The Stranger

The Romance of Chili Cheese Fries

Angela Garbes — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 04:00:00 -0800

The inexpensive, late-night, bad-for-us food my husband and I ate as we were falling in love. by Angela Garbes

I knew I was in trouble on our third date, when, on our second round of beer and whiskeys at the Summit Public House, we decided to order a large pepperoni pie from Toscana Pizzeria next door. Over the next four hours of conversation, we polished off every bite. At 2 a.m., we stumbled home toward our apartments, clutching each other's hands instead of an oil-soaked take-out box.

When I summon memories of romantic meals, inevitably what I come back to are the ones I shared with my husband back when we were first dating. Even when I was tired and already tipsy, I stayed out and kept eating and drinking because that seemed like the best way to keep the night going. My desire for the most innocent and illicit thrill—our knees brushing under the bar—was insatiable and made my entire body tingle. So I'd order another round of drinks and something deep-fried that came in a basket and/or covered in melted cheese.

A lot has happened in the decade since. Right now, I'm 36 weeks pregnant with our second child. My uterus has grown exponentially, squishing my internal organs, including my stomach, which is currently able to accommodate only a small amount of food before giving me punishing heartburn. I look in the mirror and see a comically swollen balloon version of the young woman I was—50 pounds heavier and now with gray hair.

It's not just me that's changed, but the city, too. The Summit is still open, but Toscana Pizzeria has closed, replaced by a Moroccan restaurant, Itto's Tapas. (I take comfort in the fact that Itto's is run by the same owner, Khalid Agour, who made the change because he wanted to serve the Moroccan food he was raised on.)

When not eating greasy dive-bar food, we'd eat salt-and-pepper squid and Singapore noodles in the neon-lit windows of Sea Garden or Ga Ga Loc in the International District. Sea Garden was damaged by a fire in 2013 and never reopened. Ga Ga Loc closed and is now called Fortune Garden, which serves a lengthy, albeit different, menu of Cantonese food. Thankfully, you can still order the salty fish and chicken fried rice, the funky bits of pungent fermented fish begging to be washed down with a sweet Tsingtao. While our favorite seafood egg tofu dish is gone, we've found a decent substitute up the street at Harbor City (open until 11 p.m. seven days a week) in the form of braised enoki mushrooms, dried scallops, and silken egg tofu swimming in a rich brown sauce.

A few weeks ago, I got an urgent, late-night craving for chili cheese fries. I dispatched my husband to Slim's Last Chance and, while he was out, popped a Zantac to stave off any heartburn. He returned with a white take-out box filled with golden-brown fries doused in beefy Texas red chili and smothered in cheddar cheese. We sat on the floor of our living room, the box balanced on my belly, and devoured the fries in minutes, our 3-year-old sleeping peacefully, obliviously upstairs. I was sated and sober but somehow light-headed. Food will always give me a swoony, inexhaustible pleasure, but it's nothing compared to what I get when I'm with the one I love.

The Delicious Hand-Ripped Noodles of Xi'an

Angela Garbes — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 04:00:00 -0800

A review of the biang biang noodles and cumin-stewed meats at Xi'an Noodles. by Angela Garbes

Good cooking takes time and effort, and it's physical work. I am reminded of this every time I gleefully slurp my way through a bowl of bang bang noodles at Xi'an Noodles.

The onomatopoetic name of these noodles refers to the hard work that goes into making them—biang biang is the sound the hand-rolled dough makes when it's repeatedly slapped against the counter to thin it. The dough is then pulled and stretched before being hand-ripped into long, jagged-edge noodles. In Xi'an's tiny, semi-open kitchen, giant stockpots and woks burble and sizzle over open flames. Five cooks in matching black T-shirts maneuver around each other in tight choreography—noodles get dunked in boiling water, noodles get fished out, limbs cross, sauces are ladled, steaming bowls get garnished with herbs. It's mesmerizing.

Xi'an, one of China's oldest cities, was, significantly, the eastern end of the Silk Road, and its food bears the mark of the many cultures whose people and goods traveled there. A Muslim influence can be seen in the abundance of lamb dishes, as well as the flatbreads and spices such as cumin.

You'll find cumin lamb and cumin beef "burgers" (each $5.99) under the menu heading of "Very popular street food in China—Worth Trying." There's truth in advertising. Both meats (stewed with plenty of cumin, red chili, and garlic until tender and then finely shredded) are stuffed into dense, griddled buns that absorb the flavorful braising liquid. Add a sprinkling of chopped scallions and a few sprigs of cilantro from the DIY topping and sauce bar.

But the noodles are the real stars here. They are thin and wide, lovely ribbons with uneven sticky surfaces that sometimes get tangled up with each other, creating even more surface area for the flavorful oils and sauces. Their texture is remarkable: soft and slippery, extraordinarily and satisfyingly chewy. They are available with your choice of meat—beef, lamb, or two different kinds of pork—and served with or without soup.

In Mount Qi pork soup ($9.99), chunks of braised meat and noodles bob around in a crimson broth crowded with airy clouds of scrambled egg and quivering cubes of tofu. The tingly beef ($9.95), flavored with green Szechuan peppercorns, kisses your lips with a pleasant buzz. But I can never get myself to stray from the cumin lamb ($9.95)—unfailingly earthy, musky, and darkly, almost primordially, gratifying. (Even the "dry" noodles here are plenty saucy and moist.)

There are also several meat-free options: hot oil noodles ($9.95) with chilies and snappy bean sprouts, noodles sautéed with egg and tomatoes ($9.95), and vegetable noodles ($9.95) with broccoli, peppers, cabbage, and red onions (plus a pungent garlic undertone). The latter is clean and bright, if comparatively a bit bland.

But you can easily adjust things by adding some chili oil, sesame paste, sesame oil, black vinegar, soy sauce, scallions, or cilantro from the sauce bar. The condiments are set atop a large, gleaming stainless-steel table that no doubt serves as the noodle-making station in off hours. Everything at Xi'an can be seasoned as you see fit. It seems only right that you should get your hands a little dirty.

My Favorite Plate of Food in Seattle

Angela Garbes — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 04:00:00 -0800

The spicy rice cakes at Joule, and the chef who created them. by Angela Garbes

There are dishes that get under the skin—they intertwine with our senses and emotions, nestle deep into our bodies and memories. The spicy rice cakes with chorizo and pickled mustard greens at Joule is my favorite plate of food in town.

Contrast is the heart of this dish—and that's what makes it so good. The cakes, flat ovals made from glutinous rice, are inherently chewy, but after being fried in a hot pan, their exteriors become crunchy, even crackly. The chorizo (spiked with cumin, pimenton, and coriander) is meaty, smoky, and satisfying, while the mustard greens light up your palate with brightness and tang. All of it gets bathed in a smooth gochujang-based sauce (which gets a hit of sweetness from mirin). It's a dish as comforting as it is invigorating.

I used to work as a server at Joule, and I found it difficult not to order the rice cakes at the end of every shift. I ate them regularly throughout my first pregnancy, when by the end of the night, my legs felt like cinder blocks. To sit down to the steaming ivory bowl was to become one with exhaustion, relief, and satisfaction.

I'm not the only one who loves these rice cakes. According to chef Rachel Yang's recently published cookbook My Rice Bowl: Korean Cooking Outside the Lines, on any given night, one out of every three customers orders it. Joule receives 80 pounds of rice cakes each week, but still occasionally runs out. The rice cakes are loosely based on a popular Korean food served by late-night street vendors in plastic bags. But Yang, a chef of wild creativity balanced by classic technique (she and her husband and co-chef Seif Chirchi have been nominated for a James Beard Award four times), transformed the dish, which pulls from Mexican and Chinese playbooks, into something entirely original.

For many, Yang's food is their first introduction to both Korean ingredients and the boldly flavored, boundary-pushing food that defines much of American dining now. She understands innately that elements such as kimchi, fermented tofu, and fish sauce aren't novel ingredients poised to "arrive" on the food scene, but ingredients that have always been here, part of so many people's history and everyday lives.

In My Rice Bowl, as much mini-memoir as cookbook, Yang details how, after moving to the United States, she tried her best to become "American." In the restaurant world, that meant cooking classic French, fine-dining cuisine. But she also admits that she didn't find satisfaction and success until she embraced the fact that her heritage, like that of other immigrants, is exactly what makes her food—and America itself—so interesting. Like a bowl of spicy rice cakes, identity, for many of us, is a delicate balancing act.

My favorite passage is Yang's subtle but full-fledged embrace of the complexity of her identity. "I don't tend to use Korean words for foods. My tendency to give ingredients and my dishes American names reflects my own way of making them more understandable," she writes. "Often, American chefs who specialize in specific cuisines try to advocate for authenticity, but I'm already Korean. I'm as authentic as it gets."

Warm Service and Stellar Comfort Food at Union Saloon in Wallingford

Angela Garbes — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 04:00:00 -0700

Union Saloon is the kind of bar you wish was in your neighborhood. by Angela Garbes

Late on a Sunday afternoon, I sat at the handsome horseshoe-shaped bar that anchors Union Saloon, Wallingford's newest neighborhood bar. With its heavy wooden door, antique objects, oversize booths, shiplap walls, and exposed wood-beam ceiling, the space evokes nostalgia for the taverns of the Wild West, the creaky hulls of grand ships.

I sipped an old-fashioned (cocktails here are of the classic, straight-shooting, two-to-three-ingredient variety) and dipped salty triangles of golden fried pita bread into a luscious spread of smoked sturgeon rillettes ($13)—tangy with crème fraîche, bright with lemon, lively with fresh dill—until the plate was clean. Given the day's (and every day's, it seems) news, I thought about how Union Saloon's nostalgia won't be pleasant to everyone: The "settling" of the American West and long journeys in the hull of a ship conjure up very different images depending on who you are.

Luckily, Union Saloon's warm service and stellar, thoughtful comfort food were more than enough to distract me from thinking about the state of our country for too long, even offering an unexpected bit of hope.

A summer green bean salad ($11)—a tangle of still-crunchy wax and broad beans, verdant and pale yellow—was thrilling, beefed up with crispy wedges of fried potatoes and laid atop an herby and tart mayonnaise-like sauce gribiche. Black peppercorn chitarra ($18), delicate strands of handmade pasta bathed in a buttery sauce as rich as it was light, got a summery boost from ribbons of zucchini. Maitake mushrooms added earthy heft, and guanciale gave a bit of racy, meaty funk.

A pork-cheek sandwich ($15), one of four sandwiches that make up the heart of the saloon's menu, remains the most satisfying dish I've had in months. It's as decadent as it is restrained: an open-faced sandwich on house-made focaccia slathered with mayonnaise and topped with a mountain of silky pork meat, braised so long that it's become one with the tomatoes and chilies with which it was cooked. The freshness of a shaved fennel salad with pickled mustard seeds and the acidity of a napa cabbage slaw held the dish at the intersection of too much and just right.

Japanese elements are scattered throughout chef Blake King's dishes: maitakes, bonito flakes on a Caesar salad, fried chicken with togarashi, the napa slaw served alongside sandwiches. King is obviously a student of the cuisine, but he doesn't flaunt it. He uses the ingredients sparingly, amplifying flavors and creating unexpected twists. A multicultural perspective is woven into his culinary vision, as subtle as it is undeniable.

A long, low bookshelf topped with old cast-iron objects lines Union Saloon's front windows, and a few cookbook titles hint at the kitchen's inspirations: Salumi; Japanese Farm Food; Terrines, Pâtés & Galantines. But the bare shelves long for more books and items, from places far afield. And the barstools and booths, occupied mostly by denizens of the immediate neighborhood, cry out for a more diverse crowd of people from all over the city. The food is certainly worth the trip. Union Saloon was designed to feel comfortable and well-worn from its inception. I look forward to seeing how it ages and grows.

Head to Wicked Chopstix for Lobster Pho and Obama Noodles

Angela Garbes — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 04:00:00 -0700

Fresh noodles—and perspective—at a Rainier Valley restaurant. by Angela Garbes

As the bowl of pho arrives, a meaty red lobster claw breaks through the fragrant heap of cilantro and thinly sliced red onion on top and dangles over the edge of the bowl. The tail, split open to reveal an abundance of sweet, buttery meat, floats on the surface, a parcel of luscious, coral-colored roe tucked inside. There's a whole lobster lurking in Wicked Chopstix's lobster and scallop pho ($19), and it holds you in its thrall from the moment it lands on your table.

While the broth wasn't made from a seafood stock (which would push a great dish into the realm of heavenly), it was decadent, delicious, and thoroughly unexpected. As I slurped and slurped, breaking and cutting through bits of shell (a cracker and seafood scissors are thoughtfully provided), the soup growing more flavorful the longer the lobster steeped in it, I wondered why we don't see bowls of pho made with Dungeness crab or spot prawns around town.

There's no shortage of good Vietnamese food in Rainier Valley—mostly banh mi and long-simmered soups served in the many small, tried-and true, unassuming spaces that line MLK. But Wicked Chopstix, open since May, stands out by offering a dining experience that feels entirely fresh. The modern decor—white subway tiles lining an open kitchen, industrial metal touches, an abundance of plants—hints at the creativity at work, including bone marrow served with taro chips or veal pho.

Obama Noodle ($13, traditionally called bun cha ha noi, but named here as an homage to the famous meal the former president shared over a cold beer with Anthony Bourdain in a Hanoi restaurant) is served on a bamboo tray overflowing with greens and three kinds of meat, the best of which is smoky, freshly grilled pork bathing in tangy, sweetened fish sauce. Cha Ca La Vong ($15), white fish flash-fried and served sizzling on a hot cast-iron platter, comes in a cloud of wonderful scents: fresh dill, earthy turmeric, red chili, and the sweetness of onions and fried shallots. Crunchy peanuts and a pungent fermented fish dipping sauce complete the dish. Both entrées are served with rice noodles and at least four kinds of fresh herbs to wrap up in crisp lettuce leaves. This is food that demands your attention and participation, asking you to play with textures and flavors, personalizing each bite to discover what tastes best to your tongue.

As she cleared our table, manager Ida Nguyen, whose warm service is a highlight of the restaurant, told us about a soon-to-be special, something the kitchen has been testing for weeks: chicken pho made not with rice noodles but ribbons of zucchini.

In front of the restaurant, traffic speeds up and down MLK, cars pull in and out of the busy Empire Way shopping plaza, while light rail trains zoom by, bells clanging. Outside the Washington Cafe and Club, a neighboring Ethiopian and Eritrean bar, recycling tubs overflow with St. George beer bottles. But the back of Wicked Chopstix is an entirely different scene: a tiny thriving herb garden, a riot of green amid concrete. Mint, rau ram, purple perilla, and scallions, their leaves and stalks freshly snipped to garnish dishes, grow upward, swaying lightly in the breeze.

The Stranger's 10 Best Restaurants in Seattle

Angela Garbes — Wed, 10 May 2017 04:00:00 -0700

Seattle's 10 essential dining stops, from cheap to upscale, as recommended by a Stranger food writer. by Angela Garbes

Whether you're in the mood for Vietnamese street food, fresh and reasonably-priced sushi, home-style Mexican, rustic Italian, upscale French-inspired seafood, or wood-fired pizza and gourmet burgers, these are essential stops.

Ba Bar

Central District

Ba Bar fuses two of Seattle's strongest culinary forces—pho, the Vietnamese rice noodle soup that is the lifeblood of the city, and an obsession with local ingredients—into an affordable menu of Vietnamese street food made with responsibly raised meats. Rich, aromatic bowls of broth are filled with oxtail, brisket, and eye-of-round from Painted Hills ranches; the succulent, rotisserie-roasted pork belly that sits atop fresh banh hoi noodles comes from Oregon's Carlton Farms. The cocktails are good, and the food is served until late—11 p.m. on weeknights, 4 a.m. on weekends.

If you're not looking for a full sit-down meal but still want to try some Vietnamese food, head to Saigon Deli in the International District for banh mi, rice paper rolls, grilled beef in betel leaves, fried spring rolls, and other grab-and-go snacks.

Corson Building

Georgetown

If you're willing to spend more money, chef and restaurateur Matt Dillon has rightfully earned a reputation for crafting food that both defines and is defined by the bounty of the Pacific Northwest. It's easy enough (and certainly worth your while) to eat at Dillon's restaurants Sitka & Spruce, Upper Bar Ferdinand, and the London Plane, but if you have the time to seek out the Corson Building, a house and garden with limited hours hidden underneath a highway overpass in the industrial neighborhood of Georgetown, the rewards will be significant. On Thursday and Friday nights, choose dishes from chef Emily Crawford's handwritten menus filled with summer dishes such as braised pork with zucchini, plums, and radicchio, and marinated squid with melon, cucumbers, and shishito peppers. On Saturday and Sunday, dinners are prix fixe feasts drawn from the same seasonal inspirations.

Fonda La Catrina

Georgetown

Seattleites, like everyone else in America, eat plenty of quick meals of burritos and tacos. But when they want to sit down to flavorful, home-style Mexican food, they head to Georgetown's Fonda La Catrina for handmade tortillas, long-simmered pozole, fiery camarones sautéed in a crimson chile de árbol sauce, grass-fed hanger steak tacos, and slow-roasted cochinita pibil. (Tasty margaritas and cocktails are also a draw.) The love extends beyond the food into the welcoming space and service, including a back patio, which can accommodate large groups and all ages with grace and ease. If there's a wait (and there usually is), those over 21 can pass the time next door at Catrina's sibling bar, El Sirenito, with drinks, an extensive selection of tequilas and mezcal, and snacks such as ceviche and fish tacos.

Il Corvo

Pioneer Square

You know you've found Pioneer Square's Il Corvo when you see a line of people snaking out of its unassuming storefront and up James Street. Chef and owner Mike Easton wanted to be able to spend time with his family, so he serves only one meal a day—lunch—and only Monday to Friday. Turns out you can make a living in the restaurant industry without sacrificing too much—but only if your food makes no sacrifices when it comes to artistry and flavor. With the exception of the ever-present rigatoni Bolognese, Easton's brief menu of three handmade pastas, as well as a few antipasti, changes daily. Spring brings sauces such as wild nettle béchamel, while summer brings dishes such as cavatelli with sweet corn. Over the years, Il Corvo's beautiful, rustic food has become an integral part of how Seattleites track and understand the changing seasons.

L'Oursin

Central District

L'Oursin, a relative newcomer, feels like the restaurant Seattle has been waiting for its whole life: very much of this place (think local seafood, and lots of it), steeped in the technique of classic French cooking, but also inventive and forward-thinking. The menu is refined, more than a little fancy, but never pretentious: black cod with oxtail ragout, grilled spot prawns with anchovy butter, poached artic char with sea urchin sauce, raw scallops and radishes with cured egg yolk that's shaved as fine as a dusting of pure snow. The food is beautiful, and the drinks are, too—aromatic, unexpected cocktails and a wine list devoted entirely to natural wines. The wine descriptions alone are worth the trip, as evidenced by this characterization of a sauvignon blanc: "A natural beauty who doesn't know she's being raised by a pet rock and a can of pears. Almost lost forever in a New Jersey warehouse."

Maneki

International District

Seattle's oldest Japanese restaurant is also its best. Maneki opened in 1904 and, under the loving direction of longtime owner Jean Nakayama, is still doing steady business today. Maneki serves beautiful, fresh, and reasonably priced sushi—don't miss the wild salmon and aji horse mackerel—as well as hot izakaya dishes including broiled, miso-marinated black cod collar, chicken karaage, and handmade gyoza. In the 100-plus years that the restaurant has been in existence, it's only had one major interruption to business—when it shut down because the US government sent Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II.

Other sushi recommendations: If you have the time and money for a decadent dinner, head to the sushi bar at Pike Place Market's Sushi Kashiba, where master Shiro Kashiba (who installed Seattle's first sushi bar at Maneki) will serve you a leisurely, multicourse feast. Or venture north to Ravenna for chef Kotaru Kumita's stunning omakase meal at Wataru. Both meals will consist of the freshest seafood available, prepared and presented with a variety of techniques, and lightly seasoned to highlight the natural flavors of each fish.

Meskel

Central District

East Africans are one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in Seattle, which means that the city is awash in a number of excellent Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurants. In their dining rooms, the lingering scent of incense commingles with the intoxicating aroma of the dozen or so spices—chilies, paprika, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove, and more—that make up berbere, the complex seasoning that is the backbone of the cuisines. Meskel, located in a house on the corner of Cherry Street and 26th Avenue in the Central District, is one of the city's most consistent sources of excellent, deeply flavorful stews made with berbere, lentils, chicken, and lamb. It's all served family-style over spongy, tangy injera bread, which you feast on with your bare hands.

Palace Kitchen

Downtown

Tom Douglas is Seattle's most well-known chef. He's also the city's most prolific restaurateur, the owner of more than a dozen restaurants ranging from seafood to wood-fired pizza to Italian to pan-Asian. But his best restaurant is downtown's Palace Kitchen, open since 1996, where much of the cooking is done over a wood-fired grill, and much of the produce comes from Douglas's own farm in Eastern Washington. The food is unfussy and familiar, executed at a high level, and guaranteed to please both out-of-town visitors and jaded locals. The Palace Burger is possibly the city's original gourmet burger, and still one of its greatest. The full dinner menu is served until 1 a.m. Hold out for a booth; you can always wait and have a few drinks at the bar.

Peloton

Central District

Seattle is known as a coffee town—and for good reason. Every day, we spend hours within the coffee-scented walls of its many neighborhood cafes, having meetings, reading books, and answering e-mails. Cafes are where Seattleites go for caffeine, community, and, increasingly, great food. No other cafe embodies the ethos behind the city's food as well as its uninhibited, creative energy more than Peloton, where chef Mckenzie Hart puts together hearty and vibrant salads and sandwiches with seasonal and local ingredients. Peloton is equal parts cafe and bicycle shop—you can enjoy your avocado toast while soaking in a bit of the city's thriving bike culture as well.

Pike Place Market

Downtown

There's a reason Pike Place Market is always filled with tourists: It's magic. Wander through cobblestones and tiled hallways, amid beautiful produce, artisan cheeses, pickles, and breads, and—most striking—abundant, fresh seafood. Eat Dungeness crab and steamer clams at Jack's Fish Spot; chowder, blackened salmon and halibut sandwiches at the Market Grill; and shucked-to-order oysters ordered off the brown paper bag menus at Emmett Watson's Oyster Bar.

And no Seattle place is more magical than the lounge at the Athenian Inn during happy hour, which runs from 4 to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Four dollars gets you a frosty mug of draft beer—so cold, a crust of icy crystals forms on top of the glass. Squeeze into one of the bar's tiny wooden booths, order the fried calamari, and then stare at the Olympic Mountains, Puget Sound, and the ferries shuttling back and forth across the water. This is Seattle; there's nothing better.

Beacon Hill's Dim Sum House Serves Small Dishes That Are Simple Yet Flavorful

Angela Garbes — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 04:00:00 -0800

Beacon Hill's Dim Sum House Serves Small Dishes That Are Simple Yet Packed with Flavor by Angela Garbes

On a cold day, the front door and windows of Beacon Hill's Dim Sum House fog up quickly. Steam—rising from the many bowls of congee, plates of chow fun noodles, and baskets of steamed-to-order dumplings that fill its cozy dining room—travels through the air and clings to the glass like a moist kiss. When you walk in, you are welcomed into the modest restaurant's warm, soy-sauce-scented embrace.

There are a few restaurants near and around the city that, along with comforting, reliable food, offer a particular sense of place, right down to the regulars who occupy the chairs and barstools. There's the chipped beef on toast and salty service at Chelan Cafe, which, tucked underneath the West Seattle Bridge and near the shipping containers and rail yards of Harbor Island, has long been a second home to longshoreman and other workers. Randy's Restaurant, open 24 hours a day on East Marginal Way in Tukwila, is an enduring pink-and-orange testament to the many people who, fueled by its chicken-fried steak and meatloaf, built the region's aviation industry.

Dim Sum House, located on mid Beacon Hill, holds the same sort of charms. It's a delicious snapshot of its neighborhood, a diverse, affordable, and residential area mostly inhabited by multiple generations of Asian American families. Here, the circular tables are filled with families loudly talking to each other in Tagalog or groups of older women gossiping in Cantonese. Flanked by two bustling grocery stores, Fou Lee and Seattle Super Market, its menu is built from the same ingredients that line their shelves and bins: white rice, ginger, scallions, wheat noodles, black mushrooms, chicken feet, chili oil, dried shrimp, and Chinese barbecue pork. Dim Sum House is a diner for those who would be just as happy, if not happier, to tuck into a bowl of rice porridge with sliced fish as a pile of eggs and hash browns at breakfast, or to nibble through steamed pork spare ribs with fermented black beans rather than a BLT for lunch.

Instead of the usual process of choosing items off carts being pushed through the dining room (which would be impractical, as the restaurant consists of only 12 tables), you simply order dishes such as shrimp balls, barbecue pork buns, and sesame balls, which are then made to order. Obviously, by doing dim sum this way, many dishes have to be made in advance and then frozen or refrigerated. This fares better for some dishes than others.

Xiao long bao ($4.10), the famed soup dumplings that inspire devotion in eaters across the world, are disappointing here. The dumpling wrapper is thick and mushy, and the soup inside, rather than being fatty and rich, is watery and tepid. Much more satisfying are humble turnip cakes ($2.70), custardy white squares made from grated daikon radish and rice flour that, after being steamed, are pan-fried. The exteriors are crunchy and dotted with plenty of salty brown bits, but the insides are impossibly creamy, earthy, and sweet.

A general rule here: Order items with crispy edges (aka fried foods) and, most importantly, embrace the oil. Honey walnut prawns ($3.10), encased in a crackly, golden crust, come dressed with dollops of a sticky-sweet mayonnaise sauce. As the sauce softens from the heat of the prawns, it languidly disperses itself, coating everything on the plate in its delectable goo. Fat, meaty wedges of purple-skinned eggplant ($3.10) soak up the oil of the deep fryer like a heavenly sponge; they're lightened by the pink cloud of minced shrimp stuffed inside. You get the sense that the fryer at Dim Sum House has known many types of food in its lifetime; it imbues everything it cooks with a sort of inter-special savoriness and depth of flavor that spans generations.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and a few steamed dishes shine. Big, brawny siu mai ($3.10) hold mountains of ground pork and shrimp that burst out of the top of their wrappers like a volcano, juices running down the sides like rivulets of lava. Beef tripe ($2.70), boiled into slippery submission, is wonderful—delicate, tender waves that glide across the tongue along with soft tangles of carrot and ginger. It's a good reminder that some of the best food comes from the most humble ingredients, prepared simply.

Dim Sum House operates with a skeleton crew, which no doubt helps keep prices low. Service is, above all, efficient—but always friendly and kind. There's one woman who acts as server, expeditor, busser, and cashier for the restaurant's dozen tables, as well as one person in the kitchen. Together they execute a large menu with a range of mostly Cantonese dishes, but if you want sweeter, American-style Chinese dishes such as General Tso's chicken or even chicken teriyaki, Dim Sum House has got you covered, too. But this is the sort of place where, even though the menu is big, you find the things that you love and stick with them.

For my own family, those dishes include sui kau noodle soup ($6)—a light seafood broth filled with thin wheat noodles and fat parcels of dough stuffed with chunks of pork shoulder, little shrimps, and crunchy bamboo shoots—and the sliced fish congee ($6), supple pieces of mild fish floating in thick, almost milky, rice porridge. It's a dish as uniformly white and comforting as a down comforter.

I can never bring myself to leave Dim Sum House without ordering the pan-fried shrimp and chive cakes ($3.10), bumpy and bulky with their generous fillings of chopped shrimp and bright, fresh chives. The slightly translucent wrappers, chewy with tapioca flour, are given a welcome crunch by a smattering of sesame seeds that are added before they hit the hot pan. The cakes arrive on a little plate, atop a white paper doily, which makes them feel like a special gift.

Meals here can feel like an indulgence, but they never are. At its heart, Dim Sum House is a neighborhood restaurant that gives its residents exactly what they need: an affordable meal. It speaks to Seattle's immigrant communities that continue to make do with limitations of size, location, and resources, even as their rich flavors and traditions influence the culinary culture of the city at large.

Newer neighborhood restaurants—I'm thinking of family-friendly places like the Central District's Peloton, Fremont's Vif, and Ballard's Stock—still strive for the same goals of older restaurants like Dim Sum House: meals that feel necessary, that nourish with a sense of community essential to the city. Even Stock, a place that bills itself as a farm-to-table cafe, has chosen to make congee one of its staple offerings. Diners may seem like relics of the past, but across cultures, we're all still striving for the same, simple comfort, especially in these uncertain times.

Corvus and Co. Doesn't Just Have Good Food—It Also Has Warmth and Soul

Angela Garbes — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 04:00:00 -0800

Corvus and Co. Doesn't Just Have Good Food—It Also Has Warmth and Soul by Angela Garbes

For 30 years, the Capitol Hill corner of Mercer and Broadway was home to a Greek restaurant called the Byzantion, which ended its run last fall. I don't remember much about the Byzantion's food, though I do have one fond, 15-year-old memory of slurping a bowl of avgolemono, a lemony rice soup, on a gray day, surrounded by its green plants, Grecian sculptures, and white stucco walls. For a moment, everything tasted and felt like sunshine.

Though it shares the same layout, Corvus and Co., the six-month-old bar and restaurant that replaced Byzantion, could not look any more different: dark wood, brick walls, black vinyl booths, a hallway drenched in red velvet wallpaper, all of it overseen by a giant owl on the southern wall. The white bird, made of the plaster that lined the walls of Byzantion for so many years, was hand-carved and chiseled by owners Paul Berryman and Izzy Guymon, the first-time bar owners who met when they worked together at Percy's & Co. in Ballard. Berryman and Guymon are responsible for all of Corvus's design and construction. (The vision for the bar, Guymon told me, was hashed out over a series of Friday evening meetings at Gorditos in Greenwood: "We started putting things together over burritos and beer.")

While the Corvus aesthetic is shadowy and gothic, Berryman and Guymon's handiwork has imbued their business with a certain amount of soul and warmth. At a time when most of the city's new bars and restaurants are located on the ground floor of recently constructed buildings and seem to share a numbingly similar design, soul and warmth are no small feat.

Corvus manages to hit a sweet spot between neighborhood hangout and craft cocktail den. The mirrored wall behind the bar is stocked with a range of good quality booze, and its cocktail lists include both classics and modern creations. On my first visit, three dudes each sat at the end of the bar drinking draft beers, their faces caressed by the blue glow of their smartphones. Next to me, a couple, dressed up for what was maybe their third date, flirted and ordered the "Wolf Whistle"—a mix of rye, fernet, and orange bitters—and the "Antivenom," made with bourbon, cardamom, and the cinnamony Czech liqueur becherovka.

Cocktails infused with herbs and spices match well with chef Mac Jarvis's Middle East–leaning menu, which employs flavors such as sumac, allspice, smoke, and salty preserved lemon with abandon—and with a fair amount of success.

