Home Grown: A celebration of local culinary enterprise

Dustin and Derek Ronspies: Brother Act

Clearwater, Florida, 40 years ago, would not have been a culinary hotbed. (Not that Seattle was, either.) The best-known kitchen, Bern's Steakhouse, was a good half hour across the Tampa Bay causeway. And yet, from this land of stone crab and fried grouper, from ethnic neighborhoods like Ybor City featuring Cuban sandwiches and Greek salads, came the Ronspies brothers.

Dustin (left), Derek (right)

Dustin, lanky, goofy, older by two years, found work as a dishwasher, then as a line cook (six years at Outback Steakhouse), while earning credits toward a degree in architecture, which he traded for culinary school, and in whose alumni newsletter he found an ad for a chef with a luxury travel enterprise in France. As it happened, it was the famous Buddy Bombard hot-air balloon company, headquartered just across the peninsula in Boca Raton. The balloon gig was followed by a stint as private chef to a globe-trotting billionaire, then a tour as chef on a yacht. One port of call was Seattle, and Dustin disembarked. Eight years ago he found a rundown spot in Wallingford that became The Art of the Table. Twice now he has been named a finalist in the James Beard ranking of regional chefs. "It's about life, nourishing oneself, nourishing others."

Dustin's cooking is quite sophisticated. A typical plate: butter poached octopus, duck gizzard, shiitake, cilantro fried rice, carrot butter, chili oil, orange-vanilla vinaigrette. Twenty-eight seats, including the chef's table overlooking the kitchen. There's a manifesto of sorts: "Put away your phone, eat your fish skin, slurp your broth, gnaw your bone, eat your micro-greens, lick your plate, eat your cheese rind, have a cocktail, try everything, use your fingers when applicable, hold onto your silverware, enjoy your time here."

An early sous-chef was his little brother, Derek, more intense, who'd been working as a server in Colorado while taking computer animation classes. "I hated waiting tables," Derek told me, "but I loved working the kitchen." His particular interest was charcuterie. After a stint on Nantucket and a foray to Argentina, he turned up in Seattle. After hours, the brothers, along with Dustin's wife, pastry chef Shannon Van Horn, would go for beers and ramen at Showa, the upstairs annex above Chiso's in Fremont.

In 2013, Derek took over that very space, just half a mile west of AOTT, and launched his own restaurant; he called it Le Petit Cochon, the little pig. All of 39 seats. The menu makes a brief nod in the direction of the ocean (Neah Bay black cod), but is otherwise concentrated on the four-legged denizens of farms and ranches. A true snout-to-tail restaurant, in other words. Pork chops, of course. But also brisket, short ribs, offal, bone marrow. It's what Derek calls "Swine Dining." No dish is more iconic than his Phat-Ass Pork Chop, a hunk of meat five inches thick, served on a cutting board. The website is gettinpiggy.com. If you order the Smokey Pig Face Fritter, it comes with fennel, Penn Cove mussels, Rockwell beans, za'atar "whippy," and lemon oil.

What distinguishes the Ronspies brothers from the flock of farm-to-table restaurants around town is that they take the farm part very seriously. They're not just names out of a directory but friends. Dustin's website, www.artofthetable.net/philosophy, lists an even dozen. Farmers like Brent Olsen, Jason and Siri Salvo, ranchers like John and Rose Aschenbrenner, George and Eiko Vojkovich, Kurt Timmermeister.

Liver? Well, duck liver, foie gras, one of life's great pleasures, they both love it. Derek especially is fond of offal. But the liver of a four-legged beast? Says Dustin, "The most vile thing in the world. I won't serve it."

The brothers don't cook in the same kitchen very often these days, but they do get together. One gets the feeling they were not always such pals growing up, but now, as grown-ups, as chefs, as friendly rivals, good buddies they are. Switch kitchens? Not likely. Share a pop-up, why not?

Ronald Holden/January 2016

Ronald Holden's next book of true tales about the local food scene, Forking Seattle, is due to be released in the summer of 2016.