Seattle - last but not least...

(July 8th, 2012) All things being left up to me, my first night in Seattle would have been spent dining at Quinn's.  No, it doesn't have some super fancy, internationally acclaimed reputation that precedes it, but in passing by it I just picked up a vibe that drew me to it.  I almost didn't make it there at all, in fact.  I was originally scheduled to fly out Sunday afternoon, but while sitting outside chatting with a pair of Kim's friends, I received a half dozen texts from Southwest about how my flights were constantly being delayed and pushed back then moved forward. Well, I could only take so much of having my flights tweaked like that so, given how great of a company Southwest is, I changed my flights to Monday morning and only had to pay the difference in air fare.  Why can't all airlines still be people friendly like that?

So, there we were with an extra night in Seattle.  Sounds like the perfect opportunity to revisit the previously missed hole in the wall known as Quinn's Pub. As eager as I am to talk about the food, equally impressive was the drink selection.  I think some drool just escaped my lips and splattered against my key board as I recall their craft beer list.  The first bottle for the evening was A Saison Darkly, followed up by the Chimay Trippel, on draft.  That's right, Chimay on draft.  Those two beers were both exquisite in their own rights, but what really gets my heart racing is the last bottle that I sampled that evening: Ayinger Ur-Weisse.  Months ago I broke my tradition of only ordering beers that could be described as some shade of night while at Marble in Santa Fe.  That afternoon spent with the Brothertons found me ordering a double white ale that made me completely reconsider my opinions about non-opaque beers.  Ever since then I've been open to trying other white or Belgian ales, but nothing ever came anywhere close, until the Ayinger Ur-Weisse.  It's hard to describe why I consider it such a fantastic beer drinking experience - it's a light, summer beer that's crisp and unfiltered.  It doesn't sound too special, I admit, but sipping it was sublime.  The perfect ending to a good meal.  Speaking of which, it's about time that I describe it, don't you think?

In looking at the menu, I was faced with a severe case of indecision: too many things looked too good to not order.  So, I did the only sensible thing possible: I ordered them all.

Sauteed Swiss chard, bluebird farro, caramelized onion, and marscapone

Ever since my visit to One Market Restaurant in San Francisco, I've not been able to get enough farro in my diet.  It shouldn't be any surprise, then, that the first dish to come out was the Swiss chard and farro.  I'm slightly surprised, to be honest, that I haven't taken the time to find a local source of Farro in Albuquerque, but then again I have been gone for the most part...

Duck confit and foie gras croquettes with a stone fruit and mustard sauce

As any readers of this blog are well aware of, I'm a sucker for duck.  Foie gras, for the ethical implications associated with it, is something that even though I enjoy, I usually don't seek out.  These croquettes were a complete gastronomical experience in every bite...crispy exterior and soft interior.  Savory meat with a tangy sauce.  The only thing missing was some visual firework display...but that was taken care of with the next dish:

Bone marrow, served with bacon and fresh herbs

Bone marrow is one of those ingredients that I'm always curious about.  I've had a few fun experiences cooking with it, but I've never been offered a chunk of bone marrow to eat as is.  Usually when you cook with it, it's in chopped up, inch long sections of bone...not something that's easily accessible, and a lot of work to get out any way other than just melting out.  But this, six inch long segments that was ready to be spooned straight to your mouth?  This was something new and, for lack of a better way to put it, an eye closing experience (closing - so I can just focus on the taste, texture, and smell of what I'm eating).  Whenever my sister sees me make this face, she says that that's the best compliment I could possibly give a chef or a restaurant.

Pork belly and crispy pig ears, served over watercress and frisee salad, pickled ramps, and bing cherry compote

The other ingredient that I've been going crazy over this summer, ever since my first visit to Farm and Table, is pork belly.  I've enjoyed it several times since then, but it was the dish at Quinn's that launched me into a mission to obtain (at Keller's Farm Stores it turns out) and experiment with it on my own.

Orange flower pound cake with a ginger-peach compote, and lavender panna cotta with berry sauce

The fifth and final dish for the night was a pair of desserts (again, we couldn't settle on just one!).  I'm going to have to wait for my fact checker to refresh my memory about these since the four preceding dishes and beers far outweigh them in my memory.

And, believe it or not, we've now reached the culinary end to my North-West road trip.  Hope you enjoyed the food pictures.  More coming soon!

Oysters and Salmon and Crabs, Oh My!

(July 7th, 2012) Elizabeth’s still jealous.

I think that might be a theme to this summer really.  I’ve gone overboard on dining experiences, and she’s been forced to read about them and experience them vicariously through me and my blog.  And if you thought that it just wasn’t fair to this point, just wait till I get to the Berkley post in a few editions.

Seattle provided another ample wave of things for her to be jealous over, namely Sitka and Spruce, but, like with all things, I must start at the beginning and work my way forward…

Not everything we made it to was superbly gourmet and fantastically, melting in my mouth, sloberingly good.  The first restaurant that we went to, in fact, barely will be recorded here.  But, the thing that set it apart from my recent experiences is that it was an authentic Chinese restaurant, plus bakery, plus boba tea shop, in the middle of a trendy neighborhood.  Albuquerque, are you listening, why can’t we have just one of these?  I wouldn’t mind the nauseatingly proliferate amount of greenery either…’

Regent Bakery and Cafe

 

The gourmand portion of the trip started during our first morning in Seattle with a trip down to the farmer’s market, Pike's Place.

