Chef Scott Clark made headlines back in 2017 when he stepped away from his fine dining career in the kitchens of San Francisco Michelin-starred Benu and Saison to start a small, casual eatery in a train caboose in Half Moon Bay. Dad’s Luncheonette quickly gained a cult following.
Now, Clark is releasing a cookbook celebrating the California coast: “Coastal: 130 Recipes from a California Road Trip” (Chronicle Books, $35), which will land in bookstores on March 4.
We recently chatted with him to hear more about the project.
Q: What inspired this cookbook?
A: The inspiration — the powder keg — was a road trip I took with Betsy Andrews, the co-writer, and Cheyenne Ellis, the photographer, from Half Moon Bay down to Ventura County. We had this epic adventure, the three of us with my daughter, and were on the road for seven days, cruising around and eating and hiking and doing all this fun stuff and meeting with really cool producers and farmers and foragers for an article. And when the article ran, it was three paragraphs.
We were like, “There’s so much here to continue to unpack and to showcase.” A deeper inspiration for me was to try to take some of the stuffiness away from understanding the California “dreamscape” pedestal, making it easy to digest and a ton of fun. There’s a lot of marginalia in the book. I wanted all my years of being chained to the stove at three Michelin-star restaurants and all the things that I’ve learned to be transferable to people who just want to cook from home.
“Coastal: 130 Recipes from a California Road Trip” from Chronicle Books
Q: The book strikes a balance between celebrating local ingredients and making cooking accessible…
A: That’s definitely something we were going for. I come from the world of impeccable precision. That worked for me for quite some time, but then eventually it didn’t. And it doesn’t for a lot of people. There are beautiful books that are the epitome of what the heart and soul of fine dining is. I’m more interested in creating confidence and a good foundation to understand how to build flavors.
Q: Can you talk a bit about your move from the Michelin world to Dad’s Luncheonette?
A: I dropped out of college without really any plan. I had always really wanted to cook, my mom was in restaurants, and I was always in and around kitchens. They had this draw for me, this lore that I really wanted to be a part of. It wasn’t until everything fell apart that I was able to say, “This is a phoenix moment. It’s all burned down. What am I going to do from this point forward?’” So I lied, cheated and cried my way into the best restaurant that I could in the beginning of my career and then just followed that trajectory in. Looking back on my career, a toxic way: Purpose and identity were very much tied to awards and production and being able to work harder and longer.
When I had my daughter, those obtuse fallacies fell apart rather quickly. I started to recognize pretty early on that the father that I wanted to be and the life that I wanted to give my child, as well as the life that I felt was actually calling me, wasn’t going to come from 16 hours a day at work, screaming at people and being miserable. It was going to mean figuring it out again, burning it all down, having a phoenix moment, and really diving back into what made me happy, as a human being and as a chef.
It was an opportunity for me to reevaluate where I was and move into a more purposeful existence for myself. It was very much about being able to have a balance and do it on my own time. Seeing a beautiful little girl born into the world kind of made me (forego) all of that Michelin stuff.
Chef Scott Clark of Dad’s Luncheonette cooks up Hen of the Woods mushrooms. (Courtesy Cheyenne Ellis)
Q: How do you feel about that decision now?
A: I wouldn’t change a thing.
Q: What are some of your favorite things — foragers, ingredients, anything — in this book?
A: It was really cool to meet some great people, like Anthony who forages out of Monterey County and Spencer Marley, who forages seaweed in Morro Bay, and better understand the connection of the world around us. If there’s one thing that California is, it is edible. You can eat everything around you, with the proper knowledge. Knowing where things come from and understanding that they got here through a lot of really hard work from people that care very deeply. Those are the people that matter.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: My constant evolution is toward paring down, focusing on ingredients and doing less to them. I eat very simply. I’m starting to cook more and more simply. That comes with a general respect for the ingredient and a deeper understanding of how to coax out its flavor.
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Details: “Coastal: 130 Recipes from a California Road Trip” by Scott Clark of Dad’s Luncheonette with Betsy Andrews and Cheyenne Ellis (Chronicle Books, $35) is out March 4. Dad’s Luncheonette is open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursday-Sunday at 225 Cabrillo Highway South in Half Moon Bay; dadsluncheonette.com.
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