Guymon and Berryman knew they wanted to serve food inspired by the cuisines of the Levant (an area of the Middle East that includes Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria) because the deeply flavorful food lends itself well to vegetarian, vegan, and omnivorous appetites. Beyond that, the owners turned the menu planning over to Jarvis, who created a focused roster of bar-friendly appetizers and snacks, sandwiches, and hearty plates that showcase the region's flavors in ways (and price points) that you don't find at Seattle's stalwart gyro places or the excellent, upscale Middle Eastern restaurant Mamnoon.

Jarvis's food is solid—most of it very well executed, with a few flashes of real vibrancy and inspiration. Artichoke fritters ($8) made a great beginning to a meal: The golden brown orbs (they resembled hush puppies) were nutty and moist and sang with sweet notes of fresh dill. The hot, fresh fritters were a bit gummy, but that was easy to overlook, especially after I slathered them with the fantastic earthy and garlicky tahini aioli that accompanied them.

Other sauces—specifically a harissa aioli and coriander cream—were the stars on a plate that held rust-colored paprika-spiced latkes ($8). On my visit, the patties of shredded potatoes were cooked at too high a heat—a bit blackened and bitter on the outside, slightly raw and crunchy on the inside—but I found myself scarfing them down anyway, mainly as a vehicle for these wonderful condiments. The aioli was complex and cuminy, fiery and tart, while the coriander cream tasted grassy and light, with a velvety, rich texture.

A salad of smoked beets ($10) tossed with frisee, fennel, and pomegranate seeds had the beginnings of a great dish, but fell short. The beets were oversmoked and a bit acrid, while the dressing, allegedly made with tangy pomegranate molasses, tasted mostly of oil, which coated all of the ingredients, as well as the serving plate. A lamb shawarma sandwich ($17) was fine and filling. The meat was rubbed with paprika and sumac, and topped with lettuce, piquillo peppers, and more of that tahini aioli (but not quite enough to mask the too dry meat). It was all piled into a folded pita and served with a scoop of bland tabbouleh.

Much more exciting were Jarvis's stuffed onions ($15). The roasted alliums—soft, pliant, slippery, and sweet—overflowed with a heady mixture of brown lentils and basmati rice abuzz with fragrant, warming spices such as cumin, cinnamon, and allspice. It reminded me of the classic Egyptian dish koshary, a carbtastic, ultrasavory blend of rice, lentils, and vermicelli noodles topped with caramelized onions—except that I didn't feel painfully full when the plate had been licked clean. (On my second visit, the onions had been replaced by red peppers, which seemed a shame.)

Grilled lamb leg ($22, a price that feels a bit much here) came presliced and, after being reheated, was not quite as rosy in the middle as I would have liked. But it was still gamey and satisfying, and it held its own on a plate crowded with aggressively seasoned side dishes. A warm lentil salad was bracingly tart, shot through with so much acid and preserved lemon. Squat, sugary Thumbelina carrots were doused in an almost antagonistic amount of harissa spice mix that, while invigorating, got caught in my throat and made me cough. Along with an innocent-looking salad of fresh parsley and preserved lemon finished with a heavy-handed sprinkling of coarse Maldon sea salt, the whole handsome plate stood on the precipice of being too much. Yet ultimately I found myself appreciating Jarvis's bold stance, the undeniable confidence behind the dish.

In the hands of a competent and thoughtful young chef exploring new terrain, mistakes don't feel irrecoverable, but more like missteps on a longer journey. The same can be said of Berryman and Guymon, who learned some hard lessons in February when their original name for the bar, Spirit Animal, was met with resistance from the local Native community, as well as their Capitol Hill neighbors. Despite their intent to be a progressive, welcoming, and inclusive business, Berryman and Guymon were told that the name commodified Native spirituality and disregarded the painful history of colonizers who used spirits and alcohol to weaken Native communities in trade and treaty negotiations.

Following a fumbled attempt to appease these concerns by changing the name to Spirit & Animal, the owners finally settled on Corvus and Co., after the genus of birds that includes ravens, crows, and other birds that hold mythical, spiritual, and folkloric significance in cultures around the world.

"At first it was hard to do, because during all our hard work, of course we had become attached to the name," Guymon said. "But we listened. And we wanted to correct our offense. Once we really understood how we were offending and hurting people, it was not hard for us to change."

In the grand scheme of things, the word changes were just that. Corvus and Co. didn't affect Guymon and Berryman's design or culinary concept. The countless hours of labor the owners put forth were ultimately unaffected. The bar, said Guymon, looks exactly how they envisioned it would back when they were dreaming about it with burritos in their hands. And now even more people feel welcome inside.

When I talked with Guymon in the days immediately following the election, against the backdrop of the Native water protectors fighting for their lives at Standing Rock, we agreed that listening to people's perspectives and pain feels more important than ever. As these local business owners have shown, you don't have to know how to do this. And you don't have to do it particularly well, or even gracefully. What is essential—as essential as the food and water that keeps us all alive—is that you do it anyway.

Fighting Fall with a Big Bowl of Soup

Angela Garbes — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 04:00:00 -0700

The Best Defense for This Season in Seattle Is a Big Bowl of Soup by Angela Garbes

I have a hard time letting go of summer. I hold on to it desperately, jumping into Lake Washington even as the temperature of the water drops, until finally a cold autumnal reality knocks summer out of me. But the sunlight is fading. In a little over a month, we'll set the clocks back, a small act of rebellion against the inevitable darkness seeping in. The air is already crisp and carries with it the undeniable scent of dry leaves and change.

Food helps, of course. Around this time every year, I starting repeating in my head like a mantra three words I read off a sandwich board in front of Bob's Quality Meats in Columbia City a few years back: "Braising for Autumn." It's a reminder that while fall is cold and dark, it's also the coziest season, one meant for letting things burble on the stove for hours as you lie on the couch. It's the season for soups.

You're probably already familiar with the great Salvadorean Bakery in White Center, which has been providing the community with countless tres leches cakes, cream-filled empanadas, and fruity cookies, as well as pupusas, tamales, and hearty breakfast scrambles, for more than 20 years. While it's nearly impossible to resist the call of a revuelta pupusa stuffed with moist pork, refried beans, and a melty cheese that oozes out the sides and gets extra crispy and salty on the hot griddle, the soups here are just as outstanding.

In the sopa de pollo, big pieces of juicy chicken—many of them still on the bone—swim in a clear, deeply flavorful broth heady and strong with garlic and onions. Also floating in the bowl: chunks of zucchini, carrot, celery, and potato, all sliced large enough that they can simmer for hours without disintegrating into mush.

Diced fresh mint adds a lovely zip, as does a squeeze of lime and a sprinkling of the chopped onion and cilantro that accompanies the soup. A small bowl ($7.50) is, in fact, quite big and very filling, though if you're really hungry, you can upgrade to a large for just two dollars more.

While the sopa de pollo is light and bright, sopa de res ($7.50/$9.50) is darker and richer, with meltingly tender strips of braised flank that float in a thick brown broth. The vegetables here, too, are more substantial: a ring of corn on the cob, dense yucca, sweet starchy slices of plantain, and wedges of green cabbage. It's a soup to match a sky that darkens at 5 p.m., one to power you through the depths of December.

The most indulgent of Salvadorean's soups is the sopa de patas ($9.50), a large bowl crowded with big, bony beef feet, as well as slices of beef tendon and tripe that have been slowly cooked into tender, slippery submission. There are plenty of vegetables—yucca, corn, cabbage, and zucchini—but the star of the dish is the broth. It's silky and viscous, rich with collagen from the tendons and beef bones. You can feel the warm liquid wash over your tongue and coat your throat and stomach as it makes its way down into your body. And you'll swear you can also feel your skin and hair reaping the benefits of all that collagen, growing thicker and stronger, and taking on a more healthful glow.

For the last year, I have carefully been working my way down the menu at Vientiane Asian Grocery, a Laotian mini-market in Rainier Valley whose many wares and products glow under bright fluorescent lights. Tucked into the store is a small restaurant that turns out remarkably flavorful (and affordable) food. Each time I visit, I become fixated on a new item and can't imagine not ordering it every time I go. Three months ago, it was the beef jerky, flash fried, salty and musky. Then there was the nam khao crispy rice salad, made with sour pork skin and fiery dried red chilies.

But as the weather becomes cooler, I have a feeling I'll be continually drawn to Vientiane's fish khao poon ($8.00), the first spoonful of which always tastes like a revelation. This isn't a subtle or refined soup—it's fishy, gritty, funky, primordial, and absolutely thrilling. The orange broth is complex, redolent of lemongrass and red curry, alternately giving off subtle whiffs of coconut, citrus, and fermented ingredients such as bean paste and fish sauce.

Soft pieces of flaky white fish float throughout, along with cubes of pork blood, thick rice noodles, bean sprouts, and scallions. The soup is made with pounded fish and herbs, little bits of which settle into the bottom of the bowl like fossils. Equally exciting as the khao poon is the plate that comes with it. It's piled high with fresh chilies, lime, cilantro, basil, lettuce, and shredded cabbage, all of which you can use to season your soup as you please.

While Vientiane's khao poon will challenge your taste buds to make sense of a riot of flavors, the house noodle soup at the International District's Mi La Cay will comfort them. The broth here is simple—a mild chicken broth flavored with lots of fresh chives—but it's filled with a surprising mix of proteins and textures. On top floats a deep-fried, head-on prawn. Underneath it sits a mound of succulent roasted pork as well as a generous piece of fried chicken. While the pork is meaty and lush, the sweet prawn and peppery chicken are enveloped in crackly, crunchy exteriors that soak up the soup and soften as you work your way through the bowl.

Mi La Cay recently relocated from its long-standing home on Rainier Avenue to the former home of Malay Satay Hut on 12th Avenue, a few blocks north. The old Mi La Cay was a huge space with black faux marble tables and lots of turquoise accents that always made me think of Nagel prints and 1980s dance clubs. That building will be torn down to make room for a mixed-use apartment building.

With its wood-lined walls and big bamboo hut, the current Mi La Cay space looks exactly as it did when it was Malay Satay Hut, a place I still miss even though it closed two years ago. I thought about it as I slurped up my soup, its broth light and clean as a clear blue sky. The crunchy bites of fried shrimp and chicken gave it oil and heft, a few dark clouds rolling in. Everything is fleeting. Why shouldn't we try to hold on to all of it?

Our Bacteria, Ourselves

Angela Garbes — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 04:00:00 -0700

Science Writer Ed Yong Will Brighten Your View of Microbes in His Debut Book, I Contain Multitudes: by Angela Garbes {{ image:1, align:right width: 500 }}

In his remarkable first book, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, science writer Ed Yong asks us to consider the humid forests of our armpits, the arid deserts of our forearms, and the dark caves of our bowels, all of them teeming with life. "It can be weird to think about our body parts as rolling landscapes," Yong admits, but if we follow his vision, which he lays out with clarity and conviction, the results are transformative: "We can compare the gut of a person with inflammatory bowel disease to a dying coral reef or a fallow field: a battered ecosystem where the balance of organisms has gone awry."

Perhaps it should be no surprise that Yong, who chose to invoke Walt Whitman in the book's title, writes in energetic, generous, and visceral prose. I Contain Multitudes is a deeply researched book—nerdy and technical, with a Notes section that is its own odd pleasure to read—but Yong's words also pulse and glow with carnality and wonder.

A Japanese stinkbug covers her eggs in a beneficial and bacteria-rich mucus, which Yong describes as "a ball of jellybeans frosted with the world's most revolting icing." (Turns out passing microbes down to the next generation is one of the more important jobs of parenting.) When the insects hatch, they swallow their way out of the thick white mucus, ingesting the first serving of the gut microbes that will be their constant companions through life. "Put aside your disgust for a second and think about how significant that moment is," Yong urges. "In that first mouthful, each young bug transforms from an individual into a colony of multitudes; from a sterile body to a thriving ecosystem."

We live in an antibacterial culture (hand sanitizer, anyone?) that fears and vilifies germs, prioritizes human needs at the expense of all other life forms, and has developed an astonishing resistance to nuance. Yong, along with the many scientists and researchers whose work he champions, demands that we put aside these myopic and dangerous ideas.

The discovery of microbes in the 1630s by Anton Van Leewenhook, a Dutchman who had no scientific training but who was blessed with a talent for making microscopes and also the curiosity to look at his own dental plaque through them, was a joyous and revelatory event. But by the late 19th century, after the spread of several diseases were linked to certain germs, Yong explains that bacteria were recast as symbols of illness, uncleanliness, and death.

That bad reputation persists today, even though dangerous pathogens make up a minuscule fraction of microbial life. We hear all about the ravages of E. coli, but almost nothing about the marvelous work of B. infantis which, fed by breast milk, helps build up a newborn's digestive and immune systems, or Wolbachia, a bacterium that gives female wasps the ability to asexually clone themselves, thereby rendering males useless.

If we could get our heads out of our asses (or, perhaps, if we shoved them a little farther up there and looked around with a microscope), we might see past our prejudices and take in a new and expansive view of the world. There are more bacteria in your bowels than there are stars in the galaxy, and you ingest about a million microbes with every gram of food you eat. Microbes far outnumber us and predate human life by literally billions of years—it's we who are late to the bacterial party.

Yong deftly places human evolution in a larger, more complex context of microbial and animal life. I Contain Multitudes will alter your perspective on your place in the world, as well as within your own body. But it might also offer a revolutionary perspective on our society and our individual places within the body politic.

Power in the United States still relies on the myth of rugged individualism—and on keeping in shadowy silence the labor that built and continues to sustain our country. In our current political and cultural climate, the loudest voices decry the "political correctness" and "hypersensitivity" of marginalized communities, as though their existence, contributions, and concerns about our society are something new.

"Microbes matter," Yong insists. "We have ignored them. We have feared and hated them. Now, it is time to appreciate them, for our grasp of our own biology is greatly impoverished if we don't." He could easily be writing about black and brown lives in America.

The City's Best Sushi Is in Ravenna

Angela Garbes — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 04:00:00 -0700

Seattle's Best Sushi Is in Ravenna by Angela Garbes

This sounds weird, but halfway through my omakase meal at Wataru, as I was savoring a piece of local geoduck, a few lines from Henry David Thoreau's Walden popped into my mind. (It was certainly weird to me, as I haven't considered the words much since I read them in high school.) As I watched chef and owner Kotaro Kumita work diligently behind his sushi bar made of gorgeous slabs of live-edge elm, Thoreau's words colored my view: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Given Seattle diners' worship of all things local and seasonal, another chef might have simply placed a piece of the geoduck, which had arrived fresh from Camano Island that day, atop a bed of rice, and considered that enough. And it might very well have been. But Kumita chose to manipulate it—subtly, masterfully—through his knife work. He scored it diagonally in opposite directions, then plied it open to reveal dozens of tiny, glistening white diamonds.

Not actual diamonds, but the tough and crunchy insides of a geoduck. By slicing with such precision, Kumita actually turned its texture into a great asset. It was a pleasure to feel each little nub of flesh on the tongue, and because it was easier to chew, I was able to focus instead on its wonderful sweetness.

The first piece of sushi Kumita had served that night was a creamy, dulcet scallop from the waters of Hokkaido, Japan. While the chef has obvious reverence for his ingredients, the way he handled the scallop initially struck me as somewhat aggressive. Holding it in one hand, he brushed it repeatedly with half a lemon that he gripped tightly in the other. Just before placing the scallop on the tray in front of me, he carefully sprinkled it with rough flakes of sea salt—"from Okinawa," he said proudly.

I've eaten countless pieces of scallop nigiri, but this one tasted entirely new. First, a fat crystal of salt landed on my tongue and I felt it fizzle away under the bright acidity of the lemon juice. My palate was fully awakened and now able to appreciate the rich scallop, which had already been treated with the flavors that had just flashed across my tongue. What Kumita had quietly done was the equivalent of lighting a firework to begin the meal. He had my full attention, and I knew what was coming next would be dazzling and fun.

There were plenty of wonderful courses of pristine fish, each of them anointed with nothing but a few brushes of Kumita's own lightly seasoned nikiri soy sauce and a dab of wasabi. They included yellowtail, shima-aji (oily, luscious horse mackerel), amberjack, yellow jack, meaty bigeye tuna, and gooey uni from Hokkaido. A hand roll made from buttery Alaskan king crab and a single leaf of shiso, its flavor bracing and mint-like, also sang out clearly.

But whenever Kumita made the choice to slightly alter the texture and flavor of his fish, that is when I noticed his deft use of technique, his gift for following his own rhythm.

Kumita ever-so-briefly smokes black sea bream over hay, imbuing its firm, white flesh with dark, fleeting notes. He uses the same technique to treat king mackerel, this time smoking it for three minutes, as its strong, oily flavor can withstand the smoldering. For bluefin tuna, ruby jewel-toned fish that almost seems like steak, Kumita lightly torches it with a flame and douses it with a citrusy ponzu sauce, which simultaneously deepens and lightens its taste.

With flounder, the chef employs a method called kobu-jime, wrapping it in kelp and letting it cure, which gives the mild-flavored and delicately textured fish both a boost of salinity and satisfying firmness. He uses another technique, called zuke, to treat local albacore tuna as well as medium fatty tuna, called chu-toro. First, he blanches the fish for a few seconds in boiling water. After it cools, he places it in a marinade of soy and sake. The cooked outer surfaces absorb the flavors, while the interior remains raw and pure.

Both kobu-jime and zuke are classic techniques of Edomae sushi, which Kumita specializes in. The name—which combines "Edo," the former name of the city of Tokyo, and "mae," meaning front—references the traditional act of serving local fish caught from the waters of Tokyo Bay. This was before refrigeration, when techniques such as curing and marinating were used to slow down the spoiling and deterioration of fish. The methods are no longer necessary and rarely seen in popular sushi restaurants here, but Kumita uses them nonetheless. Wataru is Kumita's first restaurant. His actions here are a nod to a faraway tradition, as well as a step in his own direction.

Last November, Seattleites rightfully talked incessantly about Sushi Kashiba, the new restaurant from legendary local chef Shiro Kashiba. But we talked significantly less about Wataru, which Kumita opened just three weeks prior to Sushi Kashiba's opening. Kumita apprenticed under Kashiba both in the late 1990s and as recently as 2014 (he spent the years in between studying his craft in Japan, then working at other Seattle restaurants including Moshi Moshi and Kisaku).

Shiro Kashiba opened his spacious restaurant and bar in Pike Place Market, an iconic location in the center of Seattle. His protégé went a decidedly different route, opening his small restaurant, formerly home to a Garlic Jim's pizzeria, in the residential neighborhood of Ravenna. Wataru's next-door neighbor is Salare, where chef Edouardo Jordan also draws from culinary tradition but follows a vision that is entirely his own. It might be the most exciting restaurant corner in the city.

Motherhood in Bad Moms as Hollow as Motherhood in "M.I.L.F.$"

Angela Garbes — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 04:00:00 -0700

Motherhood in Bad Moms as Hollow as Motherhood in "M.I.L.F.$" by Angela Garbes

With Bad Moms, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (yes, two dudes) have created a small and limited world for two-dimensional female characters to run wild in. Despite strong performances from Kristen Bell and the great Kathryn Hahn, who play the highly caricatured roles of Kiki ("sad and lonely stay-at-home mom") and Carla ("feral, drunken, single mom"), Bad Moms is a very bad movie.

"We all work too damn hard trying to make our kids' lives amazing and magical," the protagonist Amy (Mila Kunis) screeches to Kiki and Carla after a long day and a bottle of Scotch. "Their lives already are amazing and magical. Let's be bad moms!"

The film's premise—to reclaim and subvert the term "bad mom"—is basic at best and, at worst, deeply flawed. Once Amy becomes a bad mom—blowing off work, drinking wine, not doing her kid's homework, abandoning cooking—she finds happiness. Suddenly, she has friends, a higher salary, and great sex with plenty of oral. (It helps that she's also attractive, thin, straight, and wealthy.)

Despite all this, Bad Moms does have a few entertaining montages set to pop music that provide satisfying comedic and physical release—a drunken, rage-filled grocery shopping spree and a party where everyone dances with phallic vodka bottles and does whip-its. It's no doubt exactly the relief that its audience, including many mothers on a rare night off, are seeking.

But one question nagged at me throughout the film, even as I found myself laughing: While these women are out partying, who is watching their children?

The issue is addressed once, anemically. After catching Kiki out at a restaurant having a salad and champagne for lunch, her angry husband demands to know who is at home with their four children. "Rosa," she replies quietly, hinting at the legions of domestic care workers who make even the smallest acts of luxury possible.

Though it never manages to successfully reclaim the term "bad mom," the movie at least has a tiny foothold in reality. It allows its mothers to appear angry, violent, desperate, and, occasionally, in sweatpants. By contrast, pop culture's other most recent attempt at female empowerment, the music video for pop/R&B singer Fergie's song "M.I.L.F.$," completely fails at reclaiming the term MILF into anything transgressive, let alone progressive.

"Changing the acronym to Moms I'd Like to Follow [from Moms I'd Like to Fuck] is about empowering women who did it all," Fergie said. "They have a career and a family, and still find time to take care of themselves and feel sexy."

It's all a lie, of course.

However empowering women may find the term MILF, the male gaze is built directly into it. The truth is, we're all fuckable—only, as the video makes abundantly clear, some of us more so than others.

The video, directed by Colin Tilley, opens with the "MILFman" driving through MILFville, a pastel-colored suburb that looks like a bargain basement David LaChapelle set, to deliver milk to Fergie and other celebrity mothers including Kim Kardashian, Ciara, and Chrissy Teigen.

"Heard you in the mood for a little MILFshake," Fergie croons. "Welcome to the Dairy Dutchess Love Factory."

Fergie welcomes us to many places: the MILF Spa where she bathes in a tub of milk, a 1950s boozy soda counter where women hang from stripper poles in giant strawberry milkshakes, and a classroom filled with teenage boys in lettermen jackets who are all hot for teacher. "M.I.L.F.$" culminates with a scene in which Kardashian, clad in nude-colored latex lingerie and 10-inch gold heels, showers in thick white liquid. In lurid clips, Fergie, dressed in a yellow-and-black vinyl swimsuit that reads "slippery when wet," and others pour milk (or is it semen?) all over their bodies.

The only subversive moment in the "M.I.L.F.$" video is a brief shot of Teigen, a swimsuit model and cookbook author, breast-feeding her infant daughter. Despite Teigen's best attempts to seduce the camera with a pouty-lipped kissy face, there's nothing sexual going on here, just a breast doing exactly what it was designed to do—sustain life.

The trailer for Bad Moms features fuchsia-and-white stencil lettering on a black background. It immediately called to mind the cover design of The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson's singular and necessary examination of bodies, love, and motherhood that was released last year. In it, Nelson wrests parenthood out of heteronormativity's choke hold and expands it into something much larger and complex. At one point, she posits that pregnancy, a state "so profoundly strange and wild and transformative," might actually be "inherently queer."

Amid the daily grind of work—both public and private—and our deadly culture that values some lives more than others, choosing to guide a small human through the whole mess can feel like a radical act of hope. But watching Bad Moms and "M.I.L.F.$," I felt hollow. They were grim reminders that motherhood is still, in Nelson's words, "the ultimate conformity."

Four Places to Enjoy Ful, the Most Comforting Breakfast Dish

Angela Garbes — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 04:00:00 -0700

Four Places in Seattle to Enjoy Ful, the Most Comforting Breakfast Dish by Angela Garbes

I devote a lot of time to thinking and writing about lunch and dinner, but not breakfast. Left to my own devices, I'd probably eat cold leftovers or plain yogurt straight from the container every morning. Meals out still feel like a luxury, while breakfast is an at-home necessity, one that I prefer to take with my coffee, in my comfy pants, before I am fully conscious.

But there's one breakfast dish that always seems to call to me, quietly and softly insisting that I get dressed and leave the house for it: ful, a humble, satisfying bowl of cooked fava beans. When I do, I am never disappointed. While the origins of ful—which you'll often see spelled as "foul," "fool," or "foule"—go back as far as ancient Egypt, ful is now eaten throughout the Middle East and East Africa, in countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan.

Ful's spices and accompaniments change with every country and cook who prepares it, but they include cumin, berbere, olive oil, tahini, parsley, lemon juice, fresh chilies, tomatoes, onion, hard-boiled eggs, and cheese. Eating ful requires no utensils, just a willingness to sop it up with pita, French bread, or spongy injera. But the heart and soul of ful is always dried fava beans. They begin as sad, brown, crumpled looking things, but after hours of the simple, miraculous act of cooking, they are transformed into something entirely new—supple, tender, and wholly comforting.

In Seattle, where we are blessed with a large number of East African immigrants, ful abounds in our many Ethiopian cafes and restaurants. Much like Vietnamese pho, it pours out of the small kitchens in large quantities, a lifeblood that fuels a hungry community of workers with the energy they need to get through their days.

For years, I've turned to the Central District's Cafe Selam for my ful needs. Here the ful is satiny smooth and spicy—the fava beans are lightly pureed with olive oil and red chili. It's served in a broad white bowl topped with freshly chopped scallions, tomatoes, and serrano chilies, as well as slices of hard-boiled egg and soft crumbles of feta cheese. A red plastic basket filled with two crusty French loaves accompanies each bowl. Immediately after it lands on the table, I'm tearing into the bread and dragging it through the stew. Hours later, my lips are still buzzing from its spice and heat.

At Sunset Cafe on Rainier Avenue South, ful is served strictly during the morning hours. It is beautiful and shimmering, with swaths of grassy olive oil pooling on its surface. Two small mounds of piquant diced green chilies and white onion, as well as a bundle of roughly chopped fresh tomato, float on top, begging to be stirred into the beans. The favas, while soft, remain pleasantly firm enough to bite through.

Each bowl is served with small slices French bread, as well as a small ramekin filled with a soft, spreadable farmer cheese whose creaminess echoes that of the beans. While you can easily drag the bread through the ful (remember: no need for utensils), consider spreading a little cheese on each slice and then topping it with favas and a few bits of onion, maybe a tiny piece of chili or two, as though you're composing your own personal hors d'oeuvres. It makes each bite feel special.

Service at Sunset Cafe can move at its own leisurely pace, so if you're in need of a quicker ful fix, head across the street to Kaffa Cafe and Wine Bar, which is set up for more expedient coffee shop–type experience. While the ful here is a bit bland compared to Sunset, it's still quite tasty, and between the heady mix of berbere, coffee, and incense in the air, you may catch a little buzz. There's an attention to detail here—red onions, jalapeños, and tomatoes are diced with precision and, along with some dry cheese (it resembles the dusty Parmesan cheese that comes in packets with pizzas), lovingly placed in their own quadrant on top of the bowl.

Way up north in the Pinehurst neighborhood, Jebena Cafe serves what is certainly Seattle's most beautiful bowl of ful. A crimson sea of favas—long simmered with berbere and tomato—fills a vintage green bowl, shaped like a leaf, that sits atop a matching plate. It's showered with diced green chilies, scallions, feta cheese, and a generous amount of olive oil that adds a silky richness. The ful is already wonderfully spiced, but a final sprinkling of what tastes like cardamom and black pepper lights up your senses as you bend over and breathe in its scent.

Jebena's ful is astonishingly creamy—each scoop looks like it holds whole softened favas, but once inside your mouth, the skins melt away and suddenly your tongue is awash in a texture so lush and velvety, it's hard to imagine the beans were ever dried. The whole French rolls served with the bread have thoughtfully been heated up just before serving.

Just as pho has come to occupy an integral part of Seattle's consciousness and daily life, ful is making its way into the more mainstream fabric of the city. In Fremont, the lovely upscale cafe and wine shop Vif occasionally serves their own version of it. Vif's spring ful, made from chickpeas and red lentils instead of favas, had decidedly seasonal Northwest elements: soft-boiled farm egg, English peas, radishes, and soft herbs such as mint and chive blossoms.

As ful finds new audiences, it remains a dish tied to another part of the world. As I sat in Jebena last week, breathing in the scent of incense that lingers in the dining room and eavesdropping on conversations spoken in Amharic, I felt transported.

But as I looked down at my bowl, I noticed that the way the white crumbles of feta sit on its piled-high toppings look like a dusting of snow on a mountain. I'll admit I have a tendency to fall in love and rhapsodize about whatever plate of food happens to be in front of me, but for a moment it reminded me of gazing down at Mount Rainier from an airplane—another thing that makes me feel lucky to call this corner of the world home.

JarrBar Is Small, but Its Ambitions Are Big

Angela Garbes — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 04:00:00 -0700

JarrBar Is Small, but Its Ambitions Are BigRelated Location: JarrBar by Angela Garbes

As the sun slips behind the Olympic Mountains each day, it casts a magical light that gives everything an otherworldly glow. The hours between day and night are the perfect time to make your way through Pike Place Market's cobblestone alleys and down its creaky wooden hallways toward JarrBar, where you can while away a few pleasant hours with food and drinks.

JarrBar, from owner Bryan Jarr (who, along with chef Cormac Mahoney, co-owned the much lauded but sadly short-lived Madison Park Conservatory from 2010 to 2014), sits on Western Avenue, beneath the market. Housed in a narrow space that used to be a storage closet, JarrBar feels a bit like a box, but a wonderfully cozy one. It opens at 4 p.m. every day, just in time to allow western light in, bathing the blond wood bar and tables in sunshine.

JarrBar opens at a time when many office workers are eager to get out of work but not quite ready to head home. It stops serving food and drinks at 2 a.m., late enough to be a place where restaurant industry workers can find similar respite between work and home.

"It's in the market but off the beaten path," said Jarr. "It's tiny, so it can only fit so many people, and narrow. But it has high ceilings and that European feel—as though people live above the little doorway. It's casual and neighborhoody, like the taverns or pubs throughout Spain and Southern Europe."

Jarr's vision was a place where "you can meet a few friends after work, share a couple of little things, have a few glasses of wine." The wine is mostly Spanish and reasonably priced; house cocktails are flavorful and use a nice variety of spirits. The space can't accommodate a full kitchen or hood system, which is just fine with him, since his plan was to offer bar food that was "different than the stuff that's cooked in fryers."

The food at JarrBar is of the Spanish grazing variety—olives, pickles, and almonds, as well as cans of imported seafood such as tuna, mussels, and sardines. Plates piled with cured meats, including slices of a handsome jamón ibérico that sits at the end of the bar as though it's a regular customer, and cheese are also served. It's easy enough to get sated here, but it would be unfair to come to JarrBar expecting a traditional dinner. Think of it as a place to get a small in-between meal, one that you piece together from a menu divided under four simple headings: "Jars," "Tins," "Plates," and "Cheese & Dessert."

A jar filled with pale-green preserved fruits—pipparas and olives—was a harbinger of what to expect. The long, slender peppers were vinegary and mildly spicy, while the soft-fleshed olives were briny and stuffed with minced anchovies. They were by turns tangy, salty, buttery, and fishy—all the flavors you can experience on JarrBar's menu presented in an unassuming glass vessel. King salmon rillettes ($12), one of just a few items made in-house, were fantastic. The fish had been lightly smoked, its pink flesh packed with butter into another glass jar. It was ultra-rich, soft, and creamy, but perked up by just the right amount of lemon and chives.

