Chris Douglass has made Icarus one of the most celebrated places to enjoy fine dining in Boston.

Chris Douglass started out in life as a forestry major. Apparently the thought of long walks among the trees appealed to him as a young man in the 70's. It seemed an idyllic career choice. Sadly, forestry is just another business, driven by profits and efficiencies. "It was definitely not what I thought!" he confessed.

So Chris spent a couple of years, after working out that forestry was not for him, dabbling in the restaurant business. Washing dishes and other odd jobs at restaurants met the need to pay the rent. As he worked he gradually realized he enjoyed the life. "I liked the culture of the restaurant business before I knew that I liked cooking," Chris explained. He has no formal culinary training, just a lifelong commitment to being better and better at what he does.

In 1978 he was working at Another Season on Beacon Street in Boston, but had a fascination for the newly opened Icarus on Tremont Street. The two owners - Tom and John - were not restaurateurs. In fact they were both in the construction business! But what they were doing with Icarus was, at the time, unique. The menu changed every day. Initially it was written on a blackboard and based on an old copy of Julia Child's cookbook propped up in the kitchen.

Chris eventually persuaded the owners to give him a job and he joined the shoestring operation. With barely enough money to pay him, no liquor license and most of the furniture and fittings sourced from a thrift store, Chris must have seen something that most of us would have missed.

"We had an old shopping cart, which we rolled to Tony's on Shawmut Avenue each day. We grabbed whatever vegetables looked good and made a menu based on what we got," said Chris. "French cooking was very much in vogue at the time. We were looking outside the country because we didn't have a developed local cuisine to the extent that we do today. There was not as much good raw material, in terms of great local produce and supplies available."

But things soon began to change for Chris and the owners of Icarus. A beer and wine license and then a liquor license were acquired. Increasing skills in the kitchen and a better overall understanding of how to run a restaurant led to a steady increase in both business and success.

The restaurant moved to its current subterranean location in 1987 and Chris became a partner. The space had once been Lulu White's Jazz Club and briefly a bar featuring "Jell-O" wrestling. Chris tells of the previous owner trying hard to sell the Jell-O making machine along with the space. Needless to say Icarus does not have much Jell-O on the menu.

Fast forward to 2000 and we find Chris taking over ownership of the restaurant and beginning a new phase of his restaurant career as owner/chef. Icarus has become a recognized spot for celebrations, anniversaries and events. It boasts terrific food and the kind of friendly reliable service that only happens in a well run and well managed location. "The difference between fine dining and just dining is the details," said Chris. He has tried most things during the 25 years or so and is a natural chef, with a terrific eye for current trends and fads.

Recently he has branched out and opened Ashmont Grill in Dorchester. I asked him why he would open such a different style of place, why not another Icarus? "I didn't go to culinary school and sort of fell into cooking before I realized that it was something that I wanted to do. The early Icarus ran on a shoestring, but we saw a progression as our skills developed towards becoming more expensive and exclusive. One day I realized that I was serving a clientèle that was somewhat limited. I wasn't able to cook for everyone or cook everything I wanted to cook and stay within the Icarus concept," Chris explained. "We tried to outdo ourselves cooking really delicious meals for the staff out of the scraps, everything from delicious meatloaf to mac and cheese." Chris decided to open a new restaurant and expand his range of cooking. "I understood that there was as much skill and craft in doing that well as there was in the fine-dining cooking."

I asked him why Dorchester, why not downtown? "I live there and saw an opportunity. I know the community and sense the constant demand for local restaurants," he replied. "It made sense to try and capture part of that market." But, Dorchester does not have the best of reputations. "Perceptions of Dorchester have changed and continue to change as folks get the nuances, the variety of neighborhoods," he explained. "The Milton community close by has very few liquor licenses and so there's a whole market there that travel to Dorchester."

It was a big project that consumed much of his time during the build out and opening. "The building probably should have been knocked down," he joked, "it was really dark with no windows and seriously in need of renovation." But things went well and Ashmont Grill receives a constant stream of good press about its great food, at great prices. It may not be fine dining in the classic sense, but it sure is good food.

Chris is now onto the next project. "Ashmont Grill is two years old now, it doesn't require the attention it did when we first opened," he said. "I am spending a lot of time on my new concept, a pizza and pasta restaurant in Dorchester not far from Ashmont Grill." This is different again and definitely not fine dining. It's hard to be pretentious about pizza and pasta. Chris recognizes that the very simplicity of the food makes its own challenge. "I am a little threatened by the challenge of making pizza, there is so much more to it than folks think. It's so fundamentally simple, but there are a lot of subtleties to making an outstanding pizza."

Has all this led to him becoming an executive rather than a chef? "I don't spend all my time in the kitchen anymore, but I do spend a lot of time, tasting and working with the chefs to develop the menus. I don't spend my whole time cooking anymore," he grinned. He obviously likes his new role.

He still enjoys cooking outside the restaurant, he loves to barbecue and his home kitchen is his pride and joy. "I can't even clean the rest of my house, I always start in the kitchen and struggle to get to the rest of the place. I get mad if someone messes up the kitchen," he joked.

Chris Douglass has had a real career in the restaurant business. Literally starting at the dishwashing station and working his way through respected high-end chef to restaurant entrepreneur. He is a restaurateur honed by the market and experiences both good and bad. Icarus still uses some of the thrift shop furniture that it opened with. When the restaurant is not open, Chris works at the bar so he can pass the time with staff as they come and go. This is a man with his feet firmly planted on the ground. No danger at all that he will fly too close to the sun and crash back to the ground.