Interview with Chef Steve Ward
English Summary
LESLIE: Hello, we are here with Chef Steve Ward and we’re going to take this opportunity to ask him a few questions.
So, what’s your favorite meal to prepare?
CHEF WARD: I would say probably with Portland river salmon. We’re about thirty-minutes from the moon river. So, we get a lot of that fish for us from the Native Americans. We get thousands of pounds from them when the fish are running. Where I can then freeze it and process it and use it as standard food item throughout the year. So it could be poached, it could be roasted, it could be pan fried. It could be anything from a Salmon taco to a salmon quesadilla to a sit-down dinner for our banquet service. We get enough volume from the Native Americans to allow us to do that. When there is fish we can plan out further.
LESLIE: What would you say to encourage our folks to come and eat in your restaurant?
Well, that’s a very unique situation that we provide fish made available by the Native Americans. It is very unusual for a hotel of this size in the US, to be able to sustain food of that volume here for customers who are coming to Portland and want to experience Portland foods. So we can do it . . . pretty much, year around. That could be salmon, tomatoes or looking forward to mushrooms. There are a lot of things that we use, such as in the restaurant here in the restaurant, Gather. We can do that on a daily, weekly basis. We choose menus four times of the year. Really the highlight is to enjoying the types of foods on our banquets’ side.
LESLIE: Wow! We do want to let you know that the Zucchini Pancakes are delicious! So, if you’re curious, you need to come for the food and more.