The letter that opens the booklet
The first frame is a printed Holiday Greetings card, stock code AC 617 CF, on which Anderson typed in blackletter:1
December 31, 1993
Claude and Shirley Sedenquist
I thank you for allowing me to research some history of The Pacific Northwest Chefs de Cuisine Association, of which Claude played a major part in making.
These zerox copies are only a small part of your book.
Thanks so much to both of you, and have some Happy Holidays, and a great 1994.
Your Chef friend, Darrell Anderson
The archival label beneath it reads "Box 20 ThermaBind booklet / Chefs – Biographies and clippings – Sedenquist, Claude".12
Edison Tech
He was trained where Hubert Eickman taught. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer of 26 July 1962 records him at a trial-run meal cooked by Edison Technical School's Culinary Olympics team, and names him plainly:
Other tasters included Claude Sedenquist, Bob Lam and Jack Christianson, all alumni of Edison kitchens, all working chefs for Ivar's acres of restaurants.
That single sentence is the hinge between two dossiers in this box: the Edison classroom on one side, the Ivar's kitchen on the other.34
The same clipping is worth keeping for a second reason. Ivar Haglund left a $2,000 "tip" for the school's scholarship fund, and the six-man Edison team is named: Cliff DeLong (28), Jim Reid (20), John Fisher (21), Mike Graff (20), Roger Brager of Palmer, Alaska, and Wilford Masset, 19, of Issaquah. Masset is the "Wil Masset" Eickman's 1995 obituary credits with founding South Seattle Community College's Food Services Program — here he is at nineteen, on Eickman's competition team. Haglund's parting advice to the students was "Put some clams in the chowder".34
Ivar's, rung by rung
The archive tracks the whole climb inside one company.
| Date | Post |
|---|---|
| Feb 1953 | Assistant to Chef William Boileau, Ivar's Acres of Clams — exhibiting in classifications 5, 7 and 17 at the Fourth Annual Exhibit of the Culinary Arts5 |
| June 1955 | Head chef, Ivar's Acres of Clams67 |
| Nov 1956 | Chef for Ivar's Acres of Clams and Ivar's on 5th Avenue, assisted by Leo Paulson8 |
| Sept 1959 | Manager, Ivar's Acres of Clams910 |
| July 1961 | At Pier 5411 |
| 1962–63 | Chef, Ivar's Acres of Clams312 |
| 1964 | Executive chef, Ivar's restaurants13 |
| 1967 | Executive chef, Ivar's restaurants1415 |
The promotion is datable to the month. Richard O'Neil — then president of the Chefs de Cuisine of the Pacific Northwest, and the man who would hold the chair in 1955–56 — wrote it up in his own column:
CLAUDE SEDENQUIST has been promoted to head chef at Ivar's Acres of Clams to take the place of BILL BOILLEAU, who has taken over the manager's billet at O'Hara's in Bellevue. Congratulations, Claude, and the best of luck. Incidntally, Claude is one of the youngest chefs in town and we are very happy to see the new generation progressing so well.
He was twenty-five; the typo is in the original.67
Four years later Food Service Magazine put his portrait on page 39 under the caption "Young Manager is Claude Sedenquist" — a young man in a tweed jacket and bow tie, arms folded, thirty years old — beside a photograph of Ivar's new fry line and the note that 60 per cent of Ivar's volume was deep-fried seafood. The kitchen had been fitted out by Wells Manufacturing Company.910
The association
He is on the membership roll by June 1955, listed simply as "Claude Sedenquist, Ivar's" among Paul Muellet and Leo Paulson of Edison, Jacob Lang, Hans Kirschner of Hesse's, Ernest Rustuen of The Wharf and Oliver Hansen of Clark's Top Notch.67 He appears on the association's printed rosters through the decade,16171819 sat on the ten-man committee for the First Annual Governor's Gourmet Dinner honouring Governor Albert D. Rosellini on 28 February 1960,20 and stands in the group photograph of its planning meeting at the Olympic Hotel.21
He travelled with the Northwest delegation to the American Culinary Federation's national conventions — Miami in September 1961,22 and Miami again in 1963.2324 His ACF membership certificate, kept in the booklet, expires on 31 December 1962.2526
He was President of the Pacific Northwest Chefs de Cuisine Association, 1964–65.27 The archive agrees, and adds his officers.
The Escoffier charter, and a question it settles
Washington State Restaurant News reported Seattle receiving its charter for Les Amis d'Escoffier:
The new charter was sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Chefs Association officers of which are: Claude Sedenquist, president; Ken Hadrath, vice president; William Raines, secretary; and Ivan Binder, treasurer.