You might think it hard to muster a lot of enthusiasm for the menu, which mostly consists of items whose preparation requires little more than opening a can. But doing that dismisses the tremendous labor and care that went into the food long before it arrived at your table. Jarr, who traveled and studied seafood preservation through Spain and Portugal after closing Madison Park Conservatory, sources canned seafood (sardines, tuna, cockles, and more) from purveyors who use traditional line-and-hook or net fishing methods. Most clean and prepare their harvests by hand. You can taste the difference.

Chipirones ($14), small whole squid, their tentacles tucked sweetly into their bodies, are packed in their own black ink, allowing them to achieve another level of natural, subtle salinity. They are pleasantly chewy and oceanic, and taste as though the tin had been opened to reveal not a cramped metal space but the depths of the sea. Tuna belly, called ventresca ($18), is tender and velvety, even more luxurious as it bathes in a viscous olive oil that slicks your tongue, lips, fingers, and plate in its pale yellow richness.

Sturdy slices of purple-skinned octopus ($14) were muscular and lean, and tasted even better with just a dab of the lush aioli it was served with. Mussels ($9)—plump, meaty, and a creamy pale orange—are another excellent choice. They are packed not just in oil, but also vinegar, giving much-needed brightness and acidity.

All the tinned foods are served on wooden boards with a few simple accompaniments: wedges of lemon, and tiny stacks of sea salt and red espelette pepper, which is less spicy than it is sweet and floral. Spend an extra five dollars for little bowls of three sauces: house-made salsa verde, loaded with fresh parsley and garlic; house-made romesco, red, smoky, and studded with hazelnuts; and a complex, spiced harissa paste that you can use to add a dose of heat. Part of the pleasure of eating is customizing each bite and experiencing something new—how just a few flakes of salt or bit of green herbs can amplify flavors, how some things taste best plain and unadorned.

A Seattle native who also worked on a cookbook with the folks behind the Pike Place Fish Market (the ones who throw the fish in front of tourists), Jarr returned from his European travels inspired to apply traditional artisan preservation methods to Northwest seafood. Next year, he'll open Jarr & Co. in the Pike Place MarketFront, the Western Avenue expansion of the market that's currently under construction. When it opens next summer, Pike Place MarketFront will include a public plaza, farm and craft stalls, low-income senior housing, and several food businesses. Jarr & Co. will be a restaurant and bar, but like Beecher's Cheese, it will also be a retail space where the public can see the production process behind curing and preserving seafood.

Chef Zoi Antonitsas will lead the project. She and Jarr worked together at Madison Park Conservatory and have remained close. Antonitsas, who received national recognition at Westward and currently cooks at Omega Ouzeri, is particularly gifted when it comes to working with seafood and Mediterranean flavors. "It only made sense to bring Zoi on and have her take control," Jarr said.

"We're going to do things outside of the usual salmon, oysters, and tuna," he added. "Cockles, butter clams, manila clams, mussels, mackerel, black cod, and spot prawns. We're going to do a whole run. In Europe, there's a long history of eating like this, but that hasn't been the case in America."

JarrBar, as it turns out, is a testing ground for Jarr & Co., a fantastic idea that, miraculously, hasn't been done here before. "One of the purposes was to start to introduce the products from Spain and Portugal in this format," said Jarr. "Before the big undertaking and investment, JarrBar was a safe, easy way to see if people even like this stuff. And it's been awesome. It's exceeded my expectations."

The Imaginative Things Eden Hill's Chef Is Doing at the Top of Queen Anne

Angela Garbes — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 04:00:00 -0700

The Imaginative Things Eden Hill's Chef Is Doing at the Top of Queen Anne by Angela Garbes

On the top of Queen Anne sits a small restaurant called Eden Hill—so small that walking through the front door, you find yourself squarely in the middle of its intimate 18-seat dining room, which is almost always full. (Reservations here are highly recommended.) When you sit down for dinner, your server will tell you that you have two choices: pick a few dishes to share from the short menu of smallish plates or opt for the five-course chef's blind tasting menu, which changes daily and consists of entirely different dishes.

On a recent evening, I came in and stood for a minute amid people oohing and aahing over their plates of elaborately composed food. The majority of them had opted for chef Maximillian Petty's blind tasting menu—something that both surprised and impressed me.

Petty's tasting menu costs $90 per person (with an optional wine pairing available for $40), while à la carte dishes cost an average of $16. That the restaurant was filled with several tables of customers forking over substantial amounts of money for a prix fixe meal that lasts more than two hours (on a Tuesday night, no less) shows that Petty, who opened Eden Hill last September, has established a relationship of real trust with his neighborhood clientele. They're not only willing to eat whatever the chef wants to feed them but also willing to take a chance on the gels, foams, creams, and other conceptual elements of his self-described "avant garde, New American" cuisine.

Whichever dining experience you choose, Petty's reverence for his ingredients (many local and seasonal, of course) will be on full display, as well as his playful imagination. He is a chef with a lot of ideas and techniques, and he cooks as though he has a mandate to use all of them.

A tasting menu in late June began with an amuse-bouche of two smelt—oily little fishes that were lightly fried and crispy. They tasted great dipped in a creamy aioli, but were even better when dabbed with an acidic malt vinegar fluid gel—part liquid, part solid, wholly intriguing. Each smelt acted as both fish and chip, and each vanished in just two quick and satisfying bites.

Another course—pasta bathed in an ultra-rich, funky taleggio cream sauce—held a masterful surprise: the noodles were actually made from thinly sliced pig skin that Petty had cured for more than a day. They were soft and chewy, and, when coated in the delicious, complex molten cheese sauce, became even more slippery and pleasurable to eat. The dish was wonderfully lush and indulgent but needed neither the shavings of black truffle nor the edible gold leaf that were laid on top of the bowl. Both seemed to exist mainly so our server could describe the dish as being "totally baller."

Other courses on the blind tasting menu were less successful. A Dungeness crab salad that involved layers of ancho chili liqueur and coconut-and-corn cream suspended over a glass filled with herbs and smoke (it was meant to "scent the dish," our server told us) was overcomplicated, strange, and fussy—a trick that fell flat. Seared arctic char, despite its accompanying octopus broth and lovely magenta dianthus flowers, wasn't very interesting, nor was an Anderson Ranch lamb chop served on a plate painstakingly dotted with goat yogurt, sour cherry gastrique, pickled onions, fermented cabbage, nasturtium powder, microgreens, and flowers. Despite the ornamentation on both plates, the main proteins, while flawlessly cooked, were straightforward and safe.

A meal put together from à la carte menu items was much stronger—every plate complex but also well conceived and thought out. Garnishes were essential, not extraneous.

Florets of cauliflower "chilaquiles" ($13), meaty and encased in a crackly crust, were dressed in a vibrant and piquant jalapeño and chive blossom hot sauce. Underneath, fermented red cabbage gave both tang and earthy crunch, while clouds of a manchego foam, nutty and sharp, added an ethereal texture. Charred octopus ($21) was expertly cooked, supple all the way down to the tiny curlicue at the end of the tentacle. Its crispy exterior was matched perfectly by a crunchy exterior of accompanying sunchokes, which were sweet and creamy on the inside. Pickled black currants, served whole as well as part of a sweet-and-sour sauce on the bottom of the plate, gave zest and brightness. And grilled leaves of goose tongue grass, an ingredient I've never had before, were astonishing: naturally salty, smoky, and buttery.

While perusing the desserts, I noticed that a version of the lovely dessert we were served two weeks earlier as part of our blind dinner—alder-smoked apricots, tart and musky, with pistachio cream, white chocolate bark, and vanilla "bubbles"—had found a home on the à la carte menu. We were told the dish was the chef's attempt at re-creating an Italian soda he had enjoyed earlier that week. The newer, more refined iteration is made with grilled stone fruits, pistachio and rose-hip cream, roasted white chocolate, and ginger-and-vanilla bubbles. Perhaps Petty uses the tasting menu as his place to experiment and test out ideas.

Eden Hill's signature dessert, called Lick the Bowl, is a somewhat ridiculous looking dish I've seen all over Instagram and Yelp for the last year. A foie gras "cake batter," salty and unctuous, is served in a miniature silver mixing bowl that's turned on its side. The batter spills out onto a heavy stone platter that holds slices of buttery griddled pound cake and fresh berries, all covered in a riot of powdered sugar and bright multicolored sprinkles. The scene looks like a party gone sloppily, delightfully awry. (If you're too shy to get the last bits of batter out with your finger, you can use one of the spatulas it's served with.)

To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the dessert—the batter was more slimy than creamy—but as I licked sticky bits of the stuff off my fingers, I couldn't help but laugh in appreciation of what I'd been reduced to. I was, in fact, licking the bowl—and my fingers, as well as my forearms, which were dusted with powdered sugar. I imagined the satisfaction the front- and back-of-house staff might feel as they watch countless diners, here for a formal meal, doing the same humbling things at the end of each meal.

Owning and running a restaurant is a daily grind. While Petty takes his food very seriously (and, perhaps, some of it too seriously), it's clear that what drives him is a sense of wonder and fun. He's a young chef who, within a year of owning his first restaurant, was named a semifinalist for the Rising Star Chef of the Year award by the James Beard Foundation. The most interesting thing about Eden Hill will be watching how all that imagination and talent matures and evolves.

The Best Food I Failed to Write About in the First Half of 2016

Angela Garbes — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 04:00:00 -0700

The Best Food I Failed to Write About in the First Half of 2016 by Angela Garbes

Sisters and Brothers

As a general rule, I wait at least three months before I review a new restaurant. But that doesn't mean I won't go to a place right away, especially when, as with Georgetown's Sisters and Brothers, it's a bar close to my house that also happens to serve a regional specialty that's impossible to find anywhere else in Seattle. Sisters and Brothers' signature dish, Nashville hot chicken, is chin-dribblingly juicy on the inside, crackly on the outside, and lacquered in a complex, crimson-and-rust-colored spicy sauce. The "mild" version isn't nearly racy enough, while the "insane" version is punishingly good, like a perverse and pleasant lucid dream. (I recommend "hot" as an ideal middle ground.)

Within a month, I started seeing a line out the door. It went down the block, and the wait often exceeded an hour. The hot chicken is the draw, but this place isn't a one-trick pony. In May, I devoured a fantastic iceberg wedge salad made with house-smoked bacon, lots of fresh tarragon, and two of spring's best items: sweet English peas and peppery radishes. Don't be fooled—the place may look like a red-walled dive bar, but chefs Chris Barton and Chris Howell are cranking out restaurant-quality food. Also, the beer is ice cold and comes in cans.

Neon Taco, Tortas Condesa, and Sunset Fried Chicken Sandwiches

Long menus make me suspicious. How can you be good at something if you're trying to do everything? This is why I love the restaurants Monica Dimas has created. Dimas owns three Capitol Hill eateries—Neon Taco, Tortas Condesa, and Sunset Fried Chicken Sandwiches—each with its own specialty food item offered with a few small but meaningful variations. By focusing and nerding out on specific food items—fresh corn tortillas, house-made cumin-rich chorizo, fried chicken made from moist, dark thigh meat—Dimas showcases both her Mexican heritage and the technical skills she picked up working at some of the city's best restaurants.

For all three of her projects, Dimas shares space and business ties with Rachel Marshall and Kate Opatz, who own the bars Nacho Borracho, where Neon Taco is located, and Montana, next door to Tortas Condesa. (Marshall also owns Rachel's Ginger Beer, and Sunset Fried Chicken Sandwiches, which opened in May, is a walk-up counter housed inside its Capitol Hill location.) I'd always assumed that Dimas worked with Marshall and Opatz because the arrangement allowed her to keep the operational costs lower than those of typical restaurants. But when I asked her, her response had more to do with the support and synergy that comes from real, personal relationships.

"[The operating model] just lets us focus on what we do best," Dimas said. "The scale/operating costs are not part of why I do it—we just work well together. There's more to it than just having someone take over a kitchen."

Holy Water Pop-Up at Bannister

Kristi Brown-Wokoma cooked at Capitol Hill's dearly departed Kingfish Cafe when it rose to prominence in the 1990s. But restaurant kitchen hours, which run late, are at odds with raising a child, so she decided to work in catering. Brown-Wokoma built her own culinary business, That Brown Girl Cooks, through catering and selling her signature black-eyed-pea hummus at grocery stores.

In late February, Brown-Wokoma found her way back into a restaurant kitchen, but still very much on her own terms. For a week, she took over the Central District's Bannister with her lunch pop-up, Holy Water. On tables covered in Dutch Wax fabric, her grown son served up bowls of his mother's riotously flavorful food: lettuce cups filled with millet, fiery Laotian pork sausage, and spicy sour mango; slow-roasted Trinidadian goat curry over coconut rice; and an ultra-rich mushroom soup that, true to the menu description, was indeed a "silky bath of garlic cream heaven."

By doing a lunch pop-up, Brown-Wokoma tapped into an altogether different energy that was a pleasure to see and be part of. Holy Water was a sunny respite and midday treat for workers, as well as a welcoming space where everyone was treated like friends and family.

Bar Del Corso

A fair amount of my time and energy as a food writer is spent tracking restaurant openings and keeping an eye on the "hottest" places. People will always be interested in the newest restaurants, but just as important are the restaurants that are built to last—places where, as the silverware slowly dulls over time, the food and spirit continue to shine. I spend many hours writing about places that I might never visit more than three times—and barely any time writing about the restaurants and food that truly nourish me.

The best restaurants are the ones that you find yourself returning to again and again, for the dishes that you never tire of eating and the people who make eating there a pleasure. For me, Beacon Hill's Bar del Corso is that place. Within five minutes, and without thinking, I always have a Negroni in my hand, and the salad of chicories—tender leaves of escarole, speckled Castelfranco radicchio, and frisee under a mountain of shaved grana—on the way. The first bite, lit up by a bracing anchovy vinaigrette, never ceases to amaze me.

Bar del Corso's small, focused menu features beautiful wood-fired pizzas (order the Romana, and be sure to add the buffalo mozzarella). But, even after five years of serving countless pizzas, fried risotto balls, and plates of creamy burrata, chef Jerry Corso's menu always remains fresh and, yes, new. A small chalkboard menu displays daily, often seasonal, specials: a pizza with roasted spring onions and prosciutto, rich and salty bacalao with grilled bread, or a light and simple vineyard worker's stew with fava beans, English peas, wee artichokes, and mint that I ate this past April. Just like spring, the dish was bright, vibrant, and quietly exhilarating. It moved me—but not as much as owner Gina Tolentino Corso did earlier when she picked up my daughter as though she were her own and placed her in a high chair to eat her fill of fava beans and pizza.

Ciudad Is Open in Georgetown, Tavoláta Brings Pasta (And a Service Charge) to Capitol Hill, And Other Food News

Angela Garbes — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 12:15:44 -0700

by Angela Garbes

Grilled meats, flat breads, and vegetables at Georgetown's Ciudad. Jordan Nicholson

Ciudad, a collaboration between two well-known Seattle entrepreneurs, Marcus Lalario (95 Slide, Alive & Well, Fat’s Chicken and Waffles) and chef Matt Dillon (Sitka & Spruce, Bar Sajor, London Plane), is now open in Georgetown. The menu is built on grilled meats (and the restaurant is built to showcase its massive grill, which you walk by before entering the dining room), and accompaniments such as housemade flatbreads and pickles, as well as an array of flavorful sauces, including chimichurri and burnt honey with balsamic vinegar. The chef is the talented Nick Coffey, who previously worked for Dillon at Sitka & Spruce, and whose food I really enjoyed at Cafe Barjot.

An adjacent walk-up bar, Bar Ciudad, opens this Sunday, July 3. Ciudad is open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday, with lunch service staring in a few weeks.

Another Tavoláta On Capitol Hill
Prolific restaurateurs Ethan and Angela Stowell have opened a second location of their popular Belltown restaurant on Pike Street. The Stowells aren’t breaking new ground with Tavoláta Capitol Hill, but I doubt anyone will mind. The menu consists of Tavoláta's well-known extruded pastas such as rigatoni with spicy sausage, spaghetti with anchovy, garlic, chili, and mint, as well as meaty entrees such as bone-in New York steak.

At the beginning of June, the Stowells quietly added a 20 percent service charge to guest checks at all 12 of their formal restaurants. (Their three, more quick service-oriented Ballard Pizza Co. locations have not added the service charge.)

"The plus of service charges is that it's really kind of like a full-on Uber experience. You just sign the check and it's done," Ethan Stowell told me last summer, when he and his wife were still debating whether to add one. Stowell acknowledged that one of the reasons they were hesitant was because of what a service charge would mean for their bottom line. (Service charges are technically considered added employer income and, as such, both subject to taxes and not required to be distributed to employees.) "The downside [of service charges] is what you do with all the money. There's tax implications to it," Stowell said.

This following statement is posted on the Ethan Stowell Restaurants website: "We now include a 20% service charge on each guest check. It has always been our goal to provide equitable wages for all members of our team and we believe this model is the best way for us to achieve this. The entirety of this service charge is retained by the house, of which 100% is distributed to staff in the form of wages and commissions."

Foreign National Serving Cocktails On Capitol Hill
From Eric Johnson and Seth Hammond, owners of the upscale Vietnamese-influenced Stateside, Foreign National, located next door, serves cocktails such as a “Long Thailand” iced tea and “drinking snacks” such as sour pour and sticky rice sausages.

As for the dark, swanky decor, which includes giant disco balls and gold lighting fixtures, Johnson told Seattle Met that it "evokes what certain parts of Asia really look like as opposed to Asian-inspired things." You can decide for yourself whether Foreign National successfully recreates, in Johnson's words, “a hole-in-the-wall bar that might exist in Saigon."

The Nest Opens High Above Downtown
Located on the roof of downtown’s luxury Thompson Hotel, where chef and restaurateur Josh Henderson recently opened Scout restaurant, the Nest is Henderson’s vision of an upscale bar and lounge. Service comes via carts custom-built for tasks such as oyster shucking, cocktail making, and meat carving. Nest, which boasts over 3,500 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, also boasts sweeping views of Seattle and the Puget Sound.

Pecos Pit Barbecue Expands to West Seattle
A second location of Sodo’s beloved Pecos Pit Barbecue, this one with both indoor and outdoor seating, as well as a view (on sunny days) of Mount Rainier. The menu holds the same smoked meats—pork, beef, chicken, beef brisket, and hot links—and sides such as potato salad and tangy stewed beans.

Seattle's Food Scene Just Got Less Weird and Interesting

Angela Garbes — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 04:00:00 -0700

Seattle's Food Scene Just Got Less Weird and Interesting by Angela Garbes

Two weeks ago, I sat on a barstool at South Lake Union's restaurant/brewery Mollusk, enthralled by a sandwich. Though it was called the "Seattle Dog," it bore little resemblance to our city's signature hot dog made with cream cheese and a squishy bun. Instead, chef Travis Kukull took a house-made Malawi-spiced lamb sausage, fragrant with coriander and red chilies, tucked it into a soft baguette (also made in-house), and slathered it with a dusty pink smoked paprika cream cheese. Between the gamy spiced meat and tangy cream cheese, there was plenty of flavor. But Kukull didn't stop there, instead adding layers of heat, sweetness, sourness, and spice—pickled fresno chilies, purple cabbage kraut, dark caramelized onions, a gritty curry ketchup, and Kewpie mayonnaise. It was thrilling—sloppy, intense, almost too much, and somehow not nearly enough.

Since Mollusk's opening in late October of 2015, the bold and playful menu created by Kukull, along with former chef de cuisine Kim Sturts and pastry chef Tanya Hoang, introduced Seattle diners to unfamiliar ingredients and flavor combinations. Last winter, I enthusiastically devoured Kukull's version of fish 'n' chips, made not with deep-fried cod and potatoes but an oily, cartilage-rich grilled yellowtail collar, and delicate chips made from lotus roots and sunchokes.

Kukull's menu challenged people. During the same meal, I looked around the large dining room to see several tables of customers who were thoroughly confused by his "Nachos Picasso," made with delicata squash chips, Super Titi garlic crackers (a popular Indonesian snack), smoked avocado crème frâiche, Padrón peppers, and blue cheese. It was clearly not the platter of nachos people were expecting.

"The food I create is the way I want Seattle to be and eat," Kukull told me last week, just days after announcing that he would be stepping down as chef of Mollusk. "I want it to be weird and creative and individualistic. When I eat someone's food, I want to know that that it's specifically that chef's food. I want this town to be supportive of things that are different, not just the traditional idea of 'success.'"

The culinary landscape of South Lake Union is dominated by typical models of success. Its streets are lined with chains such as Homegrown and Chipotle, as well as eateries from chefs Tom Douglas, Ethan Stowell, and Josh Henderson, who oversee restaurant empires. South Lake Union is a rapidly developing area of tech offices and high-end apartments. Kukull and his business partner, Cody Morris, Mollusk's brewmaster, found neighborhood diners unreceptive to Kukull's nontraditional food.

"Most of the feedback was: 'Could you please make it so we understand this?' 'Could you make it cheaper?' 'Could you make it more conventional?'" Kukull said. "That's what the neighborhood wants. Some of the larger companies like Facebook and Amazon, they want to come down here for their after-work parties, but they just want conventional pub grub."

Kukull tried to develop a menu of burgers and fries. But, he conceded, "I don't even know how to do that. Even when I try, I make it weird somehow. What I'm doing is obviously not working in this neighborhood. So I decided to stop.

"[My leaving] comes out of caring for this business," said the chef, who still maintains his ownership and financial stake in Mollusk. "Some people may not see it that way, but I really do want this place to succeed."

When Kukull and Morris opened their first venture, Gastropod, in a tiny space tucked away in an industrial corner of Sodo in 2013, they found an audience hungry and thirsty for their oddball creations. Kukull's menu included kimchi scones, bubble tea pie, and an ever-changing okonomiyaki—a savory Japanese griddled pancake—versions of which included asparagus and mochi with hearts of palm salad and wasabi mayonnaise, as well as blackened broccoli and abalone topped with barbecue sauce and fish-sauce-infused mayonnaise. Customers eagerly washed Kukull's creations down with Morris's signature sour blonde ale, called Partytime!!!, and other beers brewed with ingredients such as black lemons, coriander, rooibos tea, and beets.

Gastropod was where I went to be bewildered, and often moved, by creativity.

When Kukull and Morris closed Gastropod in 2015 to open the much larger and more ambitious Mollusk, they were filled with hope. They would be in the center of the city, not hidden away near kitchen-supply stores. Morris would brew beer in a higher-volume, state-of-the art digital system, and Kukull, who had been cooking with just a few butane burners and a convection oven, would have a full kitchen with eight burners, a grill, and a deep fryer.

Even before its opening, Mollusk was enthusiastically reported on by food news site Eater Seattle. After a few months, it received a favorable review in the Seattle Times. Kukull and Morris were prepared to be busy all the time. "What I wasn't prepared for was to be dumping money out the window," Kukull said.

He laughed and then grew quiet. He looked me straight in the eye as he told me he was laughing only because he couldn't think of any other way to get through what was happening.

Mollusk is on Dexter Avenue, currently full of backhoes, jackhammers, orange construction signs, and congested traffic. It's located in the True North building, "the only apartment community in Seattle with a bouldering wall." Across the street is the newly opened Juxt, where a 496-square-foot studio costs $1,815 a month.

Through an event Mollusk has been doing at Juxt, Kukull has met some of its residents, most of whom are recent college graduates renting their first apartments.

"While there are a lot of people coming into this neighborhood, they need time to develop a sense of safety, of wanting to go out, being part of a culture, and helping create that culture," Kukull says. "But right now, they're not sure what they should do."

Kukull tells me that when his mother-in-law ate dinner at Mollusk a few months ago, she saw a Pizza Hut delivery vehicle pull up to Juxt eight times.

"They've got these great communal areas with flat-screen televisions and pool tables," he said. "Why would you ever need to go out?"

Morris says that, while overall business has been slower than he'd like, Mollusk's bar and beer service have been successful. It's "a little easier" with beer—it's already brewed, and customers can sample different beers until they find one that they like.

Morris's current tap list includes a nettle pale ale, a delicious dry green tea lager called Biru Sencha, a sweet-and-sour rye farmhouse ale called Grit, and a potent stout brewed with oyster shells called Briny Deep. (For all of these inventive beers, Mollusk's best sellers remain its IPA, called It's Pretty Awesome, and tavern lager, the Dexter Daily.)

With Kukull gone, Mollusk's new chef is Austin Alberda, who worked under Kukull as lead line cook. Alberda will create a "more conventional and more approachable menu."

If a more traditional menu helps keep Mollusk afloat and allows Morris to continue brewing his inspired beers, I'll take it. We need to support Seattle's culinary creativity however we can.

As for Kukull, he's spending the summer cooking in Alaska and will return to Seattle in the fall. He's not sure what he'll do next, but he retains the rights to the Gastropod name.

"I'm proud of what I've done. I owned one of the greatest little cult restaurants in Seattle," Kukull said. "If I could find someone who wants to invest in me, in the right neighborhood with the right food traffic, I'd open it up again."

Morning Star Pop-Up Brunch Returns This Weekend

Angela Garbes — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 09:37:58 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Chef Tarik Abdullah is brining Morning Star, his popular brunch pop-up, to Columbia City's Royal Room. Jenny Jimenez

After a two-month hiatus, Tarik Abdullah's popular brunch pop-up, Morning Star, is back. Abudullah, a chef and culinary educator, ended Morning Star's successful six-month run at the Central District's Bannister in April. This Sunday, June 26, he's bringing Morning Star to Columbia City's Royal Room. Service runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Abdullah’s flavors have always bold and wide-ranging, heavily influenced by North African and Middle Eastern cuisine, but also drawing from South Asia and the Mediterranean. (His last restaurant gig was cooking Mediterranean fare in the wood-fired oven of Eastlake's Cicchetti.) This weekend's menu includes (gluten-free) vanilla bean pancakes with apricot jam and coriander syrup, spiced lamb hash with yams and chickpeas over soft polenta, roasted cauliflower and millet salad, and a special of harissa-marinated jackfruit with roasted red peppers and red and black rice.

Abdullah has kept busy during Morning Star's break. Last week, I spotted him helping out in the kitchen at Food & Sh*t, the monthly Filipino pop-up held at Kraken Congee. He's also working to transform the former Hillman City club Maxim's into the Black & Tan Hall, a community-oriented arts and restaurant venue that will also be a worker-owned cooperative. In July, he'll teach another round of his children's cooking classes at Hillman City Collaboratory.

Which leads me to another reason why should head to the Royal Room on Sunday. Food aside, the vibe at Morning Star is what makes it truly great. The music is always what you want to be listening to, and the crowd—lots of black, brown, and white folks—is diverse and joyful. There's always a lot of love and gratitude in the air. It's Pride weekend, and while the Royal Room isn't close to downtown's big parade or the weekend's ongoing revelry on Capitol Hill, the spirit of inclusion and celebration (and, likely, lots of QTPOC) will be going strong at Morning Star.

"Food, kids, and community. Those are my things," Abdullah told me last year. "That's what's important to me."

Abdullah says this week's pop-up will be a "test run," but that he hopes to have a regular schedule figured out soon. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Itto's, West Seattle's Friendly Neighborhood Moroccan Tapas Bar

Angela Garbes — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Welcome to Itto's, West Seattle's Friendly Neighborhood Moroccan Tapas Bar by Angela Garbes
On a Tuesday evening in the West Seattle Junction, the bartender at Itto's Tapas began making a cocktail called the Foggy Ras ($13). She joyfully employed a small hand-held smoke gun to fill a glass bottle with apple-wood smoke. In a crystal mixing glass, she stirred together rye, Aperol, Rabarbaro Zucca (an Italian amaro made with rhubarb), and pink pepper bitters. She then added the concoction to the smoke-filled bottle and capped it. As she swirled the bottle around, she chatted with two customers at the bar, explaining what went into Itto's house-made chorizo and rhapsodizing about the deliciousness of the chicken tagine with preserved lemon.

After a few moments, she uncorked the bottle to pour the drink. Through whispers of smoke, the amber-colored liquid—spicy, sweet, earthy, and with a pleasant bitter edge—tumbled out into a glass and pooled around one large ice cube. Finally, from some corner of the crowded bar filled with various tinctures, bitters, and baskets of citrus fruits and fresh ginger root, she produced a tiny strainer filled with the North African spice mix ras el hanout and finished the drink with a fragrant dusting.

When, on my first visit to Itto's, my husband ordered the Foggy Ras, I raised my eyebrow at him from across the table. (I am against most cocktails that have more than three ingredients, and certainly nearly every drink that involves gimmicks like a smoke gun.) As our server, a knowledgeable straight shooter, walked away, my husband looked at me and shrugged. "She made it sound so good," he explained.

And so it is at Itto's, a charming neighborhood spot where, while the small plates of flavorful Moroccan- and Spanish-influenced fare may be a little hit or miss, you'll find yourself happily going along with things and ordering another round of food and drinks anyway.

Itto's, open since November 2015, is owned by Khalid Agour, a longtime West Seattle resident who also owns Capitol Hill's stalwart Toscana Pizzeria. Agour, a native of Kenitra, Morocco, says that even after running a pizza restaurant for 16 years, he has "always had an itch to bring the food and culture that [he] was raised with to Seattle."

The restaurant is named after Agour's mother, Itto, a mother of six whose home cooking and hospitality are woven into both the menu and the physical space. By coincidence, Agour opened Itto's on the one-year anniversary of his mother's passing. "It was one of the saddest and most joyous days I could have experienced," he said.

Itto's menu is steeped in classic Moroccan flavors. Harissa—a complex paste made from roasted red peppers, chilies, and spices such as cumin and caraway—abounds, as does chermoula, a pungent, herbaceous sauce made with garlic, cilantro, and parsley. Nearly every dish, each of them meticulously plated, arrives festooned with a cluster of peppery microgreens and drizzled with a crimson oil infused with smoked paprika.

Baby octopuses ($8) are braised in red wine until their flesh becomes soft and slippery, with just a hint of delicate chew. It's a saucy dish—four tiny sea creatures bathing in the dark, musky braising liquid that's brightened by a bit of garlicky chermoula. A potato cake called maakouda ($4)—crispy on the outside, dense with pillowy cumin-spiced potatoes on the inside—is simple and terrific. It's served with a red harissa-spiked aioli, as well as one flavored with lemon and garlic. Stewed white beans—creamy and soothing—are the perfect counterpoint to slices of piquant merguez sausage ($8), gamy lamb seasoned with cumin, paprika, and fennel.

Lamb and cumin come together again—brilliantly—in the lamb brochette ($5), another straightforward dish that shines. Tender chunks of spice-rubbed lamb are threaded onto skewers and served with an eggplant puree. The puree is humble-looking but tastes luxurious on the tongue—bright and acidic, silky and rich. (Itto's menu is filled with very reasonably priced small plates, but at $5, this one is an especially good value.)

The tapas menu is lengthy, and not all dishes are successful. Xerez de zetas ($6)—a mixture of oyster, shiitake, and cremini mushrooms sautéed with rosemary—were pleasantly earthy and woody. But they were doused with too much sherry and not cooked long enough, so the mushrooms were soggy and flaccid, saturated with acrid liquid.

