Wright Eats

We sometimes get a bit of neighborhood envy (but hey, not too much – we love our neighborhood!) when we read about all the great new restaurants flocking to Ballard, Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, West Seattle, and really, any neighborhood besides Ravenna.  We’d just like a few more places within walking distance.  Is that too much to ask?

Some locations on 65th have been regular revolving doors with restaurants coming and going year after year.  There’s the place at 65th and Ravenna Avenue which had Shamiana (which we still miss), then Shamiana reborn as World Beat Cafe, then the short-lived Bistro Magnolia, and finally Hot Dish before sitting empty for a while.  That place has a bad luck omen, so we hope that The Himalayan Kitchen, which opened there two weeks ago, fares better.

We went last night to THK, and it was decent, although we were really hoping for better.  They serve Indian, Nepali, Bhutan, Tibetan, and Indo Chinese food.  We tried one Bhutan dish, aima datchi, and another more familiar Indian dish, alu matar paneer.  We both preferred the alu matar paneer.  Although we ordered the mid-range spicy level, the food was quite mild, so we’ll order the hottest level next time.  The naan was tasty, although it was a bit thinner and somewhat crisper than I like.

Just across the street, the windows are papered over but the sign is ready for Da Pino’s to open later this month.  Currently located on Rainier Avenue, Pino Rogano is moving into our neighborhood and bringing what looks like a great menu of sandwiches, pastas, artisan cured meats, gelato, and espresso.  It will be nice to welcome a little neighborhood place like that.

Two blocks up from there is Third Place Books, where we hear that the Honey Bear Bakery will be replaced by a second Vios later this year.  We’ve enjoyed Vios Cafe & Marketplace in Capitol Hill, a family-friendly Greek restaurant with great food.  It’s interesting that the Honey Bear Bakery, which is synonymous to us with Third Place Books, is moving out.  Personally, I never found the Ravenna bakery to be as great as the old Tangletown location from years back, though, so this sounds like a good change to me.

Finally, it looks like Felix and Sarah Penn’s second place, which we mentioned a few months back, is getting close to opening on 55th.  It should be good, if it’s anything like their first place, Pair.

The Himalayan Kitchen
2255 65th Street NE, Seattle
(206) 588-0651

We had perfect weather last Sunday for Dog Mountain Farm’s fourth farm dinner of the season – skies with barely a cloud in sight, and warm sunshine, but not too hot (which was nice since the dinner tables are not shaded!).  We were looking forward to this dinner, since we thought it might be a bit like the Outstanding in the Field dinner we attended back in 2005, which we really enjoyed.  This time, we had the chance to experience the dinner directly on the farm, whereas in 2005 we toured a farm in the Skagit Valley before heading off to eat at a different location nearby.

We arrived just after 3:00 and got ourselves situated with a cool glass of white wine as we wandered the orchard and gardens.  Cindy Krepky, along with her husband David, gave a tour of their farm gardens, duck and chicken coop, and greenhouse.  The variety of products they grow is amazing, given that this is such a small operation, and especially given the harsh weather farmers were faced with this spring.  They supply a number of local restaurants, like Cafe Juanita, Canlis, Andaluca, and the Latona Pub.  Cindy explained how the land is former Weyerhaeuser land that the company sold off when the trees were no longer in good condition.  They’ve been clearing the trees and reviving the soil since they bought the land about seven years ago, and now they have a beautiful view of the Cascades.

Erik Jackson was the chef for our meal, assisted by Chef Tony who makes pies at Serious Pie in Seattle.  We were impressed with the meal, which had all the right elements for a farm dinner in the height of summer – a beautiful poached duck egg from the farm served with brioche and anchovy aioli, a cotechino sausage made by the chef and served Napoleon style with puff pastry and sweet Tiny’s farm nectarines, a delicious refreshing cold green gazpacho, a flavorful pork chop with onion jam and Muscat peach sauce, and three melon sorbets with port syrup.  It was all quite tasty, but a couple people in our party thought there wasn’t quite enough food and left a bit hungry.  My only wish was that they had used a local pork, given that it was the main dish of the whole meal – instead, it was shipped in from somewhere in Iowa, which seemed like an odd choice for a Washington farm dinner.

Dinner was served at a slow leisurely pace, so we had time to wander off to visit the two Percheron draft horses, Ike and Zeek.  Beautiful, and huge, animals!  We fed them big handfuls of green grass, and managed to keep our fingers too.

