For seven years, Gordon Naccarato has operated one of Tacoma’s top fine dining destinations – Pacific Grill in downtown Tacoma, located inside the historic Waddell Building. Naccarato’s restaurant resume is three decades deep with stops at some of the finest West Coast kitchens of yesteryear and today – he’s cooked with Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton at Campanile, Michael McCarty of Michael’s in Santa Monica, and Jonathan Waxman, whom Naccarato credits for teaching him to view food from a playful perch.
The following excerpts are from a series of e-mail interviews with Naccarato, who not only owns Pacific Grill with business partner Joe Hardwick Jr., but has collaborated on a number of projects with his brother Steve Naccarato. One of those projects is Shake Shake Shake, a retro burger restaurant that will open in the Stadium neighborhood later this year. Stadium, by the way, is the high school from which Naccarato graduated in 1972. Read on. Read more »