Stephen Scott - Chef of Zola

For Zola chef, it started with grandma

The first time I met Stephen Scott, it was 5:30 in the morning over a decade ago. He was standing in the basement of i Matti on 18th Street NW, one of Roberto Donna’s stable of nine restaurants, now closed. He was doing something unfathomable with a large lump of sourdough starter, trying to introduce its microbes into the atmosphere to create the perfect rising room for bread.

This kind of dedication to producing really good food has taken him on a very long journey, from Roberto Donna to the Italy of his ancestors to other familiar restaurant names in the nation’s capital. Now it has him at Zola, the restaurant of Penn Quarter’s International Spy Museum, where he’s also in charge of catering and the Spy City Cafe.

Along the way, he’s owned his own restaurant, the much-praised Argia’s in Falls Church, whose kitchen he’s recently been separated from by divorce. He was the chef there for seven-and-a-half years.

Scott has always cooked. His grandmother made sure of that. She had traveled over from Italy by herself at 16 to join her Italian husband in the early 1900s. “She got the ball rolling [for me] at a very young age. [I was] making fresh pastas with her, and stocks, from age 4 on up.”

Though his father wasn’t Italian, he embraced the Italian way of life, Scott says. The extended family lived in Boston, half an hour away on the T from the city’s Italian quarter. The whole family — grandmother, mother, father, kids — would travel in on the week-ends to do the grocery shopping.

“My grandmother did the traditional Italian thing,” Scott says. “She had a huge garden in back. Every bit of produce, every herb, she grew herself. She made her own wine out of grapes she grew.” And until the authorities objected, she even raised chickens and rabbits in her back yard.

Still, Scott tried to deny the cooking bug, taking himself off to Jos. A. Bank Clothiers in South Carolina, where he became the youngest manager in the company’s history. “I just took a break to see if there was something else I wanted to do. But I missed the adrenaline rush of busy kitchen nights.”

So he went back into the restaurant world. He worked closely with Roberto Donna for years, helping him open all four Il Radicchio restaurants and doing his cookbook with him. On days off, he put in time with other chefs, Jean-Louis Palladin at the Watergate among them, to increase his experience. “I asked Roberto: Could you set me up with others to learn?”

One summer, a professor from a culinary school outside Bologna, one of Donna’s best friends growing up, came to Washington on his three-month break and ate regularly at Roberto Donna’s. He ended up staying with Scott and his sister and spending time with the family at their vacation home at the beach. To repay their generous hospitality, the professor suggested Scott should have a place at his culinary school.

“It was an opportunity I couldn’t let slip away, to experience the food and wine and culture,” he says. “I always wanted to travel to Italy, growing up, hearing so much about it.”

Donna gave him a leave of absence, and off he went for almost a year. Along with the course, Scott worked in restaurants. He went truffle hunting and took wine classes, learning how to make Prosecco. 

When he came back, he returned to work for Donna. But almost two years later he was back in Italy, working outside Bologna, where, for the very first time, he met the relatives his grandmother hadn’t seen since she was 16. He was welcomed like a prince.

Back in Washington eight months later, he spent the next year and a half as a freelance cook. He helped out Ann Cashion at her Cashion’s Eat Place and Mary Richter at Zuki Moon (now closed)and traveled the East Coast for the restaurant equipment company Hatco, cooking five-course meals to demonstrate their professional range for residential use. Next stop was Primi Piatti as executive chef. Finally, he decided it was time to branch out on his own. At Argia’s, besides being the chef, he did the books, the taxes and the payroll. He designed the menu and cooked on the line if necessary.

Even at Zola, there’s little time off. “When you’re in this business, you basically are married to the restaurant. You have to have a passion; you have to love what you’re doing. When I’m interviewing someone, I say, if you don’t, you may as well not accept the job. Your life revolves around the job.”

So what does he do on days off? “I try to do laundry, clean the house, pay the bills. The first day off, you’re trying to relax, catch upon sleep ... recovering.” He doesn’t spend time like he used to at the Mister Days sports bar in D.C. (now closed) with 30, 40 chefs and line cooks, easing off the adrenaline. “These days, I’m a little too old. I gotta be here at 6 a.m.” He tugs at his baseball cap. But  “one thing about cooking — it keeps me so enthusiastic every day. You’re always learning something.”

Zola (202-654-0999; zoladc.com) is located at 800 F StNW. Main courses cost $16 to $29.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.