They’re hosting two more dinners this year, and their web site says they each have six seats left.  All of the previous dinners have been sold out, so if you have a chance to, I recommend signing up soon!

To see more photos from the event, you can view our album.

I nearly let strawberry season slip away without making my absolute favorite ice cream.  When Eric went to the market on Saturday he heard people talking about how it was the last weekend for strawberries, so he came home with a half flat for me.  I made a small batch of strawberry preserves with black pepper and mint, along with a double batch of Jerry Traunfeld’s strawberry rose geranium ice cream.  You can find the ice cream recipe in an earlier blog posting here.

Something about rose geranium makes berries taste even more intense, and this recipe has become almost an annual summer tradition for us since The Herbal Kitchen was published.  We have a huge gangly rose geranium plant whose sole reason for existence is this recipe (so if you want any leaves, let us know).  Know of any other great recipes we should try with it next?

As I found out when a part on my ice cream maker broke after the first batch, if you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can still make this recipe.  It won’t be quite as smooth as when made in an ice cream maker, but still creamy and delicious.  Just freeze a metal 13×9″ pan, pour in the mix, and place in the freezer.  Take it out and stir every half hour or so with a pastry scraper.  It will take several hours to freeze.

Twice this week, publications came out featuring copies of our photos.  On Wednesday, the Seattle P-I printed a photo of our friend Lauren Adler, owner of the new Chocolopolis shop on Queen Anne hill.  And then tonight, we picked up a copy of the August Travel + Leisure magazine, which has our photos of Licorous on page 30.  Last year, we did a photo shoot at Licorous for their new web site that I was designing, and this month T+L chose two of them for their Q&A about which restaurants a reader should try when they visit Seattle (Licorous and Txori was their answer).  Pretty exciting!

On a beautiful summer day like today, nothing beats a tall glass of lemonade.  I came across a recipe online years ago called “Best Ever Lemonade” and I’m convinced that it really is.  The trick is steeping the lemon rinds in boiling water to extract the tart lemon flavor, before combining it with the lemon juice.  Here is my slightly simplified version of the recipe:

Best Ever Lemonade

4 lemons
1 cup sugar
1 quart water

Halve and juice the lemons.  Set the juice aside and place the lemon rinds into a large bowl.  Cover with sugar and let stand for half an hour.  Pour boiling water over the lemons and stir to dissolve the sugar.  When cool, take out the rinds and strain the sugar water into a pitcher.  Stir in the lemon juice.  Chill and serve over ice.

Adaptations: Add eight 4-inch sprigs of fresh rosemary or lavender into the hot water with the lemon rinds to make Rosemary Lemonade or Lavender Lemonade.

A recent farm basket from Tiny’s Organics included some beautiful fava beans.  Dawn and I look forward to favas each spring, and we ordered them at restaurants around town whenever we could this past month.  Now that we had our own, I spent an hour peeling them, twice – once for the outer pod, which provides a spongy cushion for the beans, and then again for the shell around each individual fava.  Talk about packaging!  But it’s worth the effort.

Since it was such a nice summer day, I wanted something to snack on while relaxing in the back yard.  I looked at what we had in our kitchen, and decided to make fava bean crostini with pecorino and mint.  It went well with a glass of Commanderie de la Bargemone 2007 Coteaux d’Aix en Provence Rosé (a great recommendation from Catherine while we were shopping at Bella Cosa).

Fava Bean Crostini with Pecorino and Mint
Makes 4 crostini

1.5 lbs fava beans
1 garlic clove
1 lemon
Rustic bread
Mint leaves
Olive oil
Pecorino cheese
Salt
Pepper

Remove the outer and inner fava bean shells.  Blanch favas in salted boiling water for a minute, then strain and run under cold water to prevent beans from cooking further. 

Whisk together 2 tsp lemon juice, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/8 tsp salt, and pepper.  Taste the vinaigrette and adjust flavor as needed.  Toss the favas with just enough vinaigrette to lightly coat them.

Brush four pieces of 1/2″ thick bread with olive oil, and toast until golden brown.  Slice garlic clove in half, and rub the bread with the garlic.  Chop mint into thin strips.

To assemble: put a single layer of favas on each toast, shave pecorino cheese on top, sprinkle mint strips, drizzle a little olive oil, and crack pepper over each toast.

Starting this week, Skillet Street Food’s weekly downtown location will be on the corner of Boren and Denny Avenue.  I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be working remotely on an upcoming Wednesday.

