Saturday, December 15th
By Murf Raquet
The day was bound to come. Jeanne-Amie Clothiaux and Tracy Wright knew that when they opened the Red Door restaurant in downtown Moscow nine years ago.
The day came this week when the two owners signed the paperwork that turned over the keys to what has become one of the premier restaurants in the Quad-Cities area to new owners.
The move was part of the natural evolution she and Wright envisioned when they opened, Clothiaux said.
She thought three years would be a good target date. She missed by a mile and several leases.
Wright, whose skills as a chef delighted and educated diners, left the kitchen and day-to-day duties after five years to pursue a law degree. Now in his third and final year, Wright will be moving to Boise in a few months.
Clothiaux will continue her education and study to become a physical therapist. For that, she will have to leave the area, at least for a while.
Long-distance ownership was not in the cards for either one.
Word gets out when changes are contemplated and rumors fly. When Anne Taunton and Ashley Grosse got wind one of their favorite restaurants was for sale they reacted like few would - a lot of soul searching, number crunching, seeking support from spouses and making an offer.
It's one thing to talk about such a move and quite another to follow through and do it.
Taunton and Grosse are both native to the South central region of the United States that boasts a French-influenced cuisine they came to appreciate.
They became friends because their husbands are both political science faculty at Washington State University.
"We fell in love with the Red Door because Tracy and Jeanne had created a restaurant that made dining in Moscow a slow food experience," Grosse said.
"(Anne and Ashley) are restaurant regulars," Clothiaux said. "It's natural for them to take over."
The change will be as seamless as possible. Hal Jardine, the current chef, is staying on and will continue to emphasize the qualities of the Red Door as it has evolved over the years, putting the accent on seasonality and locally grown produce," Gross said.
A good part of the business' evolution was customer driven and will continue to be so.
"We co-created the restaurant with community input - they steered us," Clothiaux said.
Grosse and Taunton plan to be hands-on owners, mostly working the customer side of the operation but will help where needed.
The two enjoy wine and how it complements a meal. They hope to expand the wine list and do more matching with entrees. Like Clothiaux and Wright, the new owners will depend on the expertise of Terry Eckwright, manager of the Wine Company of Moscow, to build the restaurants' wine inventory.
The dinner menu will continue to be tweaked as will desserts.
At first, Grosse was nervous about taking on the new responsibilities but is now at ease with a new philosophy, she said. "All we have to do drive between the lines."
Sounds simple enough until Clothiaux chimed in.
"Sometimes you're driving a Mack truck."
The Red Door is closed for a slight remodeling and will reopen Jan. 3. It is located at 215 S. Main St. For more information or to make reservations, call (208) 882-7830.
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
January 21, 2006
Slow food movement less about movement, more about enjoying the journey
By Carol Spurling, For the Daily News
I first saw the phrase “slow food” in 2002 when I looked at the Red Door menu. My husband and I knew we wanted to be regulars of the downtown Moscow restaurant when we peeked through the window and saw happy eaters aglow with candlelight, extra virgin olive oil, and wine.
I didn’t know at the time what slow food meant. Obviously, it was not a place to get a meal on the go. Meals at the Red Door typically last a leisurely two hours.
I’ve learned since that slow food refers to an attitude about food and cooking, and that slow food has become an international movement.
The idea of slow food began in Italy, and its devotees now include 80,000 members in local slow food chapters around the world. The groups are devoted to maintaining regional food traditions, supporting agricultural biodiversity, and promoting the enjoyment of locally produced food and wine.
My freezer and pantry are examples of how an interest in slow food can play out in real life. In them are beef from Maple K Farms in Colfax; pork and sausage from SaraJoe’s in St. John; winter squash, onions, and garlic from the WSU organic farm project, wine from Washington and British Columbia, a batch of home-brewed hard cider, and canned applesauce and jam that I made from the fruit in our yard.
For my family, there’s no going back now that we’ve discovered locally grown food tastes better than food that has been trucked from halfway across the country or further. We’re patiently waiting for the day when almost everything we eat can come from the Palouse area.
The slow food movement also promotes making time to gather in the kitchen and at the table. This requires real commitment, day in and day out. Red Door co-owner Jeanne Clothiaux and head chef Hal Jardine believe good food deserves to be central in our lives.
