Eating Seattle

Where I have eaten and what I have consumed during the past 24 hours in Seattle:

Black Bottle -- braised artichoke heart, smoked chicken and sundried tomatoes on flatbread, bb's antipasti misti (fried olives, prosciutto-wrapped dates, eggplant-wrapped mozzarella), saffron-risotto cakes, one glass of 2004 Waterbrook Sauvignon Blanc, and one glass of 2004 Eola Hills Pinot Noir;

Macrina Bakery -- lemon-lavender coffee cake and one glass of orange juice;

Pike Place Fish -- sample of smoked salmon;

Beecher's Handmade Cheese -- half-cup of macaroni and cheese;

The Tasting Room/Wines of Washington -- 1-oz. pour of 2004 Latitude 46 Degrees dry gewurztraminer "Celilo Vineyard"; 1-oz. pour of 2005 Harlequin Viognier "Clifton Vineyard"; and 1-oz. pour of 2003 Camaraderie Cabernet Franc;

Matt's in the Market -- one cup of seafood gumbo; salmon with green olive and fennel tapenade over potatoes; half of BBQ pork sandwich;

Salumi -- cured meat plate (six slices each of hot sopressata, finocchiona, mole, salami, and dario, and two slices of cotto (they were out of culatello)) with provolone, bread, and olives; and one can of Diet Coke

Licorous -- one New Orleans Buck cocktail ("[a]n old school concoction of rum, ginger ale, orange juice, and John’s ‘B’ bitters") (Licorous ingeniously pairs cocktails with small bites of food. So, you might see a cantaloupe-based cocktail with a small piece of prosciutto, as melon and cured ham is a classic combo.)

Lark -- prosciutto slices, organic baby carrots with Kurtwood Farms honey, sauteed Oxbow Farm cucumbers with butter and dill, wild striped bass tartare with lemon cucumbers and tomato coulis; marbled salmon with spot prawns in a lobster broth (it tasted like fried chicken); grilled octopus with heirloom melons, prosciutto salt (see a theme?) and tarragon; bollito misto of Williamson Farm beef (beef cheeks) with tortellini and baby turnips; two glasses of 2004 Berger Grüner Veltliner; Black Mission fig tarte tatin with grappa caramel and chevre sorbet; and one glass of late-harvest roussanne dessert wine

Insignia -- for a significant fee

Behold. A glass of the 2002 Joseph Phelps Insignia -- Wine Spectator's top wine of 2005. I drank the highly touted wine as part of a $20 five-wine flight at the winery back in December. Twenty dollars is a high tasting fee, but it's not a bad deal at all when you consider that a bottle of the almost-full Bordeaux blend (cabernet sauvignon, merlot, malbec, and petit verdot, but no cabernet franc) goes for a whopping $150 retail. Was the Insignia an excellent, boisterous wine? Yes. Was it worth $150 a bottle? No. The cost-to-quality ratio was way out of whack. (Though it was a steal at $4 for the glass.) Is any wine worth $150 a bottle? $75? $50? 

This dish reminds me of my childhood

Last night, Amy took me to the always tasty Firefly for dinner. After splitting a raw tuna appetizer spiked with jalapenos and paired with crunchy, matchsticked jicama, we dived into some hearty winter fare on what was, after all, a very cold night. Amy opted for the lamb stew. I went for the mushroom cassoulet. (We drank a delightful bottle of 2002 Chambolle-Musigny with our food, but that's another story for another day.)

The last time I'd eaten cassoulet was last winter in Quebec City, when my father and I stopped for lunch at the tiny Café Le Saint Malo inside the old town's walls. That sausage cassoulet went down like creamy insulation, which was ideal given that the temperature was nearly 35 degrees below zero. Firefly's cassoulet was significantly lighter and far heavier on breadcrumbs, though replete with the requisite white beans.