A dish of rice cooked in squid ink is somewhat disingenuously called Spanish black paella ($12). While it was indeed black and studded with squid, octopus, tiny scallops, and a head-on prawn, it lacked the flavor of a good seafood stock and any trace of socarrat, the layer of crispy rice that forms at the bottom of true paella. It was served in a mini paella pan, but the dish was cold, indicating that the rice had been reheated separately then slapped into the pan solely for presentation.

A recent special of linguica sausage and house-made chorizo ($9) had tasty elements, but the disparate flavors didn't come together cohesively. Balls of fresh chorizo—smoky, if a bit sweet—were balanced on slices of cured linguica, which were set atop pools of a potent Dijon aioli that clashed with the meats. The plating was lovingly thought out but overwrought, including diagonal slices of cornichon, pickled pipara pepper, microgreens, chili oil, and a dousing of smoked paprika.

The menu at Itto's, which includes daily specials, is overseen by chef Daniel Perez. According to Agour, Perez has experience with Spanish-style tapas. "Together we fused our unique backgrounds to create our ongoing rotating menu," he said. The cocktail menu, created by general manager Devrim Ozkan and bartender Phineas Fennell, aims to do the same with drinks like the Foggy Ras, as well as a sweet-and-spicy tequila-based drink called the Jaliscorissa, made with house-made ginger beer, harissa, and a candied pickled pipara.

I appreciate that the people at Itto's are trying new things, but sometimes the purposeful fusing feels a bit heavy-handed, as though they are trying too hard. At the same time, the convivial atmosphere—particularly in the 21-and-over bar area, which always seems to be filled with neighborhood regulars—makes it clear that, even in their earnestness, Agour and his staff don't take themselves too seriously.

"I wanted [to bring] something unique and personal to the table," Agour said. Judging by the questions diners are often asking staff—"Can you tell me about this Moroccan Syrah?" "What do you think of the chicken tagine?" "What's chermoula?" "Why is this soooo good?"—he's done just that. While the menu holds a few ups and downs, Itto's is marked most by a generosity of spirit, one that Agour's mother would surely be proud of.

"We may be small, but we are large with heart," he told me. Indeed.

Chef Travis Kukull Is Leaving Mollusk

Angela Garbes — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 12:40:16 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Chef Travis Kukull in his Sodo restaurant Gastropod in 2013. Beth Crook

Seattle's food scene is about to become a little less interesting. Travis Kukull, chef and co-owner of South Lake Union's Mollusk, is leaving the restaurant.

"The neighborhood has proved difficult for my style of cuisine," Kukull told the Seattle Times' Bethany Jean Clement. His last day will be Tuesday, June 21. He'll cook in Alaska for the summer, then (hopefully) return to Seattle this fall.

Since opening Mollusk in late October 2015, Kukull's weird and wonderful menu has introduced diners to unfamiliar ingredients and flavor combinations. It's also challenged them. Back in November, I enthusiastically devoured Kukull's version of "fish & chips," made, not with deep-fried cod and potatoes, but a massive, oily, cartilage-rich grilled hamachi collar, and thin chips made from lotus roots and sunchokes.

During the same meal, I looked around the large dining room to see several tables of customers who were thoroughly confused by his "Nachos Picasso," made with delicata squash chips, smoked avocado creme fraiche, padron peppers, and bleu cheese. It was clearly not the platter of nachos they were expecting.

I've always thought Kukull's food was strong enough to win people over—and I believe that Seattle food lovers remain hungry for truly creative food. But you can't win customers over if you don't have many which, according to Kukull, was also part of the problem. "While he had loyal regulars, residents of the surrounding brand-new buildings just weren’t coming in," wrote Clement.

I ate at Mollusk just three days ago (during their happy hour, brilliantly called "Gavage Hour"). As I wolfed down a sloppy, excellent "Seattle Dog"—housemade curry-spiced lamb sausage with smoked paprika cream cheese, pickled fresno chilis, sauerkraut, curry ketchup, and sweet Kewpie mayonnaise—I overheard the bartender telling some customers that she was hopeful that the recent opening of the building across the street ("The Juxt," where a 496-square-foot studio will run you $1815 a month) would lead to more business.

I've always intended to review Mollusk, but as a general rule, I wait between three to six months before reviewing new places. Restaurants function on smooth systems and teamwork. Having worked to open new restaurants, I've seen how it can take months for the front-of-house and back-of-house to find their rhythms—and how customer feedback during those first few months influences things as well. (When I sat down to interview the owners of Queen Anne Beerhall, a full six months after they opened and just a couple of days after my last meal there, they showed me a completely revamped menu they had just adjusted based on customer input.)

Restaurants make many crucial adjustments during the first year, and Mollusk is no exception. In January it eliminated lunch service and cut staff. ("Lunch was killing us," Kukull's business partner and Epic Ales brewmaster Cody Morris told Eater Seattle. "The neighborhood just wasn't dense enough to support a lunch program.") Mollusk opened as a tipless restaurant with a 20 percent service charge, but went back to a traditional model in April, also citing lack of foot traffic in the neighborhood.

With all these changes, it never felt like quite the right time to review Mollusk. And, considering that it received attention from the Seattle Times and Seattle Met, I figured I'd wait a little longer so I could add something new to the conversation. People are always interested in the latest restaurants, but restaurants also need media attention months—and years—after they open. Sadly, now it's too late.

To be totally honest, I've never fully gotten over the closure of Gastropod, Kukull and Morris's tiny Sodo restaurant and brewery, which they closed in order to focus on the much larger and ambitious Mollusk. While you gain a lot in scaling up from what was essentially a cubicle with a few butane burners and a convection oven to a full kitchen with eight burners, a grill, and a deep fryer, you lose a little charm and scrappiness along the way. And now, according to Kukull, the menu at Mollusk will become "more conventional and more approachable."

While I can't help but be sad about all of this, if a more traditional menu helps keep Mollusk afloat and allows Morris to continue brewing his inventive, oddball beers—the current tap list includes a delicious, dry green tea lager called Biru Sencha, a sweet-and-sour rye farmhouse ale called Grit, and a potent stout brewed with oyster shells called Briny Deep—I'll take it. We need to support Seattle's culinary creativity however we can.

Flavorful, Wildly Creative Food at No Bones Beach Club

Angela Garbes — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 04:00:00 -0700
The Flavorful, Wildly Creative Food at No Bones Beach Club Just Happens to Be Vegan by Angela Garbes
"I don't like fake meat," says MacKenzie DeVito, owner of Ballard's No Bones Beach Club. "There's no point. We have all these beautiful vegetables and ingredients that can be made into solid, delicious food without trying to be something they're just not."

At No Bones, you won't find any soy-rizo, mock chicken, or portobello mushrooms doing their best impersonation of hamburger patties. Instead, you'll find tacos loaded with beer-battered and fried avocados, sandwiches stuffed with sesame-seed-crusted taro cakes, and poke (Seattle's current favorite dish) made not with raw fish but smoked golden beets. DeVito describes her menu as "Southern California–style food—fresh, with lots of vegetables, herbs, and great textures." After just a few bites, you'll be grateful that DeVito, who adopted a vegan diet seven years ago, has spent all her time since developing such flavorful, satisfying, and surprising food.

If you think of vegan food as being both virtuous and joyless, order a platter of No Bones' cauliflower wings in coconut buffalo sauce ($9), which also comes with a gratuitous side of creamy ranch dressing. Traditional buffalo sauces are a mix of a cayenne, vinegar, and lots of butter. Here, the sauce is as tangy and spicy as you would want, but DeVito masterfully substitutes in coconut cream "for that extra butter punch." While thick coconut milk would have sufficed, the use of its cream (picture the dense cloud of cream that settles on the top of a can of coconut milk) gives the sauce a next-level richness. The herby ranch dressing, made from soy-free Vegenaise and flecked with plenty of dill, provides a cooling counterpoint.

But it's not just the sauces that stand out: Big, meaty cauliflower florets are coated with a golden brown batter that's wonderfully crackly, shattering into bits that land on your plate with every bite. The batter provides another way for flavor to penetrate the food—it's slightly spiced, reminiscent of an Indian pakora, adding another dimension to the dish.

"I've spent the last seven years cooking, experimenting, and mastering what I do—mainly because I love to eat," DeVito says. But as a restaurant industry veteran and someone who grew up enjoying meat and dairy, it's clear she also sees it as a creative challenge.

A spirited inventiveness marks No Bones' eggplant fries ($9). Wedges of eggplant the size of dill pickle spears come rolled in a thick coating of panko crumbs (made with rice instead of wheat flour—much of the No Bones menu is also gluten-free) and black sesame seeds. They arrive standing in a basket, big and imposing like giant's fingers. While the rice flour gives their exteriors a bit of unpleasant gumminess, it's fairly easy to overlook this when you bite into the creamy, steaming flesh of the eggplant inside.

While the coating on the fries contains enough spicy chili powder to make eating them plain a pleasure, you will want to dip each fry—repeatedly—into the accompanying creamy sauces. One is rust-colored and smoky with roasted poblano peppers and paprika, the other a luscious green herbaceous sauce dubbed "sun goddess." You'll taste plenty of basil, as well as mint and cilantro. Also, according to DeVito, "lots and lots of garlic."

Sauces also shine in the crispy stuffed poblano pepper ($13), specifically a creamy sauce made from cashews. The natural sweetness of the nuts is cut with nutritional yeast, which gives it a deep, savory umami flavor. It plays nicely off the other sauce on the plate—a bright cilantro crema. The pepper is roasted and stuffed with white beans and vegan cheese (one that's actually creamy, not sad and rubbery). It's then dipped into a light batter and deep-fried, giving it a crackly, airy outer shell. More crunchy texture is added with a scattering of fresh scallions and purple cabbage.

Jackfruit flautas ($11) also showcase layers of texture and flavor: silky, stringy fruit (rarely used outside of Southeast Asian cuisine), crispy fried tortillas, smoky roasted chilies, piquant tomatillo-and-avocado salsa, and finely diced fresh carrots. The crowning jewel is the chao cheese—rich, coconut-based, and flavored with fermented tofu called "chao" in Vietnamese—that's made by local company Field Roast. DeVito is quick to praise the stuff, which she says is one of many recently developed food products helping more diners eagerly accept vegan food.

"For me—and basically every single person I talk to—the feeling is 'I can't be vegan because I can't give up cheese,'" DeVito says. Carnivores eating at No Bones will feel less like they are giving something up and more like they are adding to and expanding their palates.

The food at No Bones can skew sweet, as with the hearts of palm and parsnip cakes ($11). They sit atop a bed of spinach leaves looking not unlike seared scallops, pale pink with crispy, blackened surfaces. But when you slice into them, they break open to reveal haystacks of finely shredded parsnips whose sugars aren't quite balanced out by the tangy hearts of palm with which they're mixed. A heavy-handed drizzle of syrupy mango gastrique pushes things into cloyingly sweet territory. It needs less of that sauce and more of the jalapeño tartar that it's also served with. But the dish still plays with your perceptions, delivering unexpected tastes and pleasures.

DeVito started her business, originally called No Bones About It, in 2014. It began as an outdoor tent and then grew into a food truck that built a loyal following through regular gigs at Ballard breweries such as Reuben's and Populuxe. A massive fire in 2015 totaled the truck and derailed business for a few months, but loyal customers eagerly welcomed No Bones back.

Last fall, DeVito, her husband, her father, and a crew of women (No Bones employs entirely women—"I didn't plan that, it just ended up that way," she says happily) began rebuilding the Ballard space as the No Bones Beach Club. They opened the doors in February and have enjoyed a steady stream of customers since.

No Bones is a tiki bar—there are fruity drinks, and the decor includes surfboards, thatched huts, and a television playing movies like Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii. It's tropical, whimsical, and a little bit cheesy. DeVito says she simply wanted to create a "fun place where lots of people feel comfortable." Tiki is far from my cup of tea—its history is darker and more complicated than its lighthearted appearance. But DeVito and her staff have succeeded in creating a space that's fun, welcoming, and, most importantly, delicious. I'll happily come back just for the food.

A New Central District Restaurant, the Little Uncle Walk-Up Window Closes, And Other Food News

Angela Garbes — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:49:10 -0700
by Angela Garbes
The bad news: You can't get Little Uncle's khao soi from its walk-up window anymore. The good news: You can still get it at the sit-down restaurant. Jennifer Richard

The Atlantic Is Open in the Central District
As of last week, the Atlantic is open. It's a neighborhood restaurant serving an eclectic menu including dishes such as avocado toast, kale-and-romaine Caesar salad, beef tongue French dip, ginger-molasses tofu banh mi, an “old school” burger (shredded iceberg, pink sauce), and a “new school” burger (arugula, Beecher’s cheese). Chef Richard Cano used to work at Serafina.

There’s lots of wine, as well as local beers and locally brewed kombucha on tap. Atlantic is owned by Lex Petras, a neighborhood resident who also owns Pioneer Square's German beerhall Alstadt. The restaurant is located across the street from the excellent Standard Brewing and one block away from fried chicken haven Quick Pack Food Mart.

Cinque Terre Opens in Downtown's Amazon Doppler Building
Named after five villages clustered on the Mediterranean coast of Italy, Cinque Terre is a seafood-focused restaurant that melds regional Italian cuisine with Pacific Northwest ingredients. Located on the Amazon Doppler campus and owned by the Varchetta family, who also own nearby Barolo restaurant, Cinque Terre’s signature dishes include housemade pastas, mussels, octopus, and selection of pizzas. Also: Pesto. ("Pesto, a condiment made of primarily fresh basil, is the flagship of tradition in the region," the Cinque Terre menu rhapsodizes. "We make our pesto every day, from the freshest and best quality ingredients.")

The Little Uncle Walk-Up Window Has Closed, Will Reopen as Manu’s Bodegita
When Little Uncle owners PK and Wiley Frank opened the expanded, sit-down version of their casual, walk-up restaurant back in March, the walk-up window remained closed so the couple could focus on the new venture. Seattle Met reports that the Franks have decided to close the window permanently.

Luckily, the Franks have already found someone to take over the space: Manu Alfau of Pioneer Square's Manu's Bodega. Alfau will open Manu's Bodegita there in July serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The menu will include empanadas, the popular puerco asado sandwich, as well as coffee and breakfast tacos.

Ethan and Angela Stowell Are Opening A Second Tavolàta on Capitol Hill
On my last two visits to Trove Noodle, cooks there were eager to gossip about how they'd been seeing Ethan Stowell coming and going from the space across the street for the past few months. Now comes official word that the Stowells will open a second location of their popular Belltown restaurant Tavolàta at 501 East Pike Street, at the corner of Pike and Summit.

The 2,600-square-foot space, in the newly renovated Dunn Automotive Building, will be built around a large communal table (that's where the restaurant name comes from), with plenty of bar and dining room seating. There's also talk of a patio facing Summit avenue. The menu, overseen by current Tavolàta chef Addam Buzzalini, won't stray far from the well-known menu of extruded pastas and hearty proteins. The restaurant should be open by the end of this month.

Where to Eat and Drink at Tomorrow's Georgetown Carnival (Or Any Other Day)

Angela Garbes — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:25:18 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Going hard at the Georgetown Carnival. Fedora el Morro

Are you going to the Georgetown Carnival tomorrow? You should. Along with being one of the city's most interesting and low-key neighborhoods, Georgetown is compact and easy to explore by foot. During the carnival, which is free and runs from noon until 10 p.m., it's main drag, Airport Way S, is shut down to vehicles, allowing people to take over the street. Also: the annual power tool drag races, during which modified belt sanders and circular saws decorated with demonic dolls, guitars, and elaborate metal work face off against each other, is one of the most strangely compelling things on earth to watch.

Georgetown is filled with great bars and restaurants. Here's a list of a few places to eat and drink at while you're down there:

• Everyone in Seattle already knows about the greatness of homestyle, family-friendly Mexican restaurant Fonda La Catrina, which is why there's almost always a wait. But last fall, Fonda owner Enrique Trejo quietly opened El Sirenito next door, a 21-and-over bar seeing cocktails, an extensive selection of tequila and mezcal, and light snacks such as ceviche and excellent fish tacos. Sirenito also has a terrific (and spacious) back patio.

• Newcomer Sisters and Brothers already has long waits—and with good reason. The signature dish, Nashville hot chicken (available in "mild," "hot," or "insane") is juicy on the inside, crackly on the outside, and lacquered in a complex, spicy sauce. But this place isn't just a one-trick pony. I recently had a fantastic iceberg wedge salad there, made with housesmoked bacon, lots of fresh tarragon, and two of spring's best items: sweet English peas and peppery radishes. Sisters and Brothers might look like a dive bar/fried chicken shack, but don't be fooled—the food is restaurant quality. Also, the beer is ice cold and comes in cans. If you don't want to squeeze yourself into its cramped quarters, order your chicken to go and eat it across the street in Ruby Chow park.

• Another good picnic option: pick up fresh and functional to-go sushi at the charming Maruta Shoten, a family-owned Japanese grocery. (And don't feel limited to sushi, the deli also has hot food such as chicken karaage, fried rice, and gyoza.) If you want a little sugar, grab some Pocky or red bean mochi. At 5 p.m., all the sushi is discounted by 50 percent (and it goes fast).

• Some of the neighborhood's best food can be found at Hithcock Deli, where all the meats and charcuterie—corned beef, porchetta, bacon, pate de campagne, pastrami—are smoked, cured, and roasted in house. Sandwiches here are a carefully constructed works of art, down to the housemade mustard and raw-fermented sauerkraut.

• If you're feeling fancy, go drink wine at the brand-new Charles Smith Jet City winery, a gorgeous Olson Kundig-designed building that offers incredible views of Mount Rainier. While the whole place looks a little shinier than the rest of its industrial surroundings, the vibe here is casual and wines are reasonably priced.

• Seattle is such a beer-obsessed city, but I don't understand we don't spend more time talking about Machine House Brewery, which is dedicated to making consistently excellent, English-style cask ales, poured at room temperature from traditional hand pumps. While the rest of the city drowns in a sea of IPAs, Machine House, whose huge, comfortable tasting room is open to outside food and people of all ages, rises to the top.

• While you're in Georgetown, you should take a peek at Ciudad, the not-quite-open restaurant from Marcus Lalario, with a menu created by chef Matt Dillon. Dillon told the Seattle Times that, at Ciudad, "“everything will be grilled—grilled seafood, grilled lamb, grilled vegetables." The restaurant will feature an enormous charcoal grill as well as a large mural by artist Stacey Rozich, a la both locations of Rachel's Ginger Beer. There will also be a large outdoor area for parties and concerts.

I asked Lalario if there was any chance Ciudad would be open in time/in any way for the Carnival tomorrow. His response: "Looks like we may do a little something. Maybe."

Ciudad is located at 6118 12th Avenue South, just a stone's throw from the power tool races. Who knows what will happen tomorrow, but no doubt it will be great scene there next year.

Four Cafes Where the Food Is Much Better Than It Needs to Be

Angela Garbes — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Four Cafes Where the Food Is Much Better Than It Needs to Be by Angela Garbes
Seattle's myriad neighborhood cafes serve as our substitute homes and offices. Every day, people spend hours within their coffee-scented walls, having meetings, reading books, answering e-mails, plugged into personal devices—simultaneously alone and together. Cafes are where we go for comfort and caffeine, but not necessarily for nourishment. Sustenance is typically a damp premade sandwich or salad, a soggy spinach-and-feta croissant, or a day-old scone. But not anymore.

Over the last year, four notable cafes have opened up in neighborhoods across the city. They offer the requisite coffee, espresso drinks, and pastries, but also solid food menus rooted in delicious, high quality—and often local—ingredients. Even if you don't live around the corner from these places, you'd be wise to seek them out.

With just its name, Greenwood's Preserve and Gather makes its intentions clear. There's no wi-fi here; gathering goes better without it. In the morning, there's a rotating selection of freshly baked pastries (both sweet and savory), as well as house-made yogurt and toast topped with homemade fruit preserves such as chai tea pear butter and rhubarb orange jam. The bread is baked in cast-iron pans by esteemed Sea Wolf Bakers, who also supply the bread for all of award-winning chef Renee Erickson's restaurants.

In the afternoon, there are savory toasts, salads, and platters of meats, cheeses, and pickles. Ricotta toast ($4) is a satisfying snack: enormous slices of chewy, crumby bread cut into triangles and slathered with fresh, almost runny, ricotta. The mild cheese has a lovely quivering texture that exists somewhere between liquid and cream. Local wildflower honey, artfully drizzled on in a diagonal pattern, adds a complex sweetness.

In the late afternoon, large batches of Preserve and Gather's pickles are made, and the air in the cafe grows astringent from all the vinegar being brought to a boil. It's bracing but also thrilling—an inescapable reminder of the reality of taking the time to make things by hand.

On the opposite end of the city, the folks at Redwing Cafe in Rainier Beach also spend every morning baking pastries and updating their chalkboard menu with the day's particular muffins, scones, quiches, frittatas, and soups. Meanwhile, outside, a giant red-winged bird on the side of the building (built by a neighborhood artist, of course) invites people in to eat "Earth food for Earth people."

The cafe's breakfasts include a roasted vegetable hash, biscuits and gravy, and house-made granola. In the afternoon, there are simple sandwiches such as grilled cheddar with tomato slices and "PB&J" made with organic peanut butter and raspberry jam.

Try as I might, I can never stop myself from ordering the Harambe salad ($10), a big bowl of mixed greens topped with lovingly grated carrots, daikon radish, beets, and purple cabbage. The shredded vegetables provide earthy, sweet, and spicy notes, while toasted pumpkin seeds add a nutty crunch. Redwing's house dressing is a bright and deeply savory lemon-tahini sauce that follows the recipe of Seattle's dearly departed Gravity Bar. Anyone who used to frequent Gravity Bar will recognize the flavor immediately. Order a side of tea-smoked tofu ($3), thin slices of which are griddled and served warm and crispy, for an extra dose of health-food nostalgia.

If Redwing harks back a bit to Seattle's past, downtown's Mr. West looks decidedly forward. It's a sleek and modern cafe—lots of marble, glass, and dark wood—that gives the neighborhood exactly what it's been needing: a spacious and well-designed place that invites people to linger.

The menu is on trend with the rest of the city's new cafes: toasts, salads, sandwiches, cheese and charcuterie platters, as well as build-your-own pickle plates. But there are also some flourishes of real creativity here: A veggie sandwich is anchored by a spiced carrot spread, while toast takes a trip to South Asia and comes adorned with chunks of avocado that are dressed with curry powder, mustard seed, and lime.

Bowls of Greek yogurt, offered from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., are a blank canvas for the kitchen's inspired ideas. The "No. 3" is an unexpected savory dish—thick, tangy yogurt topped with the nutty grain farro, a Greek herb pistou that's heavy on musky, sweet oregano, slices of salty preserved lemon, and a dusting of spicy, fruity Aleppo pepper. There's honey in the mix, too, which makes it just a touch too sweet, but still delectable.

Mr. West is owned by the same folks behind Bottlehouse, a wine shop/wine bar/restaurant that's beloved by Madrona residents. The cafe serves a generous number of wines, as well as cocktails made with wines and beers. Indicative of its careful design, the menu at Mr. West, which is open until 10 p.m., transitions effortlessly from cafe to bar, morning into night.

If there's one cafe in town that I'd go far out of my way to eat at anytime, it's Capitol Hill's Peloton Bicycle Shop & Cafe. (I'll get to the bike part in a moment.) Chef and co-owner Mckenzie Hart puts out plate after plate of beautiful food that is rooted in the Pacific Northwest and its seasons, but also the uninhibited, creative energy that defines Seattle at its best.

Hart worked for Matt Dillon at both London Plane and Sitka & Spruce, as well as at Cafe Presse, and her experience shows. She's not afraid of spices and seasoning, but she cooks with an understanding and restraint that amplifies the natural flavors of her ingredients.

A recent daily special ($13) featured wild Oregon tuna, lightly marinated in soy, atop a bed of spicy baby greens from City Grown Seattle. Shredded carrot and sugar snap peas gave sweetness and crunch, while shaved radishes added peppery depth. A ginger-soy dressing punched up the flavor without being overbearing, while a perfect six-minute egg bathed the dish in golden richness.

Another salad, this one made with spinach, English peas, and rounds of shaved raw asparagus ($10), was a celebratory riot of green. Dense purple and yellow marble potatoes gave the dish heft, goat cheese gave creaminess, and a potent mustard-seed dressing coated everything with a lively tang. A shower of parsley leaves, much more than a garnish, added a welcome whisper of bitterness.

Last week's vegetable hash ($12), which two months ago was made from winter's hearty root vegetables, reflected the current season's produce, a tender mix of varying shades of green. Leeks and fennel were roasted into soft, slippery submission, along with romanesco. Brussels sprouts, cut in half and blackened on one side until they were almost burned, lent a smoky, charred flavor. They were all tossed with parsley leaves and fingerling potatoes, then dotted with chèvre and a chipotle aioli. The chèvre melted into a warm and gooey sauce that commingled with two runny egg yolks. The whole thing was spicy, silky, rich, and wholly comforting.

Peloton is a unique business, as much a bike shop as cafe. You can get your brakes fixed or buy a helmet while having some avocado toast or a pint of beer. Seattle's cafe scene is strong, but so is its bike-polo culture, as evidenced by the conversations I was surrounded by on a recent visit. For a moment I felt as though I didn't belong, but as I looked down at the gorgeous pile of vegetables in front of me, mostly I felt grateful for a small space that can hold so much.

Cupcake Royale's "The Gay" is Back—And Its Merch Game is Strong

Angela Garbes — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 13:39:27 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Cupcake Royale's merch game strong. Cupcake Royale

Every June for the last five years, local company Cupcake Royale has released "The Gay" cupcake—rainbow confetti cake, vanilla buttercream frosting, sugar rainbow topper—to celebrate Pride month. The cupcake costs five dollars and is available until June 30 at all six of the company's ocations. This year, for every Gay sold, Cupcake Royale is donating one dollar to the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR).

It's an election year, so everything right now has been turned up a notch—including Cupcake Royale's merchandise game. Along with cupcakes, the company is selling red t-shirts and trucker caps with the campaign slogan everyone can get behind: "Make America Gay Again." For every item sold, two dollars will go to the NCLR. Shirts and hats are available at stores and online.

KFC in White Center, 17-Course Tasting Menus Downtown, and Other Food News

Angela Garbes — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 09:31:14 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Bok a Bok is now serving Korean fried chicken in White Center. Bok a Bok/Facebook

Bok a Bok Fried Chicken Is Open in White Center
Until recently, if you had a hankering for KFC—not the fast food chain kind, but the crackly skinned Korean Fried Chicken—you either had to drive north to Lynnwood or south to Federal Way. Now you can just head to White Center.

Bok a Bok, from chef Brian O’Connor, specializes in Korean fried chicken—deep fried, extra crunchy, and served with your choice of housemade sauces including chili, Korean bbq, ranch, and sesame-soy-garlic. O’Connor isn’t Korean, though he has spent many years frying chickens at Skillet Diner and Restaurant Roux. Bok a Bok also serves its chicken in kimchi-laced rice bowls and housemade biscuit sandwiches. Sides include kimchi mac n’ cheese and sweet potato tater tots; drinks include Korean and local beers, as well as soju slushies.

Other notable openings:

Scout Downtown
Another restaurant from chef Josh Henderson’s Huxley Wallace Collective (Westward, Quality Athletics, Great State Burger, etc.), this one located inside downtown’s new luxury boutique Thompson Hotel. Like all good hotel restaurants, Scout serves accessible food all day long (with plenty of local and seasonal ingredients), but dinner service is a decadent exploration of Pacific Northwest food. According to Scout, “cocktails, oysters, charcuterie and roasted meats arrive tableside on a custom-built fleet of carts,” while a seat at the chef’s table includes a meal with up to 17 courses. (Henderson's other project in the Thompson, a rooftop bar called the Nest, will open later this month.)

Absinthe Brasserie and Bar in Belltown
As its name suggests, Absinthe focuses on the potent, herbaceous green liqueur. The bar serves many varieties of the spirit, available straight, in cocktails, flights, or via a traditional fountain, in which ice water drips over sugar cubes into an absinthe-filled glass. The food draws inspiration from New Orleans, and includes gumbo, fried green tomatoes, po boys, and fresh beignets.

Bar Vacilando on Capitol Hill
From the owners of popular Belltown “gastrotavern” Black Bottle, Bar Vacilando is a neighborhood bar with a generous selection of cocktails, wine, and beer, as well as a full menu of small plates. (Vacilando is on 15th Avenue, in the former home of 22 Doors.) The food, described as “international grazing,” includes dishes such as sisig-style pork cheek and chicken liver tacos, okonomiyaki with bonito flakes, salt cod croquettes, and savory breads called “crusts.”

If the weather's nice, consider a table on Vacilando’s hidden back patio. (Extra incentive: happy hour goes from 3-6 p.m., during which wines—of which there are many priced at six or seven dollars—are discounted by a dollar.)

Two beverage-focused businesses have also recently opened on Capitol Hill: Mystic Kombucha, a tasting room pouring the locally made kombucha, and Oasis Tea Zone, the third Seattle location of the popular cafe serving bubble and milk teas.

Steakburgers Downtown, Antivenom Cocktails on Capitol Hill, and Other Food News

Angela Garbes — Thu, 26 May 2016 09:33:15 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Steak 'N Shake: Glorious steakburgers or overrated greasy sandwiches? Steak 'N Shake/Facebook

Steak 'N Shake Is Open Downtown
Downtown's Steak 'N Shake is the first Pacific Northwest location of a Midwestern phenomenon, a chain of retro-futuristic-style diners that serve steakburgers and milkshakes.

What makes a steakburger different from a hamburger? According to noted Midwesterner (and Stranger staffer) Rich Smith, the steakburger is a regional specialty in which the burger is made from ground steak as opposed to the usual chuck meat, which "makes these thin, kinda greasy, irregularly shaped patties."

There's been a lot of buzz about Steak 'N Shake's arrival, but Smith is nonplussed, calling it a "a chain version of a steakburger place."

"If a Winstead’s opened up, now that would be something," he added, referring to the longstanding Kansas City steakburger joint that grinds steak daily for its burgers.

According to Smith, Steak 'N Shake's fries are noteworthy ("shoe-string like, like a thinner Mcdonald’s fry"), as is the fact that most locations are open 24 hours a day. The Seattle outpost is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and also pouring local beers. I plan to take Smith with me when I go and try a steakburger for myself.

Other Notable Openings:

Corvus & Co. on Capitol Hill
After changing names twice out of respect for "the pain and frustration for people who have long dealt with having their heritage misrepresented and used by non-First Nation people," first-time bar owners Paul Berryman and Izzy Guymon have finally opened their bar Corvus & Co. on the north end of Broadway. (Corvus is the genus of birds that includes crows and ravens.)

Amid dark wood and scarlet curtains, bartenders mix cocktails with names like “blackbird,” “wolf whistle,” and “antivenom.” The food menu, filled with flavors from the Levant, includes small plates and entrees such as artichoke fritters with tahini aioli, grilled halloumi and fig toast, shawarmas, and roasted chermoula eggplant with tabouleh. Chef Mac Jarvis, who was the opening chef at Ernest Loves Agnes, is running the kitchen.

