“…our customers leave happy, our employees feel like they killed it…when you can hit that sweet spot…”
— Eric Tanaka, Chef & Managing Partner
Eric Tanaka, Chef and Managing Partner, Tom Douglas Company
Eric has been with TD & Co for nearly 30 years, opened 12+ restaurants with Tom Douglas- including Palace Kitchen back in 1996- and grew the company to over 1,000 hospitality professionals pre-COVID shutdown. Born and raised in Southern California, Eric originally studied Urban Planning before following his passion into the kitchen with a job as a prep cook. He was working at a restaurant in NYC when he first visited Seattle on a family vacation and turned down a job in San Francisco to work with Tom at Dahlia Lounge. Eric lives with his wife and 5 children in Seattle and is the self appointed Mayor of Aurora Ave.
Excerpts from a conversation at Palace Kitchen days prior to its reopening in April 2023.
We are sitting here in Palace Kitchen, reopening in three days April 22, 2023. And that is going to be the first time you're opening those doors back up to the public since March 15, 2020, from the initial {COVID} shutdown. When this originally opened, you were part of the opening team. How does it feel with reopening on the horizon?
In a different way, just as exciting. The first time is kind of like your first kid; there's so many unknowns, excitement, and not knowing all of the pieces that might be out there. As a first time parent, you don't really think about it, but having the experience of opening, you know, 15, 17 restaurants since then, some of the anxiety is gone. But then there are other anxieties that come with experience as well… I think the Palace has meant so much to so many different people, just hearing from everybody how excited they are. It's heartwarming…
What is your earliest memory of falling in love with food and hospitality?
I probably separate the two, because I really got into cooking because I love to eat. I didn't really conceive of hospitality until I actually started in this industry. And really, I'd say my first decade was really more about learning to cook…as I moved towards opening a restaurant, you do start to then think about what is the experience for the customer.
So, it was later on in my career that I really fully adopted hospitality or understood the importance and I think, for chefs, understanding that is a huge barrier. Sometimes I think it's easy to barricade yourself in the kitchen, and kind of not understand what's happening out front. I don't think that you can be a complete chef or restaurateur until you understand. The customers are really who you're feeding. You're not feeding your ego, you're not feeding yourself. Sometimes hopefully it feels good for yourself and for your ego. But the reality is, we're here to make our customers happy. We're here to make our team happy. Hopefully at that point, you're happy because they're happy. But if you're number one on that list, it's probably not a great experience for a lot of people. So I think subjecting yourself to finding what makes other people happy is important in this business because that to me is what we're here for.
Is there a specific memory of when the veil lifted and you started to be able to see that shift?
Here in Palace Kitchen. More so, because of the actual physical setup, our kitchen is really pretty much right in the dining room. And that as a concept, the open kitchen, in 1996, that was not really a thing. Now, all restaurants have open kitchens. Having that sense of being in the dining room, seeing people come in, we can literally see 40 people coming in, you're like, “Oh, boy, we gotta get ready, you know?”
…Every restaurant I worked at prior, the kitchen was not open. In New York, there were mostly basement kitchens…seeing customers made sense. Like, ‘Oh, wow, we're cooking for people.’
You had the opportunity to open a restaurant of your namesake Tanakasan back in 2013. Can you share a bit about how that concept came to be? Was the intention to honor your heritage?
Let's start with the heritage piece because I think it really starts there. I'm Japanese-American. My parents were both born in internment camps. A lot of this is rediscovering my heritage that way. As they were raised, it wasn't about trying to be Japanese. It was about trying to be American. My parents did not speak Japanese. I do not speak Japanese. My grandparents did not speak Japanese. My parents weren't really cooking a lot of Japanese food. They were cooking fried chicken, making peanut butter sandwiches on Wonder Bread. In a weird way, a lot about Tanakasan was about trying to reclaim some of that cultural, food heritage.
…coming from LA, which has so many different ethnic pieces to it, I understand myself more from that perspective now, because so many different parts of me…you'll see second third generation, Mexican kids taking over their family restaurants, and same thing with Vietnamese kids taking over their family restaurants, and really modernizing them, but also incorporating other influences, outside where maybe the family traditionally stayed with their recipes…I really enjoy that…my cultural piece in a food sense is more Italy; I cooked in LA and I love Italian food. And I do see the affinity between Italian and Japanese foods and style. They're very simple and they mesh well together…Tanakasan in itself was really more looking at a Japanese American restaurant via somebody from LA.
What does hospitality mean to you?
