Banking to bullion: Gourmet Steve makes his way

Kent cook caters to good health

Stevan Ahlbeck, the owner and founder of Gourmet Steve’s in downtown Kent, was good at his job in the banking industry, but something was missing.

“I thought I was going to make a career in banking and it didn’t work out,” Ahlbeck says in his quiet manner, adding a slight shrug, “I just got burned out at it.”

But at home or out camping with friends, Ahlbeck usually could find his peace behind the grill or camp stove, preparing food for 15-20 campers, and enjoying every minute of it. He mostly cooked light fare, he said, including made-to-order omelets, but there was something about the preparation and cooking that fired him up.

“That was something I really enjoyed,” he says.

After moving from banking to collections for Verizon Wireless, Ahlbeck found himself watching hours and hours of the then-still-new Food Network and began collecting cookbooks until he had hundreds.

“I reached a point where the cookbooks I was buying were consuming me,” he says. “Additionally, I realized a point where I was stale at Verizon Wireless.”

Ahlbeck decided to turn his hobby into a new career and enrolled at the Art Institute of Seattle, where in June 2004 he graduated with honors.

Soon after, he got his first cooking job, working as a production head for Sodexho at Falcon’s Landing on the Seattle Pacific University campus. Ahlbeck bought all of the food, picked out the menu, ran the grill and supervised a full staff.

“It was like a small restaurant,” he says.

But cooking someone else’s recipes didn’t really appeal to him.

“Being told to cook food I know I can cook better … isn’t something I like to do,” he says.

So Ahlbeck branched out, starting a personal-chef service preparing meals at clients’ homes and decamping before the guests arrive, leaving a clean kitchen and only the smells of cooking lingering in the air.

“The only thing you’re left with is prepared food,” says Lynne Ahlbeck, Steve’s wife and business partner.

As his business took off, Ahlbeck began to make a name for himself as both a personal chef and a caterer, being named Best Caterer in the Federal Way Mirror’s Best of Federal Way 2006 edition. Among his triumphs as a caterer was a lunch for the Northwest Chiropractic Association, at which Gov. Chris Gregoire was an attendee.

“This was the beginning of Gourmet Steve,” Ahlbeck says.

To Ahlbeck, the word “gourmet” means “that little, extra-special touch that adds additional quality to whatever is being prepared,” he said. It’s something he takes special care to ensure in meals he crafts.

As an example, he says that anyone can make a burger, but a gourmet burger wouldn’t just be meat on a bun. It would have a specialty mayo or caramelized onions, a choice of cheese and bacon, all on a kaiser roll. And, of course, it would use the freshest ingredients possible.

“I have a real problem with a lot of other food,” he says.

According to Lynne Ahlbeck, her husband’s fascination with cooking probably came from his mother, whom she calls “a wonderful cook.” Lynne Ahlbeck jokes that the because of the size of the spread his mother would put out at any meal, you could gain five pounds simply by looking at the table.

“She was a wonderful cook,” she says.

With the success of the catering business, Ahlbeck and his wife began looking for a place to open that they could call their own.

“And I found it here in Kent,” he says.

Ahlbeck bought the small building at the corner of Gowe and Central last summer and Gourmet Steve’s opened its doors in May. Designed as a “grab-and-go” place for lunch, Ahlbeck still does his catering and his work as a personal chef.

He is working a “small bites” catering menu into his offerings at the shop, where he said people seem to want lighter fare during their lunch hour.

Ahlbeck is maintaining his commitment to fresh ingredients and makes as much of the food from scratch as possible.

“I don’t buy my tartar sauce, I make it,” he says. “I’d much rather cook with fresh ingredients all the time.”

Though the menu at the shop varies, Ahlbeck says he is focused on healthy food and enjoys “fusion” menus that combine cultures, such as his Asian Wrap, with fresh vegetables on a rice tortilla.

“I want it so people can really get a cross section of what good food is,” he says.

To Ahlbeck, the right balance in cooking is as important as it was on the balance sheets at the banks where he used to work and he takes great pains to make sure those balances are right.

“If people are out there eating just to survive, they’re not eating nutritionally,” he says. “I want people to eat healthy.”

Contact Brian Beckley at 253-872-6600 ext. 5054 or bbeckley@kentreporter.com.