The James Beard Foundation Awards are considered one of the top accomplishments in the culinary world. For the 2025 season, several restaurants and chefs in the state are semifinalists. Out of the seven Oregon chefs nominated for Best Northwest and Pacific Chef category, only two came from Portland. Kari Shaughnessy is the owner and executive chef of Hayward in McMinnville. Josh Dorcak is the owner and executive chef at MAS in Ashland. They both received a nomination and join us to share what the food scene is like in their respective communities and what it means to have so many chefs outside of Portland recognized for their work.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The James Beard Foundation Awards are considered one of the top honors in the U.S. culinary scene. Once again, some Portlanders are in the running for some of the highest profile awards. But the whole state is getting attention. Of the seven Oregon semi-finalists in the Best Northwest and Pacific Chef category, five of them are from outside of Portland.
Kari Shaughnessy is the owner and executive chef of Hayward in McMinnville. Josh Dorcak is the owner and executive chef at MÄS in Ashland. They both join us now. Congratulations and welcome.
Josh Dorcak: Thanks so much. Happy to be here.
Kari Shaughnessy: Yeah, thank you.
Miller: Kari, first – what does it mean to you to be in the running for this award?
Shaughnessy: Oh, that’s a loaded question. It’s a pretty surreal opportunity to be recognized for something like James Beard. It’s such a coveted award in this industry. I think it’s such a respected community in this industry as well. They really focus on pushing the industry in a really positive and welcoming direction right now. So for me, it’s such an honor to be recognized for those things exactly. It’s really beyond the food. It’s about the sourcing and the treatment of the staff, and there’s so much more that goes into running a restaurant that I think James Beard is really great at recognizing.
Miller: Josh, what about you? What does it mean to get this honor?
Dorcak: It feels really humbling to be chosen out of the entirety of the region. To have your name on this list, everyone has put in so much sacrifice. And much like what Kari was saying, to be involved and to be recognized for doing things, not just being creative but supporting a local community culinary scene and propelling the culinary world in Oregon. I think it’s, like I said, just really humbling to be involved.
Miller: Kari, you worked in a number of well respected restaurants in the Bay Area and didn’t come to McMinnville, unless I’m mistaken, until 2020. What brought you to Oregon?
Shaughnessy: Yes, that’s correct. Actually, it was a couple of things. I took a break from California for a little bit and was living in Maine for a short stint. And I wanted to come back to the West Coast. My old boss, who was the chef at Sons & Daughters that hired me, he and his wife, who I’d also worked for before, were cooking in Portland. I was on the phone with them and describing to them the lifestyle that I wanted for myself and in the industry. And they were like, “You should check out this town, McMinnville. It sounds like it would be pretty perfect for you.” So I moved to McMinnville, site unseen.
There was one restaurant called Thistle, which is still in McMinnville today, that was really pushing the boundaries of the food scene in the Willamette Valley. And it was really because of that restaurant that I felt like I would be able to do what I wanted to do.
Miller: When you say you described to them the lifestyle you wanted in the restaurant industry, what did you want? And I guess I’m also wondering how it was different from what you’d experienced before?
Shaughnessy: That’s a great question. I wanted a place where I could afford to own a business and own a house one day. I wanted a place where I maybe didn’t have to work until 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning. And I wanted a culture where I felt close to the people that I was cooking for, cooking with and sourcing from. I really wanted to open a restaurant that was based around the community of agricultural farmers around me. While that is so prevalent in San Francisco – that’s where I really learned how to cook and how to source properly – you’re still driving two hours to get to those farms. And now I drive five minutes.
Miller: Josh, the story I’ve read about what brought you to Ashland, it seems like it was an accident. There’s traffic in Northern California, so you kept driving. I have to just be honest, it doesn’t seem like the kind of story that can be fully true. But how purposeful was your move to Ashland?
Dorcak: Ashland just was really familiar to me because I grew up in the South Bay. A town called Los Gatos comes to mind … when I saw what this town looked like, it just reminded me of that community. So it was really familiar. I just happened to slide my phone number underneath the restaurant door – the restaurant was called Muse at the time – and went back to the Bay Area. I got a callback saying, “You should move up in the summer when the Shakespeare Festival is going on.” I was 21, and it’s like, of course, why not.
But yeah, I do like driving and I like to clear my head. I think that was one of those drives where I just kind of ended up in Ashland at 3 o’clock in the morning, where I didn’t really know where I was. I was from the city, so it’s kind of terrifying driving through the forest at 2 a.m. But to find this town was really intriguing, truly. Especially coming from the hustle and bustle of Oakland was like, man, this place is so nice, no traffic, surrounded by agriculture.