The Society's own officers were Marcel Forster president, Henry B. Schaub vice president, Darrell L. Anderson secretary, Bruno Good treasurer — the archivist himself in office. The first dinner ran to nineteen courses, entirely in French, under Charles Eusebe, executive chef of the Washington Athletic Club, with the club's catering manager Arthur Becker. Sedenquist was among the invited members, alongside Hubert Eickman, Ernest A. Rustuen, Werner Sommerhalder, Jack Calvo, Marcel Forster and Ivar Haglund himself.2831 He also sat on the Comité de la Bonne Bouche, which approved menus and tested wines.2930
This resolves an open question in another file. The venue is printed here as the Harbor Club — not "Harder Club," the reading carried in the Sommerhalder notes. Werner Sommerhalder is on the same guest list. Independently, the Eickman findings date the Seattle charter to a Reddin column of 6 December 1964, inside Sedenquist's term. Three documents, three dossiers, one evening.2831
The Society's rules, as printed: the napkin tucked into the collar; absolute silence at the serving of each dish; wines drunk during the course they were chosen for; no smoking before dessert; and no speeches.2831
The cook
What he actually made survives mostly in passing mentions, and they are consistent.
Curried shrimp was his party piece. He and Roy Johnson co-chaired the chefs' annual Christmas party, and at the 1962 one Henry A. Schaub of the Flame Restaurant in Kirkland called Sedenquist's curried shrimp the finest he had ever tasted.1234 He roasted a baron of beef for the buffet,32 and contributed "Barron of Beef" to the Fifth Anniversary United Nations Day dinner of 22 October 1964.33
He taught the public as well as the trade. As Executive Chef of Ivar's Restaurants he was the featured demonstrator at the "Sea-Fare" PUD Electric Cooking School, presented by Snohomish County PUD over three days in April, tailoring his recipes and techniques for use in homemakers' kitchens.35 One handout survives: Stuffed Snapper à la Dungeness — red snapper fillets with a crab-pattie filling.36
And with Robert Lam he mounted a display of Washington seafoods at the 1964 Culinary Art Show.13 An Ivar's staff newsletter calls him "the master conductor of all kitchen happenings".37
By 1967 he was one of the chefs whose judgement carried. At the third and fourth of the Chefs Dine Out dinners written up by Gladys Nelson —14 and the run B20-0429–B20-0433 — he took part in the post-dinner critique with Al Kuester of the Seattle Tennis Club, Joseph Sir and Marcel Forster. His verdict on the Gaslamp was "A special tribute is due the dessert. It is very fine. And this dinner wasn't done just for us — we have been here before — every night they put this much into the meals".1538
Nadja, and Shirley
The 1967 dinner report names "Claude Sedenquist, executive chef of Ivar's restaurants, and his wife, Nadja".1538 Anderson's 1993 letter is addressed to "Claude and Shirley Sedenquist",1 and his obituary records Shirley, married 38 years, which places that marriage around 1981.39
Two wives, fourteen years apart in the record, and nothing seen explains the transition. No divorce, no death notice and no remarriage record has been located for Nadja. Treat this exactly as the Eickman file treats Ruth and Leola: two women, both attested, the relationship between them not established.
The end
He died on 12 February 2019, aged 89. His obituary names Shirley and his children Gideon, Catherine and Christine, with David Lee, Shirley's son. The memorial was held on 3 April 2019 at Ivar's Acres of Clams, Pier 54 — the restaurant where he had started as an assistant chef sixty-six years earlier — and the family directed contributions to the Culinary Arts Association.39
What is still open
- The scrapbook. Anderson copied 44 items out of it and said they were "only a small part." If Shirley Sedenquist still has it, it is a larger and better-provenanced source than this booklet. Ask before anything else.
- Shirley Sedenquist is the closest living witness in the entire collection to Anderson assembling Box 20 — she was in the room, and the thank-you letter is addressed to her by name. Approach through the WSCA, not cold, and see her
publishGuidanceindata/people.jsonbefore naming her anywhere public. - Nadja Sedenquist. Attested once, in 1967. Everything about her is unknown.
- Birth and origins. The obituary gives 3 December 1929 and nothing before it — no birthplace, no parents, no schooling, no military service. The archive starts in 1953 with him already at Ivar's. The first twenty-three years of his life are blank.
- When did he leave Ivar's, and what came after? The dossier stops in 1968; he lived another fifty years. Nothing covers 1969–2019.
- Ken Hadrath, William P. Raines and Ivan Binder — his officers in 1964–65 — have no files in this box.
- Robert "Bob" Lam and Jack Christianson, the two other Edison alumni running Ivar's kitchens with him, recur throughout and deserve stubs.
- The 1959 portrait is still not cleared. The Food Service Magazine photograph on9 remains the only likeness inside the dossier, and its successor publisher has not been traced. The studio portrait the biography now carries came from outside Box 20.