Wright Eats

Our new friends Kye and Eric introduced us today to Pal-Do World in Lynnwood.  Kye is Korean American and has eaten her way around most of the Korean restaurants in Seattle – she particularly likes Pal-Do for its soft tofu, and surprisingly, the fried chicken.  She and Eric mentioned how the fried chicken at Pal-Do is probably the best fried chicken in the Seattle area, so we didn’t think twice about trekking up there for lunch with them and our friends Catherine and Ken.

Pal-Do is actually not a restaurant, but a large Korean grocery store with a food court inside.  Eric V ordered for all of us, while Kye went off in search of her favorite blood sausage (Soondae, 순대 – thanks for the translations, Eric and Kye!) in another part of the store.  When she got back, our basket of Chicky Pub sauced fried chicken (Yang Nyum Chicken, 양념 치킨) had arrived, with a can of Coca-Cola included.  There weren’t nearly enough napkins for the sticky sauce, but no one cared – we just licked our fingers and went in for seconds.

Then the rest of the food arrived.  Along with the kimchee, my favorite was the seafood soft tofu stew (Hae Mool Soon Dubu Chigae, 해물 순두부 찌게), which we ate on rice.  We also enjoyed grilled short ribs (Kalbi, 갈비) and squid stir-fry (Oh Jing Ah Chigae, 오징어 볶음), and washed it all down with roasted corn tea (Oksusu cha, 옥수수茶).

We were nearly stuffed, had plenty for leftovers, and left there paying less than 10 bucks a person – a steal!  I say “nearly” because we all saved room for the fish waffles (Boong Ah Bang, 붕어 빵).  We wandered to the back corner of the store where a guy runs a very cool machine that cranks out small fish-shaped waffles stuffed with red bean paste (no, there are no fish involved).  They came out piping hot and we all stood there shivering in the freezer aisle munching on our fish waffles.  Those alone are worth the trip.

Pal-Do World
17424 Highway 99, Lynnwood
(425) 742-2237

Crémant is one of my favorite restaurants in town.  We don’t get over to Madrona often, but I’m always happy to take an excursion for steak frites or roasted marrow bones.  When I heard last week that Crémant was going to start serving brunch on the weekend, I felt like Jules in Pulp Fiction when he first hears about Amsterdam: “I’m going, that’s all there is to it, I’m going.” 

Before we arrived on Sunday morning, Dawn already knew what she wanted to order (having seen a snippet of the menu online): Bacon and Egg Pasta.  We arrived hungry, and I studied the menu ravenously, hemming and hawing, considering ordering one of everything, but I had this feeling that might be just a little too much food.  With a little nudging from our waitress, I finally settled on the Scrambled Eggs with Pork Belly, and a French press of Caffe Vita.

Eager anticipation turned into persistent hunger as I sipped my coffee for a long, long while, tasting it getting colder and colder.  Finally, our dishes arrived, and my first thought was, “Uh-oh, I’m going to be really hungry after this.”  Our dishes were beautifully presented and tasted as good as we hoped, but there just wasn’t a lot of food on our $10 plates.  Perhaps we should have asked our waitress if we had ordered enough food, but it would have been nice if she had helped steer us in the right direction.  (Friends of ours who also had brunch at Crémant that morning said their waitress suggested they order some side dishes to complement their egg dishes.)  We asked for some bread to sop up the eggs, which helped fill a little space.

Fortunately, they offer breakfast dessert (!) featuring Claudio Corallo chocolate.  We shared a chocolate cognac drink and a chocolate chip cookie.  (Hey, it was practically noon by this time, so cognac was fair game.)  We had fond memories of the chocolate cognac drink from a dinner at Crémant earlier this year, and it lived up to our expectations.

Will we go back for brunch?  Yes – we enjoyed our dishes, there are more things we want to try, and we’ve read that they will feature different farm eggs on the menu each month.  (This month is hen eggs from Morgan’s Roost on Vashon Island.  Duck, quail, and goose eggs will all make their appearance.)  However, Crémant won’t win the “best brunch value” award, and we hope they’re able to turn around orders a little faster as they figure out their game.

Crémant
1423 34th Ave, Seattle
(206) 322-4600

After a whirlwind Sunday hitting the foodie highlights around Seattle, writer Michaele Weissman stopped by the Muse Coffee Company in Queen Anne for a meet-up with Seattle food bloggers.  Michaele is a freelance reporter and is in our coffee-crazed town to talk about her book, God in Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee, released this summer.  Bloggers Traca Savadogo and Keren Brown had gathered us to get Michaele’s take on the coffee world.