And if that doesn’t fit your schedule, you can stop by Skillet at the upcoming Pioneer Square Fire Festival on July 11-12.

Chocolopolis opened on Wednesday to the Queen Anne neighborhood.  Grand opening festivities are scheduled to begin July 15, and Chocolopolis will be participating in the Queen Anne Sidewalk Sale on Saturday, July 19.

Take a look at our previous blog posting about Chocolopolis to learn more about Lauren Adler and her new store.

We’ve been fans of Sitka and Spruce since it opened, so when we heard last year that chef Matt Dillon was opening his second place, The Corson Building, we could hardly wait.  Whereas Sitka and Spruce is generally first-come-first-served, The Corson Building is reservations-only.  They’re only open for dinners a few nights a week, usually Thursday through Saturday, but it varies – their web site lists the dates.  They host a number of other events (more on that later) and periodic Sunday Suppers, too.  We scored our reservation for their first Sunday Supper, which was last weekend.

The Corson Building sits below the Corson Street off-ramp from I-5, in Georgetown.  You’d think this would make it easy to get to, but instead the ramp deposits you a block or two beyond the building, so we wound up making U-turns and backtracking before finally finding the rustic brick two-story.  The front half of the lower floor is the dining room with the original ornate fireplace taking center stage, and in back, Matt was cooking in the homey kitchen filled with windows.  The dining room was empty this evening because the tables had been moved outside.  Tonight’s dinner was to be the first official dinner on the patio (Matt joked that the meal he served outside to his family the previous week didn’t count).

For the first half hour, we wandered the yard, admiring the edible garden, chicken coop, and doves.  We enjoyed iced tea and oysters on the half shell while Matt’s friendly and mellow dog Che ambled about, greeting guests. The urban soundtrack of planes, trains, and automobiles was completed with the railroad tracks out back and Boeing Field nearby, both active this evening.

Two dozen people squeezed in around the single long table, some in chairs, others on wide wood benches.  When we had arrived, there were place settings on the ends which were missing when we sat down, so we asked if we could wrap someone around the end to get a touch more elbow room.  It only made a difference for one side of the table, unfortunately.  This would be a cozy supper.

Three wines were available for purchase on top of the $50 per person for dinner – a good deal given that the regular dinners are $80, but the pours were small and the dinner long so we would have preferred to purchase a couple bottles instead.  The wines were chilled and just right for the hot day.

Dinner finally commenced when heaping plates of radish and fennel salad with prosciutto arrived at each end of the table.  The salad was a refreshing start, though with just two plates to pass, there was sadly little left by the time each reached the other end of the table.  For the next course, we filled our plates with clams, bacon, and chorizo, plus crostini with rabbit liver pâté.  Both were delicious and a few of us wished for bread at the table to sop up the flavorful clam broth.  Instead we dumped our broth into the shells to make way for the next course after it was clear that there would be no fresh plates for the salad.  The roasted tomatoes were intense and really made the romaine, cucumber, and tomato salad stand out.

Everyone had a break to stretch their legs before the main dishes arrived in quick succession:  King salmon with fava beans, rabbit leg poached in olive oil, lemon, and bay, with green goddess dressing, and Bluebird Grain Farms emmer with morels, carrots, and lovage.  (Dawn and I predicted tonight’s meal would include fava beans and morels – ’tis the season!)  The salmon was amazing, and the tender rabbit’s simple preparation let the delicate flavor come through – definitely one of the best rabbit dishes we’ve had.  The meal finished with muscat wine, a large plate of Pecorino-like cheese, and a huge bowl of fresh strawberries with 25 year old balsamic on the side for dipping.

Dinners are only half of the picture of what The Corson Building is about.  Matt has plans to make it into a community center for the Georgetown neighborhood.  He’s collaborating with the nonprofit Seattle Youth Garden Works, providing the kids with a plot of land just down the street from the restaurant to grow produce that he’ll buy from them.  They will be growing some of the more interesting and unusual items that he can’t easily get elsewhere.  SYGW provides jobs for underserved youth, and you may have seen them selling their fresh produce at the University District farmers market.

Then he plans to host visiting chefs at The Corson Building.  Not only will he provide the chefs a venue for hosting dinners or classes, but if they’re from out of town, he’ll let them stay upstairs in The Corson Building.  The first chef’s dinner is this Sunday with Justin Neidermeyer, who is about to open his new Piemontese-style restaurant Spinasse Trattoria in Capitol Hill, where he’ll serve his amazing handmade pasta.  Matt also plans to have Jerry Traunfeld in a couple times before he opens his much-anticipated restaurant Poppy in September.  They know each other well, since Matt once worked in Jerry’s kitchen while he was at The Herbfarm.  And Matt will also soon be hosting Amaryll and Lori from Boulette’s Larder in San Francisco.

