04/01/2022
There are two things I’m not tying to do in this post right now but I’m about to do both. The first is brag and the second is make you sad.
I’d like to present to you Chef’s riff on a Paragon original dish: ‘Chicken Pot Pie (But make it Fashion).’ Braised chicken, bacon, roasted vegetables, mushroom à la crème and fried broccolini florets.
Here’s where I get braggy, but hopefully it’s at least a . I have had the absolute pleasure of working with Chef since the very beginning of the pandemic. His creativity, passion and incredible palate is a huge reason we survived the closures, mandates and pandemic related stressors on our industry for the past two years. It’s dishes like this that remind me how lucky I am that he forced me to FaceTime him for his interview over two years ago. I knew the second I hung up that we’d be hiring him. My first call? One of my only remaining partners (he’s not staff- he’s my equal if not more so), Frankie. Because obviously Frankie makes all the decisions (which is the other reason Paragon survived the pandemic).
Now here’s the sad part. We survived the close downs, we survived not receiving the same grants other restaurants in our city did; instead we made it through with creativity and pure grit. And now, we’ve lost our lease. Our landlord elected to replace us with a ‘better tenant.’
As we bow out somewhat gracefully (or perhaps pirouette if you know chef very well), I want to invite you in to try THIS DISH. Because this dish was one that Paragon opened with in 1994, but it’s also the definition of what Paragon became through the pandemic. It’s beautiful, it’s inventive and it’s goddamned delicious.
Best,
K 🥃 @ Paragon Seattle