Lecosho’s Matt Janke Talks Neil Young, Kitchen Survival and More

Capitol Hill-based chef has volunteered with FareStart for more than 20 years (sponsored)

By Sara Jones January 27, 2015

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Sponsored by FareStart

When Matt Janke was 5 years old, he wanted to be a Las Vegas lounge singer. Forty-nine years later, the Spokane-raised chef has opened two of Seattle’s most beloved eateries—Matt’s in the Market in 1996 and Lecosho in 2010—and more: He’s forged an enduring relationship with FareStart, a local culinary job training and placement program for homeless and disadvantaged teens and adults.

In 1994, Janke started delivering shelter meals for FareStart (then Common Meals) and helping with its Guest Chef Nights—a Thursday institution in which a local revered chef coaches students to prepare a three-course dinner for almost 300 in the downtown FareStart restaurant. In the two decades since, Janke has guest chefed for the program at least once a year, and is on the schedule again for February 19. As you plot your reservation, learn more about what makes Janke go—and if, perhaps, he might sing with your supper next month.

How did you start cooking?

I was supporting myself in college [at UW in the late 1970s] work[ing] a few different restaurant jobs. After a while, I had worked my way up through dishes and busing, and ended up in the kitchen. I liked it, so I stayed.

What is the best part of your job?

Interacting with people—staff and clientele. I have always thought my biggest responsibility as an owner or manager is to put together the best component of a restaurant: a great team. Then, [it’s] to guide and give them what they need to succeed—and to make me look good in the process! Over the years, I have [also] developed some very deep long-term relationships with salespeople and clientele. There are dozens of people I look forward to seeing weekly or monthly as they come in to eat.

The most challenging part?

That can also be the clientele. I don’t enjoy it when people simply won’t allow themselves to have a good time. The restaurant biz is basically one big challenge, whether it involves heat, pressure, equipment failure, crazy fluctuations in [the] volume or the perishable nature of food. But I always like to look at what I’m up against—a full reservation book, crazy summer weather that is going to pack the patio, whatever the deal is—and I take pride and enjoyment in getting successfully to the other side. We handle some challenge pretty much every day.

What’s the key to surviving in the kitchen?

Organization and attitude. You need to set your mise en place, put it where you can use it, and anticipate how to get more if you need it. And, since this [industry] can often be difficult, or you’re hot and tired, or you just cut yourself, or something spilled or spoiled and you have to start over, you need to be able to smile about it pretty much the whole time.


The action-filled kitchen at FareStart

What are you cooking at home right now?

I have a family—a wife and a 6-year-old son. Every day I make breakfast and lunch before I go to work, and generally I make dinner. This time of year it’s beans and stews, often with either a Moroccan flair or New Orleans influence. I am also always trying to work on improving our nutrition; the latest thing has been fermenting vegetables.

Name your three favorite places to eat out in Seattle right now.

Naming three places is hard, partially because we don’t get out that often. But if you said I could go out three times this week to where[ever] I wanted to go, it would be Mamnoon, either Monsoon or Babar (depending on how dressy I felt), and maybe Quinn’s? I’ve been craving getting back into Quinn’s.

What is your favorite part about working with FareStart for Guest Chef Night?

The interaction with the students. There’s a pattern that pretty much never changes. During the course of the afternoon [while prepping for dinner], about half of them will approach me singly and strike up what is meant to seem like a casual conversation, trying to figure me out, what my restaurant might be like, whether I might offer them a job. Everyone has vastly different talents and personalities, and it’s always a learning experience for me, at least as much as it is for them. Over the years I have hired a few people after working with them during Guest Chef Night, [and] sometimes I run into former students out on the sidewalk, or in other people’s restaurants or wherever. It’s always uplifting to see what they might be up to and how their lives have changed.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

It was probably from Bruce Bonholzer, back in the early ‘80s. He told me to always make the decisions I knew to be correct, not to decide things based on how I thought other people might see them. It had to do with the discipline of a particular employee, but it applies everywhere.

What one celebrity would you love to have dinner with?

Neil Young. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the food.

How did you earn your first dollar?

It was either the time my dad hired me to spray weed killer on the thistles in the front pasture, or as track announcer on Sundays at Dave Redwine’s Motocross track near Moses Lake where my brother raced in the summertime.

You opened the Gasthaus Pub and consulted in Portland in the mid ‘90s. What’s the difference between diners in Seattle and Portland?

When I was in Portland in the ’90s, the restaurant scene was just about to take off and there was a huge amount of Seattle envy there, both among clientele and the staff I hired. The funny thing was that even though I was the guy from the big city, it was obvious that Portland people took what restaurants they had really seriously. Even in grassroots Oregon, they did not go out for dinner casually or underdressed; [their] relationship [with] restaurants was formal.

In Seattle, people are a part of their favorite restaurants in a much more intimate way. We dress up or not depending on our own whims, not on the setting, and the restaurant guests end up being closer to the staff, like family. And as a chef, I treat you like I’m having you over for dinner.

What advice do you have for budding chefs?

Consider carefully what it is you want to do. [The restaurant business] is a tough way to earn a living, with a lot of hard work and few solid payoffs in measurable terms. If you still want to do it, then for God’s sake, learn it from the ground up: Start out doing dishes and go from there. There will never come a time when that knowledge won’t be useful to you, and you should never consider yourself free of the need to know how to do the complete job.

 

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