Matt has visions for his own larder next door.  He already has space in the back half of the neighboring building and plans to develop it into a café and retail space, where you can purchase top-notch ingredients for a party or your pantry.  He says it’s the place where you’ll be able to go buy a gallon of chicken stock or maybe some stuffed quail for your dinner party.

He’s open to other ideas for using The Corson Building space, too.  Let him know what you’re thinking about and he’ll try to make it happen.  Matt’s vision of The Corson Building as a vibrant community center for all things food-related is exciting, and we look forward to seeing it develop over the coming months.

The Corson Building
5609 Corson Ave, Seattle
(206) 762-3330

To me, nothing beats pasta made at home.  People think it’s difficult and time consuming, but it’s really one of those things that takes a few times to learn and get the swing of it, and then it’s actually pretty easy to make.  It takes me less than half an hour to go from flour and eggs to fresh noodles for the two of us, including cleanup.

The key to good homemade pasta is good fresh eggs.  We buy ours at the U-District market, usually from Skagit River Ranch or Sea Breeze Farm.  You only need to add flour and you’re on your way.  I’ve seen recipes using olive oil, water, semolina flour, salt, and other things, but I subscribe to the method I learned from Giuliano Hazan, which was passed down from his mother Marcella.  Marcella is an opinionated writer, but many including myself consider her the authority on authentic Italian cooking.  She says:

The basic dough for homemade pasta in the Bolognese-style consists of eggs and soft-wheat flour.  The only other ingredient used is spinach or Swiss chard, required for making green pasta.  No salt, no olive oil, no water are added.  Salt does nothing for the dough, since it will be present in the sauce; olive oil imparts slickness, flawing its texture; water makes it gummy.

I find that unbleached all-purpose flour works really well, and in Italy they typically use 00 soft-wheat flour.  Marcella points out that semolina is primarily used for factory-made pasta, which is in a completely different category than egg pasta:

The boxed, dry pasta one refers to as factory-made includes such familiar shapes as spaghetti, penne, and fusilli.  These cannot be made as successfully at home as they are in commercial pasta plants with industrial equipment.  Dry pasta from factories is not necessarily less fine than the fresh pasta one can make at home.  On the contrary, for many dishes, factory-made pasta is the better choice, although for some others, one may want the particular attributes of homemade pasta.

The Hazans’ cookbooks are great for getting a better feel for which sauces go with egg pasta and which with factory-made pasta.  A good rule of thumb (although there are plenty of exceptions) is to use factory-made pasta for olive oil based sauces and egg pasta for butter and cream based sauces.

Last Saturday evening, I made some fettuccine which we enjoyed with Bolognese sauce from our freezer.  Every once in a while we prepare a big batch of Bolognese so we can make sure we always have some in our freezer for quick meals.

Egg Pasta
Makes 2-3 servings

1 to 1½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 eggs

Pour about a cup of the flour into a mound on a wood surface, and set aside the rest to incorporate later if you need more.  Create a hollow in the center of the mound, like a volcano, and break the eggs into the hollow.  Using a fork, beat the eggs lightly while slowly incorporating some of the flour from the walls, a bit at a time until the eggs are no longer runny.  Bring the mound of flour toward the center with your hands and work it together with the eggs.  Incorporate more flour if it is too sticky.  You will know that you’ve added enough flour when you can press a clean finger into the center and it comes away clean.

Using the palm of your hand, knead the dough.  Push forward with the heel of your palm, stretching it a bit, then fold it in half as you pull your hand back toward you.  Turn a quarter turn and repeat this motion of stretching, folding, and turning until the dough is completely smooth, about five minutes.  Immediately wrap the dough in plastic wrap and allow to rest at room temperature for at least 10 minutes.

Set up your hand-crank pasta machine, and lay out a couple clean towels.  Cut the dough into 2-4 equal parts (it’s easier to work with smaller pieces, so start by using four parts).  Leave all but one part wrapped in the plastic wrap.  Flatten the ball of dough with your hand.

