A Glittery Start Gave Chef A Passion For Food

Early in his career, Jerry Schrader cooked for Hollywood legends and European royalty. He spotted famous faces so often while working in Sun Valley, Idaho, and later in Southern California, that you might expect he’d be blase about it.

“Are you kidding? Of course, it was exciting,” Schrader said. “I’m from St. Maries. How often does someone from St. Maries get to meet Ethel Kennedy or Clint Eastwood or Roger Maris?”

Schrader, the 36-year-old chef-owner of Spokane’s Cannon Street Grill, started cooking for the prestigious Sun Valley Company when he was 18. In the four years he spent there, he soaked up a lot of important lessons.

“The people I worked with were very generous,” he said.

In turn, Schrader has tried to pass on a measure of his expertise to some of the sous chefs who have worked with him at his Browne’s Addition bistro.

“The first thing I try to teach them is to be passionate about food,” he said.

Schrader returned to the region in the mid-‘80s to care for his ailing mother. He took a break from cooking then, until a friend called from California and urged him to take a crack at that market.

He landed a job with the Club Corporation of America, which has private dining rooms throughout the country.

“It was an amazing place. We had access to some of the best ingredients in the world. We used Russian caviar, Norwegian salmon and wild mushrooms from France,” he said.

That’s not surprising, considering they were feeding the likes of Margaret Thatcher or the king and queen of Sweden.

While he enjoyed the work, after several years, Schrader got tired of living in So-Cal and decided to return to the Northwest. In Spokane, he hooked up with developers Ron and Julie Wells, who owned the Cannon Street Grill at the time (Schrader bought the restaurant in July 1995).

“We were just really impressed with his enthusiasm and his ideas and, as it turned out, his production lived up to his verbal description of what he said he could do,” said Ron Wells, who adds that he’s “crazy about (Schrader’s) chicken tortilla soup.”

Schrader’s menu isn’t easy to categorize. There are French influences in many of his sauces and a touch of Asian in dishes such as the five-spiced duck, along with many Northwest ingredients, including one of the most popular items, his crab cakes.

The regular winemaker dinners at Cannon Street Grill have created a lot of buzz, too. At a time when many restaurants have abandoned that format, Schrader has customers who are so enthusiastic, they act as his ambassadors to the California wine country.

“I have people who go to Napa to try and convince them to come up for a wine dinner,” he said.

Respected producers featured at Cannon Street’s multicourse feasts have included Woodward Canyon and Stonestreet (a rising star from California). David Forsythe, Hogue Cellars’ winemaker, brought cuttings from grapevines to dinner as a demonstration of the important role growers play in the process. This June, some older cabernet sauvignon from Quilceda Creek will be poured by much-admired vintner Alex Golitzin.

The kudos Schrader hears for his imaginative creations help energize him, so he can work 14 hours a day, six days a week. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that his wife, Robin Riemcke, works alongside him.

“We make a great team,” he said.

Five-Spiced Crispy Duck

This little-known technique creates the crispy skin.

1 duck, thawed if frozen and cleaned (remove giblets from body cavity and trim excess fat)

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice seasoning (available in the Asian section of many supermarkets)

Leave duck in refrigerator, uncovered, for three days. On the third day, blend together soy sauce, brown sugar and five-spice seasoning. Spread a thin coat of the mixture on the duck; wait 15 minutes, and repeat.

Cook in a preheated 325-degree oven for about 2-1/2 hours, until a leg twists away effortlessly.

Yield: 2 servings.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: Chef du Jour is a monthly feature of IN Food that profiles area chefs and provides one of their recipes for readers to try at home.