Hospitality in the (hopefully) optimum sense, is when our customers leave happy, our employees feel like they killed it, and then I also feel that same thing. Everybody that was there that day, just felt like that was amazing. We try so hard to be consistent with that…So [hospitality] to me, is when you can hit that sweet spot.
What are some of the things that you're looking to put into place to make that repeatable?
I think it starts every time with our team. If your team's not happy, nobody's gonna be happy. There are a lot of challenges through this pandemic. I think mental health has been challenging. I think cultural norms, in kitchens and restaurants, have come into the floor. And we've always worked on that. But I think just continuously tending to our team, their needs, creating safe spaces, being open to being challenged about that, it's important…you have to start by listening, being open to all of those pieces, because every day, it's a challenge…
Take us back to early March 2020. What went through your mind when you first heard or read about the shutdown?
I guess I thought we were gonna be closed for a month... there was never any sense that we were permanently closing. So, part of the calculus of why we did what we did, was we wanted to pay everybody what we owed them. We paid all our staff, we paid all our vendors…it was interesting as it really hyperly fast got worse and worse. Then, it was panic. It was depression.
We had our team of 11 all at Serious Pie takeout. That was like, overnight, different. But we were busy…in that sense, we're hustling. We didn't end up having time to think too much about the negative parts of it. We were just soldiering on making that work as best we could and figuring out what our next step was, but yeah, it was fear. I think it's really the big thing that came up.
Are there any in with a little bit of space from that time period? Any lessons that you have taken away from that?
…we have the power to make changes for our business and our team. And I think really, following through on those pieces… That second part is, all of those changes take a lot of communication… We learned a lot about communicating because, you know, “Are we 30% or 50% of our dining room? What is our mask-wearing policy?”... with all of these phases, you can make the decision, but then you'd have to say, “Okay, team, here's where we are with vaccinations. Here's where we are with mandatory masks. Here's where we are with serving alcohol outside of our doors, etc,”...
As you’ve shared, the focus this year for Tom Douglas Restaurants is on the customer experience. What are some of the things that you're trying to double down on?
…our communication, being transparent, and explaining our expectations…without really fully putting forward expectations, it becomes hard to hold people to a standard…doubling down once again, on the communication of expectations, being transparent with what we want, and expecting the same …If there's an issue with them, doing what we need to have done, then we can make accommodations… But getting to that place, where there's a dialogue about “how do we improve?”...That's what we want to see for ourselves this year is improvement. And it doesn't have to be overnight or perfect. We just want to see that we're building that quality on a day by day basis.
Are there other shifts that you've noticed in diner behavior as we're moving into this “post-pandemic”?
Yeah, I think early pandemic, customers were so supportive and understanding as we got further, further away from that, less understanding, and {they} really just want what they want. So that's been a change. But I understand things are expensive. You know, I think of myself in the same way, being like, man, I've been at this restaurant for 10 years, and like, the prices have doubled. But, you know, sometimes experience hasn't doubled. You know, there's these false equivalencies like, oh, as the prices get more expensive and should be better, but you know, you're just keeping pace with the cost of the inputs.
How do you know it's time to open a new concept?
…It’s more about the talent that you have internally…we've always … hired from within, promoted from within. So that was always our calculus: when we had great people…I think putting the concept before the people, in our kind of business, the way that we do it is promoting within and it's hard. Anything, culturally, bringing people from the outside, it's a little more difficult than (with) people that have been raised in it and understand it, and can fluidly operate within it.
What’s your panic meal?
Whatever is in my fridge. And that's it. I do enjoy crafting something good out of nothing…to me that is kind of dinner every night. My wife will do the shopping so I have to cook whatever she has there.
What is the most requested meal by your kids?
Split pea soup. By far. All five of my kids. And it's kind of an odd one because I don't know too many people that love split pea soup..
What is the cookbook that you've had the longest that you still refer back to?
The one I’ve had the longest is a Silver Palate cookbook. I will have to say that I don't refer back to cookbooks anymore because of the internet… but just quick reference and as a base for where to go…
What dish at Palace Kitchen are you most excited to have again?
The “PLIN”, just the little ravioli, at the Palace…It's so simple but so delicious. And late at night, it's awesome.
What is the best or worst piece of advice you've received?
I appreciate anybody who gives advice…somebody's going out of their way to help you. Whether it helps or not, might be on you. But I appreciate that people have gone out of their way… I'd never worked in a restaurant before. And I was terrible. But it was an amazing group of people that really helped me every day to be better. And I appreciate that effort … in a kitchen, you'll have a million people tell you how to do something a million different ways. It's up to you at some point to figure out what's the best way for yourself…