After living here for almost 20 years now, it’s just truly like, I couldn’t do MÄS in a big city, nor would I want to. It’s just too much demand. And then I don’t have to keep up with the Joneses here. I can kind of just do my own thing and really treat this place like the Wild West, in the sense where I started something, I can claim it and I can build it in any direction I want. I find that to be really powerful, as a business owner and ultimately a creative, to have a lot of control over what you do and how you do it, and how you see it progressing.
Miller: Am I right, Josh, that MÄS is the first restaurant you’ve owned?
Dorcak: Yeah, correct.
Miller: The sense I get is that making super tasty food and running a successful restaurant require maybe overlapping but truly separate skills. How did you learn that second set of skills, the business side of being a restaurateur?
Dorcak: I think you just make a bunch of mistakes when you first start. But I’ve always wanted my own restaurant. So in my early 20s, I would constantly be designing concepts. I’d use yellow legal pads, write out a whole proforma of a restaurant idea, mentally open it. For me, at that time, it was disparaging living in a small community like this because all my ideas fit into cities. The numbers were always, I would save $400,000 if I didn’t do my ideas, basically.
Miller: Meaning you had high cost, high concept meals that you didn’t see a way to have it pencil out in a smaller city?
Dorcak: Yeah, because you don’t have the labor pool, you have a limited demographic, we have a very seasonal community here in Southern Oregon, especially Ashland. So you just start to [think] I, as an owner, am not gonna make any money and so what is the point? The point of owning a restaurant isn’t to lose all your savings, right? So it took me a while. I’ve always had this idea of this destination tasting menu restaurant. That’s just where my mental space always lives, in this format of a kitchen.
So I went to Tokyo, came back from that trip and just completely saw the industry differently. On my trip to Japan, everything was small and nano. There weren’t these 80-seat, 60-seat restaurants. It was just maybe a counter for eight people and one dude cooking the food that he wanted to do or he specialized in. That was really jaw-dropping to me because I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve been doing it all wrong.” I just need to do it so it supports my lifestyle and supports what I exactly want to do. So I don’t have to compromise so much with the type of person that I am, as a creative. It was really like the green light, coming back from that.
Miller: Kari, what about you? Am I right that this is your first restaurant as well?
Shaughnessy: Yes.
Miller: How have you made it work?
Shaughnessy: You know, I think I’m still figuring that out, if I’m being completely honest. I think you’re entirely right to say that being a chef and being a restaurant owner are two different skill sets. And that is something that I think I’m always going to struggle with.
Miller: Do you think of yourself more as one than the other?
Shaughnessy: No. You know what? I used to think of myself more as a chef. And I always thought I would be a chef-forward restaurant owner. I believe that I am, but the days where I often feel like a better restaurant owner are maybe the days that I feel like I miss being a chef. And that’s always something that I’m going to struggle with, most likely. Josh has been running his business longer than I have, so maybe he can attest to that too.
But I think there’s creative and there’s practical, and it’s constantly figuring out the best balance of the two. That can make or break a restaurant. But I do believe that being a chef-owner gives you a perspective that no one else can have. You get the whole picture. You understand every aspect of that business. I’m hoping that one day I will get to the point where I feel like being a better restaurant owner will make me a better chef because I see the vision differently, if that makes sense.
Miller: The other five chefs in this category are: Isaiah Martinez from Yardy Rum Bar in Eugene; Thomas Pisha-Duffly from Gado Gado in Portland; Ryan Roadhouse from Nodoguro in Portland; Sarah Schafer from Humble Spirit in McMinnville; and Timothy Wastell from Antica Terra in Amity.
Two Portlanders are semi-finalists in the overall Outstanding Chef category: Sarah Minnick from Lovely’s Fifty Fifty and Gabriel Rucker from Le Pigeon.
Coquine, in Portland, is a semi-finalist in the Outstanding Restaurant category. And JinJu, also in Portland, is a semi-finalist for Outstanding Bakery.
Josh, what’s the hardest part of your job?
Dorcak: I have a family. So that is the hardest part of my job.
Miller: Balancing your job and also taking part in family raising, family paying attention to?
Dorcak: Yeah, but more in the sense that I don’t have to sacrifice anything because I get to do what I wanna do. But my children and my wife have to sacrifice the time that I’m not there, you know what I mean? So, definitely that’s the hardest part of what I do. Everything else is just decisions and tasting things. I’m not gonna say it’s easy, but easy in comparison to really trying to balance, and making sure you have time and you’re not resentful of your time spent at work. That’s one thing that I really try to focus on.