Her interest in coffee was piqued when she discovered office coffee clubs popping up in companies around the country.  After writing about the trend for the Washington Post, she was inspired to dive deeper to learn more about the young guys driving this coffee culture, and write about it in her book.  She followed coffee-obsessed buyers around the world, to coffee farms in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Panama, and along the way, she became coffee-obsessed herself.

In our conversation, she talked about the strange disconnect between foodies and coffee.  She herself was one of those foodies who didn’t understand coffee, until her epiphany one day with a perfect cup of cappuccino.  She finds it fascinating that high end restaurants everywhere focus on sourcing the highest quality food yet neglect that cup of coffee that ends the meal.  She recounted stories that Eric and I could easily relate to, where the coffee can be downright awful at some restaurants.  Why is that, when there are so many great roasters out there?  It seems like the shift toward better restaurant coffee is coming, particularly here on the West Coast where more and more restaurants are pairing up with their local roasters.

Joining us was Brent Martin, owner of Muse, who had insights on our local coffee community.  When Michaele pointed out that every coffee house owes their livelihood to Starbucks, since they carved out the market, Brent nodded.  He said he’d actually be happy if Starbucks moved in across the street, because it drives business to places like his, where people seek out quality.  This was our first time visiting Muse Coffee Company, and it won’t be our last.  Brent opened the shop in December after 11 years in the coffee business, and this place holds its own with the serious cafés in town.

Michaele is pondering her next book idea.  She wants to know, what’s the next thing that people would find to be an interesting book topic?  Drop her a line to let her know your thoughts.

And if you’re interested in meeting her yourself, she will be at Caffé Vita for a One Pot / Kim Rickett’s dinner this Tuesday.  Email hebbory@gmail.com to reserve your seat.

Muse Coffee Company
1907 10th Ave W, Seattle
(206) 282-2711

We all learned a couple weeks ago that Naomi Andrade Smith was closing her Villa Victoria take-out window because of the hard times right now, and would be focusing on her catering business.  Some of you are on her mailing list and were looking forward to her emails about weekly to-go offerings.  The email we received last night was not the one we’d all hoped for though.

It’s true.  Catherine told us the sad news on Monday that Naomi is selling the building and closing down the kitchen completely.  After some encouragement, Naomi decided to sell her last stash of frozen tamales to the lucky customers who show up in Columbia City this Saturday, the 18th.  Stop by between 11:30 and 4 to pick up your tamales, at $32 per dozen (cash only).  The kitchen is located on Rainier Avenue one half block north of Genesee Street, in the blue and red building.  Choose from chicken with Oaxacan mole, cheese & jalapeño, or pork with chileajo.  And wish Naomi well in her next venture.  We hope to see her smiling face back in the kitchen again.

Last night, we had dinner with Marcella and Victor Hazan.  Marcella is a legend in the cooking world, and her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is the one book I would take if I were forced to whittle my cookbook collection to only one.  I’ve never made a recipe of Marcella’s that didn’t work and taste great, and her recipes use straightforward ingredients and aren’t complicated.  The Essentials book is, to me, like the Joy of Cooking for Italian food – it’s divided into vegetables, meats, pastas, desserts in a similar manner as the Joy of Cooking, and it’s a tome almost as large.

It was fun meeting both Marcella and Victor.  Victor read us an amusing passage from her new memoir, Amarcord, about the time that Marcella boiled a human skull that she had procured from a graveyard in Italy.  Victor was engaging to listen to, and I’m looking forward to reading Amarcord to learn more about Marcella’s life.  Marcella herself was just as cynical and critical as she is in her books.  She offered a Q&A session, and the first person asked her about a recipe; she replied, “Why is it that everyone always asks me about a favorite recipe?  Hm?”  Intimidated, only a few people asked further questions.  Victor and Marcella are a fascinating couple.

They are still in Seattle for a little while longer.  There are going to be a few private events and one public one.  For you folks who work at Amazon, they’ll be at a book signing event for employees.  And there is one more public dinner you can attend, tonight!  As of yesterday, there were still seats available for the dinner party at ChefShop’s warehouse in Interbay.  If you’ve shopped before at ChefShop, they are extending discounted reservations of $49 for dinner only, or $69 to get a signed copy of Amarcord, too.  Call (206) 286-9988 to reserve a seat.

