Project FARE Spotlight: Cellar Door
Story and photos by Geoff Crimmins
Q&A with chef Ian Pecoraro of Cellar Door in Moscow
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and accuracy.
Tell us about Cellar Door and your Farm Dinner Kits. What do you offer the community?
Cellar Door and Farm Dinner Kits are committed to bringing the ingredients of local Palouse farmers to your table through take-home meal kits that have been curated and prepared by a chef who has over 15 years of farm-to-table experience.
Each Farm Dinner Kit has a three-course meal made entirely from local ingredients at their very best. Twice a month, our subscribers take these meals home, and with our easy to follow instructions have a gourmet, nourishing and delicious meal on the table in just minutes!
Our goal is to introduce and educate our diners on the incredible breadth of wonderful produce available all year in our wonderful region, and that, ultimately, local always tastes best!
How did you get your start as a chef and small business owner?
Cellar Door owner Ian Pecoraro holds a loaf of sourdough bread he made at the Peterson Cookhouse Commercial Kitchen on Aug. 11 in Moscow.
I began cooking professionally after my 15th birthday and haven't looked back since! I spent the first 13 years of my career cooking in various restaurants in the Seattle area, including many years at the James Beard Award winning restaurant Sitka & Spruce, as well as helping open a natural wine and seafood focused restaurant, L'oursin.
It was over this time that I honed my skills and learned an appreciation for the quality of ingredients when our farmers would arrive at the restaurant each day with crates of freshly dug up vegetables, and based on their selection we would write the menu. Every day was a different menu!
I moved to Moscow two years ago because I knew in order to realize my dream of a truly local and seasonal dining option, I needed to live closer to the farmers! The Palouse is the most beautiful place I've ever been, and some of the best food I've ever had is grown right here. My farmers make my job so easy.
What is your relationship with local food producers, and why are those relationships important?
My relationship with my farmers and purveyors is a very collaborative effort. Each week I begin a dialogue with them to find out what they have growing—what's at it's very best, or sometimes items they have a surplus of and need to move. I then base my ever-changing menus around these conversations. A large part of Cellar Door's focus is to bring awareness to farmers’ products that are available, but are often ignored, or left unused, including ingredients "seconds," or the flowers, seeds and roots of ingredients in all their different stages of growth.
Without my farmers, Cellar Door and Farm Dinner Kits couldn't exist! They are the lifeblood of everything I do, and my hope is I can do my small part in bringing some shine onto the true food heroes of the Palouse.
You described Cellar Door as your “dream job.” Tell us more about why you love what you do.
Opening Cellar Door has been in the making for a good portion of my life, even when I didn't know it at the time. I was first introduced to the concept of farm-to-table cooking when I was in high school and spent a summer living on the Quillasacut farm, which acts as a school for teaching you to live off the land and utilize the seasonal ingredients of the moment.
To be able to take those lessons I learned at such a young age and turn them into a business that helps to continue that mission to the people of the Palouse is incredible!
On top of that, I get so excited to spend my days surrounded by the best ingredients possible and cooking whatever it is that is going to showcase those ingredients best. It's the dream come true of any chef to have that sort of freedom with their food and menus.
I also feel incredibly grateful for my diners and Farm Dinner Kit subscribers—they're so supportive and passionate about local food. They've fully bought into Cellar Door's mission, and along with my farmers are local food heroes.
Pecoraro buys apricots for making jam from K & C Farms on Aug. 13 at the Moscow Farmers Market. He buys most of his ingredients from local and regional farmers.
What sort of experiences would you like your customers to have?
First and foremost, my hope is that each meal with Cellar Door, whether with Farm Dinner Kits, or a private event, my diners have an incredible meal that is equal parts delicious, nourishing and surprising. It's incredibly important to me that food not only tastes amazing, but also makes you feel great afterwards. At the end of the day, food is meant to nourish, sustain and energize us—I take that responsibility as a chef seriously.
Beyond that, I hope that my meals are educational and inspiring for my diners. My hope is that after having a great meal, they're inspired to go to the farmer's market that weekend and pick up a new ingredient or two they wouldn't have before, take it home and experiment with it in the kitchen. Food is fun, and cooking is made easy when your base ingredients are of the quality we have out here.
