When Jamie Stachowski
began cooking in a neighborhood Italian restaurant called
Fontana’s, it was 1977 and he was 15. The action of
the kitchen, the coordinated movements of the line cooks,
and all the heat, noise, fire, and smells were spellbinding.
He got his first job in a French restaurant,
the famed and classic Ma Maison, in Los Angeles in 1981. He
vividly recalls the smell of garlic and wine. French technique
enthralled him, particularly the extent to which the French
worked the food. “Nothing is just cooked. It is butchered,
wrapped, rolled, tied, and stuffed. It is cut into shapes
and miniscule pieces.” Stachowski apprenticed under
the tutelage of one well-reputed chef after another: Wolfgang
Puck, Joachim Splichal, Patrick Healy, and Claude Avery.
From Los Angeles he went to New York in 1983
to Le Perigord, and then to Washington, D.C. to work with
Jean Louis Palladin in 1984. In Palladin’s kitchen the
cooking techniques contrasted with the heavier cooking in
long-established Le Perigord. Palladin’s flavors were
intense yet pure, the technique simple and gentle. In this
kitchen, Stachowski mastered the art of sauce making, an affinity
that continues to this day.
At the age of 23, he held his first chef
position. He opened Johnny’s of Bethesda, a 200 seat
American restaurant that received positive reviews. Stachowski
began to incorporate the French technique he had learned into
the American menu. His second chef position in 1989 landed
him in a Washington, D.C. location, Madeo, a 70-seat restaurant.
In this smaller setting, he developed his technique and style:
extracting maximum flavors from a broad range of ingredients
and orchestrating them in to a consonant whole.
Stachowski developed operational skills in
his association, from 1993-1997, with Capital Restaurant Concepts,
a corporation of eighteen restaurants. This position also
provided an opportunity to live in Beirut, Lebanon, where
Jamie met with the grand challenges of opening an American
restaurant in another country. When he returned from Lebanon
in 1997, he became the chef of Pesce, a small fish and seafood
bistro, where his maturing culinary style inspired a devout
following.
In 1999, he worked with Paul Loukas in opening and establishing
eCitie restaurant and bar in Tyson’s Corner Virginia.
Conceived of as a nightclub with fine dining, eCitie was
an immediate hit and was voted Best New Restaurant of
the Year by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan
Washington, one of ten new restaurants to watch by the
Wall Street Journal, and one of five by the Washingtonian
Magazine. He was Guest Chef at the James Beard House in
2000 and 2002.
