MATCH MAKER | canyon river grill
RICHARD DUVAL
Chef Kevin Davis is famous for his seafood and New Orleans-style dishes.
Davis remembers. “Whoa, they canceled all the conventions! Well, then one afternoon we have a full restaurant for happy hour. So I asked the customers, ‘What’s going on?’ They told me, ‘Well, this is our last day.’ “Companies with offices downtown were sending people home,” Davis continued. “Nordstrom. Facebook. Amazon. Their employees were our customers. So it was just like that. It happened very quickly.” This fall, the New York Times published a piece on Seattle’s restaurant industry. Celebrity chef Tom Douglas closed his 13 restaurants in March. Only two remained open. Another high-profile chef, Ethan Stowell, is part of 20 restaurants. He was managing 12 of them as of early December. Maria Hines, a 2010 James Beard Award winner and a Match Maker alumna, permanently shuttered highly acclaimed Tilth on Oct. 30. It was the flagship of the three restaurants she launched — and has since abandoned. As the father of four young children, Davis didn’t have the luxury of trying to ride things out. “There was a brief period of guilt and
CANYON RIVER GRILL AT CANYON RIVER RANCH 14700 Highway 821, Near Mile Marker 15 Ellensburg, WA 98926 CanyonRiverGrill.com (509) 933-2309
remorse and crying. And that was it,” he said. “You’ve just got to pull it together.” A native of New Orleans, Davis is renowned for seafood and his rèsumè. He trained in France with Michelin-starred chef Jacques Chibois and in Miami for James Beard winner Mark Militello. By the time he was 25, he was back home leading the kitchen at famed Arnaud’s in the French Quarter. Five years later, his interest in wine led him to the Napa Valley and Tra Vigne with chef Michael Chiarello. In time, the Northwest fascinated him, so New Orleans native Jan
Birnbaum brought Davis up to Seattle to help him at Sazerac. By 2007, he’d created Steelhead Diner. The following he’d built sustained his businesses just enough to survive winter each year until cruise ship season, Pike Place Market tourism, the Seattle Mariners and Seattle Sounders began to heat up each spring. “I want people to know that we love Seattle, but I don’t think people really understand the depth of what’s happened yet,” Davis says. “It will be years before the restaurant scene comes back in any significant meaningful way there.” Canyon River Ranch is the type of getaway one might expect to find in Montana’s famous haven for fly fishing — the Madison Valley — and reminiscent of the iconic Steamboat Inn along Oregon’s North Umpqua River. As with Steamboat, the foundation for Canyon River Ranch began during The Great Depression, first as the Lattice Inn, then Red’s Riverview Campground. Anthony Robins, Richard Leider and Steve Joyce purchased the campground from Loman “Red” Blankenship and his wife Sharen Larson, then the Winter 2020 • Wine Press Northwest
|
65
