tighe

Mamster/Laurie, Have you tried Noodle Boat in Issaquah? I'm just curious because a couple Thai women I was in grad school with said it is the closest to food at home that they found in the Seattle area. I haven't gotten myself out there yet. They said that Bai Tong, which I have eaten at, is the next closest.

BH, we must be on the same wavelength, as I was talking to my wife about starting this very thread over breakfast this morning. The topic came up because we were eating at Brassrie Margaux in the Warwick Hotel. We had a great brunch (my account in on the 'Brunch-able' thread) which, combined with the two dinners we've had there, confirmed for us that it is a really fine restaurant. At dinner, they offer a menu of pretty standard French items which are executed very well. You won't be wowed by creativity, but that's OK with me. Staying on the French theme, I think Maximilien doesn't get the recognition it deserves for the most part. The quality of the food there combined with the views from restaurant make it one of my favorite places to take visitors for lunch. It's interesting that you mentioned Canlis, because I would probaly put them on my most overrated list. I've only eaten there once but I thought the food was not up to the quality level needed to justify their prices. Their wine list is absolutely criminal in my opinion. They seem to pop up pretty regularly in media articles about the Seattle restaurant scene, so I can't really say I think they get shorted on pub. I'd love to try Tosoni as I've heard good things about it.

I had a very ejoyable brunch today at Brasserie Margaux in the Warwick Hotel. My wife and I have had dinner there a couple times and it was very good, so when we found ourselves nearby this morning, we decided to give brunch a shot. My expectations were somewhat lowered because I have seen how some hotel restaurants that are quite good for dinner, sink into deep mediocrity at breakfast. Happily this was not the case. The menu had some interesting sounding omelelets, a few standard brekfast items (i.e. eggs beni, French toast, etc.) and some French choices. I decided on the quiche (no, I'm not a real man) of the day which had asparagus, ham and goat cheese. Before I get to that however, there were a couple nice touches before the main course was served. To start the meal they brought out a small dish of fresh fruit and instead of just bread, they presented a basket of small pastries, muffins and croissant, all warmed. I was starting to get pretty enthusiastic at this point..... The quiche was excellent, cooked to my liking, that is still fairly moist in the center. A good-sized piece was served with a salad of mixed greens, julienned pear and toasted pine nuts with a simple but tasty vinaigrette. The flavor of the quiche was exactly what I had hoped for given the ingredients and the crust, which I'm sure was made with about 2 pounds of butter, added to the flavor and texture, rather than detracting as it does with some quiches. At $10.50, I thought this was very good value given how much brunch can cost other places. My wife had the eggs benedict, which she thought was good, but not up to the standards of the quiche. I could tell she was quietly coveting my food through most of the meal.....

Another good meal we had on the northshore was at Sushi Blues in Hanalei. The best item was the ahi roll that was coated with tempura batter and deep-fried.

Hands down the worst meal I've had in someone's house was when I was fresh out of college and travelling through Europe. I was staying with the parents of some frinends in Spain for a few days. I had gone out the night before and gotten completely wrecked, stumbled in around 5 am. Was woken up for lunch at around 11:30 feeling really, really bad. I've managed to blot out significant portions of the lunch but two things are burned into my mind and palate forever. First was the salmon and shredded carot salad. Bad quality smoked salmon diced up and tossed with shredded carrots, all swimming in some gag-inducing white dressing. For desert, which was described as a "very traditional Spanish desert", was what I can only describe as a block of soft plaster of Paris that was drowned in honey in an attempt to make it palatable. Didn't work. It was really bad and eating flavorless mush when one is severly hung over really pushes the limits. I had some great meals on that trip, this however was not one of them...

One chef is quoted in the article as saying that he has no idea how he'd go about getting real wasabi. In case anyone else is in the same boat and would like to get their hands on some, Pacific Farms in Oregon grows the real stuff and sell it online. The difference is really amazing....

My wife and I had two spectacular dinners at Pacific Cafe when we were on Kauai in March. I believe Mssr. Josselin was in the kitchen the first night. The first night we had the tasting menu which was a great introduction to the highlights of the menu. The way Josselin has fused French culinary techniques and sensibilities with Island/Pacific Rim ingredients and flavors is really remarkable. I wish I could remember the details of the tasting menu more, but my wife has notes somewhere. The second dinner we ordered a la carte. I had the 'Surf & Turf' mentioned above. Excellent ahi, but the foie gras wasn't the best I've had. My wife had snapper with a potato crust and truffle sauce. It was definately one of best single plates of food I've ever encountered. The alluring truffle aroma along with the crispness of the scalloped potato crust and the moist fish is something you have to experience to understand. Beachfan, did you make it to the Beach House at Poipu? We didn't get there but a friend of mine said he had what may have been the best seafood meal of his life there. Overall, I was really impressed with the quality of the restaurants we went to on Kauai. I never thought it would be possible for me to get too much ahi, but by the end of the week, I had ahi overload for sure. A good problem to have......

mamster, You might want to try the Red Apple on MLK in the CD. They have animal parts that I've never seen for sale anywhere else. When we lived on 'the Hill', my wife used to get stuff there for making stock.