San Fermo in Ballard
San Fermo, located in the conspicuous 19th century house that sits amid all the brick and cobblestone of Ballard Avenue, is a neighborhood Italian restaurant from the owners of nearby Percy’s & Co. (They also own Bimbo’s, the Cha Cha, Rudy’s barbershops, and the Ace Hotel). There are seasonal dishes, Sunday farmers markets dinners, and handmade pastas, as well as Italian-American classics like chicken parm sandwiches. “People ask me, ‘What region of Italy?,’” owner Tim Baker told Seattle Met last year. “I say, ‘New Jersey.’”

Raconteur in Seward Park
From the owners of Flying Squirrel Pizza Company, Raconteur serves as both cafe and restaurant-in-residence for Seward Park’s newly opened Third Place Books. Along with coffee and espresso, Racaonteur offers hearty breakfast, lunch, brunch, and dinner options, as well as beer and wine. Alas, there is no pizza.

In Lunch News...

• Eastlake's Sushi Kappo Tamura, one of Seattle's best Japanese restaurants, has started serving lunch, making it a little easier for more people to enjoy chef and owner Taichi Kitamura's traditional (and often sustainable) Japanese fare. You can take a look at the menu here, and it's worth noting that, starting today, Kitamura will be serving the breaded and fried wonder that is tonkatsu made from Kurabuta pork, every Thursday.

• Effective tomorrow, Capitol Hill's Mamnoon is ending its daily lunch service in the dining room. (Don't worry, you can still get its beloved mana’eesh flatbreads from the take-out window.) Starting this weekend, the restaurant's communal table will offer a daily happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m., with affordable small plates and drink specials. And beginning June 18, Mamnoon will offer weekend brunch with dishes like shakshuka (eggs simmered in a spiced tomato sauce) and assorted pastries and sweets from pastry chef Carrie Mashaney.

At Spice King, Breads Rule—Baked, Fried, Griddled, or Stuffed

Angela Garbes — Wed, 25 May 2016 04:00:00 -0700
At Spice King, Breads Rule—Baked, Fried, Griddled, or Stuffed by Angela Garbes
I haven't been this excited about bread in a long time. Maybe ever. Sure, a crusty, rustic loaf—the kind that leaves a trail of shattered crumbs all over my clothes and the kitchen counter—is great, but it's not often that I crave it. For the last month, though, I've found myself repeatedly pointing my car toward a warehouse behind the Walmart in Renton to eat the warm, fresh, cooked-to-order breads at Spice King, a Punjabi restaurant tucked inside the international grocery DK Market.

Spice King's stuffed parathas ($4.99) arrive at your table straight from the griddle they are cooked on, hot and steamy, soft and floppy. They look like giant savory pancakes, each one about a foot in diameter. Their edges hang off the serving plates enticingly. The parathas are made from an unleavened whole-wheat dough—dusty brown in color, laced with a hint of grittiness and sweetness—that are rolled out into thin, wide circles before being stuffed with spiced fillings such as aloo (potato), gobi (cauliflower), keema (ground lamb), mooli (grated radish), or the soft cheese called paneer. The mooli is especially tasty: moist, earthy, sweet, with a pleasant edge of bitterness. You can order your parathas (and every dish at Spice King) mild or spicy, on a scale of zero to five stars.

It's well worth the risk of burning your fingertips (and the roof of your mouth) to immediately tear into a hot paratha, its swaths of dough dotted with gorgeous golden-brown bubbles. The bread rips apart easily into jagged-edged pieces, steam and bits of diced cilantro flying out. Dunk your paratha in some of the cooling yogurt-based raita that accompanies it, or add fuel to the fire by dipping into the fiery house-made fluorescent coral-colored hot sauce. Or do both and, while you're at it, be sure to try some of Spice King's verdant mint chutney—herbaceous, tangy, and subtly sweet.

Paneer naan ($4.99) is an entirely different bread, but no less delicious. The naan, stuffed with crumbles of creamy, slightly tangy paneer and fresh cilantro, is made from a leavened white flour dough that's baked inside a clay oven called a tandoor. As it bakes, it transforms up into a light, airy bread. Bubbles puff up on its surface, and the heat from the tandoor brandishes them with a flavorful char. After cooking, it's brushed with a generous coating of clarified butter and arrives at the table glistening and lovely. Spice King's tandoor also produces a satisfying keema naan ($4.99), which is stuffed with spiced, finely minced lamb and sweet peas.

Tandoors have long been used in the province of Punjab; they are, traditionally, wood-fired clay ovens that imbue the meats and breads cooked inside them with heavy dose of smoky, grilled flavor. (These days, tandoors can be portable, fueled by gas or electricity, and made of stainless steel.) According to Pushpesh Pant, author of the massive and comprehensive India: The Cookbook, Punjab has given the world "tandoori food, tandoor ovens, and, arguably, the Indian restaurant."

When the British left India in 1947, the subcontinent was divided into two independent countries, Pakistan and India. Punjab—home to Hindus, Sikhs, and other religions and ethnicities—was also divided into two separate provinces, displacing huge numbers of people and scattering Punjabi refuges throughout India.

"A string of Punjabi roadside restaurants called dhabas sprang up all over the larger cities and proliferated along every highway," writes Pant in India: The Cookbook. "They introduced the rest of India to the joys of tandoor cuisine and the pleasures of eating out. Dhabas started not as a business proposition, but as the refugee strategy for survival. The food is mostly cooked in a tandoor oven, the menu is limited, ingredients are fresh, and the food is simple."

Today, Punjab produces more than half of the country's grains, including a large percentage of its wheat, which may explain why there's so much wonderful bread at Spice King. While you could easily make a meal out of its stuffed parathas and naans, don't miss its plain breads, which are perfect companions to the restaurant's other dishes (of which there are many), including tandoori-cooked chicken, lamb, and fish.

Boti kebab ($12.99), cubes of charred, tandoori-cooked lamb, are served on a sizzling cast-iron plate with onions and bell peppers. They're tossed in an odd, though not entirely unpleasant, sweet-sour-spicy glaze that can be cut nicely with a generous squeeze of lime juice. The meat is deeply gamey and smoky, and it tastes great wrapped in a piece of plain, buttery naan that's been dragged across the hot plate to pick up sticky bits of flavor. A drizzle of mint chutney brightens each bite.

Naan also acts as an efficient sponge for soaking up the complex gravy—rich with red chilies, ginger, cardamom, and other spices—in Punjabi bakra ($11.99). Tender pieces of musky goat swim in the dark, flavorful sauce, begging to be sucked clean off their little bones.

Spice King offers a long list of vegetarian dishes made with lentils, chickpeas, and eggplant. Bhindi masala ($9.99) is a standout: Thin slices of okra, fried so they are dry, crispy, and without any trace of their viscous juices, are tossed in a thick gritty spice paste that's warm with cumin, bitter with fenugreek, and hot with chilies. Spread the okra on a piece of fresh roti—a thin whole-wheat bread baked in the tandoor—whose simplicity contrasts all of the dish's spices and crunch.

Saucy dishes like saag paneer ($10.99), cubes of cheese nestled into a sea of pureed spinach and mustard greens—so dark and green it tastes like the forest—demand to be sopped up with Spice King's roti and naan. The sauce is so dense and velvety that it clings to your spoon, landing on your bread only after a strong flick of the wrist.

Much of the action at Spice King comes from its location inside DK Market, a sprawling market selling Asian, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern ingredients. There are whole aisles of tinned fish, olive oils, dried legumes, and international cookies. Its shelves are stocked with seemingly every ingredient imaginable, from bitter melon to Washington-grown buckwheat, kefir-cultured farmers cheese to Iraqi flatbread. A diverse set of customers push their way through Spice King's front doors, inquiring about samosas, chutneys, and levels of heat.

"Ma'am, three stars is still very spicy," a woman behind the counter recently told a customer hoping for a dish that was medium-spicy. "You see, Indian 'spicy' and American 'spicy' are very different."

UPDATE: Beyoncé Gave Us Everything Last Night (Now with Photos!)

Angela Garbes — Thu, 19 May 2016 15:06:03 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Beyoncé? She flawless. AG

Before Beyoncé even took the stage last night, we saw her body—flashes of flesh broadcast on a massive, four-sided tower made of video screens. We saw her holes. An orchid bloomed from out of her mouth. She sat on a backwards chair looking into each and every one of our souls, a light emanating from her pelvis.

This is the Formation tour, and we are all formed from women.

Coming at you from all sides Daniela Vesco/Parkwood Entertainment

How does a black woman—a pop star—come to be in complete artistic and commercial control of her music and image? And how does the world’s biggest pop star come to transcend all of pop’s trappings and become a seemingly unstoppable cultural force?

After watching what Beyoncé Giselle Knowles did last night at CenturyLink Field over two straight hours and thirty-plus songs, the answer is clear: She works.

“If you came to have a good time tonight, say ‘I slay!” Beyoncé instructed us.

Daniela Vesco/Parkwood Entertainment

The opening of the Formation tour is all aggression and empowerment. The songs—“Formation,” “Sorry,” “Run the World (Girls)”—flared, quite literally, with fire but also raw emotion and power. Once everyone was drawn in, the rest of the show could begin.

She’s hurt and angry, but she’s resilient. She’s grown and sexy—and proud. She’s a flawless diva who is feeling herself, literally and figuratively. But wait, hold up, she’s also insecure and flirtatious, a naughty girl in a red vinyl fantasy. Ultimately, she is all of these things at any given moment, which is what makes her free.

Beyoncé gave us everything last night. She performed songs mostly from her two most recent albums Lemonade and Beyoncé, but also plenty from 4 (her best, most complete album), B’Day, Crazy In Love, and the Destiny’s Child catalog. She gave us a gutwrenching rendition of Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones.” It was one of her best vocal performances of the evening, and she did it all on her knees, vulnerable. She gave us the sexed out bliss of “Rocket,” then segued straight into a few bars of D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel?)” She gave us a safe space to lose our minds.

Formation is a woman’s world—Beyoncé, 20 backup dancers, an all-female band, including guitar and bass players who take the stage to play gripping solos. The only men in Formation are the ones offering Beyoncé water, handing her towels to wipe off her face, and switching out her microphones.

Daniela Vesco/Parkwood Entertainment

In new videos made for the tour, Beyoncé appears inside a few different glass boxes. She wears a rhinestone muzzle. Onstage, her backup dancers appear in wire necklaces that extend upwards over their faces like cages. And then Beyoncé smashes one of those glass boxes with her fist, and she and her dancers move with a ferocity and ownership of space that you realize nothing can hold them.

The choreography—muscular and unrelenting—is a powerful throughline of the show. Whatever subject, style, or emotion was being explored musically, it was rooted in the tribal-like movements of Beyoncé and her backup dancers. Their arms, echoing West African dance traditions, swirled in circles and also moved with military precision through sharp, wide angles while their legs were often set in wide, powerful stances. There was a lot of stomping.

“If you’re a woman, you’re strong. We survive,” Beyoncé said.

Beyoncé—and Formation—are functioning on all levels.

At one point, Beyoncé walked off stage and disappeared—only there she was on the giant screen, wearing the same gold bejeweled panties, her legs spread wide. She sat on a black box. Then, suddenly, the box opened up, the screen slid apart, and there was Beyoncé, sitting underneath her own vagina as the nasty bass line of “Partition” made everyone’s nether regions quiver involuntarily.

“She’s everything,” a woman near me screamed.

She’s not wrong. Beyoncé is everything, but she’s also exactly only everything that Beyoncé wants us to see. All two hours of Formation are perfectly constructed and edited. There are the visuals: snippets of the visual album Lemonade, the home videos of her, Jay Z, and their daughter Blue Ivy, as well as a live video feed that, during songs like “Drunk In Love,” display altered, transportive images in real time.

Musically, it’s the same meticulous editing. Songs are re-mixed and pre-mixed with others (“Rocket” with “Untitled,” “End of Time” with “Grown Woman”). While Beyoncé performed a few songs in their entirety (mostly from Lemonade), she sang only a verse or so from the majority of the thirty-plus songs in her set—still more than enough to satisfy and remind us all of the breadth of her body of work.

“Many of you met me 19 years ago with Destiny’s Child,” she said in one of several moments of sincere and joyful gratitude. “Thank you for allowing me to grow and evolve.”

How she is able to give us seemingly everything? Her source of inspiration and power—herself, her life as a black woman, a wife, a mother, an artist—is, apparently, endless.

Endless. Daniela Vesco/Parkwood Entertainment

The end of the show found Beyoncé alone on stage—glittering, glistening, barefoot—thanking us. She didn't walk off the stage; she was absorbed by bright lights and vanished through a hole in the floor.

Our society’s understanding of what it means to be a woman—what our bodies should look like, what parts should or should not define us—is changing and growing for the better. Beyoncé, flawless and with blonde hair, isn’t necessarily at the forefront of that. But she is, undoubtedly, the most powerful cultural force celebrating women. She tells our stories, explores our emotions, embraces our complexities—our glorious, glowing holes.

Enter the Dough Zone

Angela Garbes — Wed, 18 May 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Dough Zone Is a Great Reason to Drive to a Mall on the EastsideTags: chowRelated locations: Dough Zone by Angela Garbes
Let's be honest: Big group dinners at restaurants are rarely that enjoyable. There's the inevitable misfortune of sitting at the opposite end of the table from the person you actually want to be talking to, the stressful haggling and splitting of the check, and those sad last bites of food that everyone is too shy to eat. Having worked as a server, I can tell you things are no better for servers. You dedicate a huge portion of time to people too preoccupied with talking loudly at each other to ever really engage with you, and somehow, after the check is split into eight separate bills, the tips never add up to what you are expecting.

Before you enter into another tedious group dinner, consider entering "the Dough Zone" instead.

"The Dough Zone" is a roughly two-square-mile triangle spanning the Eastside cities of Bellevue and Redmond, and it is home to three locations of local chain Dough Zone Dumpling House. The original location of Dough Zone opened in the summer of 2014, just east of Bellevue's Crossroads Mall. Crowds of diners, as well as long lines, followed. In January of 2015, a second location was opened in the city's Overlake area. It proved to be equally successful, so a third location was added last December near Redmond Town Center. Now you don't usually have to wait in line at Dough Zone. (Microsoft's corporate campus, with its 30,000 or so employees, happens to be located smack in the middle of the Dough Zone triangle, which may help to explain the restaurant's locations and rapid growth.)

All three Dough Zones follow the same formula: restaurants tucked into nondescript strip malls, simple modern dining rooms, a DIY ordering system where diners mark their choices on simple photocopied menus, and semi-open kitchens where focused cooks roll out sheets of dough in plain sight. Also: excellent, perfectly textured dumplings.

Pork soup dumplings ($9.50 for 10), called xiao long bao, are beautiful parcels of dough that arrive at the table in a bamboo steamer. When you lift a dumpling out with chopsticks, its bottom sags with porky broth while its top remains perfectly composed, like a pair of pursed lips looking expectantly at you for a kiss. Give the sturdy, soft dough a quick bite to release some ultra-hot steam, which allows the hot soup inside to cool down. Slurp up the broth, let it wash over your tongue and bathe it in warmth, then proceed to blissfully chew the moist ground-pork filling.

Seattleites lose their minds over the xiao long bao from upscale Din Tai Fung, the legendary Taiwan-based restaurant chain. Since Din Tai Fung opened its first local location in Bellevue in 2010, Puget Sound residents have happily lined up and waited for hours—far longer than they ever waited at Dough Zone—to slurp its soup dumplings. A second Din Tai Fung opened in the University Village shopping center in 2013, and a third is expected to open in downtown Seattle later this summer.

If you or someone you know is willing to stand around for more than two hours for a dumpling, that's your business. But for what it's worth, Dough Zone's xiao long bao are just as good as Din Tai Fung's and they cost a full $2 less per order. More importantly, Dough Zone, unlike Din Tai Fung, also serves sheng jian bao, the wonderful pan-fried cousins of xiao long bao.

The sheng jian bao, called "jian buns" at Dough Zone ($8.75 for five), are made with an enriched dough that makes the dumplings fluffy, airy, and slightly sweet—somewhere between a hum bao and a xiao long bao. They're seared first, and then steamed, giving them crispy brown bottoms and soft, pillowy exteriors. The broth inside is absorbed into the dough, which, along with the minced-pork filling, squirts warm meaty juices into your mouth with every bite.

You might be tempted to skip over Dough Zone's pot stickers ($4.75 for six), a common dumpling you'll find on many restaurant menus, but that would be a mistake. Like the jian buns, they are first pan-fried and then steamed. The dough is rolled to an ideal thickness—enough to feel substantial, to stand up to the hot pan that gives each pot sticker a crispy, pebbled, golden-brown bottom, but still thin enough to let the filling shine. Pork and shrimp pot stickers are briny and sweet, with big chunks of shrimp, and enlivened with plenty of diced chive. The dumplings are also available with vegetable, chicken, and beef fillings.

Pork chao shou ($4.25 for six), essentially boiled wontons, are made from a very thin dough that forms a soft, delicate skin around their ball of filling. The excess dough hangs off each dumpling like a lovely cape, soaking up the sauce in which they are served. You can order chao shou in Szechuan sauce—slicked in a piquant, slightly numbing, clear red chili oil—or hot and sour sauce, which is a generous helping of broth spiked with vinegar and chili oil. I prefer the Szechuan sauce preparation, which also includes a sprinkling of sesame seeds and scallions for contrasting flavor and crunch.

Dough Zone's menus hold much more than dumplings. There are also terrific fresh noodles (don't miss the cold noodles with Szechuan sauce, $5.25), braised beef pancake rolls ($4.75) made with a light, flaky dough, as well as cold appetizers such as the sweet and sour cucumber ($2.75)—whole cucumbers thinly sliced and rearranged in striking sculptural ways.

Across all three locations, the food is consistently great and the menus nearly identical. The Crossroads location offers a handful of exclusive dishes, including shrimp-and-zucchini xiao long bao and a sweet naan bread made with banana and the custard-like Southeast Asian fruit durian.

My meals at Dough Zone have all been big family get togethers—never less than six people, ranging in age from 1 to 70 years old. Instead of the awkward dance of deference and negotiation that typically accompanies ordering, one person is given the responsibility of filling out the order form for everyone. Any remaining uptight sense of formality goes out the window as you mark things down with a pen that comes attached to a plastic spoon, as all pens at Dough Zone do.

The food here arrives quickly—and tends to show up all at once. An empty table is suddenly filled with six dishes, elbows and chopsticks begin flying in every direction, and all jian buns must be vigilantly defended from the hungry 10-year-old boy fresh from soccer practice. Meals can be chaotic and messy, but also wildly fun.

The New Mama's Is Open, Culture Club Closes, And Other Food News

Angela Garbes — Thu, 12 May 2016 09:39:00 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Sunset Fried Chicken Sandwiches is now open inside Rachel's Ginger Beer on Capitol Hill. Sunset

Mama's Cantina Is Now Open
Mama's Cantina may have the same name and address as Mama’s Mexican Kitchen, the beloved Seattle institution that was open from 1974 to 2016, but its culinary vision is decidedly different. (Whether that's or a good or bad thing depends on who you ask.) Chef Jenny Izaguirre will roast a whole pig weekly for her mojo pork dishes, and Mama’s signature carne asada “Elvis Burrito” is now made with Wagyu skirt steak (and costs $12). There are still tacos and quesadillas, but in place of old family recipes for chili verde, chili rellenos, and enchiladas covered in melted cheese, there’s guacamole with grilled pineapple, a Korean quesadilla with kimchi and kalbi-marinated steak, and a banh mi burrito. Tequila and mezcal (over 40 varieties) and margaritas still abound.

The original Mama's Mexican Kitchen closed less than two months ago, and Mama's Cantina will also close—temporarily—when the building is razed, likely later this year. It will reopen when the new development is complete.

Culture Club Cheese Bar Closes
In sad news, Sheri LaVigne's Culture Club Cheese Bar on Capitol Hill (which also recently became home to LaVigne's beloved the Calf & Kid cheese shop, after she closed its original location in Melrose Market) has closed permanently.

“Putting every ounce of yourself into something and then having to admit failure is the hardest thing on earth,” LaVigne told Seattle Met. “When I opened Calf and Kid there was a void in the way cheese was being sold and represented. And now I’ve created that void again.”

If you would like a final chance to buy cheese from LaVigne and thank her for all her hard work, she's hosting a "cheese fire sale" at Culture Club this weekend, selling its remaining cheese (over 100 pounds), as well as wine and beer.

Other New and Notable Restaurant Openings:

Tarsan I Jane in Frelard
Perfecto Rocher, a third-generation paellero from Spain, and Alia Zaine made a name for themselves in Los Angeles before settling in Seattle. Using an 11-foot wood-fired oven as his primary cooking surface, Rocher’s menu focuses on his native Valencian-Catalan cuisine.

Sunset Fried Chicken Sandwiches on Capitol Hill
Chef Monica Dimas (Neon Taco, Tortas Condesa) continues her successful permanent pop-up model with this fried chicken window located inside of Rachel's Ginger Beer, also serving iceberg wedge salads, hushpuppies, and more.

Sam Choy's Poke to the Max in Hillman City
A brick-and-mortar restaurant from Hawaiian chef Sam Choy, who is the culinary force behind Seattle's three Poke to the Max food trucks. Several varieties of raw fish—including tuna, salmon, shrimp, and mahi mahi—marinated with citrus, soy, chili, and onions, are served atop rice bowls and salads, or in wraps and tacos.

Poke is having a moment here. Note the recent openings of Renton's Big Island Poke and Wallingford's 45th Stop N Shop & Poke Bar. The Stop N Shop, which is located in the former home of the Erotic Bakery (RIP), is exactly what it sounds like—part mini-mart, part poke shop, and totally charming. Order at the cash register and pick up incense, Pringles, and a six-pack of beer while you're at it.

Pizza Everywhere
Seattle—in particular, Capitol Hill—has been having a prolonged pizza moment, with the recent openings of Ian's Pizza and Dino's Tomato Pie. (If you enjoy waiting in a long line for pizza and indifferent service in a crowded bar, can't recommend Dino's enough.)

You can now add Portland-based Sizzle Pie (which has many vegan and vegetarian options), Meltdown Pizza Co. (from the owners of Still Liquor), and Pizzeria 88 (from the owners of Belltown's La Vita E Bella) to the neighborhood's options.

Elsewhere in the city, Ethan Stowell has opened another location of his Ballard Pizza Company...in South Lake Union

Also recently opened: old school ice cream and soda shop Shug's in Pike Place Market; the University District's Xi'An Noodles, specializing in the handmade biang biang noodles of China's Shaanxi province; and a second location of Un Bien, the Caribbean sandwich shop owned by the sons of former Paseo owner Lorezno Lorenzo. Appropriately, this Un Bien is open in the same Shilshole spot that was formerly a Paseo.

Sampling the Spring Harvest at Vendemmia

Angela Garbes — Wed, 11 May 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Sampling the Spring Harvest at Vendemmia in Madrona by Angela Garbes
For chefs, spring is an exhilarating time. Vegetables such as asparagus, nettles, ramps, green garlic, English peas, and fava beans signal that, after months of potatoes and parsnips, we are moving toward the summer growing season, toward the sweetness of zucchini, tomatoes, and corn. But spring's ingredients—green, grassy, tender, fleeting—are delicious in their own right.

Every April, I begin scouring restaurant menus and their social-media sites for spring dishes. A few weeks ago, I came across a lascivious photo of ramps and morel mushrooms lying atop each other on the Facebook page of the restaurant Vendemmia, which opened just under a year ago in Madrona. I'd been meaning to return to Vendemmia since I first visited last November, back when it was frigid and dark every night at 5 p.m.

In winter, chef and owner Brian Clevenger's menu held items like ravioli with chicken and root vegetables, as well as steak with wild mushrooms, bacon, and potato. House-made paccheri ($18), which look like comically oversized rigatoni that, unable to hold a tube shape, collapse flaccidly onto themselves, was a brothy and satisfying dish. The dark, oceanic seafood stock filling the bowl was brightened with delicate wild prawns and a sofrito of fennel and celery.

Cavatelli ($16), which resemble miniature hot dog buns, were pleasantly firm and simply dressed with butter, black pepper, and wide swaths of salty pecorino cheese. As it melted, the cheese formed a gooey, gluey blanket on top of the pasta. Wresting the noodles out from under its weight was as difficult as pulling yourself out from under a down comforter on a cold winter morning.

I meant to go back to Vendemmia and write a review the next month, but looking over my notes later that week, I saw that I had written down the word "restrained" three times. At the time, I thought the food was good but perhaps a little boring. Nothing I ate, and nothing I saw on the menu, surprised or captivated me.

Clevenger, who previously worked at Ethan Stowell's Italian restaurants Tavolàta and Staple & Fancy, named Vendemmia after the Italian word for "harvest." Looking at a photo of those racy ramps and morels again last month, I decided to revisit Vendemmia when the world—and the restaurant's menu—was exploding with life and spring dishes such as ravioli with asparagus and green garlic, and mozzarella with spring onion.

A Dungeness crab salad ($13) was as good as I remembered: creamy, briny, and sweet, but still light and ethereal. Crème fraîche, enhanced with lemon, gave richness, but also a distinct tanginess. Snap peas added a delightful crunch. (The vegetable is, apparently, in season all year round at Vendemmia.) A bowl of shaved green beans ($7)—blistered on the grill and kissed with just olive oil and sea salt—were stunning in their simplicity.

Tagliatelle ($21) came entangled with two of the season's finest ingredients, morel mushrooms and English peas. The peas exploded like tiny bombs of sugar on the tongue, but the earthy, anisey flavor of the morels were muted by an overwhelming amount of butter and pecorino cheese. Grilled New York steak—a generous portion that at $43 still feels very, very expensive—was cooked to a perfect rosy-centered medium rare and served atop a beautiful spread of spring's greatest hits: creamed nettles, morels, and fava beans. Unfortunately, the morels were dry and overcooked. Oily bread crumbs cooked in brown butter were unnecessary, especially since the creamed nettles tasted almost entirely of cream, with barely any of the wild plant's peppery green notes coming through. A few pea vines and leaves scattered underneath were a salvation, adding freshness and crunch.

The most memorable dish of the meal was one not tied to any particular season. Beef tartare ($13) arrived on the table looking not unlike a gorgeous brain: pink, squishy, unmistakably and unapologetically meaty. The tartare had been chopped so fine and packed so densely that it was difficult to distinguish individual elements such as shallots and mustard, though they were there. Each element had been fully and masterfully integrated, imbuing the tartare with a sort of delicious mystery.

Next door to Vendemmia is a small seafood market and oyster bar that Clevenger, along with partner and co-owner Kayley Turkheimer, just opened in March called East Anchor Seafood, where classic, straightforward dishes also shine. Turkheimer, who has worked on fishing boats, as well as in processing plants and wholesale fish companies, manages the market.

Ahi poke ($14), made from a loin of tuna that's foisted straight out of the cooler case and cut in front of you, tasted, first and foremost, like clean, fresh fish. Sesame seeds, seaweed, and soy sauce merely enhanced the ahi. Smoked-salmon crostini ($9), topped with pickled shallots and served on warm grilled bread, was knockout good. Later, our server informed us that it was made not just with smoked salmon but a little black cod, too.

"So much of that good richness," she said, grinning, before disappearing to shuck oysters. (If you go to East Anchor, be prepared to wait. The shop is understaffed, and staffers here are also selling seafood and shucking oysters for Vendemmia, so they are doing their harried, multitasking best.)

At East Anchor, friends drop in to split a bottle of chilled rosé, couples meet up to slurp dozens of oysters, and families stop in after soccer games to buy pounds of mussels to take home and make for dinner. It seems to be just what the neighborhood needs.

Thinking about my meals at Vendemmia, which are distinguished more by classicism and meticulousness than creativity, it's clear that part of Clevenger's talent is pleasing and comforting diners. He gives them exactly what they want, but doesn't invite them out of their comfort zones.

Vendemmia takes no risks, even with its decor, which is all gray concrete, white paint, and minimalist fixtures. None of the art on the walls will stir or provoke you, because there is no art on the walls. Staff, both front and back of house, wear all black and move with such professional efficiency that they almost become indistinguishable from one another. No one in the packed dining room seems to notice.

Two months ago, Clevenger announced his next project: Raccolto, a fresh pasta and seafood restaurant in West Seattle that will open this summer, perhaps just in time for our short but glorious tomato season.

Tickets For This Year's Burning Beast Go On Sale Tomorrow Morning

Angela Garbes — Tue, 10 May 2016 09:24:00 -0700
by Angela Garbes
This year's Burning Beast will be hold on Sunday, July 24. Brendan Kiley

Burning Beast, the annual whole-animal feast/bacchanal held at Smoke Farm in Arlington, is happening this year on Sunday, July 24. Tickets, 400 of which routinely sell out in a matter of hours, go on sale tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. You can buy them here.

The event, which pairs a number of local chefs with large amounts of an animal's meat to cook over open flames, culminates in a large wooden beast being set aflame in a field. Last year, Washington's drought—along with low rainfall, wildfires, and the accompanying statewide burn ban—necessitated its cancellation.

Last year's ticket holders were given a full refund when the event was cancelled and, this year, they were given pre-sale access to purchase tickets early. The number of tickets available was increased slightly this year, and a few hundred remain. But they're sure to go quickly, so plan accordingly.

A few of the meat-and-chef pairings that look particularly good this year: beef tongue cooked by Miles James (formerly of Dot's), goat cooked by Jason Stoneburner (Stoneburner, Bastille), pig by (James Beard Best Chef Northwest nominee) Mike Easton of Il Corvo, lamb by Stateside's Eric Johnson, and giant octopus (!!) by Piatti's Dylan Giordan.

I'm Obsessed with a Laotian Pork Sausage Called Sai Ua

Angela Garbes — Wed, 04 May 2016 04:00:00 -0700
I'm Obsessed with a Laotian Pork Sausage Called Sai Ua by Angela Garbes
Last summer, I wrote about Song Phang Kong, a tiny restaurant in the International District serving Laotian and Thai dishes. Over the course of several meals, I fell a little bit in love with the place—not just its food, but also its owner and chef, a spirited and charismatic woman named Beng Rajsombath.

My favorite dish of Rajsombath's was sai ua, a vibrantly herbaceous pork sausage filled with lime leaf, galangal, lemongrass, cilantro, shallots, and sticky rice that was even more memorable for its deeply sour flavor. After mixing and stuffing the sausages herself, Rajsombath told me she hung them for a few days, allowing the rice and meat to ferment and acquire their distinct flavor.

After lunch one day, I convinced Rajsombath to sit down for an interview—no small feat, since she was a busy woman in perpetual motion. Rajsombath learned to cook working in the market food stalls of her hometown of Seno, Laos. Bored by family farming, she opted to cook so she could make enough money to take cabs to watch Bollywood movies in the nearby city of Savannakhet. After fleeing Laos in 1977, she lived in the Ubon refugee camp in Thailand, where she sold noodles to support her family before coming to the United States in 1979.