Whenever people discover that we managed a reservation several years ago for two of the coveted seats at El Bulli, they ask, “so, what’s the secret to getting a table?”  I don’t know the answer to that.  Mostly, it was just plain luck, I think.

Ferran Adrià talking with guests at the chef’s table in the kitchen.

But the number one thing you need to do to get a reservation is to request it by email during the proper timeframe.  This year, it is October 14, 15, and 16 – that’s right now!  It doesn’t matter if you’re the first person to email them.  The way it works is that they queue up all of the requests together, and then Luis Garcia spends a month sorting through the reservations and filling in all of the dates for 2009.  Usually, the nos start going out first, to those who requested dates on which they’re closed (so check the calendar carefully), or for whatever other reasons.  In 2004, when we made our reservation, the yeses started coming in mid-November and we received ours on November 19.  So you must wait patiently for the reply.  I had actually forgotten about it and was shocked when the affirmative reply arrived in my inbox.  I think I read it at least five times before frantically calling Eric.

What should you write in your email request?  Again, I have no idea, but I can tell you that our message was polite and succinct.  I wrote about two sentences giving our requested timeframe, and that was it.  I wrote it in English, and also copied a translation in very poor Spanish, which I’m sure was awful given that I know only a few Spanish words.  I also believe it was useless, since we discovered when we visited that they speak most common European languages quite fluently.

The only other tip I have is to be flexible with your availability.  I requested any time during the last half of August, or all of September or October.  This was before I knew that they were closed in October, so I effectively gave them a month and a half window of time.  And then we planned our vacation after hearing back from Mr. Garcia.

While they have historically been open April through September, this year the schedule is shifting to mid-June through mid-December.  My guess is that you may have better luck with those off-season fall months.  Good luck!  Let us know if you send in a request and whether you get in.

Now we can have our favorite crêpes for dinner, too.  Anita opened her restaurant in Ballard this week, serving crêpes just like her popular farmer’s market locations.  In addition to some of the market-favorites, like my “usual,” the spinach, feta, mozzarella, and cracked black pepper crêpe, she has some new crêpes that you can only find on her restaurant menu.  And at dinnertime, when we went, there is a small dinner menu alongside the crêpe menu, with choices like chicken liver pâté, pumpkin soup, steamed mussels, and lamp chops with Mission figs.  The menu changes every few days.

Lamb chop with Mission figs and potatoes.
Photo by guest blog photographer, John Gossman.

The interior has a comfy-cozy neighborhood feel, perfect for tucking into on a cool fall evening.  With its large windows and warm yellow decor, I imagine that it’ll be a great hangout for breakfast, too.

Anita looked happy for opening week to have arrived, and weary, too.  It was her third day open, and she said evening business has been good already, but that weekday breakfasts have been pretty slow.  With the popularity of neighboring Ballard brunch spots, like Dish, I’m sure she’ll be more than busy for weekend brunch.  And word will get out soon enough.

Remember how I said a couple months ago that there was no need to fret about her market stands closing?  I was wrong.  While some stands, like her stalwart Ballard market location, will indeed remain open, it looks like the U-District location we’ve come to love has only a few short weeks left.  Anita says that her U-District market stand has not had much business.  In fact, she received more business at the U-District market last winter than this summer.  That seems counterintuitive unless you remember how they moved the food stands, including her crêpes, outside the main market and over near the University Heights building.  With that move, she stopped getting the market foot traffic.

It’s too bad they can’t figure out a way to better integrate the food stands with the farmers at this market.  I know how important the farmers are, and I certainly don’t want them to get displaced by the food stands, but there must be some way to open up the market a bit more to the back area and encourage more foot traffic.  There’s a good symbiotic relationship there – Anita buys her ingredients from the farmers each morning, and she even attracts people to the market.  With the inundation of produce from our CSA delivery this summer, there are plenty of weeks where we wouldn’t even have gone to the market.  But sometimes nothing seems better on a Saturday morning than Anita’s crêpes, so we’d walk down there anyway.  And once we’re there, we always buy a few things from the farmers that catch our eye.  It looks like we’ll be making more trips to Ballard, to wait in the long line at her Sunday market stand, or dine in at her restaurant.

