Wright Eats

Italian is my favorite type of food: simple dishes designed to make impeccable ingredients shine.  And admittedly, I have a weakness for great pasta.  But I’ve been forever disappointed in Seattle’s Italian offerings.  Sure, there are La Spiga, Tavolata, Volterra, Branzino, and others which are good, but none match that ideal we’ve been looking for, especially on the heels of a trip to Italy, when we’re craving handmade pasta and authentic rustic antipasti.

Our hopes were raised when we heard last year that Justin Neidermeyer was planning to open a restaurant in Seattle featuring his ethereal pasta.  He’s known for the handmade pasta he sold at the Ballard market a couple years ago.  When the folks at Sitka & Spruce told us that he was hosting trial dinners at their restaurant last fall, we signed up immediately.  The intimate 10-person dinner only managed to make us more excited for his restaurant to open: the pastas were truly amazing and the meal left us giddy about the prospects of a Seattle restaurant where we could enjoy this kind of food.

Finally, Spinasse opened last Thursday.  We dined there on their second night, one of the hottest evenings in Seattle this summer.  The menu is family-style and designed for having a number of courses, just as you would at a restaurant in Italy: antipasti (starters), primi (pasta), secondi (usually a meat or fish), insalata verde (salad, typically eaten before dessert), and dolci (desserts).  You can choose between three fixed price options, depending on how hungry you are: $33 for your choice of one antipasto and one primo, $47 for two antipasti, one primo, and one secondo, or $75 for everything (when we were there this included tastes of six antipasti, three primi, two secondi, and a light dessert).

Each dish transported us straight back to Italy.  With the sweet and sour onions served with artisan salami from Fra Mani, we were suddenly eating dinner at a rustic agriturismo outside Bologna.  With the intensely sweet, juicy melon wrapped in 24 month proscuitto, we were now on the piazza on a beautiful day in Verona.  We nearly cleaned all the plates of antipasti before remembering that we had several more courses coming and needed to pace ourselves.

Next up: the pasta.  Each was perfect, and it was hard picking favorites.  The gnocchi were light and served with the cutest chanterelles and tomatoes with basil.  The agnolotti filling was flavorful and quintessentially northern Italian.  These two pasta alone would have left me happy and satisfied, but it was the tajarin, fine hand-cut egg pasta, served with ragu, that simply blew us away: delicate and perfectly al dente.

The option they’re missing from the menu is a pasta tasting menu.  While pasta-only meals are not typical in Italy, one of our more memorable meals in northern Italy was at a restaurant in Bologna known for its pasta menu degustazione.  At Osteria Numero Sette we had upwards of seven different pasta courses.  I think this would be a great way to highlight Justin’s pasta making skills!

We were full now and could only nibble at the secondi: a delicious roasted chicken with amazing dandelion greens (typically a very bitter vegetable) and potatoes, along with slow-roasted goat with chickpeas and savoy cabbage.  More than one of the wait staff told us that they’re still adjusting portion sizes – during their trial dinners the plates had been even larger!  They’re aiming for more reasonable sizes and were anxious to get our feedback.  So for the best deal, get there soon.

Dessert was typically Italian – nothing complicated, and a light sweet ending to the meal.  In this case, it was a single slice of Piemontese Toma cheese with a perfectly roasted nectarine half drizzled in honey.  Remember how we were full?  We ate every bite without a problem.

Ok, so the food was great, but how about the service?  Somehow it always seems that in Seattle you can get great food, or great service, but rarely both.  Not so at Spinasse.  Our waiter was super-friendly and down-to-earth, and as a former New Yorker (where there are as many Italian restaurants as there are Starbucks in Seattle), he was excited himself about the arrival of Spinasse.  He was attentive, and even when returning to the kitchen with a handful of plates, stopped to welcome patrons who had just walked in the door.  We also didn’t go wrong by asking him to choose our wines – the white and red he chose were both great and well-paired with the food (not surprising since the wine list is exclusively Piemontese, and regional wines really do seem to match local food the best).  We particularly appreciated the quartino size wine options, with about a glass and a half of wine per carafe, making it easy to pair a couple different wines with our meal.

The only downside of the experience was the heat.  But we all know that air conditioning is rare in Seattle, and those few hot days of summer are ones that you have to grin and bear in exchange for the generally idyllic summer.  But compounded with the summer heat were the periodic blasts of hot air wafting straight from the kitchen, which left diners sweltering.  I generally wither in heat, but it still didn’t mar our experience.  We were just so crazy about the food, and somehow, I think it even made it feel more like dinner on a hot summer day in Italy.

UPDATE 8/23: They’ve been tweaking things at Spinasse based on the feedback they’ve been hearing.  Previously, à la carte options were only available while sitting at the bar, but now are available to everyone.  They’ve lowered the price on the smallest fixed price menu to $27, and they’ve added an antipasto misto option, where you can try small bites of every antipasti for $20.  Still no pasta tasting menu, though.

Spinasse
1531 14th Avenue, Seattle
(206) 251-7673

We got two kinds of bittersweet baking chocolates from Lauren Adler, owner of Chocolopolis, to try an A / B baking chocolate experiment.  I wanted to make brownies, but haven’t found a really great brownie recipe.  So I went straight to David Lebovitz’s blog to see if he had one, since every dessert he touches is gold, and chocolate is his specialty.  The recipe I found there wasn’t his but Nick Malgieri’s “Supernatural” Brownies, which sounded great.  Then, before I had a chance to make the brownies, I was reading the September issue of Saveur, and the very same recipe is printed in there.  It was settled – now I knew I had to make them.

The chocolates we wanted to compare are Valrhona Manjari 64%, and Guittard Coucher du Soleil 72%.  On their own, they’re both good, but I like the Valrhona better because it has the hints of cherry that I really like.  But would we be able to tell the difference in brownies?

To make it a true A / B experiment, I used the same eggs, butter, vanilla, etc., and I baked them side-by-side in the oven, switching sides halfway through baking.

The result is a super fudgy moist brownie – exactly what I was hoping for!  So could we tell the difference?  Well, the Valrhona brownie had a slightly brighter chocolate flavor, while the Guittard has a bit deeper intense chocolate flavor.  But the difference is subtle.  No matter, because it turns out this recipe is awesome!  This is definitely going to be my brownie recipe of choice from now on.

We’ll be bringing a half pan of each batch to Chocolopolis tomorrow morning for Lauren to try.  If you’re reading this and would like to try the taste test for yourself, head on up to her store, ask for my brownies, and she’ll give you a sample of each.  The thing that isn’t mentioned in the Saveur issue but is mentioned on David’s blog is that brownies improve after sitting for a day or two.  Lauren says 3-4 days is even better which is why she told me she’ll keep them on hand until Wednesday, if they’re not gone before then.  If you’re planning on stopping by, note that the store is closed Mondays.  Report back here on what you think!

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