I was heartbroken to learn recently that Beng Rajsombath passed away. She died in her hometown of Seno, Laos, last December. One of her children left a comment on my review telling me, "She was a passionate woman... passionate about food, about people, about generosity, and about achieving her dreams. She was relentless and fearless and she gave [Song Phang Kong] everything she had. Even though she was tired and exhausted every single day, she was truly happy. Song Phang Kong was the final, and may be one of her greatest, achievements in life, even if only for a short time."

Luckily, Song Phang Kong continues even without its founder. Its new owner is Thanaporn Luijan, who also owns the West Seattle Thai restaurant Thailanding on Alki. Luijan knew Rajsombath for many years, back when Rajsombath used to sell her homemade sausages to Thai restaurants around the city. Luijan has given the restaurant a fresh coat of paint, new tables, and a few new menu items. Thankfully, she's kept all of Rajsombath's Laotian dishes.

Luijan's sai ua ($9, served with sticky rice) lacks the fermented tang and powerful citrus flavor of lime leaf that distinguished Rajsombath's, but the sausage is still delicious. It's both spicier and sweeter, studded with plenty of diced galangal and large, soft chunks of shallot. Be sure to dip it in the accompanying sauce, a blend of fish sauce, lime juice, and red chili flakes. They'll bring you extra if you ask for more.

Tasting Luijan's sai ua helped me understand that there are infinite variations—both regional and personal—to this sausage, which is sometimes spelled sai uah, and sometimes called sai grok or sai krok. Its many names and iterations may have something to do with its origins on the Khorat Plateau, in what is now called the Isan region of Northeastern Thailand. Through forced population transfers and the promotion of Thai language and culture, modern-day Isan (sometimes spelled Issan, Isaan, Esan) became part of Thailand, but for centuries it was home to Khmer and Lao people. Sai ua is considered to be part of Isan cuisine, which is known for its potent spiciness and funk, but the simple term "Isan" belies a complex and diverse history.

I've since had sai ua at three other restaurants in Seattle, and all of them have been unique—each dominated by different spices, served with different accompaniments.

At Capitol Hill's Soi, open since last August, the menu is dedicated to Isan Thai food. "Our food is fiery," its menu states, as much a warning as a declaration of pride. Indeed, the most noticeable trait of Soi's sai uah ($10) is burning heat (not entirely a bad thing). Red chilies dot slices of disappointingly dry ground pork, muting the notes of lemongrass and lime leaf. The sausage is served with slices of fresh ginger and a single, innocent-looking Thai bird chili. Don't be fooled. Even the tiniest nibble of that chili, especially when combined with the sausage, might melt your face off.

Ballard's Pestle Rock makes their Isan sausage ($12) with responsibly sourced pork from Oregon's Carlton Farms. The meat is finely ground, and the herbs super-finely diced, creating a smooth sausage that has a certain sort of finesse. It's spicy and racy, laced with plenty of red chili and black pepper, but brightened by many delicate strands of lime leaf. Sugar is also deployed to counter the heat, though the sausage was sweeter than I prefer. A side dish of sweet-and-sour crunchy pickled carrots and cucumbers helped to cool things down, as did a serving of earthy roasted peanuts.

At Vientiane Asian Grocery, a small supermarket and restaurant at the intersection of Martin Luther King Junior Way South and Graham Street, the sai ua are brawny and thick. Here, there are three types of sausage: " regular," "spicy," and "sour," all handmade by the Laotian women running the kitchen. In the cooler case, where you'll find bags of fresh sausages to take home and cook yourself, as well as fermented chili and fish sauces, the sour sausages are labeled as "Esan."

While the Esan sausages at Vientiane are indeed sour, their acidity is more akin to white vinegar, not the pungent funky, fermented taste I was searching for. A $10 order comprises five enormous sausages (served with a dense pile of sticky rice) that could feed three people. While they are juicy, fat, and garlicky, I couldn't detect any other herbs besides cilantro. Vientiane's best sausages are its spicy ones ($8)—moist, coarsely ground pork that threatens to burst out of its casings. The meat is succulent, but also gritty and redolent of lemongrass, with lots of red chili flakes and cilantro, and a dark, fiery dipping sauce made with fish sauce and even more fresh chilies. They're absolutely thrilling.

Part of the joy of being at Vientiane is sitting in its orange chairs, beneath the bright fluorescent lights and colorful flowers that hang from the ceiling, and next to the many photos of Laotian dishes (including an entire section dedicated to delectable looking "party trays") that line the store's windows. You're in good company, too—under the watchful eyes of the golden Buddhas that line the shelves behind the cash register, surrounded by the movement and voices of the many hardworking older women who are there every day.

Renee Erickson Wins the James Beard Award for Best Chef Northwest

Angela Garbes — Tue, 03 May 2016 09:47:15 -0700
by Angela Garbes
"I just went to work for myself," says Best Chef Northwest Renee Erickson, "which is very uncommon and hard." Sea Creatures

Last night at the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards in Chicago, Renee Erickson was named Best Chef Northwest.

Erickson won for her restaurant the Whale Wins; she is also chef and co-owner of Bar Melusine, Barnacle, Bateau, and the Walrus and the Carpenter. It's a well-deserved win, and one that comes as no surprise considering the year of professional success she's been having.

In March, Bateau earned four stars from the Seattle Times, the first time its critic Providence Cicero has ever given that rating. The current issue of Bon Appétit magazine includes a whole feature on the chef declaring "Renee Erickson makes us want to move to Seattle."

"This is confident restaurant food, without the bells and whistles that distract so many chefs," Andrew Knowlton wrote of Erickson's menus, which are influenced by rustic French fare, but defined by local produce, seafood, and meats.

"I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to enjoy a meal prepared by culinary doyennes of the past: M.F.K. Fisher, Elizabeth David, Julia Child. Then I realize Erickson is becoming that cook for my generation," he continued.

Erickson is a leader in the Seattle—and national—restaurant scene, not just for her food, but also her commitment to the industry and its workers.

A year ago, she and business partners Jeremy Price and Chad Dale (they operate their restaurants under the company name Sea Creatures) made the decision to eliminate tips, implement a 20 percent service charge, and raise front-of-house wages to $15 an hour in a move toward greater parity among restaurant workers. (The company also offers health insurance for employees working 25 hours a week, as well as a matching retirement savings plan.)

“The industry needs to evolve,” Erickson told me at the time. “The system we’ve adopted in America favors the front of the house in financial value, and that’s really not fair—at least we don’t believe it to be.

“The conversation we always defaulted to,” she added, “was the legitimizing of the [restaurant] industry that we felt wasn’t there. There’s this idea that being in a restaurant is a stepping-stone to whatever you’re going to do when you grow up. I definitely chose a career that I’m super-proud of, and it feels hurtful when people are not treating you as equal to a cabinet builder or some other person in a craft."

Erickson's commitment to making restaurant work a well-paying, full-time profession is a personal one.

A recent article on the website Tasting Table, "Sauté It Forward," promised readers the chance to meet the chef "who taught Renee Erickson how to kick ass in the kitchen."

Asked who her mentor was, Erickson's answer both surprised and impressed me. She named herself.

"I didn't have what most people consider normal mentoring; I just went to work for myself, which is very uncommon and hard. I was responsible for it all, but I was also doing everything that I expected my employees to do," Erickson said. "It's not like I don't ask [my staff] to do a lot of really hard things all the time, but I also try to pay attention to some kind of balance. And most of them have stayed with us."

When Erickson accepted her award last night, she brought Marie Rutherford, chef de cuisine of the Whale Wins and a longtime employee and friend, on to the stage with her.

Watch (And Weep) As D'Angelo Sings Prince's "Sometimes It Snows in April"

Angela Garbes — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 10:08:50 -0700
by Angela Garbes
All good things, they say, never last.

Of course Prince passed away in April, leaving us his most raw and haunting ballad "Sometimes It Snows in April," the closing track on Parade, as his own, perfect eulogy.

That's exactly what I thought last Thursday morning when I turned on KEXP to hear it playing and immediately began crying. It's what I thought on Saturday morning, when I pulled out my Prince records and played them for my daughter, whose aimless, innocent swaying to the song also brought me to tears.

Death leaves no room for uncertainty, and neither did D'Angelo's performance of "Sometimes It Snows in April" on last night's Tonight Show. Even before D'Angelo began singing, his beleaguered face betrayed his sadness. When he sailed into his chilling falsetto to sing, "I used to cry for Tracy because I wanted to see him again," you could feel so much restless movement in the spirit world.

It was not a flawless performance. Five minutes into the song, after changing one of its lines to "I often dream of heaven, and I know that Prince is there," D'Angelo was so overcome with emotion that he missed the next line. (Princess, the Prince cover group comprised of Maya Rudolph and Gretchen Lieberum, were singing backup and sang it for him.) But the performance, like grief, was real and inescapable and powerful, forcing you to hang on for dear life.

Chili's South Indian Restaurant Is Back—Bigger and Better Than Ever

Angela Garbes — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Chili's South Indian Restaurant Is Back—Bigger and Better Than Ever by Angela Garbes
In 1993, a nuclear scientist from Kerala, India, opened a dollar store in the University District at the intersection of University Way and 50th Street. At the time, Vairavasamy ("Sam") Arumugan never expected that his business, then called 99+ Emporium, would one day grow into a beloved restaurant serving the food of his home state. But that's exactly what happened.

Over the years, Arumugan's store transformed into a mini-mart selling items such as incense, cigarettes, and phone cards. In 2008, his daughter, Anila Swamy, began cooking dosas—thin, griddled crepes made from a batter of fermented rice and lentils that are a staple throughout Southern India—from a tiny kitchen in the front of the space by the cash register. She changed the store's name to Chili's Deli & Mart, a tribute to her mother, who used to call the young, quick-tempered Anila mulaku, after the fiery small chilies that flavored her cooking. Word spread, and Seattleites began flocking to Chili's for the Arumugan family's food.

I have many fond memories of stopping at Chili's over the years for a dosa—perfectly toasted, crackly and thin at the edges, made of concentric golden brown circles that revealed the careful, loving manner in which the batter had been spread onto a hot griddle. Sitting at a plastic folding table in the small yellow dining room, I ate them slowly, relishing in the warm, homey atmosphere. I was particularly fond of the masala lamb and goat fillings ($8.99 each), the gamey meats slow-cooked into tender submission and imbued with cardamom and clove. The braised meats were weighty and substantial, a perfect counterpoint to the airy lightness of the dosa. A touch of the accompanying bright tomato chutney enlivened every bite, as did the magnificent coconut chutney, which is a perfect study in contrasts: simultaneously creamy and coarse, as spicy as it is cool and refreshing.

The restaurant was small, but business was good. Eventually, Swamy and Arumugan, co-owners, dropped the mini-mart business to focus on food. Then, in 2013, things changed. In August of that year, a land-use permit was filed to build "a seven-story structure with 115 residential units above 10,765 square feet of ground level commercial space" where Chili's stood. The impending teardown of the building loomed. When I called in January of 2015 to ask about its future, Arumugan told me: "We don't know anything. This has been going on for two years."

In June of 2015, the original location of Chili's closed. Swamy and Arumugan spent months searching for a new location, before finally moving into a space eight blocks south on the Ave—4220 University Way Northeast, the former home of another Indian restaurant. They reopened on December 2, and, according to Swamy, so far it's been a "huge success."

"Imagine: Six months we were out of business," she marvels. "But people came back to us."

One reason Chili's customers came running back through the doors is because its Southern Indian menu is a rarity in Seattle. Most Indian restaurants in the city are dominated by northern curries such as palak paneer and breads such as naan and roti. Here, rice is the main starch instead of bread, and it's served with piquant stews and a spicy broth called sambar. Coconut, which grows more commonly in the south of India than the north, shows up in a number of dishes.

Before Chili's came along, you had to drive to Bellevue to eat southern specialties like dosas, as well as puttu and idli, steamed cakes also made from rice-and-lentil batters. Of course, "southern" and "northern" India are not monoliths, and cuisines in both regions vary from east to west, and from state to state. The spice mixture garam masala, a foundation of cooking throughout the country, not only differs across regions, but from household to household, cook to cook.

"Hindus cook different, Christians cook different, Brahmins, we cook different," says Swamy. "My sambar is different; your sambar is different. Here at Chili's, I make what I know."

Lucky for us, Swamy and her kitchen staff are deeply knowledgeable—and skilled. They offer three versions of vada, savory fried doughnut-like fritters made from a white lentil batter studded with black peppercorns: plain (served with coconut chutney), sambar (served with a cup of flavorful broth dotted with mustard seeds for dipping), and dhahi vada. The dhahi vada ($7.99) are two fritters served submerged in a luxurious yogurt bath, then topped with cilantro leaves, a chili sauce, and a dusting of garam masala. The yogurt is a touch sweeter than I'd prefer, but that didn't stop me from lapping it up happily.

The classic masala dosa ($8.99), a crepe wrapped around a dense pile of gently spiced potatoes, tinged a beautiful golden shade by turmeric, is as wonderful as ever. If you're craving a little more chili action, order the Mysore masala dosa ($8.99), named after the city of Mysuru, Karnataka, which comes with a layer of potent, technicolor-red hot sauce that will get your heart beating fast on the first bite.

For even more incendiary heat, order the Chettinadu-style dishes (available with chicken, lamb, and goat), which originate from the Chettinad region in the state of Tamil Nadu. The Chettinadu lamb ($15.99) is downright fiery and thrilling. Here, the sauce is less like a gravy and more like a thick, concentrated paste smeared onto the soft cubes of lamb. The warm cinnamon flavor is strong and entrancing. When I finished eating, I looked down at my plate to find the remnants of the many spices found in the dish laid out like fossils from an excavation site: a cardamom pod, fragments of a cinnamon stick, whole peppercorns, a bay leaf, dried red chilies. The flavors lingered on my lips and tongue hours after my meal.

At its new location, Chili's now serves exclusively a lunch buffet with popular Northern Indian dishes from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day. It costs $8.99 a person (small children eat for free). The buffet is fine—fresh naan is brought out to tables in little baskets, there are vegan curries made with textured vegetable protein, and the mint chutney is wonderful—but ultimately forgettable. You'll want to come for dinner; the kitchen begins serving its Southern Indian food after 3:30 p.m.

Starting this week, Swamy is expanding her menu, adding about 10 new dishes including meen pollichathu, fish that's slathered in a spice paste and roasted in banana leaves; a fried chicken dish from Chennai called Chicken 65; and several fresh vegetable curries.

While Chili's is growing, it remains Seattle's only Southern Indian restaurant. Swamy believes that's because the dishes are more difficult to make, especially dosas. Every day she begins to make the next day's dosa batter by soaking the rice and lentils, grinding them, and letting them ferment overnight.

"All our food is made with hands, human hands," says Swamy. "Hands, body, heart—that is what goes into Chili's."

What I Gained from Having a Miscarriage

Angela Garbes — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 04:00:00 -0700
When It Comes to Pregnancy Loss, There's So Much We Don't Talk About or Understand by Angela Garbes
Two and a half years ago, six weeks into a wanted pregnancy, I woke up bleeding.

Thick globs of tissue, clots, and tangles of matter dropped out of me, staining my inner thighs and clothing, and sliding down the sides of the toilet. I called a consulting nurse, who calmly walked me through a few questions. Bleeding is normal, she assured me, as I sat silently on the other end of the line, upset, seething, and not believing a single word that came out of her mouth. I hated her. I hated my body for what felt like a betrayal.

It was November, and my husband and I had planned to tell our families about the pregnancy at Christmas.

The nurse told me to wait a few hours and, if I was still bleeding, to come in so they could draw my blood to check my hCG level. Human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, is a pregnancy hormone that doubles every two to three days during early pregnancy.

That afternoon, the bleeding had become heavier and thicker. I went in for the blood test. The next morning, my doctor called with the results, telling me that they were inconclusive and that I should probably come in for another test tomorrow to make sure that my level was dropping, and that I was in fact miscarrying. But I didn't need another test to tell me what I already knew.

It was a full week before I stopped bleeding. I knew that what I was losing was matter, cells—not a baby. And yet the matter, for a couple of weeks, annihilated my rational mind. In just six weeks of pregnancy, nothing in my life had really changed. And yet, as it slipped and oozed out of me and I was powerless to stop it, it was replaced by a screaming sense of loss.

The only reason I didn't stay facedown on my floor for a day, or a month, was because my husband insisted that I go to work. He never tells me what to do (he's smarter than that), and that's probably the only reason I listened. Recently, I asked him why he insisted I go to the restaurant that night and wait tables.

"Sometimes when people are really raw, the easiest way to get through the hardest part is to stay busy," he said. "It wasn't about not dealing with things—you knew what was happening—but reminding yourself that the world wasn't over. I wanted you to be able to get away from it for a little bit."

I worked that night, but as I walked the floor, smiling, serving steaks, busing tables, and opening bottles of wine, I could feel my own juices running out of my body. I couldn't get away from it that day, not physically, and not ever.

After I started telling people what had happened, many of them told me not to worry. They pointed out that at least I now knew I could get pregnant. Over and over, I was told I could try again. For many women who have experienced pregnancy loss, healing becomes contingent on hope, on another pregnancy. But those directives, which come from well-meaning partners, family members, and health-care practitioners, can get in the way of the more complex, healthier—and often slow—process of grieving and recovery.

For a few weeks, that embryo the size of a pea suddenly felt like an unfathomably large black hole into which, at moments, my sanity was at risk of being sucked.

I drank. A lot. I didn't sleep well. I cried, seemingly all the time. I watched videos of Beyoncé talking about her miscarriage—"The saddest thing I've ever been through"—on YouTube over and over.

Instead of telling our families I was pregnant that Christmas, my husband and I did something else. We flew to Little Rock, Arkansas, on Christmas Day, rented a car, and drove to Memphis, where we spent a few days eating barbecue and fried chicken, and drinking bourbon. We paid $10 each at the door of a juke joint where the price of admission included a red Solo cup, allowing us to help ourselves to unlimited refills from a keg that sat on the floor, late into the night. We were sad, but we were drunk, and we talked loudly about the importance and beauty of our freedom.

The next day, we went to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where we each stood in the exact spot where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In Arkansas, we hiked on the Trail of Tears, walking part of the route that members of the Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, and Chickasaw nations took, fighting disease and starvation after the United States government forcibly removed them from their ancestral homelands.

We drove through Money, Mississippi, where, in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was beaten, mutilated, and murdered, his body thrown into the Tallahatchie River, for talking to a white woman. In Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, I saw a family burning wood and trash in a drum on their front lawn. The windows of their house were broken; the fire was for heat. It was in that moment that I understood fully that while my loss was sad, it was not a tragedy.

As we drove north back to Little Rock, I stared out the window as the landscape whirred by and repeated the lines of Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art" inside my head like an incantation: "So many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster."

Two months later, I still hadn't gotten my period. I called my doctor. He ordered another hCG test to determine whether my body was back to a state of normalcy or whether my uterus was still holding on to any "retained products of conception," the clinical term for placental and fetal tissue that can remain after a miscarriage. My hCG level was six, or "very slightly elevated," meaning inconclusive. And so another test was ordered for the next week.

This new test would determine whether I might need a D&C, a surgical procedure of dilation and curettage, to "completely evacuate" my uterus. During a D&C, a woman's cervix is dilated, and an instrument called a curette is used to scrape and remove the uterine lining.

The day after my blood was drawn, my cell phone rang a few minutes before 8 a.m. It was January, so the room was black. I shot up in bed and fumbled around for my phone. My husband, moving more quickly than he usually does at this hour of the morning, headed downstairs to make coffee and give me some privacy. We both knew who was calling.

I scrambled out of bed and tried to pull myself together, as though my doctor might actually be able to see me over the phone. I was naked and possibly still a little drunk from the night before (there had been martinis, then dinner, wine, and, improbably, shots of tequila and dancing). I had wanted to be more prepared for whatever he was about to tell me.

"Hello!" I said with forced energy. The fake sound of my own voice startled me. "Hello, hi, this is Angela," I tried again.

"Good morning, Angela."

As soon as I heard his voice—always so unnervingly calm—I stopped moving. What I wanted to hear was that my hCG level was back to zero, my uterus was empty, and I would not have to be scraped. But I understood that nothing, certainly not a thin layer of cotton, certainly not the cold, dark room I was in, could shelter me from the results of the blood test.

My doctor cleared his throat. "I think you're pregnant," he said.

"No, I don't think so," I replied confidently, dismissively.

He paused.

"Sorry, let me start over. Angela, this is your doctor calling. I'm calling to tell you that you are pregnant. Last week, your hCG level was six. Today it is 1033. The only way that happens is pregnancy."

I have been pregnant—knowingly—four times in my life. Before I gave birth to my daughter at the end of 2014, I'd had a miscarriage in 2008, an abortion in 2009, and another miscarriage in 2013. Half of my pregnancies have ended in miscarriage. This might seem shocking, but it's actually quite ordinary.

According to a 2013 study by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, most people believe that miscarriage is a rare occurrence that happens to only 5 percent of women. In reality, miscarriage ends up to 20 percent of known pregnancies—roughly 750,000 to 1,000,000 every year in the United States. The true percentage is almost certainly higher considering the number of women who miscarry so early that they may never recognize the pregnancy as anything more than a late period.

Let's talk for a moment about the term "miscarriage." It's objectively terrible. Think of the words that begin with the same prefix: mistake, misstep, misplaced, misspelled. "Mis" seems to imply not only that something is wrong, but that you have an active role in making it so. Forty percent of the women surveyed who have experienced a miscarriage said they felt they had done something wrong to cause their miscarriage, and 47 percent expressed feeling guilty.

Scientists know that the majority of pregnancy losses are caused by aneuploidy—chromosomal abnormalities that, for reasons we don't totally understand, result in forms of life that are incapable of being carried to term. Fetuses with other chromosomal irregularities, such as Down syndrome and Klinefelter's syndrome, can still grow into healthy, full-term babies.

Yet the same 2013 survey found that the most commonly believed causes of miscarriages are things like stressful life events, lifting something heavy, and having previously used a contraceptive intrauterine device (IUD). These all suggest some responsibility on the part of women.

And they all are unrelated to miscarriage.

There's a lot that scientists don't know about pregnancy loss—not to mention about women's bodies and our reproductive health in general. It was only in the 20th century that researchers came to understand menstruation as part of our species-sustaining reproductive process, and not a scourge that caused food to spoil and puppies to fall over dead.

Before this revelation, people relied on information from sources like the Bible, which, in Leviticus 15:19-20, says: "Whenever a woman has her menstrual period, she will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. Anyone who touches her during that time will be unclean until evening. Anything on which the woman lies or sits during the time of her period will be unclean."

Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote: "Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seeds in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees falls off, the bright surface of mirrors in which it is merely reflected is dimmed, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air."

That may sound antiquated and superstitious, but as recently as 1974, a leading medical journal, the Lancet, published a letter speculating that flowers held by menstruating women would wilt as the result of "menotoxin," an invisible, nefarious substance secreted through the pores of women who happen to be on their period. The actual existence of menotoxin was debated for the better part of a century. To be clear: It's a myth. There is no such thing as menotoxin, or "menstruation poison," and there never was.

Though women's reproductive health is crucial to the survival of our species, we haven't valued it enough to fully study and understand it. We still haven't even managed to figure out what triggers labor—the physical process by which every single human is brought into the world.

Most of what we understand about miscarriage didn't come from direct research. Instead, discoveries came about accidentally, the byproduct of work done by scientists whose fields of inquiry were things like chromosomal abnormalities or mammalian placentas. These researchers analyzed spontaneously aborted fetuses and products of conception simply because they were in convenient, abundant supply. Why no one thought to study the reasons why they were in such supply is mind-boggling.

The clinical term for miscarriage is "spontaneous abortion," which feels, yes, clinical. For everyday life, I prefer the term "pregnancy loss," because that's exactly what it is. What exactly is lost, though, lies entirely in the heart and mind of each woman who experiences it.

People are uncomfortable talking about pregnancy loss, so they don't. It's no wonder—any meaningful discussion of it requires acknowledging death, sadness, blood, tears, and items being expelled from the vagina.

It doesn't help that what paltry conversations we do have about pregnancy loss are dominated by stories of people who have been through multiple, consecutive losses. And books on the subject, even ones grounded in science, are typically written by men and strongly emphasize hope—the importance of getting over a pregnancy loss in order to try again. With titles like Miscarriage, Medicine & Miracles, these books are about fixing problems, reinforcing that you can and will get pregnant again as the goal.

"Recurrent pregnancy loss" is defined as three or more consecutive losses. While would-be parents who struggle through this and are still determined to have children must have access to information and hope, the reality is that recurrent loss affects only 1 to 2 percent of women.

"[Recurrent pregnancy loss] is a tragedy," said Dr. Kristen Swanson, dean and professor at the College of Nursing at Seattle University. "But that's not the everyday version of miscarriage."

Swanson should know. She began studying pregnancy loss 28 years ago as a doctoral student. Since then, she has interviewed and counseled hundreds of women about pregnancy loss and care. Swanson was also dean of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina, and, for more than 20 years, on the faculty of the University of Washington School of Nursing.

As a PhD student in the 1980s, Swanson, who had just given birth to her son, attended a support group for new mothers. On that particular day, the group hosted a guest speaker, an obstetrician who spoke about pregnancy loss.

"I listened like a nurse," she recalled, "because he was using words like 'spontaneous abortion,' 'products of conception,' 'diagnosis,' and 'prognosis'—medical terms."

Afterward, women in the group were eager to share their own experiences. Swanson was struck by the markedly different words the patients used: They spoke of loss, grief, babies, emotions, and mourning.

"There are two totally different languages used by practitioners and women who have experienced pregnancy loss," Swanson said. "My awareness happened in that moment. I knew this was something I could study."

Swanson thought she would send out a survey to a few hundred women and then write a paper. She found that not only was nothing written on the subject at that time, there was not even any meaningful tool of measurement. So she created her own. She asked women two questions about their losses: What is it like? What made you feel cared for?

"We should always take miscarriage as an absolutely normal life event," said Swanson. "It's a transition, part of living and dying. Every single day, your body is sloughing off fluids and cells that may be harmful to you. With miscarriage, you are entering a very natural process. The body is wise. It recognizes a pregnancy that could never be carried to term."

In the very early stages of pregnancy, the production of hormones—the chemical directives parts of our bodies send to other parts to compel them into action—increases. Women's bodies are suddenly awash in a strange soup of estrogen and progesterone, which affect everything from the breasts to the bowels to the brain. (By frustratingly sudden turns, these hormones can make you feel exhausted, incredibly aroused, or nauseated.) When pregnancy loss occurs, suddenly all those hormones rush away, and women may easily be swept up in a chemical ebb tide.

"The emotions that go with [miscarriage] can be huge," said Swanson.

Then comes the reckoning of what was lost, which is unique to each person. The reactions to pregnancy loss are as diverse as the women who experience them—essentially infinite.

Based on her interviews with women, Swanson developed a Theory of Caring that's based not in sympathy, which is what most people tend to throw at women who have experienced pregnancy loss, but empathy.

In Swanson's definition of care, nurses treat and nurture their patients with a personal sense of responsibility. Her theory defines specific acts health-care providers can perform: knowing, being with, doing for, enabling, and maintaining belief. According to Swanson, the belief that must be maintained is the belief that a woman can recover and work through pregnancy loss—not that she will, or even want to, get pregnant again.

Swanson's Theory of Caring, though it was created specifically to care for women who had experienced pregnancy loss, has since been adopted as a model for general nursing and patient-driven care at hospitals around the country.

I wonder what else we might learn simply by listening to women.

The experience of pregnancy loss can be wildly divergent, even within one life.

My first miscarriage happened eight years ago, just days after a doctor's appointment. My doctor at the time had asked me a routine question—the date of my last period. I couldn't quite remember, and then I realized it had been more than six weeks earlier.

She ordered a urine test; I was pregnant. I wandered out of the clinic onto Madison Street and called a friend, who within minutes picked me up by the IHOP near Broadway. A few hours later, my boyfriend, the man who would later become my husband, picked me up at her apartment, where I had been sitting on the couch crying.

I—we—did not want to be pregnant.

Two days later was when I started bleeding. I went back to the doctor's office, where they performed an ultrasound with a long wand that was inserted into me. "There is nothing in there now," I remember someone saying. "You must have miscarried."

I didn't ask any questions. I don't remember feeling anything besides relief. My body had made an executive decision, and I felt grateful to it for that.

But five years later, when I was pregnant again and my husband and I were excitedly planning to tell our families at Christmas, the circumstances had changed. I still remember, on that morning that I began bleeding heavily, hanging up with the doctor and starting to walk the three feet from my bedroom to my bathroom and not getting all the way there. Instead, I lay down on the carpet in the hallway and sobbed for an hour.

A friend of mine, someone I used to work with, recalled a similar experience. She and her wife have been trying to get pregnant for the last two years, and she'll be the one to carry the baby. She's been inseminated four times and gotten pregnant twice. Both ended in miscarriage. Her first pregnancy came, much to her surprise, on the first attempt.

"It was literally the first time I've ever had sperm in my body," she remembered. "Suddenly, it felt real, like a whole new life—this could be it, our baby, our family."

But the pregnancy stopped at eight weeks.

"The first miscarriage was devastating," she said. "Even being with a woman, my wife still doesn't understand how crazy those hormones make you. I felt like I was losing my mind a little."

As I sat listening to her, I marveled at the fact that, two years ago, we were miscarrying at the exact same time. Working side by side, bleeding side by side, each secretly worried that, at any moment, we'd come undone. It was only months later that we found out all of this because we chose, in spite of all our hesitations, to talk about it.

My husband recently reminded me of something I'd forgotten. He said that the next day, the day after I lay on the carpet crying for an hour, when I was bleeding the heaviest, I had called him into the bathroom. I was sitting on the toilet passing large blood clots. I wiped them away and held out the piece of toilet paper to show him. I hadn't remembered doing that. I apologized because apologizing seemed like the polite thing to do, but I didn't mean it. I was glad that I had done it. That he had seen it too.

It.

It was gelatinous, the texture of snot, and the deepest shade of red I've ever seen—nearly black. As it fell out of me, I looked closely, both hoping and fearing that I would see something recognizable—a tadpole, a cashew-shaped alien, a tiny eye the size of a poppy seed on something that vaguely resembled a head. I was fascinated by the stuff. It may not have been a baby, but it was part of me—something I grew with my own body. And now it was leaving me. I rolled it in my fingers. It was warm. It was not alive.

I was surprised to learn from Swanson that I was not alone in my need to touch what came out of me. In fact, touching—and being able to talk about it—is a powerful experience for many women. If a woman Swanson was interviewing had had access to the products of conception, she asked questions about it: Did you pass anything? Did you scoop it up and feel it?

"'I DID,' they'd say with huge eyes," Swanson said. "So then I'd ask them, 'What did you feel?' 'What was the shape of it?' These are the most intimate moments I have ever experienced while counseling women. They want to tell that story, but they don't get many places to tell it."

For me, the most difficult part of that second pregnancy loss was attempting to make sense of so many new and entirely unrecognizable feelings. I found myself grieving someone I had never known, someone who, to be honest, I never even thought of as a person. How (not to mention why) do you mourn someone who never came into being?