The cassoulet got me and Amy thinking about casseroles, and I told Amy that one of my favorite dishes as a very little kid was my grandmother's tuna casserole. The meal -- which screams '50s housewife to some -- was extremely simple: canned tuna, cream of mushroom soup, elbow macaroni, frozen peas and carrots, a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, and perhaps a little milk for creaminess -- all mixed up and baked in a casserole dish. What I liked best about the finished product was how the elbows browned and hardened, allowing the pasta to do for the tuna mixture what the jicama did for the raw tuna at Firefly -- provide a textural contrast. My grandmother died when I was 10, and I haven't had a very basic casserole since.

I decided to change that tonight by recreating almost exactly my grandmother's casserole -- in part to remind me of what she used to make, and in part as a test run for future casseroles. While I boiled three-quarters of a box of Barilla elbow macaroni, I thawed a half-pound of frozen peas and carrots. Into my trusty metal mixing bowl, I poured a can of Campbell's lowfat cream of mushroom soup and a little under a pound of canned chicken. (Amy had picked up some at Target this week, and it substitutes nicely for canned tuna.) In went the thawed vegetables and the just-undercooked pasta (so as to allow the pasta to suck up some of the soup's flavor) and a bit of grated Parmesan cheese. I mixed the ingredients and poured the resulting goop into a Pyrex baking dish. Over the top, I sprinkled some fresh bread crumbs and a little more Parmesan. The whole thing went uncovered into a 400-degree oven for almost 25 minutes; really, I just wanted to ensure that the top got nice and crusty, how I like it.

And I ate the casserole Paula Deen-style -- right out of the oven. Just like Grandma used to make.

Olives in the raw

When I was traveling through Sonoma County three weeks ago, I stopped in at the Olive Press in Glen Ellen to taste some of their housemade oils. Outside the shop, raw olives were everywhere -- on the ground, on Van Gogh-esque trees, and in bins awaiting brining or pressing. And although I'd eaten a raw olive once before (a not-yet-ripe green one off a tree outside Renoir's house in Cagnes-sur-Mer), apparently I hadn't burned my hands badly enough on the hot stove of extreme bitterness to avoid popping yet another olive into my mouth. This time, I chose a freshly dropped black olive from off the ground, hoping that its increased ripeness would make the taste milder. It didn't. I spit out the small piece of olive meat and tossed the now-lopsided orb into the woods.

Much to my curious delight, the Olive Press didn't have a monopoly on raw olives. I found more on trees at Trefethen Vineyards in the Napa Valley and freshly picked ones at the original Dean & Deluca, just south of Saint Helena. One does not find olive trees on the East Coast, and thus one does not find raw olives. Marveling at the rare fruit, I had a conversation with the produce folks there about shipping some back to Washington so that I could brine my own (using lye, I learned), but the logistics were just too difficult. Do people even do that out east? I find the thought of curing olives appealing in the same way I find baking bread appealing; you're making something edible out of something that's virtually inedible. You're bringing life to it.

I've recently found out the bad news that shipments of raw olives are generally finished until next winter. Until then, I'll have to be content with store-bought cured olives. In the meantime, I'm stocking up on lye. 

Last of the Summer Drinks

Raspberry mojitos (and snacks) at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Kitchen Non-Confidential

In honor of my good friend Caroline's very last day at work (next week, she moves to Philadelphia for a year-long job), Todd and I took her to lunch at Vidalia -- a high-end Southern-style restaurant in Washington. Caroline opted for Vidalia's signature dish, the always excellent shrimp and grits. Todd and I ordered off the special $19.90 lunch menu; to start, I had the scallops over quinoa, and then the trout, which came with lima beans diced okra. (I've come to hate okra, but that's not Vidalia's fault. Okra is simply a gooey vegetable. Well, perhaps that is Vidalia's fault. Isn't one of the marks of a truly great restaurant whether they can make you like something you thought you didn't?) Like everything at Vidalia, the food was consistently in the B+ range. That is to say, Vidalia's food is pretty much like every episode of Wings -- always good, but never, ever stunningly great.

