Chefs John Stewart and Duskie Estes incorporate sustainable living into their work, home and community.
When driving through Northern California, I forget about the city and the mundane tasks I typically seem to obsess over. Sonoma County’s vineyards, farms and rolling hills greet me with a deep green color of serenity; making me wish all places could be like this. When talking to locals, there’s a sense of pride and community that stems from their respect for animals, local business and diverse agriculture.
Chefs John Stewart and Duskie Estes are a husband-and-wife team that takes that respect to a higher level. They own two restaurants in Sonoma County: Zazu Restaurant and Farm in Santa Rosa, and Bovolo in Healdsburg. Both are supplied with fresh produce from the couple’s kitchen garden and five-acre family farm and fruit orchard (where they also raise pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits and goats), along with goods from other local producers.
They never travel far for anything involved with the restaurants, and both believe you should know the face behind the product you’re buying. Their produce is always picked fresh and, whenever possible, their fish is sourced from Bodega Bay (it’s always sustainably sourced). Both restaurants’ fry oil is recycled into biodiesel, and all food waste goes to their family farm for animal feed or compost. “You should care about what you give back, not just what you take,” says Estes.
Rustic Italian and American innovation
Stewart hails from Mt Kisco, N.Y., and Estes is from San Francisco. Surprisingly, they’re both culinary school dropouts. Stewart went to the Culinary Institute of America, N.Y., for one year (of a two-year program), and Estes attended four months of a 16-month program at California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. They did both graduate from college: Stewart from the University of Colorado at Boulder in political science and Estes from Brown University in American history.
They met working for Tom Douglas in the coffee mecca of the United States, Seattle. Stewart came to work in Seattle because a friend of his from high school worked for Douglas. Estes moved to Seattle to bring the “Share Our Strength Operation Frontline” there (more about that later), then met Douglas as well. Estes later went to work for Douglas as a sous chef for all of his restaurants, then became chef of Douglas’ Palace Kitchen. The couple met at Etta’s, another Douglas eatery, during this time. Stewart and Estes married in Calistoga at Hans Fahden in 2000 and officially moved to Sonoma County in July 2001. They opened Zazu the following month.
They shared a vision to open restaurants that showcased both of their unique, individual styles of cooking. Zazu started with a nightly changing menu with Stewart’s rustic Northern Italian style of making salumi, pasta and gelato from scratch. Adding more to the melting pot was Estes’ spice of playful Americana dark chocolate fondues and Better Butters (the ultimate, filled peanut butter cookie) complimenting Stewart’s Old World ingredients along with the philosophy of supporting local producers.
While running Zazu, they both felt Healdsburg needed a family friendly place with great food, fast service and an inexpensive price point (they call it “slow food fast”). They decided to extend their talents into a second restaurant, and thus Bovolo was born, a simple-but-elegant treat to the palate boasting its own gelateria, pizzeria, enoteca and salumeria. Estes says, “If you look at both menus, it’s like a reflection of each of us. The Bovolo menu mainly stays the same and Zazu changes every night.”
Snout-to-tail
The couple’s culinary philosophy is to use every part of the animal, which is also known as “snout-to-tail.”
Following Estes and Stewart to their home to see the farm, with the sun’s warm rays and autumn leaves drifting over the windshield, I slowed down to take things back a notch. I was enjoying the drive just like Grandpa did on Sunday afternoons along the North Coast. I pulled up a gravel road, where two dogs were happily barking, to a big, comfortable farmhouse. The familiar smell of wet grass on soil permeated the air as I walked behind the house to the farm.
The snout-to-tail philosophy applies to not wasting anything, explain Stewart and Estes as they throw feed to the chickens. “Anyone who has kids should own chickens; they eat all the waste the kids don’t eat from their lunches and dinners,” says Stewart.
To have so many ingredients in your own backyard is absolutely amazing. Their farm, conveniently located between their two restaurants (and overseen day-to-day by farmer Milo Mitchel), includes a small fruit orchard of Asian pears, olives, Meyer lemons, persimmons, apples, Comice pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, pomegranates, cherries and figs. They also grow golden and red raspberries, alpine strawberries, bronze fennel, shiso, flat leaf parsley, cardoons, tarragon, marjoram, Blue Lake green beans, garlic, chives and pretty much everything that can grow under the Sonoma County sun.
