“I’m a thinker,” says Thanawat Bates, executive chef at Denver’s Palace Arms restaurant. “It takes me a long time to plan a dish.”
Bates, 29, known for extravagant, precise cooking, took over the Palace Arms kitchen in 2005. Since then, he’s done a lot of thinking.
“Every dish I make, I always do a sketch first. I think about the china. I think about the room. I think about the fact that our clients are dressed up — I want to present dishes in a way that they won’t spill on themselves. I think about everything.”
Bates knows he’s walking a culinary tightrope at Palace Arms, shouldering the traditions of one of Denver’s most historic and beloved restaurants while weaving contemporary constructions and global flavors into the experience. It’s not always an easy act, but Bates relies on a simple tenet: balance.
“Just because the room is historic doesn’t mean you can’t have a modern twist on things. You can balance them. I apply a lot of French technique, but I’m always going to have my heritage of Asian culture to add to it: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, all on the same plate. Balance.”
Bates’ resume is untraditional; Unlike most chefs at his level, he doesn’t have a degree from a top cooking school. He studied at Colorado Mountain College, then bounced around kitchens on both coasts — the Ritz-Carlton in Washington and the St. Regis Hotel in Beverly Hills among them — before arriving at the Brown Palace to work with the banquets team.
His cooking made early waves in-house, and when Palace Arms executive chef Wade Hageman decamped for California, Bates was tapped to helm the kitchen.
“There are textbooks, and there is talent and raw passion for food,” says Marcel Pitton, managing director of the Brown Palace. “From the beginning, I noticed and tasted the qualities and skills in Chef Bates’ creations, and flavors that went far beyond education.”
New idea, new dish
Bates keeps his creative gene in play by constantly switching up dishes — even sacred Palace cows such as Bison Rossini — sometimes at a moment’s notice.
“My staff knows that dishes will change. Some days I’ll have a new sketch,” he says. “And if we accidentally burn something, we taste it. Can we turn it into something useful? Can we find a fatty ingredient and crust it with ash? We try to challenge our minds and see what else can we do.”
It’s no small task to maintain this kind of inventive curiosity in such a grueling business, but Bates has an advantage: He has the rhythms of a restaurant in his soul. At 12, after moving with his mother and stepfather from his native Thailand to Lander, Wyo., the family opened the only Thai restaurant in town. Bates pitched in.
“I saw how hard you have to work to have a restaurant, so I knew. When you have a small family restaurant, everyone does everything. I’d take an order, put the ticket on the rail, cook the order, bring it to the table, then do dishes later.”
Grunt work didn’t dissuade Bates, who instead capitalized on his reservoir of experience. “I wanted to do two things: art school and culinary school. So I thought, well, my mom owns a restaurant. This is an advantage. And anyway, food is like art. It starts conversations.”
Four years into his post, Bates hasn’t entirely changed the long-standing culinary conversation at Palace Arms, a conversation that goes back nearly 60 years, but he’s colored it with more vivid, provocative hues.
Contrarian dishes
The tableside Caesar salad still exists, but so does a contrarian dish Bates calls “Expression of Beef Wellington” — a composed plate of discrete Wellington parts: foie gras torchon, a puff pastry crisp, a brush of madeira reduction. Bananas Foster is still available, but so is an elaborate dessert (created with pastry chef James Gallo) entitled “Contemporary Sundae,” a punchy assembly of a brownie-like cookie separated by a stripe of peanut butter from a beehive of cherry cotton candy, punctuated with Devonshire cream and banana.
Bates, according to Pitton, “brought an intriguing twist to Palace Arms that the room and its guests had never experienced before.” At times these juxtapositions — cotton candy served under a portrait of Napoleon — have been jarring (see sidebar), but as Bates’s tenure continues, he’s found ways to harmonize with the room.
Bates acknowledges that it hasn’t always been easy for the exacting clientele to accept the evolution. But he is undaunted. “I think you just have to sell it. Being a chef these days is not just about cooking anymore. Pretty much every night I try to go out and touch all the tables.”
But not every customer gets it, and Bates, who counts his own mother among his biggest critics (“She doesn’t like my food,” he says, “she thinks it’s too fancy”) faces his share of criticism from diners.
“I take everything personally. But I always listen. That kind of thing built my character. Maybe I have to work 10 times as hard, but I’ll get it right. It’s like when I was learning English. I didn’t give up. I couldn’t.”
In it for the people
Bates the artist recognizes that his medium — food — is, by its nature, impermanent. But this doesn’t discourage Bates the chef and restaurateur. He’s in it for the people.
“The best I can do is give great food, great service,” he said. “I can give them a warm welcome, and say thanks when they go. The only thing a customer leaves with is a memory. If I can help paint that memory, that’s the best I can ask for.”
Tucker Shaw: tshaw@denverpost.com
Colorado ingredients? Yes, but only if it’s right
For all his modern cookery, Palace Arms chef Thanawat Bates comes from the old school when it comes to sourcing ingredients: He is discerning and demanding. “I have all my vendors’ cellphone numbers,” he says. “I need to know when they go on vacation, how I can reach them, who I’m supposed to be talking to while they’re gone.”
And while other area chefs proudly tout their use of locally grown products, for Bates, the quality and character of the ingredient in hand trumps its provenance.
“Yes, I use Colorado asparagus, Colorado peaches. But certain things from here are just not consistent. Asparagus has to be a certain diameter. I will use Colorado ingredients if they’re right, but not just because they’re from Colorado.”