And thus, had it not been for the earthquakes, the meal would have been a sad one (at Caroline's departure) but otherwise uneventful. Three times during the course of the meal, the restaurant -- which is located in a basement space -- rumbled loudly. And this being Washington, the dining room hushed at each rumbling, the patrons wondering if Vidalia would be doubling as a bomb shelter by the time dessert came out. No one offered any explanation to the puzzled diners. No one stopped the French presses. No one acknowledged the shaking. This left us to think that perhaps our table alone was shaking, much like that lone raincloud that follows unlucky cartoon characters wherever they walk. But the other diners' perplexed looks reassured us that we were neither specifically unfortunate -- nor crazy.

Perhaps worse (if indeed the rumbling was nothing more than an air conditioning unit acting up), a loud "Fuck!" emanated from the kitchen. This "Fuck!" was followed by several other "Fuck!"s and some muffled yelling. The manager and the wait staff wandered into the kitchen to determine the cause of the "Fuck!"s. Each person emerged from the kitchen into the dining room with an embarrassed smile. One server's eyes darted from patron to patron as if to discern whether she was giving up that she knew what had gone down among the pans. Did the rumbling have anything to do with the "Fuck!"s? Or were they separate occurrences? (It's not just me. Insurance companies are always interested in such questions.) Whatever the case, patrons should not have to wonder -- not necessarily because they deserve to be told, but because they shouldn't have to hear "Fuck!"s coming from the kitchen in the first place.

I'm fully aware that kitchen fights break out all the time. This type of stuff has been well chronicled in books such as Kitchen Confidential and Waiting. Indeed, when I asked one server what was going on, he said that he wasn't at liberty to say (the correct answer, as opposed to the incorrect response of silence to the rumbling), but that I could read all about it in Kitchen Confidential. For the shock value, part of me was glad to see it (or, hear it) happen yesterday. But another part didn't want the curtain of gentility to be pulled away. I would say that that's especially true in a restaurant catering to high-paying customers, but it's equally true in a place that serves up $5 burritos. If a restaurant allows its patrons to hear kitchen fights and unexplained rumblings, those patrons will inevitably wonder whether that inattention to customers spills over into the food in ways perceptible or imperceptible.

Salad dog days of summer

An authentic Chicago hot dog, accompanied by a dill pickle, relish, mustard, tomatoes, and "sport" peppers (yes, they're hot) -- all on a poppy seed bun. Don't take a drug test after you've eaten one of these. And don't eat a three-course meal two hours after you've eaten one of these, as I did.

Master of my domain name

Is The Gastropub's URL to cumbersome to remember? Now, you can stop by The Gastropub simply by typing http://www.thegastropub.com into your Web browser. We're here to serve you better.

(Speaking of service, I'm reminded of a sign I saw as a little kid outside an Empire Falls-esque diner during a day trip to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: "Men: No shirt, no service. Women: No shirt, no problem." For some reason, I highly doubt that restaurant is still serving up scrapple.)

The Creamery and the clear

Notwithstanding our having suffered the 1-2 punch of a broken-down car (me) and a stolen purse (Amy), Amy and I endeavored to get out of town a few weekends ago by any means necessary. We rented a car and headed north into central Pennsylvania, ending up in State College -- home of Penn State University. Wandering around campus, we happened upon the Creamery, a university-run shop that sells dairy products made by the school's cow herd via the fine folks at the Department of Food Science. Although tempted by the fresh butter and milk, our lack of refrigerator dictated that we needed to consume food on the spot. Accordingly, the ice cream was the only real option (and, in retrospect, would probably have been the only real option, even if we had brought a Playmate Cooler along).

I thought about getting the Paterno Peach (we were, after all, in Nittany Lion country), but we ended up splitting some cookies and cream. This was a perfect ice cream, slightly buttery with a moderate level of sweetness, nothing overblown -- made all the more enjoyable because it was an unexpected find. My friend Caroline introduced me to some fabulous gelato in Philadelphia last week, but I take true pleasure in the unadorned, ideal expression of something so simple and home-grown. No bells and whistles at the Creamery. Well, cowbells are okay.