Miller: How old are your kids?
Dorcak: I have Caswell, who’s 15 years old. I have Blaine, who’s 5, and then Owen is 3. So three boys and a big spread there. And yeah, it’s pretty intense.
Miller: Kari, what about you? What do you find to be the hardest part of your job?
Shaughnessy: I think for me, the hardest part is balancing the ethos that I set out to do when I opened this restaurant. I told myself I wanted to open a restaurant that, first and foremost, sourced incredibly, ethically, well and local to our community. I wanted to create a positive and healthy work environment for my team. And I wanted to show a small town that eating well and eating beautifully-sourced food can be an everyday experience or an occasion. Looking at those three priorities for us and balancing them, they don’t always go hand in hand. So I think that that is something that I really pride myself on, that I think we do well. But I think that is probably the hardest part of my job.
Miller: In the last, I don’t know, 20 years, as restaurant culture has so fascinated people in popular culture forms in a way that I don’t think it did 30, 40, 50 years ago, a lot of us are very used to seeing angry chefs yelling at their underlings. You talked about the opposite: a positive and healthy work culture. Is it a challenge to maintain standards and keep everything positive, healthy and supportive?
Shaughnessy: Yes and no. I think it’s one of those things that once you start doing it, it’s amazing how easy it becomes to maintain it. It’s like when you cut something out of your diet, it feels really hard at first and then you adjust to that lifestyle.
Some of my favorite compliments that I get … we have a very open kitchen at Hayward, and I love it when guests come up to us and say, “Your kitchen seemed so calm and quiet, and everyone was smiling, and it’s well run.” To me, that is an amazing thing to hear because, you’re right, the industry standard has never been that positive. And I think COVID really opened that up to a lot of people. I think, as an industry, we’ve all been pushing to change that in a really positive way. There are ways to correct an employee. There are ways to lead an employee and manage an employee that makes them feel supported and wanted. And it’s finding that way and sticking to it.
Miller: Josh, how would you describe the work culture that you try to foster?
Dorcak: Man, it’s pretty chill here. We do a lot with not a lot of space. So it’s demanding, but not from an authoritative kind of perspective at all. Everyone has to chip in and do all aspects. It’s washing dishes, it’s answering a phone, it’s everything, cleaning the restaurant.
So the culture here is, you just do the work. In my earlier years, like what Kari was saying, it was not a kind industry, 10 years, 15 years ago. So I really have made it a point – I don’t like when people yell at me, so I’ve never raised my voice. If we’re in a tiff, a creative imbalance, or a work imbalance, then we do the clear the decks thing. We just say it out loud and have a round meeting about what the issue is and how we move forward from that issue.
It’s just treating everyone with the same respect that I would expect to have from them. We’re all equal in a way, in this restaurant. At least that’s what my intention is.
Miller: Kari, you have what seems to be a playful bent in a lot of what you do. You did a series of menus based on TV shows not long ago, including “The Sopranos” and “Twin Peaks.” You’re just finishing up a nostalgia series that includes a “Breakfast for Dinner” menu, a “Summer Camp” menu and a “Dinner at Grandma’s House.” What excites you about your own menu takeovers?
Shaughnessy: In San Francisco, I grew up in the world of fine dining and I have an immense amount of respect for those types of restaurants. It was something that I was really attuned to with moving to a small town. I wanted to create a place where people would come often and it felt like family with still the same attention to detail that fine dining provides. So I sometimes find the best way to open up new customers to the fact that we’re not fine dining in our perspective, we treat it a little bit differently. Food is meant to be fun, playful and evoke different memories.
One of my favorite things is when you have someone try a dish and it maybe looks nothing like they’ve had before. Or it didn’t read on the menu like anything they had had before, they tasted it and it tastes so familiar. What a joy to me to be able to kind of trick someone into this childhood memory that they didn’t know they had. You can find that in fine dining often, throughout a tasting menu. But you don’t always get that in a more casual ala carte experience. So that was really one thing that I wanted to set out and do.
Miller: Kari Shaughnessy and Josh Dorcak, congratulations and thanks so much.
Shaughnessy: Thank you.
Dorcak: Thank you.
Miller: Kari Shaughnessy is executive chef of Hayward in McMinnville. Josh Dorcak is the owner and chef at MÄS in Ashland. They are two of the seven Oregon semi-finalists in the Best Northwest and Pacific Chef category for 2025.
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