Ben, I recently had a similar thing at Cactus (sorry this won't mean anything to non-Seattleites...). It was lemonade with cilantro leaves and a few small pieces of jalapeno. I haven't tried to reproduce it yet, but it was really good. What else was in the one you had? I found a recipe for 'Indian Style Lemonade' on iChef: Ingredients 8 c Water 1/2 c Fresh lime juice 2/3 c Fresh lemon juice 1 1/3 c Maple syrup 1/2 tb Freshly grated ginger 1/8 ts Cayenne, optional Does this sound like what you were served?

If you can get your hands on it, there was a good feature article about wine tasting and dining in the Rhone Valley in Food & Wine a couple months ago (sorry I remember the exact issue). I can't vouch for any of their recomendations, but it was enough to make me want to get on a plane!...

I posted the following in an Istanbul thread over in the 'Europe' section. Happy eating. Food in Turkey, one of my favorite subjects!! In Istanbul, it's kind of hard to go too far wrong as long as you stay away from the most touristy places. My reccomendations would be: Develi - a kebab house not far from the main tourist area of the city. Steve Raichlen chose it as one of his 10 favorite grill restaurants in the world. I was duly impressed Tugra in the Ciragan Palace Hotel - pretty much the ultimate for high end Ottoman/Turkish food. The meal I had there was spectacular both in terms of the food and the setting. It's expensive by Turkish standards, but not by American. One warning: avoid the chicken desert at all costs Pandeli in the Spice Market - very good food and good place to stop for lunch. There's also a lot of good street (or boat) food in Istanbul. Down on the waterfront you will see fishermen selling grilled mackerel and other fish from their boats. It's great! Over in the Beyoglu district (accross the Golden Horn) there are a couple large markets that have a variety of great food to offer. If you're going to travel along the coast, try to stop in Dalyan in the southwest. It's a really interesting little town that hasn't been overrun by tourists (yet). There are some really great fish restaurants there along the river. Near the center of town there is a completely non-descript place that serves the best lamb sandwiches ever. Look for line of locals out the door at lunch time. Have a great time!!

Steve, Obviously you took my respose WAY too seriously. Guess I'll have to use one of the little smiley faces next time to indicate my tongue-in-cheekedness. The chances of me taking anything you, or anyone else for that matter, says here to heart is nill. To say that the attitudes expressed on this thread in general or my posts in particular are broadly representative of how Cascadia has been accepted in Seattle would be inaccurate. I was expressing my own opinions while asserting that I believe that there is some segment of Seattle-area residents that feel the same way. You are absolutely right that Cascadia and a few others that opened at about the same time were something new for the city. Whether on net, that worked for or against them, I can't say. Cascadia has, after all, been quite successful as far as I know. While you may not have said that Kerry was brilliant, many others have and I frankly don't have enough experience with his food to come down on one side or the other. As I said in my last post though, I think "Nortwest Cuisine" is partly defined by a lack of pretentiousness. I think Cascadia's ambiance, attitude and presentation is pretentious which makes it dischordant to simultaneously claim the 'Decidedly Northwest' moniker. Or....I could be completely wrong and my opinions are in fact completely the result of my insecurity. As a fat, dorky, definitively un-hip white guy, I have to admit that I don't feel like I blend with the hipper-than-though beautiful crowd that tends to dominate Cascadia and its ilk.

Hmmmm...well other than being mildly offended at your thinly veiled implication that Seattleites are simply a bunch of unsophisticated hicks that aren't refined enough to appreciate Kerry's brilliance, you may have something of a point..... Being one of the few true natives in Seattle, I do think there is a preference for substance over style in this region (thus the predominance of gortex and jeans), which I would say is inherently part of what has been discussed here as "Norwest Cuisine." So to me his attempt to embrace Northwest Cuisine while simultaneously going for a self-conciously cool/hip vibe creates a real conflict. Despite being one of the local hicks that you suppose can't rise to this level of sophistication, I have actually eaten at the type of restaurant in SF, NYC, Europe, etc. that you bring up and I loved them all. They were appropriate to their environment and to the cuisines they were featuring, I'm not sure Cascadia is. It's kind of like when someone builds a pastel colored mansion on the lake here in Seattle. It may be a beautiful house and it might look fantastic in Florida, but here its looks out of place. I think you will have trouble finding anyone who has has a "terrible" meal at Cascadia and I don't think anyone has implied that here.

