In the late 1990s, Daniel Gonzalez was a three-sport athlete at Ferris High School determined to leave Spokane after graduation.
But instead of baseball, Gonzalez pursued culinary studies at the Art Institute of Seattle, followed by stints in such venerable Western Washington spots as Cafe Campagne and Le Pichet, both French-style fine dining restaurants. He also spent three years in Seattle at the former 1200 Bistro & Lounge and worked as a private chef, which enabled him to go to Europe, including Spain.
In 2007, when 1200 Bistro closed, Gonzalez returned to Spokane, fathered a son and worked his way through the region's evolving culinary landscape, from the Davenport Hotel to South Perry Pizza. He spent six years at Adam Hegsted's Eat Good Group, including the Wandering Table.
Last fall, Gonzalez and longtime partner Monica York launched Kismet restaurant in the Hillyard neighborhood, highlighting the Latin flavors of Gonzalez's upbringing with dishes like elote, arepa cakes and empanadas. This year, Inlander readers voted it "best new restaurant" in our annual Best Of readers poll.
Now that Kismet has its first year on the books, we chatted with Gonzalez for our recurring chef Q&A series. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INLANDER: Give us the highlights of how you got here, from your education, influences, events or employers to significant moments.
GONZALEZ: I took a couple of food classes in high school as a joke so I could have a snack in the middle of the day. I really liked it. People were amazed I could make all these cakes and all the stuff we were making. And they were like, "How do you know how to do this?" I watched my grandmas make this stuff forever.
Before [I left for] culinary school I got to see a class, and it was [pioneering French chef] Jacques Pépin, and he was making potato croquettes, and he was doing it out of a piping bag and cutting them. Every single one of them was identical, and I was like, "Dude, I want to be that guy."
Who helped you get where you are today?
My mentor Chet Wallenstein [from 1200 Bistro & Lounge, also Microsoft founder Paul Allen's personal chef]. It was the farm-to-table thing before it was a thing. Adam [Hegsted] has so many irons in the fire. It was a very eye-opening experience of what Spokane could be.
The support of Monica. My mom and dad. I always tell people my dad's my hero in the way that he does things and all the sacrifices he made to make us have the life we had. But my mom has always been the glue that kept us all together. They had me when they were really young, and they didn't give up. They were 15. We didn't have a lot of money so we spent a lot of time doing family things together.
What essential tool and/or technique do you use most often?
Pressure cookers are amazing, and I never really thought that I would be a pressure cooker guy, but they're insane if you can figure out how to marinate something and manipulate the flavor and throw it in one of those pots and it's done in three hours instead of 12 hours. They're so efficient and not very messy.
What's a really cool thing you do, or still love about your work?
Butchery. I can take apart anything.
What's your favorite thing to eat from your own menu?
It's the "whettos" [tacos] for me here. A lot of the time it's tamales because I can heat up a tamale and eat it quick. Put an egg on it! Tamales go with everything.
Where would you travel just for the food, and why?
I would go back to a time when avant-garde started and you can go into French kitchens and see 120 cooks making these meals. Like where [French chef Auguste] Escoffier invented the brigade system, just to see what it took to make it a well-oiled machine. And I want to go back to Spain with Monica.
What might you be doing if you weren't in the culinary industry?
I love professional sports ... baseball. I could geek out and be a statistician like nobody's business. I'm the nerd that carries the scorecard to the games.
What advice do you have for someone going into the industry?
You're in for a long haul. Be immersive in everything you do, but also be a fly on the wall. Go to those places where the learning curve is high. Even if you have to wash dishes for a couple of weeks before you hold a knife. Culinary school is great — it's a foundation — but that is not where I learned nine out of 10 things that I learned. It's like culinary jargon is a foreign language and you're going to school to learn that language.
And just be ready to fall on your face every now and then. It happens. Take it on the chin. I made a lot of mistakes, but trying to make it so you don't make the same mistake over and over is very important.
What's next for you, five or 10 years down the line?
If I open up another place, it's going to be something simple. For me I wouldn't be above a place that served burritos in a bag at 4 o'clock in the morning. I would [also] like to have a 10-seat kind of sit-down thing, and I could cook for those people and do it three or four times a week. That would be fine as long as we were making money; sustaining so that other people had an opportunity to have a job, and giving back to [Spokane].
I don't want to line cook forever. I don't want to get burned out. I love cooking, but I want to take time that doesn't necessarily involve food. Burning out is very, very easy to do in this industry. ♦