“We didn’t know that there was a slow food movement when we put those words on our menu back when we opened in 1998,” Clothiaux said. “Someone told us about it a couple years later. But it fits perfectly with what we’re trying to do at the restaurant and at home.”
Clothiaux and her business partner, Tracy Wright, picked Moscow as the home for their restaurant partly because there was a rainbow hanging over the town when they first arrived and partly because the Moscow Food Co-op and the Moscow Wine Company existed.
“Because those businesses were succeeding, we knew that people cared about food here,” Clothiaux said. “It’s amazing how much great food you can get in this town, if you look.”
Clothiaux grew up in Alabama, but her father’s side of the family is from south Louisiana. She often was surrounded by Cajun relatives and spicy food.
“When I was a child, on weekends, our family did a lot of sitting around the kitchen talking, trading stories, while two or three family members peeled shrimp, potatoes, and carrots for the evening meal,” Clothiaux said. “We’d make okra gumbo, crawfish etoufee, shrimp fricassée’, jambalaya, and dirty rice. Hanging out by the steady rumble of a large cast iron cauldron of simmering vegetables, the air loaded with rich nutty aromas that come from browning flour in lard, is still about the most calming way I can think of to spend a Saturday afternoon.”
Now that Clothiaux is grown up, she uses healthier fats than lard, and she spends her weekends cooking on a wood-fired stove — the ultimate in slow. Many of her home-cooked meals start with some melted butter in a cast iron pot over medium heat, to which she adds a few cloves of diced garlic.
“We cook a lot of venison, and a lot of Mexican style, pepper-based sauces, anything that can simmer in a cast iron pot is great on a wood stove,” Clothiaux said.
Jardine often spends his weekends cooking with friends in his tiny home, which he says is “half kitchen.”
“We try to find some main course that we haven’t tried before, and build a cooperative menu around that, and eat for four or five hours. My friends and I hang out in the kitchen and talk while we stuff birds with different kinds of sausages or do a big pot of beans. It’s where we’re comfortable.”
Clothiaux, Wright, and Jardine try to create the warmth of that atmosphere at their restaurant.
“We wanted to create a space and a menu for people who appreciated real food, where the vegetables are cut fresh by hand, where homemade stocks are the bases for sauces,” Clothiaux said. “People who cook understand how labor intensive that is and are willing to pay our prices. And while recognizing that our prices make this a special occasion place for many people, in many ways we aim to be like a bistro in character, a neighborhood hangout.
“Loving restaurants is more than loving food — you love the space, and that you might bump into someone that will inspire you somehow. Something about eating communally with strangers is relaxing, and good for us. It settles us down.”
The Red Door tries to get locally produced meat and produce when it can. The chefs regularly use Lone Hawk Farms elk, Rosebrush Farms lamb, sunflower sprouts from Sunny’s Sprout Studio in Moscow, George’s Carrots from the St. Maries area, Affinity Farm tomatoes in season, Small Planet Tofu, Cowgirl Chocolate’s spicy caramel sauce, and Camas Prairie Winery’s Merlot, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pinot Gris as many Washington and Oregon wines. The Moscow Food Co-op bakes the restaurant’s bread.
Fortunately, cooking slow food doesn’t always mean hours slaving over complex dishes. There are three simple foods that cook very quickly and can be the basis for a delicious yet economical meal at home: eggs, polenta, and pasta.
When I’m at a loss for an easy meal I make an omelet or scrambled eggs, served with toast, and either a salad, or home fries.
Jardine usually cooks pasta.
“I make it with pesto a lot, and it’s really easy to sauté anything and toss it with pasta and pesto, like tomatoes, or zucchini, or sausages,” she said.
Clothiaux’s favorite quick slow food meal, polenta, is as versatile as pasta.
“Polenta cooks in five minutes and you can throw all sorts of things into it, cheese or spices. Plus it makes a nice accompaniment or bed for anything: tofu, meat, or fish,” she said.
Jardine and Clothiaux recommend cooks who want to learn more invest in a copy of “The Joy of Cooking,” which explains the basic techniques for cooking just about everything. A few copies of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazine can provide inspiration and recipes that are not overly complex.
“It takes a bit of time to learn, but once you’ve got the basics down, you can cook something satisfying without a whole lot of effort,” Clothiaux said.