Renee Erickson

Chef-owner, Boat Street Cafe and The Walrus and the
Carpenter
Seattle, Washington

Many chefs care about quality ingredients, but chef Renee

Erickson takes it one step further. In the bright and airy kitchen of

her home in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, I tell Erickson

that I want to wash my hands before we cook.

“One second,” she says, walking into another room.

She returns moments later with a prettily wrapped bar of high-

quality, milk-scented soap. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Looking around her personal kitchen, you can tell how much

Erickson loves quality ingredients by the eclectic collection of

bottles and jars that surrounds her.

A green bottle of fresh Trampetti olive oil comes straight from

Italy. A jar of Ballard honey comes directly from the bees that she

keeps in her backyard (the Ballard Bee Company cultivates it for

her in exchange for some of her bees’ honey). Meyer lemon oil is

labeled Colline di Santa Cruz, from Valencia Creek Farms in

California. In a bag, she keeps espelette chilies sent to her by a

farmer friend in Oregon. “They’re floral, not spicy,” she tells me,

“and for my last meal I’d want spot prawns roasted in garlic and

butter and espelette with a little lemon juice.”