New Marriott chef ready to spice things up

At the Redmond Marriott Town Center, 7401 164th Ave. NE, a new executive chef has put traditional East Coast dishes and playful twists on Pacific Northwest cuisine on the menus for Meritage Restaurant and the hotel’s banquet rooms.

Steven Scaia grew up in Syracuse, N.Y. and decided to be a chef when he was 10 years old. A graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., he started out as a fry cook and dishwasher at the tender age of 14 and was promoted to line cook two years later. He’s been with Marriott for 11 years and worked at their properties in Washington, D.C., Williamsburg, Va., Atlanta and Baltimore before settling down in Redmond three months ago.

Scaia defined his cooking style as “simple elegance ... a combination of old favorites and Northwest favorites. We use a lot of local vendors and ingredients. In the Town Center Salad, we get our ingredients right here at the Saturday Market. We get local strawberry and rhubarb for our crisp (which is served with vanilla ice cream),” he said.

On the dinner menu, there are Chef’s Selection entrees specially created by his staff, including Chef Matt’s Meatloaf, Chef Akshay’s Paella and also Scaia’s own Chef Steve’s Herb Roasted Airline Breast of Chicken with Sweet Potato Succotash & Red Wine Glace.

The Chef’s Selections will reflect seasonal tastes and will change four times each year.

There will always be vegan or vegetarian items on the menus, too. “I’m cognizant of their needs and expectations,” Scaia noted. “My wife is a vegan so I am always up on ways to present new options.”

He has 28 employees in food/beverage service at the Redmond Marriott Town Center, including 19 in the kitchen and a purchasing agent. “It’s a young, energetic staff and we read all the cooking magazines and books that we can,” he said.

We asked Scaia how he feels about the Food Network. Some pros in the food industry feel its popularity has made people more excited about dining out while others think it cheapens their art or gives viewers a skewed idea of what they do.

Scaia smiled and graciously remarked that the Food Network does “a lot of good things meant to meet the needs of people cooking at home — it’s not geared to professionals, of course.”

He said his favorite “real” chef on TV is Mario Batali, who shares his Italian heritage. In fact, Scaia’s family tree includes several ancestors and a sister who were/are professional cooks or bakers.

Paying homage to his roots, Scaia offers brick oven pizzas with hand-stretched or Focaccia crusts and a housemade Italian sausage that comes from his own family recipe. It has just five easy ingredients: “ground pork, Kosher salt, black pepper, nutmeg and garlic — and people can’t believe it tastes so good for being so simple,” he said.

He’s found that lots of diners enjoy watching chefs use the brick ovens. At the hostess stand, they’re asked, “Do you want to be close to the action or not?”

We noticed some unusual varieties of “sliders” on the Meritage menu. Anyone from the Eastern U.S. or Midwest knows sliders as White Castle hamburgers — small, rectangular burgers with mushy buns and a goopy layer of steamed onions. Rest assured, the sliders at Meritage are different.

Scaia had done lobster sliders in Baltimore and here in Redmond, he makes Eastside Salmon Sliders with Avocado Mayo. You get a small sourdough bun, toasted, with avocado mayo, sliced tomatoes, local field greens and a pan-seared portion of salmon.

His Black Angus Sliders are actually German-style burgers made with bread crumbs, egg and secret spices, he explained. He “road tested” them at two big wine festivals this summer, the Kirkland Encore and the Woodinville Wine Highway, where they were a resounding success.

Being out at these events was an excellent way to let more people know about Meritage, he added. There’s usually a good lunch crowd between locals and visiting business people. Dinner crowds are split about 50/50 between hotel guests and locals.

As such, Scaia’s careful to keep signature, tried-and-true entrees such as the Marriott Burger on the menu, with the same recipe that’s been featured for decades. The Classic Turkey Club at Meritage is another of his best sellers.

“People like foods that they can recognize,” he concluded.

For more information about Meritage, visit www.experiencemeritage.com or call (425) 498-4000.

Mary Stevens Decker can be reached at mdecker@reporternewspapers.com or at (425) 867-0353, ext. 5052.

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