meet John Downey

Family, memories and food – the making of a chef and the road taken (after a few forks)

by leslie a . westbrooK

ohn Downey has been a fixture on the Santa Barbara culinary scene since 1979. Long before “farm-totable” became popular, the Englishman has been true to simple culinary roots. Downey’s restaurant has received the top Santa Barbara restaurant ratings (“extraordinary to perfection”) from Zagat consecutively for more than a quarter of a century. He has created his own California-French cuisine, sourcing fresh produce from the Santa Barbara Farmers’ Market with nods to farmers Tom Shepherd, BD and Givens Farms on the menu. On the dinner plate you will find sustainable seafood and naturally raised meats, not to mention several splendid desserts to finish your meal. Wait staff can help with decisions on comforting dinner entrées such as natural veal noisette with wild mushrooms, marjoram and fettucine, or Mary’s Farm duck with a cabernet sauce. A lovely watercress salad, with endive, roasted hazelnuts and strawberries, is a delight. Rest assured that the wine list, curated by wife and business partner Liz Downey is extensive and features many great Santa Barbara and Paso Robles wines by small producers like Graham Tatomer who bottles a lively Riesling. The restaurant consistently receives well-deserved stellar reviews.

“I love the restaurant business,” notes Downey, “It’s a bit like theater: the show must go on at 5:30 and the audience really doesn’t know how much preparation went into it. When somebody tells me, “That’s the ‘best meal I’ve ever had in my life’ then I feel as though I have struck gold!”

It’s been an interesting journey for the amiable Englishman from Farnham, Surrey, UK (pop. 25,000) that has included stints cooking onboard the QE2 and at the World Trade Center, and professional hang gliding, before settling in California.

The 66-year old chef was born and raised in the United Kingdom. Early food memories include his Mum’s gravy-laden meat pies and gathering

Chef

Local White Sea wild mushrooms on cliff-top pastures while vacationing near the little fishing village of Beer in Devon. “My brothers and I would bring them back to camp and my Dad would cook them with bacon for our breakfast,” he recalls.

Sunday dinners with the entire Downey family were also a treat growing up for the young lad. “We always sat down together and enjoyed a feast that usually began at about 2 p.m. Our meal included a roast (alternating lamb, beef, pork), roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, a green veg and Yorkshire pudding, which I didn’t like!” Downey recalls. His family was not wealthy, the “Sunday joint” would generally be one of the cheaper cuts of meat: lamb shoulder, beef brisket (a cheap cut back then), pork shoulder or leg. The rest of the week John’s Mum struggled to make ends meet, so he remembers simple, but nourishing food, often lots of ground beef cooked in gravy with potatoes and canned peas. He still enjoys slow-cooked fatty roasts and stews, but gives canned peas a wide berth!

Downey didn’t step inside a restaurant until he was fifteen years old. “I remember that first meal out to this day. It was shepherd’s pie in a pub near the college where I had just been accepted. My Dad said this was worthy of a celebration!”

Downey claims there is no magic to what he does in the kitchen. He credits using the best ingredients prepared with integrity. “Every meal that I make I ask myself, can this be made any better? If the answer is yes, then I’ll try harder. It probably helps that I use a lot of butter!”

A long time hard worker, Downey almost took a different occupational fork in the road. At just twelve years old, he worked after school at a nursery, growing everything from cut flowers to bedding plants to hothouse tomatoes. “I loved that job and stayed on all through college until I graduated at the tender age of eighteen. My boss really wanted me to stay on, and I was very tempted, but cooking called.”

Downey followed his older brother Mike, who has just recently retired. John considers his brother his hero, and followed Mike’s cooking career footsteps. Chef John credits his college chef instructor, Walter Thomas, as the greatest influence on his chosen profession. “Tommy taught me a respect for ingredients and integrity in their preparation. Everything had to done ‘right.’ My father would also say that if you had to wonder if something was good enough, then it wasn’t.

Says, John, “From the age of about ten, I wanted to follow directly in my brother’s footsteps,” so he attended the same college, had some of the same teachers and eventually worked for the same shipping company, Cunard Lines, cooking aboard the Queen Elizabeth and later the QE2.

During college summer breaks, Downey worked on a small commercial fishing boat, but returned to cooking once again. Fed up with cooking, he took a turn at the hang-gliding business in upstate New York.

“I couldn’t believe what a great job I had! That all came to a grinding halt when I had one too many crash landings and finally accepted the fact that you need two good eyes to facilitate good depth perception for better landings!” (A firework accident at age twelve left John with a damaged eye.)

When that twist in the road didn’t work out, the Englishman found himself once again, in 1972, back into the kitchen, this time, at the World Trade Center in NewYork. The focus was on good quality American food and the late, great James Beard was his consulting boss.

“That’s when my passion for good food was ignited. Not frou-frou or trendy. Just good.” So good that he moved west in 1978, following his nose toward California’s bountiful fresh food movement and the birth of “California cuisine”.

At home, John and his family hark back to his simple roots. Meat or fish, fresh veggies (sometimes from their garden) and starch make up the menu. “Despite our difficult work schedules, we have always made sure to cook ‘real’ food for our kids,” John added.

“I’m grateful for the good living that my work has given me over the years,” Chef Downey concluded, “We haven’t made a fortune at Downey’s, but we have enjoyed a good living and have been able to raise and educate our children well. My wife Liz works tirelessly for our business and I’m grateful to her for that. I often get more attention, but it really is a joint effort.”