"Women will ask themselves, 'What did I lose?'" Swanson told me. "Some will say 'not a darn thing,' others will say 'my child.' Everybody has to come to terms with what was lost and gained."

I remember my mother driving my husband and me to the airport on Christmas morning, when we left for Little Rock. We had told her about the miscarriage the day before. Just as she was about to get back in the car, she waved and said cheerfully: "Have fun! Made in Memphis! Made in Memphis!"

I felt her love, but it didn't bring me much comfort. That came a few weeks later while talking to my friend Erica on the phone. After going through a miscarriage several months earlier, she was pregnant again.

"If I have another miscarriage, I'm done," she told me matter-of-factly.

Until then, no conversation I'd had or reading I'd done had left any room for the possibility of not trying over and over to get pregnant again. There seemed to be no space for the possibility of finding peace in a life without a baby. I realized then that if I lost more pregnancies, I wouldn't be going to any great lengths to have a child.

My ex-coworker, the one who has had two miscarriages, told me that she has also made peace—both with the fact that she might not be able to carry a baby, and that she and her wife are determined to meet their child. They'll keep trying, or they'll adopt, or they'll wait until her wife is ready to get pregnant. Miscarriage might stop her from having a baby, but it won't stop her from having a family.

When it comes to pregnancy loss, there is no script to follow. To help a woman navigate it, you don't need to offer advice or perspective. It is enough to show up, however awkwardly, and be there. To listen.

"What does it take to lean into it, to allow your body to go through the emotions that come from doing what we're hardwired to do?" Swanson wondered aloud at one point. "Women were made for birth and life and death," she added. "In the moment of miscarriage, birth and life and death come through us."

On that cold morning in January 2014, after my second pregnancy loss, I stood there, still in the dark, still possibly drunk, still on the phone with my doctor. Only now I was pregnant.

My first question was if there was any greater chance that I would miscarry. I had already googled this weeks before, and knew that the risk was about 25 percent, barely higher than someone who has never lost a pregnancy. (My second question, which I kept to myself, was whether I had unknowingly killed or pickled my proto-baby while drinking the night before. She was fine.)

"This probably isn't what you want to hear," he said. "But I wouldn't consider you abnormal until this"—pregnancy loss—"happened to you three times in a row."

"So what do I do now?" I asked.

"Live your life. Come see me in a month."

I waited until I was 14 weeks pregnant with the little being that would become my daughter Noli Jo before I started telling people. And even then, I still held on to a lot of fear. I don't remember when exactly I let go of the fear, but I do know that, when I told others, it was their happiness that made the pregnancy seem viable and real. They seemed to have nothing but hope and belief.

We are often told to accept life's difficult circumstances, in part because we can learn from them. Gradually, we think of them less as things that happened, but things that are a part of us. The same can be true for pregnancy loss.

Weeks after talking to Kristen Swanson, I couldn't stop thinking about something she said—that birth and life and death exist in women's bodies simultaneously.

I picture pregnancy loss as a primordial river rushing through me; it carries forces so big, they eclipse my imagination. It runs through my femoral artery and vena cava, through my spleen, my brain, and the chambers of my heart. At first, this force is strong like rapids, flooding everything. With time it slows, but it never goes away. It rearranges my cells like stones in a riverbed. It never stops running, even after I can no longer see or feel it.

Someone once suggested that if I hadn't lost a pregnancy, I wouldn't have the beautiful baby I have now. She was trying to make me feel better, I think, or to help me make sense of things. It was a mistake. I remember looking at her face and thinking that if I hadn't had my miscarriage, I wouldn't be the person I am now.

Now Is the Time to Eat Asparagus, Rhubarb, Nettles, and Ramps

Angela Garbes — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 12:55:00 -0700
by Angela Garbes
It's spriiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. AG

I enjoy tormenting myself, apparently. Every morning between 10:30 and 11 a.m.. I receive the same email from Pioneer Square's Il Corvo Pasta—an email that unfailingly makes my insides groan with longing as I work quietly at my desk a mile away, unable to act on the desires it triggers. The email, sent by chef and owner Mike Easton, announces the restaurant's menu of three pastas, which change daily.

"Pea-Vine pesto is back!," yesterday's email screamed silently at me from my Inbox, accompanied by a salacious photo of rigatoni, curvy tubes lounging atop each other in a bright green sauce.

I am almost never able to head down to Il Corvo for lunch, so the emails always pain me. And yet I am unable to unsubscribe from the list. Last week, when I read an email declaring "Spring is in the air!!," I realized that the daily messages chronicling the handmade pastas and sauces are part of how I track and understand the changing seasons.

Recent Il Corvo dishes have included fiore with spring garlic, butter, and chilies; sumac tagliatelle with asparagus; pasta misti with sorrel-hazlenut-pine nut pesto; and zane d'elefante (elephant tusks!) with buttermilk and wild nettle béchamel. Each green element is a sure sign of spring. (BTW, Il Corvo's similarly seasonally-minded sibling, Pizzeria Gabbiano, has closed permanently. It will reopen as Il Corvo Pasta Studio, a public space where people can watch all types of pasta being made and buy dried pastas to take home, possibly as early as the end of May.)

This week you can look outside the window and see that sunnier, warmer days have arrived—or, like me, you can study the changing menus around town.

Asparagus, nettles, rhubarb, ramps, peas, and fiddlehead ferns—these are tender spring ingredients that chefs around Seattle clamor for after months of root vegetables and winter greens.

Asparagus fritatta and rhubarb gallettes at Vif. AG

Yesterday when I stopped in at Fremont's Vif, an asparagus fritatta and rhubarb mini-gallettes jumped out from the daily selection of pastries and treats. At Greenwood's Coyle's Bakeshop, sweet rhubarb croissants and savory asparagus croissants have been making appearances. At Tilikum Place Cafe in Lower Queen Anne, there's currently a mache salad with pickled rhubarb on offer.

You'll find an asparagus soup with creme fraiche and English pea agnolotti at Ethan Stowell's newest restaurant, Marine Hardware. (The location used to be Stowell's Chippy's Fish and Chips, but he closed it and reimagined it as a higher-end place with small plates and prix-fixe menus). The chalkboard menu at Columbia City's La Medusa recently sported burrata with grilled ramps and top sirloin with escarole and fiddlehead ferns. And a few weeks ago, at the expanded Little Uncle on Capitol Hill, I happily slurped a spicy, brothy jungle curry made with wild boar, bamboo shoots, and wilted nettles.

Current dishes at Capitol Hill's Lark include semolina gnocchi with nettles and Neah Bay halibut—the fish that marks the arrival of spring— with raw artichoke, herbs, and za'atar-spiced yogurt. At Marjorie, also on Capitol Hill, chef Zephyr Paquette has settled nicely into her role as chef, and is serving halibut with pea vines and black lentils, as well as a foraged nettle risotto.

Of course, spring extends to beverages too. The bartenders at Beacon Hill's Bar del Corso are currently mixing rhubarb tonics made with rye, tonic, rhubarb simple syrup, and rhubarb bitters. At grocery stores and wine shops across town, shelves glow pink, stocked with seemingly endless bottles of rose just waiting to be tucked into picnic baskets.

My current favorite summer beer, the ridiculously easy drinking Ziggy Zoggy lager from Bremerton's Silver City Brewery, is also starting to pop up around town. I picked up a six-pack at the PCC in Columbia City last week, but you'll also likely see it on tap throughout the coming months at places like Brouwer's, the Pine Box, Chuck's Hop Shop, Brave Horse Tavern, Zeek's Pizza locations, and the great Athenian Inn.

Ziggy Zoggy is a German kellerbier. I'll leave the technicalities to beer nerds and just tell you that the lager is crisp and dry, a little bit malty and sweet. It's unfiltered, bright yellow but slightly hazy, much like a Seattle sun triumphantly breaking through spring clouds.

Manolin Is Hosting a Dinner Next Week For Hartwood, The Yucatán Restaurant That Was Its Inspiration

Angela Garbes — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 11:01:17 -0700
by Angela Garbes
This is going to be good.

In my review of Manolin, published almost a year ago, I said that it "feels like a beach vacation—not the cheesy kind with blended drinks and fresh towels, but the kind of oasis you might discover at the end of a bumpy ride down a dusty road, where you take up residence in a palapa and subsist on fresh fruit, seafood, and warm tequila for weeks."

Having just returned from a road trip through the Yucatán Peninsula doing almost exactly that—snorkeling in the clear teal waters of the Caribbean, lying on the beach, listening to geckos call, counting mosquito bites, and eating creamy avocados, oozy, overripe mangoes, as well as ceviches studded with delectably sweet conch—that description holds.

It's been too long since I've eaten at Manolin, which was inspired in part by a trip owners Rachel Johnson and Joe Sundberg took through the Yucatán, but I found myself thinking of it (and, specifically, its halibut with green mole and rockfish ceviche with sweet potato) as I lay in the sun, making a mental note to go back soon after my return to Seattle.

Yucatecan food is noticeably spicier than other regional Mexican food—incendiary habaneros are the chilies of choice, and they light up your lips, fingers, and tongue in a hot instant. Dishes are also bright and acidic; seafood ceviches are given life with copious of amounts of fresh lime juice. But what struck me most about the food was its smokiness.

Much of the peninsula is tropical jungle and forest; it's constantly abuzz with the sounds of insects, birds, and reptiles. The land is wild and life is still steeped in the traditions of the Mayan people. Electricity and gas are expensive, so cooking is done over wood, imbuing everything with a tremendous depth of flavor—smoke, sweetness, nuttiness, char. Even the fresh corn tortillas, griddled over a fire, that I bought from a man named Lucio who sold them from the back of his pick-up truck in a small fishing village, had dark flavor notes.

The heart of Manolin's kitchen is a large wood-fired hearth in which chef Alex Barkley cooks proteins on a cast iron plancha above glowing coals. The inspiration came from not just classic Yucatecan cooking, but from a restaurant called Hartwood, an entirely wood-fired restaurant using traditional Mayan ingredients, started by New Yorkers Eric Werner and Mya Henry in 2010.

Hartwood is located in Tulum, a once quiet and remote beach town that despite strict construction regulations and limited electricity and plumbing, is rapidly developing into a commercial zone of hotels, resorts, yoga studios, and high-end boutiques. Hartwood started as an improbable leap of faith, but thanks to features in publications like the New York Times and Lucky Peach, it's become an international dining destination. (On the one day I was in Tulum, I stopped by Hartwood just after the restaurant opened at 5:30 p.m. and was promptly told that the all the restaurant's tables—and its wait list—were completely full for the evening. I was instructed to come back the next day at three p.m. to try and get on the list. But I was leaving in the morning and, luckily, there's plenty of terrific food in Tulum. I recommend the al pastor—roasted on hot coals—and cabeza tacos from Aca Los Tacos, a family run stand on a side street in town.)

Hartwood chef Eric Werner doesn't purport to cook Mexican or Mayan food, though he's strongly dedicated to its techniques and ingredients. According to the Times, "Mr. Werner’s cooking tools are primitive, but his cooking style is decidedly modern, in tune with the hive mind of today’s culinary elite. These chefs are rewriting the menu of fine dining...aiming for food that is natural, minimal and egalitarian. In this movement, sometimes called 'New Nordic' even in the tropics, geographic labels like Mexican are losing their weight, and food that is regionally 'authentic' is no longer the quest. All this is why the world has begun to beat a path to Hartwood’s (rusty) gate."

It's part of what led Manolin's Johnson and Sundberg, who have since taken tropical elements and flavors and married them to native Pacific Northwest ingredients, to Hartwood, where every element of the restaurant—food, cooking equipment, and design—sparked their imaginations and cemented their vision for Manolin.

"Hartwood was the single most influential restaurant Rachel and I visited before opening Manolin," Sundberg told me. "We wrote our 'business plan' after a night there."

When I got back to Seattle, I nosed around Manolin's Facebook page, where I was delighted to see that this coming Monday, April 18, the restaurant, in conjunction with Fremont's Book Larder, is hosting Eric Werner for a five-course meal inspired by his cookbook Hartwood: Bright, Wild Flavors from the Edge of the Yucatán.

"It seems like there is something about the Yucatán/Hartwood and Manolin that's like this strange circular vortex," Sundberg said. "Our chef Alex Barkley was just there in December, before we knew we'd be doing this event."

Barkley's draft menu for the dinner looks fantastic: Albacore ceviche with grapefruit; rockfish ceviche with mezcal and chamomile; halibut with white beans and cilantro crema; pork belly with honey, poblanos, and pickles; chocolate habanero cake with sour avocado. The dinner is sure to sell out, but Sundberg says there are a few seats left. You can get them through Book Larder here.

When I wrote my review of Manolin last spring, one criticism I had was that some of the proteins were unevenly cooked, as though Barkley occasionally struggled with the temperature of the coals on which he was cooking.

But as Werner writes in the Hartwood cookbook, fire is "a force of nature that you can direct but you can't fully control...You're not going to learn how to grill over wood from a cookbook, you're going to learn by doing. You need to watch the flames, the wood, the food. You need to make mistakes. You will get better, but it will take time."

Last summer Manolin was named one of "America's Best New Restaurants" by Bon Appétit magazine. I have no doubt that Manolin's talented chef and cooks have grown and developed—and that they'll be putting their best forward at next week's dinner.

"It's weird and awesome for us to be hosting this event," said Sundberg. "We will be laying it on thick."

At Lionhead, Jerry Traunfeld Goes in a New Direction—Sichuan Peppercorns, Doubanjiang, and Other Chinese Ingredients

Angela Garbes — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 04:00:00 -0700
At Lionhead, Jerry Traunfeld Goes in a New Direction—Sichuan Peppercorns, Doubanjiang, and Other Chinese Ingredients by Angela Garbes
A few weeks ago, on the opening day of the University Link light rail extension, I walked a mile and a half from my house to the Beacon Hill light rail station. As the sun set, I descended into a tunnel and boarded a train. While facing backward, I traveled forward and, 20 minutes later, emerged—magically it seemed—onto a busy corner of Capitol Hill.

I walked a few short blocks to Lionhead, the Sichuanese restaurant that chef Jerry Traunfeld opened last summer, where I tore through a plate of dark and musky duck ($24) with my hands. It was redolent of star anise and clove, its richness cut by a glistening sauce of chili oil and sour black vinegar. The bird had been braised so long that both its flesh and bones were tender; I nibbled on its soft little ribs and sucked out every bit of flavor that I could. I dipped pieces of juicy breast into a mixture of coarse gray salt and Sichuan peppercorns; my tongue lit up with the taste of citrus before getting pleasantly tingly and numb. It was marvelous.

Traunfeld has a long history in the Pacific Northwest restaurant world, none of it related to Chinese cooking. For 17 years, he was executive chef at Woodinville's the Herbfarm, which helped define both fine dining in the Northwest and the region's devotion to local and seasonal ingredients. There, he mined the acres of gardens just outside his kitchen and became known for his masterful use of fresh herbs—a revelation at a time when sprigs of parsley were mainly used as garnishes.

"Taste a few flakes of dry tarragon and they will seem little more than mild and musty," Traunfeld wrote in The Herbfarm Cookbook, published in 2000, the same year he won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Northwest. "Then taste a leaf of fresh tarragon, just picked from the garden; it will be sweet and peppery and fill your mouth with a punchy anise flavor underscored with green savoriness."

In 2008, Traunfeld opened Poppy on the north end of Broadway. In the restaurant's rear parking lot, next door to a gas station, he installed an herb garden. He continued making food primarily from seasonal Northwest ingredients, but took spices and inspiration from India. Meals at Poppy are served as thalis, platters that hold many small dishes such as nigella-and- poppy-seed naan, yams with curry leaf, potatoes with lavender and mint, and coconut curry kohlrabi with dill.

Few chefs could put seven boldly seasoned dishes onto the same plate, allow diners to eat them in whatever order they please, and have it all work. But that's exactly what Traunfeld does—he understands which flavors complement each other, how they form layers, how they sing in harmony.

A few years ago, Traunfeld began thinking of opening a restaurant inspired by the Chinese food that he loves to cook at home and eat in the International District and Bellevue. He drafted dishes that were exactly what you'd expect at a Chinese restaurant from Jerry Traunfeld: sweet-and-sour pork made with pears, chicken wings with Chinese black beans and rosemary.

But then he went to China.

"I went specifically because I wanted to understand the food better," he says. He ate his way through Sichuan province, known for aggressive flavors—fermented bean pastes, fiery chilies, sour pickles and vinegar, ginger, and the complex, numbing native Sichuan peppercorn. (The Sichuan peppercorn, by the way, isn't actually a peppercorn, but the outer husk of the prickly ash berry.)

"The more I thought about it, the more I just wanted to cook food that was truer to the cuisine," Traunfeld says.

And so he dove into Sichuan food, spending two years researching, reading cookbooks, and developing recipes. He and his husband cooked countless versions of classic dishes such as ma po tofu and gung bao chicken in a wok on their home stove.

"It's a different set of tools, and a different palate that you're working with," he says. "But it's still about balance."

At Lionhead, the chef takes a few liberties with Man and Husband beef slices ($10), traditionally called Husband and Wife beef slices. Instead of using the usual brisket, lung, or tripe, it's made with cold slices of braised beef shank and tendon, the former dense and meaty, the latter chewy and slippery. They're dressed in a slick, piquant chili-oil sauce; peanuts, cilantro, and scallions provide freshness and crunch.

House-made buckwheat noodles ($12.50), wide and flat like pappardelle, were chewy and satisfying. The hearty grain makes the noodles pleasingly bumpy and gritty, which gives the spicy, earthy sesame sauce more surfaces to cling to. The oozy yolk of a perfectly soft-cooked egg adds even more richness, while pickled mustard greens add salty and sour notes.

Even if you're accustomed to the strong flavors and smells of Sichuan food, the intense aroma of ma po tofu ($16), soft tofu and ground pork swimming in a thick, brown gravy dotted with fermented soy beans, will be striking. Its base is doubanjiang, a paste made from fermented fava beans and chilies, which made the dish pungent and funky, downright dirty and barnyardy—in the best possible way. There's an incredible depth of flavor here—the dark, primordial doubanjiang, the heat of chilies, the salty hits of soybean, and, of course, the transfixing, floral buzz of Sichuan peppercorn. As you eat, your cheeks begin sweating, your glasses begin to fog up, and you're drawn, in spite of yourself, back into the dish.

Compared to the dark and soupy ma po tofu, la zi ji ($15) seems light and easy. It consists of nuggets of fried chicken (crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside) hiding under a fragrant and beautiful blanket of red chilies. But the scent of the chilies, released when they're tossed in a screaming hot wok, combines with the many lip- and tongue-numbing Sichuan peppercorns to create a heady, almost intoxicating, eating experience.

"A lot of Chinese cooking is about controlling heat, a trick of using the wok," says Traunfeld. It's something he didn't fully understand when he was cooking in a wok on a home burner, but had to figure out when he found himself standing in front of a wok sitting atop a powerful 150,000-BTU burner.

Traunfeld credits his chef de cuisine Kenny Lee and sous chef Sean Lin, both Chinese (though not Sichuanese), with helping him grasp the techniques of Chinese cooking.

"It wasn't until I started working with Chinese chefs that my cooking really evolved," he says. "I would have had no knowledge of some of these things without Kenny and Sean. You can't learn this stuff from books. They've been so valuable."

I asked Traunfeld about a recent special that I was taken with—tender, creamy slices of pork kidney ($16) with fine threads of ginger, pickled jalapeños, and black sesame oil in a light broth. The kidney slices and been scored with a knife and, when they were cooked, curled into delicate tubes decorated with a beautiful lattice pattern. It turns out the dish is Lee's recipe (he learned it from his mom), and the knife technique comes from Lin.

"It's humbling," Traunfeld says. "I don't claim to be an expert on Chinese food, I just like to cook it. And in this kitchen, I am always learning, every day."

Edouardo Jordan Is a Food & Wine Best New Chef

Angela Garbes — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 09:43:59 -0700
by Angela Garbes
"I need to be open about my path and the road I traveled so that other young black cooks understand the road is not easy," said Edouardo Jordan, the first African-American chef to be named a Food & Wine Best New Chef. Jenny Jimenez

It's been a good year for chef Edouardo Jordan. Last June, he opened his first restaurant, Salare, in Ravenna. Since then, he's gotten a three-star review, been on the cover of the fall issue of our food magazine The Sauce, been written up in the New York Times, and featured in Lucky Peach magazine. As of this morning, he is one of Food & Wine magazine's Best New Chefs of 2016.

In praising Jordan, the magazine had this to say: "The menu at Salare represents the chef’s outstanding and diverse training, from salumi-making in Italy to working the line at Per Se in New York City and cooking over live fire at Seattle’s Bar Sajor. His superb sweetbreads with collard greens merge his fine-dining experience with his Southern roots."

Jordan's food—excellent housemade charcuterie, dishes like honeycomb tripe braised in San Marzano tomatoes, and halibut run down, a Jamaican stew made with local fish, coconut milk, and plantains—is informed equally by his rigorous French and Italian training, experience with Northwest ingredients, and black Southern upbringing. It would have been easy for him to open a straightforward Italian restaurant here in Seattle, but instead he chose to cook food that is a full and complex reflection of his identity. Jordan has challenged diners to try—and embrace—new flavors and unfamiliar cuts of meat.

"With Salare, I'm being respectful of my heritage, going deep into slavery when our folks were cooking in the fields and given end pieces of pork and offal," he told me last fall. "They figured out how to make those things taste good and feed the family. I still think about that kind of heritage and history now. I also want to open people's eyes."

While there have certainly been other African-American chefs before Jordan who deserved this honor, Jordan is the first African-American to be named a Best New Chef by the magazine. That he has always spoke openly about the challenges he's faced as a black chef in fine dining kitchens makes this recognition feel even more significant.

Congratulations, chef.

Linda Derschang Is Opening a New Bar Tonight

Angela Garbes — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 10:01:53 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Club Leche, from nightlife maven Linda Derschang, will feature happy hour bottle service. The Derschang Group

Prolific restaurateur and bar owner Linda Derschang (Linda's, King’s Hardware, Smith, Oddfellows, Little Oddfellows, Tallulah's, and Bait Shop) is debuting another Capitol Hill project, Club Leche, tonight. Appropriately, the kitchen at Leche (the Spanish word for milk) will serve small plates called tapas, and the bar will offer a full selection of cocktails.

Tallulah's and Little Oddfellows, Derschang's most recent projects, are airy, light-filled spaces that focus on simpler, lighter food—vegetable-driven plates, whole grains, and made-from-scratch pastries. Leche is a bit of departure from this. It's more bar and nightclub than restaurant, with a decor inspired by "Bieber’s entourage, popped bottles, strobe lights, shame, mall culture, and keeping it '100.'"

One unique aspect of Leche's bar program will be its happy hour bottle service, created in partnership with TMZ, Grey Goose, and Axe Body Spray. According a press release from the Derschang Group, "LECHE is the Kim Kardashian of bars, featuring an ultra-exclusive, VIP experience."

Doors open at 4 p.m. today. Club Leche is located at 606 Broadway E.

The Time My Family Ordered a Whole Fried Catfish at Rainier Restaurant and BBQ

Angela Garbes — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 04:00:00 -0700
The Time My Family Ordered a Whole Fried Catfish at Rainier Restaurant and BBQ by Angela Garbes
I come from a family of chronic over orderers. If you've ever been to a Filipino family party, or just a Tuesday night dinner at a Filipino household, you understand. My husband likes to tell the story of the first time he went to dinner at my parents' house. There were four of us, and my mom and dad served a dinner of salad, pancit, baked salmon, and white rice. Oh, and two racks of smoked pork ribs.

At restaurants, our usual formula for ordering is one dish for every member of the party, plus an extra one just to be sure we don't starve. A few months ago, on the day before New Year's Eve, five members of my family—me, my husband, our 1-year-old daughter, my mother, and my father—found ourselves at Rainier Restaurant and BBQ (which, to be clear, is neither on Rainier Avenue nor a barbecue restaurant) in Rainier Valley. The address is 6400 Martin Luther King Jr. Way South. The restaurant has a loyal following for its great Vietnamese food. It also has the distinction of being one of the places Anthony Bourdain featured in the Seattle episode of his Travel Channel show The Layover, where it stood out among the other "classic Seattle" spots visited, including Canlis and the Walrus and the Carpenter.

Rainier has the usual Vietnamese restaurant suspects: bowls of dependably delicious pho, as well as dishes of bún (chewy rice vermicelli) and com tam (steamed broken rice), the last two topped with assorted grilled meats. Like Chiang's Gourmet on Lake City Way, Rainier also has more than one menu: a regular one with dishes familiar to most diners, as well as a "secret" one that includes meats such as python and alligator. When you're very hungry, which my family and I were, all those choices can seem incredibly overwhelming.

Everyone in our group was right on the edge of hangry, so we ordered a few things right off the bat: shrimp-and-pork fresh rolls, squid with black-bean sauce, duck noodle soup, and bo lá lot. My mom had a hankering for fried fish, so we tacked on the only fried fish option available: a whole deep-fried catfish. That might seem like a lot of food, but honestly we were proud of our restraint.

Most of the food came out quickly. Ten minutes after we ordered, as we were plowing our way through chewy pieces of squid and slurping noodles out of little bowls, a man came out of the kitchen to talk to us about our catfish.

"Small is okay?" he asked.

When we said yes, he told us that the smallest available fish weighed five pounds. That didn't sound that small to me. There was a moment of hesitant silence as we all tried to assess just how big this fish would be. My father, taking charge, declared simply, "Well, Mom wants it. And it's almost New Year's."

Thirty-five minutes later, long after we had finished all the other food and my daughter had started to get fidgety and fussy, the catfish made its grand entrance. As it came out of the kitchen, we gasped. It was at least a foot and a half long, hanging over the edges of the platter it was served on. Its body was curved as though it was still swimming, preserved in a perpetual state of motion. When it landed on the table, it sizzled and hissed. It appeared to have wings—its crispy fins sticking out. A bubble on the side of its face, just above one of its whiskers, burst open as we looked at it. My daughter's eyes grew wide, and the simple exclamation of a 1-year-old summarized everyone's feelings: "Whoa."

Though just moments before, all the adults had declared ourselves "probably too full to eat anything else," we set to work. We took turns chiseling away at its crunchy golden-brown exterior to get our fingers on the minerally and extraordinarily moist flesh underneath. We didn't bother dipping the sheets of rice paper into hot water to make fresh rolls (too much work), opting instead to simply wrap chunks of the fish in lettuce leaves with fresh herbs and pickled carrots. We dunked them into a spicy, pungent anchovy-pineapple sauce.

We proceeded to eat in reverential silence, entering a trancelike state, save for a few "mmmmmms," until we had eaten an entire side of the fish. We were exhausted and ecstatic, awash in a strange sort of triumph.

I was surprised when I found myself saying out loud that the catfish reminded me of lechon, the Filipino whole roasted pig that's often served at parties. But my family agreed. Like lechon, the skin of the catfish had the most wonderfully crackly texture, which made it a joy to eat on its own. Underneath, the meat was oily, sweet, and abundant, beckoning us to keep picking away at it, even after we knew it wasn't a good idea to do so. The fish's very presence made an ordinary meal feel like a special occasion.

Months later, remembering how we passed my baby girl amid four sets of loving arms so we could all eat and marvel together, I realize that it was.

Enough with Eating Entire Animals—Seattle Restaurants Are Getting Creative with Vegetables and Grains

Angela Garbes — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Enough with Eating Entire Animals—Seattle Restaurants Are Getting Creative with Vegetables and Grains by Angela Garbes
At Sweetgrass Food Co., a quick-service downtown restaurant that opened last fall, you can order amaranth grits with fennel and kale for a sit-down breakfast, or just grab some chia-seed pudding and be on your way. If you need caffeine, you might order a matcha latte, made with green tea, or perhaps you'd like to try the Sweetgrass coffee, drip coffee blended with organic grass-fed butter and coconut oil.

Juicebox, a proudly organic juice shop and cafe on Capitol Hill that's been open for just over two years, also serves a version of butter coffee, this one made with espresso, Irish butter, and something called "brain octane MCT oil." According to the woman behind the counter, the coconut-oil derived MCT oil (MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides) allegedly boosts energy and brain function.

Seattle has long had its share of healthy food spots that introduced diners to wheatgrass shots, tofu scrambles, and vegan gravy—places like Gravity Bar, Globe Cafe, Still Life Cafe, and Green Cat Cafe. But those restaurants are gone now. (Thankfully, Roosevelt's Sunlight Cafe, the city's longest-running vegetarian and vegan restaurant, lives on, serving sesame crunch waffles, homemade granola, tempeh tacos, nut burgers, and salads doused with lemon-tahini dressing as it has since 1976.)

Today, Seattle is experiencing a resurgence of healthy eating, one that's marked by contemporary marketing flourishes like brain-enhancing oils and detoxifying juices. But last year's openings of Sweetgrass Food Co., Queen Anne's Bounty Kitchen, and Fremont's Eve, as well as the more recent debuts of downtown's Anar and Ballard's Stock, also signal a shift toward a more traditional, conscientious way of eating. Menus are composed of dishes dominated by vegetables, whole grains, and fruit—all of the ingredients organically and locally sourced whenever possible.

Sara Dickerman, Seattle-based food writer and author of the recently published cookbook Bon Appétit: The Food Lover's Cleanse, believes the current trend is as much a new movement as it is a reaction to a dining trend that defined the last decade.

"So much of our focus now is on dining out. For a while, the feeling was like, 'If you're not eating all the pig, all the time, you're not really eating,'" Dickerman says. "So if you're eating a larger and larger portion of your meals out at restaurants, it can't always be plates of rillons with rillettes, with a little bit of lardo on the side."

In moving away from such meat-centric fare, chefs and home cooks like Dickerman have discovered the delight of cooking more vegetables and whole grains. They're crafting dishes that, according to Dickerman, are "scrumptious, textured, and layered."

Those are definitely words I'd use to describe the Havana Libre bowl ($13) at Bounty Kitchen. A cluster of black beans and forbidden black rice—earthy and nutty, dark as midnight on a moonless night—were the perfect counterpoint to peppery arugula that had been tossed with a bright, sunny citrus dressing. (The dressing, creamy and rich, is made with cashews instead of dairy.) The dish had even more dimensions of flavors, including a hash of diced sweet potatoes warmed with cumin and oregano, as well as fresh cilantro and buttery mashed avocado.

The Spicy Southern Not-Fried Chicken Salad ($15) is an incredibly generous salad that could easily feed two people. The greens—a combination of soft red-leaf lettuce, spicy arugula, and hardy kale—are given an extra herbaceous boost from celery leaves, parsley, and bitter radicchio. Roasted brussels sprouts, red grapes, avocado, and pumpkin seeds all add notes of sweetness (and contrasting texture), while shredded, chili-rubbed chicken breast and cayenne-infused dressing, again both creamy and dairy free, added plenty of spice and heat.