The pigs are happy, with plenty of room to bask in the sun, lie in the mud and enjoy their lives with human beings who truly respect an animal’s life in every way possible. Estes says, “We’re committed to diversity of agriculture, and so are a lot of people around here. For a long time, we’ve been advocates of not wasting any animal part. I view it as a way to show respect for an animal when it gives its life to you. When someone says they don’t want to see the eyes of a fish, it’s like they don’t want to take responsibility for the animal giving its life. But those same people go to McDonalds—and they’re grinding everything into that burger!”
As we walk by the jumping goats, agreeing with Estes, I mention that everyone should be at least somewhat aware of the beneficial things that are wasted in restaurants and home kitchens across America. Estes says, “If you have chard, you shouldn’t throw away the stems. Instead, you can roast and incorporate them [the steak dinner at Zazu includes roasted chard stems] or feed them to the animals. We grow chard—or buy local chard—and the people we buy from also donate part of their profits to medical organizations that serve the needs of low-income families.”
Estes and Stewart provide a sense of seasonality, Zen and Sonoma County to their restaurant patrons. At Zazu, they sometimes let guests go outside and pick things they’re going to eat from the kitchen garden if the season is right (providing clippers and a headlamp, if necessary). They also provide roughly 30 employees with medical benefits and vacation pay, and donate 1 percent of sales—not profits—to worthy causes in their surrounding community.
In addition to sustainable farming, Stewart and Estes are devoted to community involvement, with a focus on schools, hunger prevention and nonprofits. Stewart says, “We want the best product, and buying from a local person at a higher price actually lets that person live here and allows diversity. We’re lucky to live here. We can drive up Westside Road and see Clover Stornetta cows walking around on grass. Our dairy products don’t travel to us from Colorado or the Midwest just because it’s a cheap commodity.”
In the past, Estes worked for Share Our Strength (SOS) in Washington, D.C., where she trained people on limited incomes how to shop for and cook well-balanced, nutritional meals. In more than 105 cities, SOS holds an annual event called Taste the Nation, which raises money for hunger prevention. Because everything is donated—it uses volunteers, chefs donate food, wineries donate wine and everybody gives what they can—100 percent of the money raised is granted because everyone “shares their strength.” Every community decides where its money goes, with 80 percent staying in that community and 20 percent redirected internationally. Estes and Stewart model themselves after organizations like SOS, giving back to local groups and to the people helping them succeed.
As full-time business owners, they now have less ability to give personal time, but they’re still committed to causes and organizations they find important. They also strive to be benevolent stewards of the land. Estes says, “We respect the animals’ place; we do it on our own family farm, in our own way now.
For the premiere of ‘The Next Iron Chef,’ [in which Estes competed] we had a viewing at Zazu, and everyone who worked that night donated everything.” For that event, Zazu raised more than $3,000 for the Ceres Community Project [see “Growing Strong,” Jan. 2011]. The ticket price was $39, and all of that went to Ceres. The event was made possible by Iron Horse, Hafner Vineyards and Davis Family winery donating the wines, and by myguyhitech donating all the video viewing equipment; Zazu staff donated all their time to be there.
The science of pigs and wine
In addition to the restaurants, the couple is involved in the food and wine industry through various other enterprises. In 2006 and 2007, Stewart began training with celebrity chef Mario Batali and at the University of Iowa Meat Lab. Stewart became interested in making cured meats after tasting them at a restaurant called Salumi, owned by Batali’s father, Armandino. Armandino worked with generations of family cooking traditions, a lifetime in the kitchen and, on top of that, he had two years in the formal study of meat curing. At the time, Armandino wasn’t taking any apprentices, but through a connection at Food and Wine magazine, Stewart met and later worked with Mario at his restaurant, Otto, in New York, which focuses on cured meats.
As Stewart’s experience grew, he wanted to pursue and learn more about the art of cured meats. He then enrolled in classes at the University of Iowa in Ames where others such as Paul Bertoli (and Armandino Batali) attended. Stewart now makes his own line of bacon and salumi, called Black Pig Meats, which has local Bay Area carriers including Pacific Markets, Oliver’s and others (you can find an entire list on the website). Last summer, Stewart and Estes bought four female piglets from a rancher named Mac Macgruder, who resides in Potter Valley and raises free-range pigs on 5,000 acres.
