Kari Brunson (Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Mike Urban)

Dancer Cooks Up New Career

Marcie Sillman
09/04/2009

For most of her life, Kari Brunson had one driving passion: to be a ballet dancer. She took classes, worked hard, pushed her body. And Brunson achieved her goal. For the past seven years, Kari Brunson has danced professionally with Pacific Northwest Ballet. But this summer, during the dance company's annual hiatus, the ballerina discovered a new passion: food. And a new stage: the kitchen at one of Seattle's finest restaurants.

Charles Walpole is grilling burgundy radicchio leaves at Anchovies and Olives restaurant.

Walpole: "This goes in a salad with corona beans, grapefruit and sliced octopus."

Walpole is the chef de cuisine at this new Capitol Hill hotspot, the man in charge of the menu and kitchen operations. They call him "chef." They call former ballerina Kari Brunson "stage." That's from the French word for stay, or internship.

Brunson: "Everyone calls each other chef. I don't feel like a chef. Chef Manu named me Stage, and it kinda stuck."

Brunson is standing across a huge butcher block island from Chef Charles, stacking a pile of menus. She seems perfectly at ease in the sleek, modern restaurant. Brunson says that's not how she felt earlier this summer, on her first day at Anchovies and Olives.

Brunson: "I did really bad the first day. It was like 'Edward Scissorhands' on my fingers."

Kari Brunson is pretty new to cooking. Even cutting a cauliflower was a challenge. For most of her 26 years, Brunson's life has revolved around ballet. She's been dancing with Pacific Northwest Ballet since 2002. But Brunson says she's always enjoyed eating fine food, and a few years ago, she decided it was time to learn how to make it herself,

Brunson: "So, one summer I sat and watched the Food Network. I didn't know the recipes were online. I'd sit with a notepad and frantically write down recipes."

And then she'd cook them. Two and a half years ago, Brunson started a food blog to chronicle her progress in the kitchen.

Brunson: "I'd dance all day long, I would plan the meal I wanted to make. Then I would come home, I would cook the meal, take one photograph, and then I'd put it online — I'd put up the recipe, maybe write a bit about it."

Brunson dreamed of working in a restaurant some day, after her dancing career ended. Her husband Erik told her to give it a try now.

Brunson: "He's like, you have to do it, it's going to change your life. It's going to basically tell you if you want to do it or not. It's a yes or no, not an in between."

And here's where Kari Brunson had connections on her side. She asked PNB's former artistic director, Francia Russell, to put in a good word for her with Russell's son, Ethan Stowell. He owns four acclaimed Seattle restaurants.

Brunson: "I wanted to do it myself, but I realized as a woman ballet dancer, to go into a kitchen, say I want to cook — you are just not taken seriously."

Brunson says after Russell talked to her son, Stowell agreed to let her intern at Anchovies and Olives.

Brunson: "He told me I would do Thursday, Friday, Saturday, two to ten. And then he said, 'On a trial basis, I'll find out if you work out that first weekend, we'll go from there.'"

The rest, he said, was up to Brunson.

Brunson: "The first night I got there at two, and at ten, one of the chefs said, 'You can leave.' I said, 'What time are you leaving?' He said, 'We stop at twelve.' I said, 'I'm staying.'"

By the third day, the chefs told her she could stay as long as she liked. Brunson's internship was supposed to last five weeks, during the ballet company's summer hiatus. But a funny thing happened when Brunson went back to her day job. She really missed being in the kitchen. In fact, she kind of resented her time away from her new friends at Anchovies and Olives. So Kari Brunson went in to talk to PNB's artistic director, Peter Boal.

Brunson: "I said, 'This is gonna shock you, I'm resigning today.' His mouth dropped open, and he said, 'Are you sure?' And I explained I was, I had fallen in love with the restaurant world, cooking. I was cheating on ballet."

Brunson will spend the next few months cycling through the kitchens of Ethan Stowell's four restaurants. Stowell says that experience will probably serve her just as well as a stint at culinary school.

Stowell: "It's not an art, it's a craft, and how good you are depends on how much work you're willing to put into it. So, she needs to work on knife skills, she has a ways to go, but she should do fine, should do well."

Brunson realizes she's starting on the bottom of the ladder in this new career. She calls herself an amoeba, the lowest of the low. You'd think that would discourage her, but it seems to have the opposite effect.

Brunson: "It's a different world. I get to start fresh, be bad, and make myself good. Which is what I felt like I'd done with ballet. I wasn't the talented little child that would soar through the ranks. I pushed, I made myself be a dancer. So now I'm gonna make myself be a chef."

Watching the cooks dance between the ovens and cutting boards at Anchovies and Olives, it's easy to imagine the graceful Brunson will have no problem joining the cast here. Meanwhile, it's five o'clock, curtain time.

Walpole: "Oh, wow, we're open. We'd better hurry up!"

I'm Marcie Sillman, KUOW News.

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