Kevin Davis

Chef-owner, Steelhead Diner and Blueacre Seafood
Seattle, Washington

The steelhead trout is called “the fish of ten thousand casts.”

According to chef Kevin Davis, who named his first restaurant the

Steelhead Diner, to catch steelhead “you have to be out by

yourself in nature. You have to know where to be and how to be

there and how to present yourself to the fish.”

In other words, it takes a certain amount of intensity to do it

right. And intense is the word I’d use to describe Davis’s food at

both Steelhead and his newer restaurant, Blueacre Seafood. The

flavors are big and bold and bright; the three dishes we prepare

together are all cooked over very intense heat. Flames shoot out of

the pans, they’re so hot. As I said: it’s intense.

Davis himself comes from a family of intense cooks in New

Orleans. Family ritual dictated that each family member had his or

her own dish and that they and only they could make it. “My

grandmother made chicken stew or okra gumbo, and no one else

would make it.” His uncle David’s signature dish—Pompano

David—is one of the dishes we cook, renamed Trout David.

When he was eleven, Davis’s mother died. His dad decided that

Davis, his brother, and his sister would each cook dinner two

nights every week. “It turned out,” says Davis, “that by the time I