A Chef Nourishes the Soul: Mothers of Invention

The last time I saw Duskie Estes, I was visiting Seattle to catch up with old friends. Though Duskie had cooked for me in her apartment and I’d enjoyed her food at potlucks,—beautiful dishes that were on a separate plane from the artichoke dips and three bean salads—I’d never seen her in action before. So I was a bit stunned when I got a chance to watch her command the open kitchen of Seattle’s top flight Palace Kitchen. It was like finding out that one of your friends who said she could play okay tennis was really Venus Williams.

A diminutive woman with a pixie haircut and a mellow California disposition—she uses the word “dude” more than the rest of my friends combined—Duskie is no rough-edged Anthony Bourdain. She’s a sweetheart, a feminist, and a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who isn’t into the barking-at-underlings style often associated with top chefs. That doesn’t mean she isn’t in her element in a restaurant kitchen. Seeing her at work is to glimpse a woman in full creative flow.

That night, sitting at the bar nursing a Washington state Pinot, I appreciated her every move. She heaved alderwood logs, tracked the moves of her large staff, checked plates before they went out, wielded dangerous looking knives, and reigned in the flames of an open fire. Duskie made it all look easy.

Many recent food fans, enamored by Food Network productions, have no clue as to how physically demanding restaurant cooking is. Sore feet and sweaty brows are only the half of it. Scarred arms, sliced fingers, and aching backs are also part of the professional bargain. Frequent abuse of uppers and downers—even in their legal, liquid forms—to deal with the oddball hours doesn’t help either.

That night in Seattle, one of the most impressive aspects of Duskie’s wizardry was the fact that she was in the first trimester of pregnancy, exhausted and nauseous. None of her staff had a clue. Restaurants may be one of the most hierarchical workplaces, outside of the military, and pregnant women certainly aren’t in the pecking order, much less toward its top, so it’s not surprising that she was nervous to make her news public.

“Women are expected to do pastry and pantry,” says Duskie, who started cooking in 1988 as a student at Brown University. “When I was starting out, nobody wanted to put a girl on the hotline then. I basically had to lie to get there.”

Duskie is small and really nice, but she has a pronounced stubborn streak; it’s indicative that she served as the coxswain on Brown’s men’s rowing team. Determined to work her way to a top post, she quit her job at one restaurant, and applied elsewhere, giving false assurance to the new chef that she had worked sauté before. “For a week I did nothing but stay home and practice flipping slices of bread and rice in a pan,” she recalls.

In the years since, Duskie has worked at an impressive array of restaurants on both coasts (though never for a woman chef). When she married John Stewart, a fellow chef, in 2000, she was heading up the Palace Kitchen, one of chef Tom Douglas’ celebrated eateries, while also co-authoring a cookbook with him. She and John wanted kids right away; they also wanted a restaurant of their own.

Whether they were delusional or impatient, it’s hard to say now, but they decided to do both at the same time and to throw in a move just for a higher degree of difficulty. In March 2001, their daughter Brydie was born. In July, they moved to Sonoma County, California. On August 1, they picked up the keys to their new restaurant, and two weeks later, they opened the doors of Zazu.

Although Duskie wishes she had more compatriot chef-moms, the job has been ideal for parenting young children.