Anita’s Crêpes
4350 Leary Way NW, Seattle
(206) 838-9997

We first met Catherine Reynolds at The Spanish Table years ago, when we were just learning about Spanish food and wine.  Catherine was the wine manager, always cheery and helpful in recommending wonderful cheeses and wines to try.  Over the years, as she’s branched out into all things food-related, we’ve taken paella classes from her, attended wine tastings that she and her husband Ken have hosted, and have read her beautifully-written blog to find out about places to visit and things to eat, here and about.  And now she’s struck out on her own with her new business Queso y Vino.  Is there a better way to learn about Iberian food and drink than at wine tastings and dinners hosted by a passionate foodie like Catherine?  Aside from hopping on a plane to Lisbon or Barcelona, I think not.

Queso y Vino’s first official event was hosted last week at Washington Wine Company, which featured a Mexican-fusion dinner by Chef Naomi Andrade Smith, with Catherine’s wine pairings from Spain, Portugal, and South America.  Naomi is the force behind Villa Victoria, and while we were sad that she had to close her take-out business last month, keep hope alive – she’s still selling food to the public from her main catering location.  She will be sending out menus weekly to her mailing list, so you can order ahead and pick up a dozen tamales or whatever she’s offering that week.  Hopefully, she’ll continue selling all the things we loved so much from her take-out business: empanadas, homemade chips and guacamole, her amazing green tomatillo sauce, and her own roasted coffee beans.

We went to the dinner with some friends, and the oft-repeated phrase of the evening was, “Oh man, this is so good.”  Not only that, but dinner was hands-down the best value in town – seven family-style courses with seven paired wines for a mere $50.  Dishes included minced sautéed rockfish with chile and avocado with hand-cut chips, a salad with jicama, orange, and honey-tamarind dressing, chipotle-rubbed pork ribs with jalapeño and pineapple glaze, chanterelle mushroom tamales steamed in banana leaves, and chicken picadillo-stuffed poblano chiles with walnut cream sauce and pomegranate seeds.  The wine pairings were excellent, and included cabernet sauvignon from Argentina, pinot noir from Chile (one of my favorites of the night), a blend from Portugal, and a full-bodied Spanish Priorat.  Dessert was classic and, well, so good: flan covered with raspberries, paired with Madeira.  This was served with Naomi’s roasted coffee, Café Mocambo.  She purchases her beans from the same grower as Illy coffee.

We had a chance to chat with Naomi, and when we told her how much we were going to miss all of the great food at her take-out location, she had a wistful look on her face as she mused, “I wonder if I should open up a restaurant?”  We certainly hope she does – La Carta de Oaxaca and taco trucks aside, it’s tough to find good Mexican in Seattle.

If you’d like to be in the know about Queso y Vino events, send an email to quesoyvino@gmail.com and ask to be added to the email newsletter.  I hear that Catherine’s holding wine tastings at 12th & Olive and dinner at Gaudi later this month.

Villa Victoria
4116 Rainier Avenue, Seattle
(206) 722-3303

The Chez Panisse kitchen; Eric ready for dinner at Chez Panisse; Blue Bottle coffee at the Saturday market.

Eric’s f/1 photography group met for a weekend in San Francisco at the end of September.  The two of us flew down a few days early to do some eating, and then my friend Jacki and I toured around and shopped while the guys were doing their photography thing.  Here’s where we went:

• Jardiniere – This is a classy, upscale, expensive place near the symphony.  The food was good, but not out of this world.  We had an excellent pinot recommendation – George Vintage IV, which we really loved.  And when we reached the end of the meal, we regretted having had (awesome) cocktails and drinking most of that bottle of pinot, since we had to miss out on the dessert tasting flights of name-your-drink.  They had a good two dozen different flights: armagnacs, tawnies, scotches, everything.
• Boulette’s Larder – Eric and I went here for weekday brunch in the Ferry Building.  We sat outside on a brilliant beautiful day (as it was for our entire visit), overlooking the Bay Bridge.  They had a limited menu of impeccable simple ingredients.  We enjoyed poached eggs with beans and a beautiful slice of tomato, with a dusting of Parmigiano, along with a huge plate of toast from Acme Bread Company, a great bakery also in the building.

The Ferry Building; a farmer selling grapes; rotisserie chicken at the farmer’s market.