With the machine at its widest setting, roll the disk through the machine.  Remove it and fold it in thirds.  With the folds on the sides, roll it through the widest setting 2-3 more times.  Narrow the opening between the rollers by one notch.  Roll the dough through again, just once.  Continue narrowing the opening and rolling through until the pasta is the desired thickness.  When you are about halfway done, the pasta will become very long and unwieldy – you can place it on the towel, cut it in half, and switch between the two pieces each time you narrow the opening.

Allow the pasta sheets to dry for a few minutes on the towels until they are leathery but not too dry or brittle.  Cut strips using a fluted pastry wheel to make pappardelle, or feed it through the machine’s cutting attachment to make fettuccine.

As they say, the third time’s the charm.

The first time we tried going to Elemental was about two years ago with friends.  They had recently gone for dinner, raved about how good it was, and really wanted to take us.  Great!  They said you need to get there early so we showed up at 5:30 with them.  The five tables were already full, and we got the cold shoulder from the owners.  No reservations, no waitlist, “no we won’t call you on your cell – come back in a few hours and try again.”  Our friends weren’t too thrilled about the response, so we left and had a lovely dinner someplace else.

Later that summer on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, Dawn suggested we give Elemental another shot.  Having read that you stand a good chance of getting one of the 14 seats for dinner if you arrive before the 5-6 cocktail hour, we left early.  We took a bus down to the U District, strolled along the Burke-Gilman trail, and arrived at the restaurant at ten-to-5, where another couple was standing reading a small handwritten sign hanging there: “Closed tonight due to a hand injury.  See you next time.”  Hm.  Two strikes, I thought.

Fast-forward two years to a cold and gray June day.  Dawn, knowing that I had all but written off Elemental by now, bravely tossed out the idea of trying to go once more.  Our friend DoRon had just declared Elemental his favorite restaurant in Seattle, so shouldn’t we at least try it?  “Fine,” I said, “but this is it.”  We followed the same plan as before: bus, walk, get in line early.  We arrived and took up spots number nine and ten in the line.  However, that was no guarantee we’d get in, given that people ahead of us might have friends joining them.  Dawn could see I was already scheming a fallback plan for the evening, but as luck would have it, we were seated ten minutes later.  The poor group of four in front of us didn’t fare as well – there are only two “big” tables at Elemental (for 4 or 6 people), and they were the third big group.  Lesson learned, I supposed: get there early for two people, or really early for more.

When we sat down, I actually felt relieved!  After all of the anticipation, we could finally sit and relax for a few hours.  Cocktails and truffled popcorn mellowed things out, and by the time dinner started an hour later, we were ready to eat.  Phred, co-owner and our waiter this evening, asked if we wanted to see menus or if he should just bring us food.  Our preference is to always let the kitchen make whatever they want, so we went with that option and never even saw a menu.

And so began our nine-course meal of shared plates and interesting wine pairings.  An intense cold asparagus soup was followed by a plate of delicate scallops, radishes, and watercress drizzled with olive oil.  The one food that Dawn generally avoids is scallops, but these were so tender and fresh that they had practically no resemblance to the bivalve as we knew it.  Next were two stacked blini with salmon gravlax, roe, and crème fraîche, followed by gnocchi in a cream sauce, a puff pastry with chickpeas, and a perfectly-seasoned white fish with sautéed zucchini and a small egg custard.  You might think we were completely stuffed at this point, but the serving sizes were perfect – we were enjoying everything, and still looking forward to more.  The main meal wrapped up with an ancho chili-glazed squab, and a beef tenderloin with cream sauce and cabbage.  Finally, three desserts arrived altogether – buttermilk ice cream and strawberries with chocolate syrup, a thin slice of chocolate mousse cake, and a Greek dessert of cheese-stuffed crepe drizzled in honey.  I could get used to every meal ending with three desserts!

And let’s not forget about the wine.  For an absurdly underpriced $20 per person, we enjoyed nearly a dozen paired wines – dry sherry, dry white, sweet white, oaked white, reds of all kinds (including an amazing Rioja tempranillo that was the perfect pairing for the ancho chili-glazed squab), and several dessert wines.  (Now you know why we didn’t drive to dinner tonight!) Phred cleared each round of wine glasses as he brought the next, which I really appreciated.  With that much wine, I don’t like to feel pressured to drink everything, but it’s nice to enjoy the different tastes with each course.

