Interview w/ Oceanaire Chef Eric Donnelly

I sat down with Eric Donnelly, executive chef, to talk about sustainability, where he draws his inspiration from, and just what it means to be a chef nowadays. It was well before opening, but the restaurant was bustling with preparation; it’s no small task to keep a rotating menu that offers 30 fresh fish options.
 
Donnelly began his career at Seattle’s Sazerac under Jan Birnbaum. A brief stint at Tulio’s preceded his first executive chef position at Semiahmoo. Longing for a return to the city, Donnelly took a job under Kevin Davis at Oceanaire before taking over in 2006. Young for his position, what Donnelly lacks in professional training and experience he makes up for with raw talent and unabashed enthusiasm for his profession.

Seattle.net: What seasonal fish do you find people are most excited to see on the menu?
Eric Donnelly: People were definitely anticipating the Alaskan Halibut season. That was our big kickoff for the year. But, along with Halibut, I get a lot of by-catch fish off Halibut fishing boats that I try to utilize when I can get them. Alaskan Yelloweye Rockfish, also the Idiot Fish—both great.

In your opinion, what makes a dish successful?
A great mouthful of food with a little bit of sauce, a little of the component and little bit of the protein, whatever that is.

How appreciative are you that the seafood restaurant you cook at is situated in the Northwest? Does it make line of supply issues remarkably easy, or are there still challenges?
It’s great, but there are challenges here, obviously. In the Northwest there are local ground fish and salmon—they’re easy to get all the time. But when you have a menu composed of up to 30 different varieties of fish you still face the challenges of holding those 30 fish that could be from Fiji, Costa Rica… The plus is we live in the internet era. All the fish are very accessible. East Coast fish are easy to get. I can preorder. “Hey, this boat is going to be coming in. It’s going to have A, B and C on it.” I can prepare that for the next few days and it’ll be at my back door.

Tell me about the Fish Box I just toured.
The Fish Box is pretty cool, huh? It’s between 35 and 36 degrees in there at all times. That’s where all of our product is received. It comes in the door at 10am, we make sure it’s acceptable receiving temperature and from there, we take the whole fish. We have a butcher, but if I’m preparing a menu for tonight I’ll say, “Hey I want to cut this halibut or the Paco Paco from Bali, I want to do the Hawaiian White Snapper, leave the two flukes for tomorrow.” It’s great. We do all of our processing in house. It’s a very unique program that we run here.    

I read that lately Oceanaire's focus is on sustainability. How difficult is it to maintain a menu of sustainable fish?
Being a green world that we’re starting to live in, I feel proud that we at Oceanaire really take time to do that. The fishing industry as a whole has really received a lot of negative press. Maintaining a menu of 25 to 30 fishes through sustainable fisheries is pretty hard to do, but we do a very good job of it. I know who I purchase fish from, I know the boat it was caught on, I know when it was caught, how it ended up at my door. We do our homework. 

Are there times when sacrifices have to be made to maintain sustainability?
Depending on what time of year, I have to trim back my menu, my varieties. I’m not going have a fish on the menu that’s receiving pressure. Right now, I do have Columbia River King, but we’re facing closures of fisheries in Oregon and California and it’s something we’re going to have to deal with in the next little bit—to respect the environment and, as seafood restaurant, be a leader. 

Do you collaborate with the other chefs in town? Is there a level of camaraderie, or more of a competitive atmosphere?
A lot of the chefs that I grew up cooking with run their own establishments now, so I feel that we’re all kind of friends and help each other. “How’s business this week? What do you got going on?” or, “What are you cooking?” In my world, I try to keep a lot of interwoven friendships with other restaurants. 

Where do you like to eat out?
I said this on the radio the other day: one of the best meals I’ve had lately has been at Cremant. We go to La Carta de Oaxaca… sometimes I don’t mind going down to South Park and getting some tacos. I’m a Seattleite—we do the neighborhood thing. There’s a ton of great restaurants around here. 

How is having all these celebrity chefs around changed your status, and do think it has brought more aspiring chefs into the field?
As I like to say, in the “food network era,” everyone cooks at home. It’s kind of cool for chefs now because not only are you stepping into the spotlight, but chefs are like rock stars. It’s really weird. When I started cooking it wasn’t like that. It was a blue-collar thing; a great way to work with your hands and with your body. Now everyone is like, “Wow, you’re a chef, that’s so cool!” It’s nice, but at the same time it’s awkward because chefs are usually pretty reserved.

Do think it has improved quality?
I think what is has done is introduced the United States to great cuisines—to great chefs on TV making beautiful dishes and introducing places that probably wouldn’t normally have that level of cuisine to a new spectrum of ingredients, dishes and cooking styles.

What do people have to look forward to seeing at Oceanaire, on the menu or otherwise?
The kickoff of salmon season will be coming down the pipeline in the next month. We’ve already started with the Columbia River kings. We should be seeing soft shell crabs pretty soon here, and nice spring produce to accompany beautiful fish.