• Slanted Door – This is a modern Vietnamese place in the Ferry Building.  We went here for a light lunch.  It was good, but I doubt I’d go back, since nothing we ordered impressed me hugely.  The size of the place and type of food vaguely reminded me of Wild Ginger in Seattle.
• Chez Panisse – We hadn’t been here before, and were really impressed by the execution of a simple menu.  We went for a weeknight dinner and were offered one small tasting menu.  Just four courses seemed tiny compared to most restaurants’ lengthy tasting menus nowadays, but it was perfect – I hate the overstuffed feeling at the end of a huge meal, and this just made us feel satisfied and happy.  The food initially seemed like fairly standard local fare when reading the menu (tomato salad, lamb three ways), but the seasoning was spot on and little touches of simple things made the standard become inspired (such as tangy-salted handmade ricotta and warmed Nicoise with the tomato salad).
• La Taqueria – Great tacos in the Mission District.  They charge for extras like cheese and sour cream, which make it a little pricey, but worth it.  I couldn’t get over the fact that they would charge $1.20 to remove the beans from the tacos.

Bi-Rite ice cream cone; choosing flavors at Bi-Rite; a Ritual Coffee Roasters cappuccino.

• Ritual Coffee Roasters – We stopped here for our caffeine fix in the Mission.  You can watch them roast the beans right there in the store.
• Tartine Bakery – The line was out the door and inching slowly at this popular bakery.  I rested my feet at an outdoor table while Eric stood in line to get a slice of lemon meringue cake.  It was moist, yummy, and super-rich (I could barely eat more than a few bites).
• Bi-Rite Creamery – Awesome ice cream.  Beats our Molly Moon, particularly the salted caramel ice cream, which is very close to my all-time favorite homemade ice cream (Bi-Rite’s is missing the yummy caramel praline bits).  I was really bummed when I found out that David Lebovitz would be visiting from Paris and signing cookbooks here only a week later.

Lemon meringue cake from Tartine; pop rocks dark chocolate bar enjoyed with peanut butter hot chocolate at Christopher Elbow; sole with corn chowder at Range.

• Range – A one-Michelin-star restaurant tucked into a corner of the Mission District.  We had a reservation but chose to sit at a table in the bar, which had a better vibe than the rooms in the back.  We were all guessing what Eric’s “sole with corn and potato chowder” would be – chowder with sole in it, or sole with some chowder on the side?  Turned out it was neither.  The sole was served in a bowl with a shallow pool of chowder at the bottom and lots of chunky vegetables.  Don’t miss the homemade butterscotch pudding for dessert!
• Ferry Building Farmer’s Market – The ferry building has lots of interesting food shops open every day of the week, but the place comes alive on Tuesdays and Saturdays when the farmers set up tables all around the building, and everyone in San Francisco comes out shopping.
• Yank Sing – I didn’t go here, but Eric did with the guys for dim sum and said it was great.

Peppers at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market; a mural in the Mission; the f/1 guys enjoying dim sum.

• Rye – On the recommendation of Michelle and Kelly at Licorous, Jacki and I stopped here for pre-dinner cocktails.  The space is really cool.  Dark, brick walls, high ceilings except a lowered wood ceiling over the bar, a pool table near the bar, and a lounge on the other side of the room.  It looks like it would be a fun place to go late at night.
• Zuni Café – This was my second time here and it was just as amazing as I remembered.  Last time, we could tell there were a number of nooks and crannies behind the main dining loft, but I had no idea just how many there are.  The second floor dining rooms are tucked away everywhere, each with railings overlooking the first floor.  Loved the Caesar salad, and had a nibble of Jacki’s starved tomato salad – those were the best, sweetest tomatoes I’ve ever eaten.  The roast guinea hen was super-flavorful and juicy.  Yum.

The wood stove at Zuni Café; a tea shop in Chinatown; the starved tomato salad at Zuni Café.

• Citizen Cake – We stopped here for brunch while shopping on Hayes Street.  I’m always a sucker for Dutch baby pancakes, and theirs was great.
• Christopher Elbow Chocolates – Lots of yummy gourmet truffles here (you can get some of them at Chocolopolis in Seattle), and interesting inclusion bars, too.  Jacki bought a dark chocolate bar with pop rocks, which fizzled on your tongue as you let it melt in your mouth.  They had a dozen different drinking chocolates – I liked drinking my peanut butter chocolate in the chocolate lounge.
• Blue Bottle Coffee Company – We stopped to pick up espresso beans from the Hayes Valley location.  It was mid-afternoon and there was still a long line crossing the alleyway in front.  We didn’t get any drinks since we had had Blue Bottle mochas (made with Recchiuti chocolate!) just that morning from one of the two Blue Bottle stands at the market.
• Canteen – We all went here for Sunday brunch.  It’s a tiny, tiny place, like a small diner, so we had to split into two tables.  Breakfast was satisfying and tasty – I’d go back, and would like to try dinner here.