Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen" (published in 2001 and now in its sixth printing). Like that treasure-trove of incredible edibles (ask me, I've cooked from it), the new book has Big Tom's Seattle-centric lust for life all over it.
Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.