“Chefs don’t keep shit in the fridge,” he says. He makes dinner for people at the Corson Building (his urban refuge in Georgetown that’s poised to challenge the Herbfarm in the destination-restaurant category), while he still runs Sitka & Spruce (his tiny, famous local/organic wonder located in a strip mall). He’s rarely home, and he rarely has people over, much less for dinner parties. His condo—a small, low-ceilinged haven in a quaint Anhalt building on Capitol Hill—is very quiet. It pours rain outside. His dog climbs on the couch, lies down and yawns. Dillon says unconvincingly that the dog, named Che, isn’t allowed up there.

Bareness of cupboard is relative, however. He inventories his refrigerator peremptorily: pickles (“My friend Erin’s mom made them”). Corn tortillas. Pommery Moutarde au Poivre Vert, a French mustard with green peppercorns. Seville orange marmalade from St. John restaurant in London (famous among gastronomes for nose-to-tail cooking). Pickled Asian vegetable salad from PCC. Lettuce from a friend’s garden. Red onion. A lime. Cabbage. Shallots. Some cider. Campari. A bunch of vitamins. A growler from Georgetown Brewing Company.

Dillon’s flush in the ice cream department, with Ben and Jerry’s Turtle Soup and Pistachio Pistachio; lemon sorbet; and one individual-serving-size Häagen-Dazs chocolate. Also in the freezer: Trader Joe’s toaster waffles, bread from Columbia City Bakery, chicken stock in ice cube trays, more stock with picked chicken in it, and an ice mask.

In the larder: Iraqi date syrup from Big John’s PFI, a Seattle treasury of imported foods. Molasses. Torrone, an almond nougat confection from Spain. A jar of pigs’ trotters from Spain. “Some weird beans from Spain. Some reallllly good tuna in olive oil. Some reallllly good flat fillets of anchovy in soy oil.” Sardines. Wheat germ. A canister of Show Me the Whey—“I don’t know what that is.” Vanilla extract. Spices. Tea. Vegetable bouillon. More vitamins.

Dillon’s patient, but it’s clear that the contents of his home kitchen do not capture his imagination. He wants to talk about the Corson Building, his labor of love, which opened this past spring after a much-longer-than-anticipated renovation. It’s a picturesque 1910 Mediterranean revival building surrounded by fruit trees, raised garden beds, wisteria, roses, and a stone fountain of Venus, with doves and chickens in cages—all nearly under an I-5 off-ramp, directly under the flight pattern for Boeing Field, and hard by the train tracks.

The restaurant’s only open a few nights a week, by reservation only, one seating, with a set menu along the same simple, scrupulously sourced lines as Sitka & Spruce (though quite a bit pricier). He’s looking more to Middle Eastern and eastern European cuisines for inspiration, he says. Brunch at the Corson is beginning soon.

He’s excited to cook in the Corson’s “cozy-ass” kitchen and braise stuff in the outdoor brick oven this autumn, and for the first annual harvest party.

“We're going to set up pickling booths. And do massive amounts of cocaine”—he laughs; this is a joke about the unimpeachable, pastoral niceness of the event—“and we're gonna get a keg of New Zealand beer.” He’s serious about the keg, as well as about community; the harvest party will be a benefit, and the Corson’s already hosted a cookout for Seattle Youth Garden Works, Georgetown do-gooders par excellence.

But, he says, “You just wanted to find out the contents of my fridge."

Does he have any stories of the refrigerator of his youth?

“Yessss…” he trails off. “All I ever had in mine was cocktail wieners and macaroni and cheese. ”

What kind of macaroni and cheese?

“I don’t remember. I’m not even sure my mom got Kraft—whatever the generic kind at the grocery store was. And then when I was eight, I went over to a friend’s house, and I’d never really seen a fridge before with food—full, with carrots and lemons.

"Therefore my mother always says that I learned how to cook out of desperation, not inspiration. My mother worked to keep food on the table… that’s my fridge story. ”

A pause.

“I have a good freezer story, ” he says. “When I worked at the Herbfarm, I bought a freezer for the restaurant and put it in the basement of my house. I would store stuff there—berries and whatever—and I’d bring it over to the restaurant. And, um, I got divorced. My ex-wife stayed in the house, and I left the freezer there. But then she moved out.

“I went over there to clean one day, and I took these bags of spot prawns out of the freezer and put them in the laundry sink. And I left. But the people who owned the house weren't coming home for a few months.”

Uh oh.

“So a few months later, they came home to toxic spot prawns rotting in the laundry sink.”

That must’ve been fragrant.

“Oh, I bet it was delicious.”

Does he think he did it on purpose? A subconscious thing?

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Actually she's really cool. It was a good divorce.”

Bethany Jean Clement is a writer and editor. Her work may be found in The Stranger and in Best Food Writing 2008.

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