Chef Gordon Naccarato recently received a complaint from a diner frustrated with Naccarato’s potato pancake.

“(The customer) grumbled that it was like a McDonald’s hash brown,” Naccarato, chef and owner of Tacoma’s Pacific Grill, says.

No sooner did Naccarato finish the statement then a smile spread across his nicely tanned face. “That’s a compliment to me,” he laughs. “Really. McDonalds makes a great hash brown.”
This from a chef who shared ownership of a critically acclaimed Aspen restaurant with Bruce Paltrow and Blythe Danner; who commanded the kitchen for five Labor Day soirees hosted by Neil Diamond; who cooked veggies for Michael Jackson; who served as Jack Nicholson and Don Henley’s chef at their famous Monkey Bar in L.A.; who received Food & Wine’s 10 Best New American Chefs of the Year distinction in 1988; and who cooked for sitting Supreme Court justices of the United States.

“I’m not a food snob,” Naccarato adds. “McDonalds has it wired — they have consistency down — that’s always the challenge for a restaurant.”

Chatting hash browns with Naccarato seems par for the course. I stopped in to ask him about ceviche recently and ended up discussing everything from fast food to blogging to ramen.
“McDonalds also makes the best french fries,” he continues, his eyes lighting up.

Talk about obsessed.

Quick bio

Gordon Naccarato grew up in Tacoma like many of us. Unlike us, though, his dad sports three World Series rings. Boxing announcer and two-time president of the Tacoma Athletic Commission, Stan Naccarato played in the Cincinnati Reds baseball franchise before arriving in Tacoma to raise his children and manage the then Tacoma Tigers for 20 years.

Gordon Naccarato began his adulthood at Loyola University’s law school but left, he told Great Chefs Television, because “I realized I wasn’t going to be happy practicing law.” He started waiting tables at Los Angeles’ Michaels, working his way into the kitchen, eventually leaving to run the show at Gordon’s in Aspen with Paltrow and Danner.

He opened and closed the now defunct Beach House/Margarita Beach Cafe in Gig Harbor, but it’s at the Pacific Grill where this Tacoma boy feels at home.

More important matters

Naccarato’s biographical information above came from research I did online — the chef spent little face time with me discussing his past, choosing instead to talk at great length about Tacoma’s future.

He gives high praise to the restaurateurs blazing new ground in this town — bringing finely crafted food to the neighborhoods — trailblazers like Charlie McManus and Troy Christian, who opened Maxwell’s Speakeasy. He hopes more neighborhood-centric restaurants with “real senses of personal style” will follow despite the competition they bring to his own establishment. Naccarato has a saying: “Good restaurants don’t hurt good restaurants. Good restaurants hurt bad restaurants.” He walks that walk, often promoting and plugging his competition on his Web site.

Naccarato gives little love, however, to those institutions that rest on their laurels, going on and on like a disappointed father about longtime institutions charging high prices for mediocre food. Not that Naccarato wants to get into many discussions about prices — he’s been through that wringer already when he chose to participate openly on the News Tribune’s food blog. Writing under the handle, Chef Gordon Naccarato, he tried to explain to readers why restaurants charge what they do, but when someone said restaurant owners are like serial killers and no one came to his defense, he stopped and started his own blog (blog.pacificgrilltacoma.com).

“There’s too much mudslinging at that site,” he says.

Writing online helps keep the creative juices flowing for this self-described “frustrated writer.”
“Blogging helps me tap into my urge to express myself,” he says.

Recent posts include an enthusiastic review of Hotel Murano’s Bite restaurant, a discussion of black truffles one of his servers brought back from France, and “Sayulita — Paradise found.”

What’s next?

Naccarato envisions owning more restaurants in the future — a sort of Tom Douglas (the Seattle mega-restaurateur and chef) of the South Sound. Already he plans to open a convention space on the other side of the Courtyard by Marriott from Pacific Grill — booking parties already for December 2008. The 5,500-square-foot, three-banquet room space is a natural extension of the work he already does for the Marriott as the hotel’s food vendor.

Naccarato will also open a lounge concept he calls an “appetizers all day long” place in an undisclosed Tacoma location sometime soon. He’ll focus on small plates at reasonable prices.

“The most expensive thing will be like $14,” he adds. “I could see flatbread pizzas and playful things like fish sticks.”

Naccarato enjoys well-prepared food with touches of whimsy — like the blue cheese tater tots he’s made famous at Pacific Grill.

Naccarato also sees himself owning a fast food restaurant in the future. For a guy who loves McDonald’s french fries as much as he does, that makes perfect sense.

[Pacific Grill, 1502 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.627.3535, pacificgrilltacoma.com]