The brown rice pottage ($8.50) at Sweetgrass Food Co. is similarly gratifying: a porridge of long-simmered brown rice topped with meaty shiitakes, purple adzuki beans, and a soft-boiled egg. I ordered the pottage, which is served all day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., as a late-afternoon lunch, which may explain why it lacked much broth and was rib-stickingly dense. Yet it was still quite good, rescued by its many fresh elements: shaved fennel, sprigs of cilantro, chopped scallions, paper-thin slices of raw, piquant ginger, and, best of all, sweet-and-tart pickled red chilies.

On both occasions that I sat in Sweetgrass's airy, light-filled dining area, I watched most of its office-dwelling customers take their smoothies and Buddha Bowls to go. With customers in and out in less than five minutes, the restaurant's appeal became clear. It was something Dickerman echoed when we met over a bowl of Juicebox's coconut-milk yogurt parfait.

"In a more casual environment—for everyday meals when just sustaining yourself—why not sustain yourself in a lovely way that's more flavorsome than the Whole Foods deli aisle?" she mused.

While Sweetgrass and Bounty Kitchen are decidedly casual daytime spots, Fremont's Eve is something different: a full-service restaurant suitable for a special-occasion meal, complete with knowledgeable service, a biodynamic wine list, and a kitchen that's willing to take some creative risks. Eve's menu has a considerably higher amount of proteins and fat but those ingredients—goat butter, bison, chickens from esteemed Mad Hatcher Poultry in Ephrata—are very much in line with the restaurant's vision of "kind food [that] supports the farmer, the earth, and your body."

Chef Jason McCollum isn't just assembling big bowls of raw ingredients here. He's working to transform lean rabbit meat into rich terrines, making elderberry mustard, and roasting chicken bones to simmer in broth for days.

Your body will feel deeply warmed and nourished—and your taste buds awoken—by a steaming cup of bone broth ($6) made from roasted chicken bones, coconut, and orange zest. It's simultaneously bright, milky, and musky—and so rich with collagen that if you let it cool for a few moments, it settles into a thick, almost gelatinous mixture before your eyes.

Chicken fried barley ($18), a play on chicken fried rice, is an intriguing, if imperfect, dish. Overall, the plate of stir-fried barley, chicken, green beans, and carrot was a little bland. It begged for a sauce, something more substantial than the silky yolk of the poached egg that it's topped with. But it's also imbued with a dark, smoky flavor—the distinct breathy char that comes from the high heat of a well-seasoned and deftly handled wok—that keeps you coming back to the dish, despite its flaws.

The restaurant's signature dish, the Eve hot bowl ($14/$16 with a poached egg) is ostensibly virtuous: Ancient and whole grains such as barley, freekeh, and wild rice are mixed with brussels sprouts, radishes, beets, and blistered carrots, and then topped with crunchy pumpkin seeds, crushed almonds, and pecans. But after the first few bites, you realize that everything is coated in a rich dressing made with tahini and olive and sesame oils, and that the vessel you're eating from is both very wide and very deep. Yes, the dish is healthy and vegan, but decadence is its defining characteristic.

Eve's hot bowl reminded me again of something Dickerman said. "If you're trying to lose or maintain weight, you have to be careful about portions," she said. "Just because you're in a health-focused restaurant, you still have to look with a slightly cynical eye."

Dickerman has worked as both restaurant cook and restaurant critic, and she still dines out often. But with The Food Lover's Cleanse, she's insisting on the role that home cooking can also play in a more healthy diet and lifestyle.

"I actually don't believe in a cleanse, per se. But I can make a commitment to myself to cook more vegetables and more whole grains, and be a little less focused on big meaty portions. You'll make better choices if you take some of that into your own hands."

This story has been updated since it was first published.

Amazon Is Giving Its Downtown Employees a World of Restaurant Choices—Will the Rest of the City Show Up to Eat?

Angela Garbes — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 04:00:00 -0700
The food options at Sixth and Lenora now include Mamnoon Street, Anar, Bar Noroeste, Great State Burger, Marination, and Skillet Regrade. With more to come. by Angela Garbes
Long before Wassef Haroun and his wife, Racha, opened their first restaurant, Mamnoon, in 2012, Wassef spent years working at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. Lunch was often two pieces of presliced cafeteria pizza eaten at his desk.

"At the time, I didn't know much better, and didn't have much choice," Haroun recalls.

The Harouns just opened a second version of Mamnoon, called Mamnoon Street, in downtown Seattle's brand-new, 36-story Doppler office tower, the first of three high-rise buildings being constructed as part of Amazon's global headquarters and urban campus.

The kitchen at Mamnoon Street, which is visible to anyone walking along Sixth Avenue, is in constant motion: Chicken and lamb slow roast on a spit before being shaved off for shawarma; herbs are chopped for quinoa tabbouleh; falafel is fried to order; and freshly baked flat breads called manaeesh are sprinkled with fragrant za'atar. The intoxicating smells of smoke, garlic, sumac, and mint commingle and fill the air. These are the flavors of the Harouns' native country, Syria, as well those of Lebanon, and other areas of the Middle East.

The restaurant's defining feature is a smartly designed walk-up window, outfitted with gleaming white subway tiles and a heating lamp. At noon on even a cold and rainy day, it's easy to see why the line of people waiting is 12 deep. You can take your food to go, or eat it in a small dining room and bar warmed by orange chairs and the frenetic energy of the walk-up window.

The Harouns are among a group of local restaurateurs who signed on with Amazon, a number that will grow over the next two years. They have not one but two restaurants on the ground floor of Doppler. The other is Anar, tucked into the interior of the block, away from the street, which eschews meat, dairy, gluten, or processed sugar. It's a calm oasis decorated in Moroccan tiles, and its menu is steeped in Middle Eastern flavors, but with a decidedly healthy focus. There are house-made fruit-and-vegetable juices with ingredients such as rosewater, orange blossom, and pomegranate, as well as bowls filled with quinoa, kale, muhammara, green lentils, and pickled turnips. It's crave-worthy food that also happens to be good for you.

And those are just two of the many restaurants on this brand-new block, bordered by Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and Lenora and Virginia Streets, which didn't exist a few months ago. (It used to be a blue-gray motel and parking lot.) The ground floor of Doppler offers an undeniable variety of cuisines, price points, and culinary techniques. The tower and its adjacent Meeting Center comprise more than one million square feet of office space.

Haroun admits that when he and his wife were initially approached by Real Retail, the real-estate company hired by Amazon to manage retail leases throughout its new buildings, about opening a restaurant in Doppler, they were skeptical.

"Our first reaction was, 'Ooh, a corporate campus, that feels really tied into one company,'" he says, pulling air in between his lips and grimacing slightly for emphasis.

The Harouns were not sure if their vision would be a good fit with Amazon's.

"Our aim is always to have the broadest possible set of guests," he says. "At Mamnoon, on any given night, we have an unbelievably diverse set of guests—all walks of life, races, religion. That's really something to be very proud of. And so we needed to learn more about it."

Haroun believes diversity, and a growing awareness of food, is taking root in the tech workforce. "On the campus of Microsoft, you won't see that many women. Here you do—at least more than I ever remember seeing."

He went on to say, "Technology is, more and more, a part of our everyday lives—and every part of our lives. [Techies] are no longer these strange people just thinking about algorithms and abstract things, especially at Amazon."

At Bar Noroeste, a restaurant conceived by Josh Henderson, executive chef and founder of the Huxley Wallace Collective, the kitchen, led by chef Shannon Martincic, aims to answer the question "What if tacos originated in the Northwest?"

At the heart of Noroeste's menu are tacos made with ingredients sourced almost entirely from the Pacific Northwest, like fresh lingcod caught off the Washington Coast, thick tortillas made from yellow corn grown on the Olympic Peninsula, and Oaxacan cheese made from Jersey cow milk in Oregon. But you can also sit down to a prix-fixe meal that begins with scallop ceviche—cool, sweet meat marinated in a bright pisco-cilantro sauce, topped with spiced popcorn and lovely, delicate almond blossoms—as well as venison crudo, dark and muscular, flavored with fermented almonds and crispy fried shallots. Your meal ends with a server smashing a piñata constructed from Theo chocolate, made at the company's factory in Fremont, onto your table.

Avocados do not grow in the Northwest, and one of the more talked-about aspects of Bar Noroeste's cooking is how they get around this particular situation. Noroeste's guacamole is made not from avocados but from eggplants that are soaked whole in a mixture of soda water and salt before being fried and peeled. This technique alters the flesh of the eggplant, giving it a texture that strives toward the richness of raw avocado. Cilantro and garlic give the "guacamole" its flavor and familiar green color.

As for the "chips," they are made from red wheat berries instead of corn; the grains are ground in-house, then formed into chips, and fried.

At first bite, Noroeste's green spread did taste like guacamole, though it was airy, not dense and buttery, the characteristic traits of great guacamole. But with each bite, my tongue and my brain went back and forth, holding their own excited discussion about experience versus expectation. The dish played with my perceptions of texture and flavor, making me appreciate the skill and risk behind the food.

On a more recent visit to the Doppler building, I tried Bar Noroeste's guacamole for a second time. The chips were the same—grainy and dense, almost like pieces of savory graham cracker crust that had been deep-fried into greasy, tasty submission. But the guacamole itself was dramatically better, creamier. I'm not sure that I'll ever truly accept it as guacamole, but I admire its existence.

Amid a Seattle culinary landscape that values local ingredients, the question at the heart of Noroeste's cooking is more inevitable than surprising. But it's also a question predicated on a certain amount of hubris. The taco and its base, masa, which is made from a crop indigenous to the pre-Columbian Americas, were already invented many years ago.

But what aspect of Amazon's increasing global and urban dominance doesn't contain some element of hubris? Every table at Bar Noroeste is a window seat, and the windows to the north look directly into three interlocking steel-and-glass biospheres that, while currently under construction, have already captivated the imagination and affection of many Seattleites.

When they're completed next year, the biospheres will be up to four stories high and big enough to accommodate plants, including mature trees, from high-elevation climates from around the world. Amazon will employ a full-time horticulturist, and there will be restaurants on the ground floor of these structures, too. Conceived as a workplace with "restorative qualities that are not found in the typical office," the biospheres themselves may or may not be open to the public. Whether you or I will be able to encounter the natural beauty within them remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, if you look out Bar Noroeste's east-facing windows, past the aquamarine scaffolding-esque structure that frames Noroeste's doorway, you'll see a pristine, recently installed bike path running along Seventh Avenue. Just behind that, a building that feels decidedly less contemporary and clean: Little Darlings, an "intimate gentleman's club in the heart of Seattle," right next to the sex shop Fantasy Unlimited.

While you think about the new-Seattle-meets-old-Seattle view, a steady stream of Amazon workers, signature blue work badges dangling from their necks and waists, pass by Noroeste's windows. All seats at Noroeste are within arm's reach of an electrical outlet should you need to charge one or more of your devices, a feature many diners take advantage of.

It seems fitting that a restaurant looking to push beyond an already rich cultural tradition is housed inside the headquarters of a company that is now aggressively attempting to redefine what the heart of Seattle looks like, and what it means to live, work—and eat—here.

Most of the restaurants in the Doppler tower opened in January, a few weeks after the first Amazon workers began occupying the offices above. Henderson and Huxley Wallace also opened a decidedly different concept, Great State Burger, in a space adjacent to Bar Noroeste but with a completely different design scheme. Bar Noroeste looks like a small and sleek cocktail lounge awash in dark wood with gold and turquoise accents. Great State Burger, by contrast, is all blond wood and bright colors.

Great State is a Pacific Northwest take on the classic American burger joint: grass-fed beef, fresh crinkle-cut fries, organic milkshakes, and locally brewed beers, all served in compostable packaging.

When planning these concepts, Henderson says, "The question was always about the Amazon customer and how it would work with them." With Great State, they focused on "speed, efficiency, and value," and with Noroeste, they created an environment appropriate for lingering over "a cocktail and some highly curated food—whether that's a long out-of-office lunch, happy hour, or after-work drinks and dinner."

As Haroun pointed out, one of the things about the Doppler project that appealed to him was that, unlike the Microsoft campus, Amazon's campus is being "designed with a relatively limited capacity cafeteria, to encourage people to spread out, participate with, and get food from the community."

Mamnoon Street, Anar, Bar Noroeste, and Great State Burger represent just the beginning of what is available on the street level of the Amazon campus. Also open already is the Hawaiian-inspired Marination, from Kamala Saxton and Roz Edison, who also own the food truck Marination Mobile, Capitol Hill's Marination Station, West Seattle's Marination Ma Kai, and Columbia City's Super Six. This new location serves popular Marination dishes like miso-ginger chicken or "sexy tofu" tacos, as well as sliders stuffed with kalua pork or Spam, and new dishes such as a Korean cheesesteak sandwich with kalbi beef. Marination isn't set up for a leisurely lunch: Seating consists of mostly bar stools and counter space lining the windows and looking out onto the corner of Sixth Avenue and Virginia Street.

Doppler is also home to Skillet Regrade, the fourth location of Skillet Diner, serving comfort food (including a crazy-good fennel-seed-crusted fried chicken sandwich that's slathered with a pickled and charred jalapeño aioli). Additionally, there's an outpost of the national Potbelly Sandwich Shop chain and a Starbucks.

Cinque Terre, an Italian restaurant from the Varchetta family, who also own and operate Barolo downtown and Mamma Melina in the University District, is scheduled to open shortly, with an emphasis on local seafood. And according to a sign that's wrapped around a vacant corner space on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Lenora Street, retail opportunities at Doppler—and the other Amazon buildings—are still available.

The website of Real Retail promises that Amazon's urban campus "will be the largest development downtown Seattle has ever seen."

The concept—and scale—of Amazon's urban campus is something entirely new to Seattle. Like Microsoft, the company could have set up a sprawling campus in Redmond or another city on the Eastside, but instead deliberately chose to build within the city.

Currently, Amazon holds over eight million square feet of office space across more than 30 buildings, most of them concentrated in South Lake Union. Once construction of the urban campus is complete (likely in 2018), there will be approximately 10 million square feet of office space accommodating up to 55,000 employees in the center of the city, according to the company.

Amazon also wants its urban campus to be environmentally friendly, so it will use recycled energy given off by computers and servers in a nearby data center to heat its buildings. "We'll have the world's largest internet retailer heating its office space with waste heat created by the internet," Richard Stevenson, president of Clise, which owns the data center building, told the Seattle Times.

Amazon is also a dog-friendly workplace; Doppler is home to a rooftop dog park.

More than 70 percent of Amazon employees live in the city itself and, according to an employee survey, just over half of them walk, bike, or use public transportation to get to their offices. The company purchases ORCA cards for its workers to encourage the use of mass transit. Amazon-built cycle tracks, like the one you can see from Noroeste, are one of the public benefits required by the city of Seattle in exchange for selling its street-use rights to Amazon. This process, called an alley or street vacation, requires the buyers to pay market value for the space and provide long-term benefits to the general public.

According to a vacation petition filed with the city last year, market value in downtown Seattle was $600 per square foot. Amazon paid approximately $3.4 million for 5,756 square feet for a private right-of-way granted by the city for the block between Seventh and Eight Avenues and Bell and Blanchard Streets. In exchange, the company will build a hill-climb area with trees and outdoor seating, more cycle tracks, and setbacks to buffer pedestrians from street traffic.

Amazon set the Doppler building far back from the street to create a more pedestrian-friendly sidewalk, which translates to a more eater-friendly sidewalk. Haroun says that that extra space is what made Mamnoon Street's walk-up window possible, and what will allow them to build an outdoor dining area for warmer weather, as Skillet Regrade has already done.

Careful planning and vision are what eventually drew the Harouns into the Doppler project. They see it as an opportunity to bring energy and diversity into an area of the city that previously languished. This is only two blocks north of Pacific Place, and yet this area used to be seriously deprived of dining options.

"It's starting from scratch, and we have an opportunity to shape it in a way that, frankly, the city missed doing in other parts of downtown," Haroun says. "We were excited, not just to participate for our own interests, but because we felt, over time, this could be pretty interesting for the whole city."

For now, the Harouns' immediate concern is attracting diners to their restaurants after traditional business hours—after Amazon's employees have left the building. By offering happy hour at Mamnoon Street, the Harouns are "trying" to stay open until 9 p.m. The restaurants get a decent number of guests on Saturdays, but there aren't many people on Sundays.

On a recent Saturday night at 6:30 p.m., a stroll past Bar Noroeste confirmed it was less than half-full. The same was true of Great State, which may just be because the building is new and people are not used to thinking of this part of downtown as a restaurant neighborhood.

"At some point, we will sit down with the building and figure out if, long-term, this is going to grow in the way we want," says Haroun.

"Those of us who love and care for this city should encourage growth and change, but do it in a way that can be managed and produce the outcomes we want to see."

The 10 New Restaurants You Should Try Right Now

Angela Garbes — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Ten New Restaurants You Should Try Right Now by Angela Garbes
1. Bar Noroeste
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What it is: A sleek taqueria that aims to answer the question "What if tacos originated in the Northwest?" Given Seattle's obsession with local ingredients, the question was probably inevitable.

Where it is: 2051 Seventh Avenue, Downtown

Why you should try it: Guacamole made from eggplants, not avocados. Salsas made from beets. Venison crudo made with fermented almonds from Oregon. Whether chef Shannon Martincic's food is modernist, Mexican, or Pacific Northwest cuisine doesn't matter—there's nothing quite like it in the city right now.

2. Bateau
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What it is: A steak house from Renee Erickson (the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Whale Wins), serving grass-fed beef from the chef's own Whidbey Island farm.

Where it is: 1040 East Union Street, Capitol Hill

Why you should try it: The beef is butchered and dry-aged in-house (a window in the dining room offers a glimpse of massive sides of sinewy beef hanging from hooks, their flavors concentrating). Steaks, both common and lesser-known cuts, are cooked in butter and beef fat.

3. CaliBurger
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What it is: A shameless copycat of beloved California institution In-N-Out Burger. "Ask about our secret menu!" the menu cheerfully commands.

Where it is: 4509 University Way Northeast, University District

Why you should try it: Because for now, this is the closest you're going to get to a Double-Double and Animal-Style fries. (Added bonus: Beverage options include boozy milkshakes, as well as local favorites Stumptown Coffee and Rachel's Ginger Beer.)

4. Eve
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What it is: Upscale hippie food (think barley, coconut oil, seeds, and cultured butter) that, while good for you, prioritizes flavor most of all.

Where it is: 704 North 34th Street, Fremont

Why you should try it: Because sometimes you just need a mug of hot, restorative bone broth, you know?

5. Gracia
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What it is: A Mexican restaurant from Chester Gerl (formerly of Matt's in the Market) serving traditional food—including barbacoa, menudo, and chicharrones—made from impeccably sourced ingredients.

Where it is: 5313 Ballard Avenue Northwest, Ballard

Why you should try it: The base for Gracia's gorditas, sopecitos, tacos, and other antojitos is made from heirloom corn that's ground in-house and transformed, through a labor-intensive process, into masa.

6. Little Uncle
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What it is: The highly anticipated sit-down restaurant (indoor seating! Beer! Cocktails!) from Wiley and PK Frank, who've been churning out excellent traditional Thai street-food dishes from a Capitol Hill walk-up window since 2011.

Where it is: 1523 E Madison Street #101, Capitol Hill

Why you should try it: An expanded kitchen means an expanded menu, with new dishes such as dom yum wun sen (bean thread noodles and roasted pork in a spicy broth) and nam prik gapi (fried sardines and an herb omelet served with pungent fermented shrimp dipping sauce).

7. Mollusk
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What it is: The bigger—and much more ambitious—brewery and restaurant from Cody Morris and Travis Kukull, who operated tiny Gastropod and Epic Ales in Sodo.

Where it is: 803 Dexter Avenue North, South Lake Union

Why you should try it: Kukull's food is weird, in the best way possible: imaginative, Asian-influenced, and unexpected. Likewise, Morris brews a range of funky farmhouse ales and sours.

8. Nirmal's
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What it is: An upscale Indian restaurant headed by accomplished chef Nirmal Monteiro, who has studied the traditional regional dishes and techniques of his home country.

Where it is: 106 Occidental Avenue South, Pioneer Square

Why you should try it: Seattle has an annoying dearth of Indian restaurants, especially ones that serve lesser-known specialties such as Goan fish curry, avial (tropical vegetables including green bananas in a coconut-yogurt-cumin sauce), and Kashmiri goat rogni.

9. Sushi Kashiba
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What it is: Pristine, simple sushi and a small menu of traditional Japanese dishes served in a beautiful restaurant in the heart of Pike Place Market.

Where it is: 86 Pine Street #1, Downtown

Why you should try it: Over his 50-year career, chef and owner Shiro Kashiba has profoundly influenced Japanese food in Seattle, as well as our understanding of Pacific Northwest cuisine. Sitting at his sushi bar is an experience not to be missed.

10. Upper Bar Ferd'nand
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What it is: A wine bar and bottle shop serving small-batch wine from family-owned wineries around the world, with a wood-fired kitchen.

Where it is: 1424 11th Avenue, Capitol Hill

Why you should try it: Because for the first time in a while, chef and co-owner Matt Dillon (Sitka & Spruce, Bar Sajor, Corson Building, London Plane) is in the kitchen, overseeing a simple menu of dry-aged meats, seafood, and vegetables, much of it sourced from his Vashon Island farm.

It's Okay to Cook "Other People's Food," But You Better Be Ready to Talk About It

Angela Garbes — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 10:33:14 -0700
by Angela Garbes
Chef Rick Bayless: The face of upscale Mexican cuisine in America. Chef Rick Bayless / Facebook

Earlier this week, WNYC’s food podcast the Sporkful launched a series of episodes, called “Other People’s Food,” to explore what happens when we cook and consume the food of cultures outside of the ones we were born into. As much as food brings different kinds of people together, there’s still a wide distance between eating tacos and understanding Mexican culture.

In part one of “Other People’s Food,” host Dan Pashman speaks with a few different people, including a professor of Food Studies at NYU, an American-born Indian food blogger, and a black food writer. (Sporkful will release three more episodes next week.) You should listen to it.

Pashman begins the show in thoughtful conversation with Nick Cho, a Korean-American podcast listener from San Francisco. Last fall, Cho took issue with Pashman’s idea to improve the centuries-old, traditional Korean dish bi bim bap by making it in a pan, similar to a baking dish, that he called “bi bum bundt.”

“Sometimes it takes an outsider, someone free from the bonds of tradition, to see a new and better way,” Pashman wrote of his would-be invention.

“Can you understand why Koreans would be offended by your piece? Or are you too white? Serious q,” Cho countered on Twitter.

Pashman invited Cho to talk it through. Their discussion is a great one. It’s worth your time just to hear the moment when Pashman attempts to apologize, and how Cho reacts to that.

Unfortunately, the second half of the episode—an interview with renowned chef Rick Bayless—is horrifying. Bayless is widely considered to be the face of Mexican food in the United States, or at least upscale Mexican. He’s won seven James Beard awards, owns six restaurants in Chicago, has written nine cookbooks, and has a national line of salsas and tortilla chips. When the former president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, visited the White House in 2010, it was Bayless who cooked the state dinner.

The Salt, NPR’s food blog, published a story about the conversation between Pashman and Bayless titled “Is It OK When a Chef Cooks Other People’s Food?”

To be honest, I don’t think this is a particularly important, or even interesting, question.

At this point in our dining culture, chefs draw inspiration from everywhere around the globe. Chefs are curious and creative people, and they should be allowed to cook whatever they want. Here in Seattle, chef Brandon Kirksey, who is white, makes very good Korean food at Girin. Every night at Bateau, sous chef Justin Legaspi, who is Filipino, makes beautiful food inspired by rustic French fare. One of Seattle’s most respected chefs, Jerry Traunfeld, who is white, uses the flavors of India and China’s Sichuan Province at his restaurants Poppy and Lionhead. For many years, the tajarin noodles that comprise Cascina Spinasse's most beloved dish (the Food Network recently named it one of the "Top 5 Italian Foods in America") were handmade by a Latino man named Martin Islas. At Kedai Makan, which I recently reviewed, non-Malaysian chef Kevin Burzell dives deep into the complex flavors of Malaysian cuisine. I could go on.

All of these chefs have the right to cook the food they want. People may not like it, and that’s also their right. But the conversation about whether or not it is okay distracts from the real issue: privilege.

The simple truth is that it is easier for white chefs like Bayless or Traunfeld (or Pok Pok’s Andy Ricker) to become enamored or passionate about another culture’s cuisine, get lauded for it, and make money off of it—easier than people from that culture. It’s an idea food writer Francis Lam touched on back in 2012 in this New York Times article about chefs including Bayless and Ricker.

“Some reasons are obvious,” Lam wrote. “An American-born chef is more likely than an immigrant to have the connections and the means to grab investors or news media attention—even more so if the chef came up through a prestigious restaurant or culinary school or is quick with a witty quote. Diners’ familiarity and comfort levels can play a part, and can even edge into prejudice.”

That’s not to say that white chefs don’t work very hard to be successful. Many devote years of their lives to the study and understanding of cuisines that, at first, are utterly foreign to them. They dedicate time and energy to educating their diners. The point is: It’s complicated and awkward even at its most earnest.

Which is why it’s infuriating to listen to Pashman’s interview with Bayless, because he's a white chef who seems completely incapable of seeing any of his own privilege. He begins by talking about how he fell in love with Mexican cuisine in 1967. A fourteen-year-old Bayless, fresh from a year of eighth-grade Spanish, convinced his parents to take a trip to Mexico City on a whim.

“I made all the airline reservations, the hotel reservations,” Bayless says, before wondering, “why any parent would allow their fourteen-year-old to do this.”

Privilege, both financial and cultural, makes international travel not only a possibility, but a leisure activity.

A few minutes later, Pashman asks Bayless, "Do you think that at times in your career it has been to your advantage to be white?"

“I certainly have never thought about that,” Bayless says. (The luxury of being able to never think about race is pretty much the essence of white privilege in America.) He goes on to say that he “put everything together from nothing, basically, just like any other entrepreneur.”

Bayless not only refuses to acknowledge any sort of privilege, he goes so far as to say that he is actually the victim of the evil, mythical (dun-dun-dunhhhhhhh!) reverse racism.

“I know that there have been a number of people out there that criticized me only—only!—because of my race,” says Bayless. “Because I’m white, I can’t do anything with Mexican food. But we have to stop and say, ‘Oh wait, is that plain racism then?’”

In an admirable attempt to get his guest to acknowledge his white privilege, Pashman talks about his own. But he doesn’t go far enough. Until he and other food writers—or chefs, or diners—call out this privilege, the issue of whether or not it’s “okay” to cook other people’s food will always seem like way more of a head scratcher than it actually is.

It’s important to recognize that privilege isn’t just white. It can be male, as New Yorker writer Hua Hsu noted in this article exploring Asian-American identity and recent cookbooks published by Asian-American chefs such as Dale Talde and Danny Bowien.

“It’s worth noting that the most famous Asian-American chefs are almost all men who chose cooking as a mode of self-expression; kitchen work was not a responsibility that the culture thrust upon them,” Hsu wrote.

Privilege, of course, isn’t entirely the domain of men. I’m a brown woman whose parents immigrated to the United States from the Philippines. They came with basically nothing, but they worked very hard, and I grew up decidedly upper-middle-class. I graduated from college debt-free, which has made it easier for me to pursue a career like writing, which doesn’t pay particularly well.

I’m aware that it’s a privilege to have this job—to have meals that I would otherwise not be able to afford covered as a work expense. It makes me aware, with every bite, how many years of thought and work and struggle can go into the opening of a restaurant, the making of a single dish.

In the opening episode of this important series about representing other cultures through cooking, Pashman introduces Bayless as someone who has thought “a lot about these issues.” But it’s obvious that Bayless hasn’t spent much time thinking about these ideas at all. The rest of us should.

Jonathan Gold Is Not a Great White Explorer Discovering LA's Ethnic Food

Angela Garbes — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 04:00:00 -0700
Jonathan Gold Is Not a Great White Explorer Discovering LA's Ethnic Food by Angela Garbes
Ostensibly, City of Gold is a documentary portrait of Jonathan Gold, the Los Angeles Times writer who, over the course of 30 years of exploring the lesser-known cuisines and cultures of LA, became the country's most beloved and respected food critic. Because Gold writes about the restaurant meals ordinary people eat every day, director Laura Gabbert follows him around Los Angeles doing ordinary, everyday things.

As Gold points out his favorite tacos through the driver's side window of his pickup truck, eats spoonfuls of Southern Thai curry at Jitlada restaurant, and walks hand-in-hand with his daughter through a museum, a picture of him emerges: a writer, a father, and a husband who is endearingly empathetic, nerdy, and human. Gold is a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic, but he's also a chronic procrastinator whose laptop keyboard is missing its "E" key.

As the film progresses, another portrait emerges, this one of Gold's beloved native city. A self-proclaimed "culinary geographer," Gold logs more than 20,000 miles a year in his truck, traversing the vast grid of Los Angeles, navigating the enclaves of its nearly 20 million residents. He manages to tame its almost unfathomable scale into something that might be comprehended through Oaxacan mole, Ethiopian doro wat, and Szechuan toothpick lamb. He maps how immigrant culture has defined, and continues to define, what Los Angeles looks like—and how it tastes.

Gold's written words play a prominent role in the film. His reviews are read aloud over scenes of line cooks sweating over hot woks and families pushing strollers down streets in the sweltering midday sun. Even if you've read Gold's reviews before, hearing them allows you to experience and appreciate them anew: the always approachable yet surprising prose, the way he draws equally from art, music, history, and literature. While his democratic approach to food is what he is most known for, it is actually Gold's quiet, dogged insistence that food is equal to these other fields that distinguishes his work most.

Gabbert gives a substantial amount of screen time to people such as Genet Agonafer, Roy Choi, Bricia Lopez, and Tui Sungkamee and Jazz Singsanong—chefs and restaurateurs whose businesses and lives were positively impacted by Gold's work. It's moving to see and hear these stories, but with each one, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable to watch various brown people say, over and over, that Jonathan Gold, who is white, essentially saved them from something.

By approaching Gold with only affection, and using interviews with writers and editors who praise his ability to make the "exotic" and "ethnic" familiar, Gabbert reinforces a well-established but dangerous media narrative that Gold is bestowing value upon or legitimizing traditional foods and cultures. It's an idea he dismisses.

"I don't think of what I do as legitimizing [them] at all," Gold told me over the phone. "The idea of being the great white explorer giving value to noble savages—I totally reject that. I never use the word 'ethnic' to describe these restaurants, because using 'ethnic' means there's an idea of an 'other.' It means that you are from a superior culture looking in, and that's just not true at all."

Gold is methodically and insatiably curious. His home is filled with culinary history books, and he's been known to visit a restaurant as many as 17 times. He thrills in the discovery of a new dish or cuisine, but not nearly as much as he does when he begins to truly understand it.

For such a loving portrait of a man and a city, City of Gold is also tinged with a somber undercurrent. When a city is composed of so many disparate parts and communities, wondrous cultural overlaps emerge, but so too do fault lines and misunderstanding.

"I can't tell you how much I love Los Angeles," sighs Gold in one of the film's final, transfixing scenes. Suddenly, it's clear that Jonathan Gold needs the restaurants of Los Angeles—the people, their food, and their stories—as much as they need him, maybe even more.