As we had read before going, Phred doesn’t like to tell you what you’re eating or drinking at Elemental, at least not until you’ve finished the course.  He obligingly confirmed (or corrected) a few guesses I made about the wines as he cleared glasses.  Not knowing what you’re having is all part of the experience, reminiscent of some of our fine dining adventures abroad.  Rather than lazily allowing your analytical process to tell you what’s in front of you (”the menu says this is a pinot noir”), you find yourself relying instead purely on your senses to interpret the food and drink (”hm, this wine has a slight acidic taste on the tongue initially, then starts tasting like raspberries”).

I’m glad DoRon threw down the gauntlet and declared Elemental his favorite restaurant, otherwise I might have completely missed this amazing experience after having dismissed it years ago.

What are your favorite restaurants in Seattle?  Where have you had a particularly memorable dining experience?

Elemental @ Gasworks
3309 Wallingford Ave N, Seattle
(206) 547-2317

Years ago, if you asked Eric or me what our favorite Seattle restaurant was, we’d instantly say The Harvest Vine.  It was the place we’d head to when we were tired and hungry after work and wanted to kick back, or we’d go to celebrate a special occasion and splurge on one of their excellent bottles of Spanish wine.  There was a time when you’d find us there at least a couple times a month.

Then, something happened.  I can’t even pinpoint what it was exactly, but a few years ago, we started to mention it less frequently when people asked us where to go eat in Seattle.  It was mostly that it became a kind of hit-or-miss place to go for dinner.  When they were on, they were on.  Sitting at the bar and watching them cooking amazing dish after amazing dish, we’d order whatever caught our eye.  But then it seemed like there were too many nights where things weren’t on.  The food was just ok and a little routine, or the service even a little off-putting at times.  And somehow it always happened when we brought friends.  Things were generally great when the right people were there – Juan Carlos, Fernando, and of course the owners Chef Joseba and Carolin – but not necessarily as good when they weren’t.

Not anymore.  They are back on their game and back on our list of top restaurants in Seattle.  We went a couple months ago, wondering how things were going since they’d opened their second restaurant, Txori, last fall in Belltown.  Despite their attention being divided between two restaurants now, the food at The Harvest Vine is better than ever.  Every dish was spot on delicious.  We went again on Saturday, and again, amazing.  The menu was more creative than ever and each dish was perfect from the presentation down to the seasoning.

We started with a dish of simple but impeccable ingredients: house cured salmon, cucumber gelée, crème fraîche, and a tiny dab of caviar.  Delicious – I was happy to hear that they plan to keep that one on the menu for a little while.  We also had braised eel on a generous bed of morels, which was melt-in-your-mouth tender.  Then, piquillo peppers stuffed with hake and potatoes and served with butter lettuce.  This was a dish that highlighted the creative talent of the kitchen.  I adore butter lettuce, but it seemed odd served in the bowl with a hot entree.  That is, until the first bite – something about the crunch and flavor of the lettuce took the dish from very good to great.

We were transported back to Spain when the braised chorizo with smoked pork belly, breadcrumbs, and red grapes arrived.  The smoky aroma reminded us instantly of the fabada we had in Asturias, even without the beans.  Our last dish was beef tongue dredged in flour and egg, then fried and served in its juice with fresh peas.  It was incredibly tender, and we sopped up the flavorful juices with our Columbia City bakery baguette.

We were almost full, but not once have I walked out of The Harvest Vine without dessert.  I’ve mentioned this before, but I think that Carolin is the best pastry chef in the city.  We’ve been known to go late at night simply to get a taste of one of her desserts.  Tonight’s were no exception.  We split two desserts: a moist corn cake in a pool of the most delicious rhubarb sauce with strawberries, along with a frozen almond parfait presented beautifully with spun sugar on top.  They arrived with Eric’s shot of espresso and my café bonbon, which is sweetened condensed milk layered with espresso on top.  You stir it up, and then your neighbor turns to you and asks you what you’re drinking because the aroma is so good.

We told the chefs how everything was spot on, and they mentioned that it’s been a lot easier lately to turn out great food since they recently started changing the menu only every other week.  Now, they say, they have time to get to know the dishes, rather than recreating the menu every day and opening up the kitchen at 5 to a whole new set of items to learn.  Now it all makes sense – it’s not coincidence that the place is really shining right now.

They do take reservations, however only for the downstairs wine cellar area.  It’s nice to eat down there, but we always prefer the atmosphere upstairs, watching the food come off the grill and the chefs arranging the plates.  There’s often a wait for a bar seat, but we consider it well worth it!  Especially on a beautiful sunny summer evening when the wall door is opened and you feel like you just might be eating in Spain.

The Harvest Vine
2701 East Madison, Seattle
(206) 320-9771