In 2005, Estes and Stewart released their first vintage of wine, a well-reviewed Schiopettino, which was made by Holdredge Winery in Healdsburg (with grapes sourced from the couple’s own Macbryde Vineyard, named for their daughters). After three releases, the vineyard developed Pierce’s disease and, unwilling to spray, Estes and Stewart pulled it up and repurposed the land as their orchard and “Pig Palace.” Today, they make wines called Blanc Pig (100 percent Sauvignon Blanc, with mineral elements and light acidity) and Black Pig (100 percent Pinot Noir, with dark berry and wood characteristics), which are produced at Thomas George Estates in Healdsburg. They’re working on increasing their restaurant placements, but for now, you can find them at Zazu, Bovolo or Thomas George Estates—and don’t forget a side of bacon.
Estes and Stewart are also collaborating on a cookbook with a working title of Chefs in the Garden and, thanks to “The Next Iron Chef,” Duskie now has an agent who’s representing it. To share a little taste of what they’re about, they sent some of Stewart’s Black Pig bacon to potential publishers along with the manuscript.
A balanced family, a healthy diet
Estes and Stewart have two daughters, Brydie and Mackenzie Estes Stewart, ages eight and nine, which makes the couple’s numerous ventures and adventures even more impressive. Estes says, “I work all night and the kids go to school during the day. I try to make up for it in the summer by hanging out with them all day, every day.”
As a family, they like to go to farms and pick chestnuts, pumpkins, strawberries…whatever’s ripe. The girls help feed and water the animals on the farm; they each also have a distinct garden bed that they help plant, maintain and harvest. And already, they have a sense of what flavors go well together in cooking. It’s not hard to imagine both daughters eventually doing something in the world of the culinary arts. Estes and Stewart are two unconditional loving beings who enjoy being together as a family over anything else in the world.
They’re chefs, business owners and lovers who depend on each other. Estes says, “I do all the marketing, math, menus and the crazy nighttime cooking. But I’d say I need [John] and he needs me. I feel so lucky to have him every minute; we respect each other. We’ve seen plenty of couples not be able to work together, but I’m grateful for what he does. The gratitude I have for him outweighs whatever silly issue is going on.”
Though they have uniquely identifiable and completely opposite skill sets, they complement each other. “We approach things differently, but that’s probably a big portion of why everything works,” says Stewart. “Duskie is more ‘chef’ by definition. I don’t know if I could have done ‘The Next Iron Chef’ competition. I don’t think I can be handed a bunch of ingredients and then just go—but you can hand me a pig, and I can get creative with it.
“I tend to cycle back to the same things, and Duskie will never cycle back to one thing in general. She likes the limelight more and I don’t really. I can do it if needed, but I can’t fake it when it’s something I’m not thrilled about.”
Estes adds, “John is patient with things and I’m not, so baking—or making salumi, which takes for four to six months, sometimes two years? Are you kidding me? If it’s not done in 15 minutes, I’m out!”
The lucid road home
As I leave Sonoma County, with Tom Waits shattering through my speakers, I’m reviewing my conversation with Estes and Stewart in my head when a particular line from the song, “Little Trip to Heaven,” catches my ear: “I know that I’m in heaven when you smile/Though were stuck here on the ground/I got something I’ve found/And it’s you.”
Estes and Stewart aren’t just about food and owning restaurants to make a buck. They’re about love and respect for everything surrounding your goals.
Stewart says, “I know it’s our career—it’s our business and all that stuff—but if you take a big step back, it’s dinner. And to be getting into these hitched battles over dinner? It’s probably true of all business, that there are times you start putting emphasis and priorities on things, but it’s really all about your kids at the end of the day.”
Estes quickly adds, “In terms of what we do every day, I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished. We obviously don’t do it for money; we do it for love and our business. Our guiding principle is to spend our money responsibly. We care about land, we care about respect of life and we care about the people who work with us. If I die tomorrow, I have zero regrets about our business decisions.”