 

mmmm, all the fresh fish...

Pike's Place - Not just fish, but flowers, meats, fresh fruit, and so much more!

Not shown, for more reasons than I care to list, the original Starbucks, complete with the slightly off kilter version of the logo, menaced behind us.

As we didn’t have the time, nor the means really, to satisfactorily enjoy the sea food, we later found ourselves wandering into Elliot's Oyster House.  Mmmm, oysters…I think that after this trip I went through a mild withdrawal from lack of fresh oysters...the thought of living near the coast again is very appealing...

A sampling of oysters for lunch

  

For those of you following along at home: Humbolt, South Sound, Fanny Bay, Bay Water, Miyagi, and Muptor Bay.  My favorites were from 12 to 3 o’clock on the plate.  I think there was a time, though it seems such a distant memory ago, when I thought that all oysters were created equally.  Well, my friends, I’m glad that there’s no ‘Oyster Bill of Rights,’ because, just like with salt, there’s an unending bouquet of oyster flavors that treat me to new sensations every time I slurp down another briney body.

Before leaving Elliot's, I filled up with a bowl of Ciopino.  mmmm, I can never get enough of this seafood stew.

Matt at his finest, just before digging into the ciopino!

By far, the highlight of the trip, and really highlight of my summer culinary experiences to this point, was Sitka and Spruce.  Yes, the same, aforementioned, sibling jealousy inducing restaurant as from the start of this post.  What makes Sitka and Spruce so special you might ask?  Simply put, they get it.  If I thought that Pok Pok was special since they induced a pure harmony of flavors, textures, and appearances, Sitka and Spruce was the testosterone induced, one-upping sequel that just had to prove that it could be done even better. 

Realizing that my memory is far too flawed to keep track of these things, I developed the habit here of taking the menu home with me as a reminder of what I dined upon:

The king bolete with giblets, cherries, and fino sherry

For those of you like me who had no idea as to what a 'king bolete' was before I ordered this dish, it's a fancy type of mushroom evidently.  Continuing the aforementioned theme of compliments and contrasts, this dish picked up right where Pok Pok left off...savory giblets and mushrooms with sweet cherries and the sherry glaze. 

Messy Dungeness crab with treviso and salted lemon

So messy, but oh so good.  It's always slow eating working your way through a crab in shell...but worth every ounce of effort it takes to get the meat out.
 

Poached halibut with cucumbers in whey, purslane and sumac

See those cucumbers?  They provided just the right amount of tartness to compliment the delicate flavor of the halibut.  The purslane are the little green leaves.  Almost all of the ingredients are locally sourced/harvested, which should explain all of the unusual ingredients during this trip.

The trappings: cracked Winthrop emmer, beet green-yogurt salad, and nan-e lavash.

Not shown - whole beets with tarragon, yogurt, and za'atar.  The only reason this didn't receive a picture is that it was eaten far too quickly for me to possibly have taken a picture of it first. In fact, this dish launched a new phase of turnip cooking for us.

This post seems to have grown to pretty long, so up next will be Quinn's Pub.

Updated 8/22/12: Ciopino added.

Seattle - The Apartment

(July 6th, 2012) With a trunk full of salt and a box of donuts safely buckled into the front seat, I set off through the Pacific Northwest for the road portion of my trip to Seattle.  Winding through the coniferous forests while being serenaded over the radio by Johnny Cash singing Hurt, Cake performing Long Time, Of Monsters and Men, and many other bands, I set out to meet my once and future running buddy Yev.

Stock photo of Yev from a run through the Pecos.  On that day, Yev learned the hard way that you shouldn't store a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in your water bottle's pouch...

Yevgeniy Kaufman, a name I always easily remember as I fondly recall reading through Yevgeniy Zamyatin’s We, happened to be in Seattle that week on his apartment hunting trip.  Serendipitously, Kim was in flight to Seattle in order to rent out the apartment she owned there as her last tenant had just moved out.  The last thing she said to me before taking off was ‘There’re too many people that want to check this out, can’t you just find someone for me and take care of it?’  Well, little did she know that, upon landing, I already had her prospective tenant lined up and ready to view the place.  It’s always nice when things can work out that easily, especially since most things in life are far from easy now days.

Kim’s (and now Yev’s for the duration of his lease) apartment was our base of operations for the weekend.  With a borrowed air mattress for a bed, a borrowed shower curtain and single towel, we managed to have a rather cozy stay.  The apartment itself was settled in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, kind of the trendy/gay/young/up all night area that just screams out to twenty and thirty somethings without a family to live here!  Up all night, and slightly hung over in the mornings, the neighborhood lacked for no small amount of entertainment between the drag shows, gourmet restaurants, themed bars (one was in a former funeral home…I’ll let your imagination fill in the rest), and open parks filled with throngs of people enjoying life and bicycle polo.

Don’t get me wrong, other neighborhoods had a certain charm too…the fish markets

  

Pike's Place

the statue of Lenin surrounded by fire and guns

The controversial addition of Lenin to the Freemont neighborhood in Seattle.

 

and a troll under the bridge

No Mai there...Kim had to keep looking elsewhere...

amongst other oddities, but it was the Capitol Hill area that I’d want to live while young and single. 

Next up: the food of Seattle (did you expect anything less?)