You are correct! Thank you for correcting my geographic dyslexia. Just to be safe, here's the link to their website which I'm sure will provide much better info on where they are than I am apparently capable of..... Ponti Seafood Grill

Mam, Did you see the latest restaurant issue of Gourmet? If not, you're prescient. This time they focused on the best neighborhood restaurants accross the country. Seattle's representative.....Monsoon! Beyond that, it was a very good issue I thought. I'm glad they took a break from simply confirming everyone's impressions about what the top 5 restaurants in each city are. It will be a good reference on where to eat when travelling to some off-the-beaten-track places.....

Laurie, Thanks for the report. Sounds like they changed their pricing substantially since I was there. Likely necessary in the current economic climate. At the prices you describe I would definately give Cascadia another try. It's always heartening for us economists to see that the whole supply/demand thing actually works in the real world. ........

I ate at La Tienda Cadiz for the first time last night and thought it was excellent. Started with the tagine vegetables which, if my tastebuds and eyes served, included chickpeas, green olives, onions, tomatos, eggplant and some amazingly complex seasoning that I couldn't quite deconstruct. It's cooked in a pyramid shaped ceramic thing that is called a tagine. The consistency of the whole thing reminded me of ratatouille. For the main course my friend and I had the paella which I thought was as good as any I've had this side of the pond. All seafood though (no chicken or sausage) which is fine for me but doesn't meet the technical definition of paella for some I know. Generous amounts of shrimp, clams, calamari, etc. combined with heavily seasoned (in a good way) rice made this a winner. We had a really nice bottle of Rebeira del Duero (can't remember the maker at the moment) that I thought was very reasonably priced. I thought the whole meal was a really good value and it was a great evening to be able to sit outside. I'll definately be back....

sg, Are you impressed by the $#!^ storm your little review of the Herbfarm has provoked! .......

Ahi is one of my all-time favorite foods. Other than coming over to my house, by far the best I've had in a restaurant is at Ponti which is near the south end of the Ballard bridge. I think, because its been around for a while, that Ponti doesn't get nearly the attention and pub it deserves a really top-notch restaurant in Seattle.

I know that I piled on earlier in the thread, but I think at this point the good ol' Farm is getting beaten about the head and neck excessively. The fact remains that the food there is stunning, as in, takes me to a higher plane of consciousness stunning. Yes, some of the accoutrements are annoying, but franky I'd wade through waist deep $#!^ to have some of the things I've had there and not even blink. I almost want to call them and find out if this single winery thing is a permanent change, because I've never run into that there. As I mentioned before, the food-wine pairings I've had there were very well executed. If they have changed to a single winery for each dinner type model, that is truly a shame and they should be further beaten about the head and neck for it!

I ate at Cascadia about a year ago and would say that while the food was certainly good, it's unlikely that I would go back. First because of price. I'm not averse to dropping some change on a meal, but at the price point that Cascadia is at, frankly I expect altered states of consciousness. I don't think the food there is in the class of Le Gourmand (thank tls for bringing up Bruce Naftaly's role in the genesis of "Northwest Cusine") or the Herbfarm and is only on par with a number of other places in town that are significantly less expensive. In addition to the food prices, their wine list markup is rediculous, something that a few other places in town also try to get away with (Canlis!). My other issue with Cascadia is that it is pretentious in a way that completely rubs me the wrong way. Don't get me wrong, I like interesting interior design and attractive/creative food presentation, but Cascadia takes both to such an extreme that I start wondering what they're trying to make up for? At Le Gourmand you won't see anything that amazes you on the plate, but about 2 seconds after you put it in your mouth you won't care about how its presented. By all accounts Kerry Sear is a very talented chef and I would love to see him start a place that just doesn't try so hard. This discussion of what constitutes "Northwest cuisine" is interesting to me. I think it would be impossible to assert that it is defined by anything other than some unique local ingredients. One of the regions advantages food-wise is its proximity to many different climactic zones, so a wide variety of food products are available. (Forgive me for stating the obvious.) Other than plank roasting salmon, I'm not sure there are any cooking techniques that you could say are distinctively northwest.

Since this thread had a lot of discussion of Cassis, I thought I'd post here instead of creating a new topic. I had a great dinner at Cassis last night, including one of the best calamari preparations I've ever come accross. I can't decide if the squid was sauteed or just steamed, but it was served on this great ginger-shallot sauce with diced fresh green onions tossed with the squid. If you're a calamari lover, make a point of trying it before they rotate it off the menu....

sg, Glad you enjoyed the food at the Herbfarm, but was really disapointed to hear about the wines. Part of why I've enjoyed my experiences there so much is their ability to create these incredible food-wine pairings. Some friends of mine went the night after you did and the featured winery was Argyle, which, in my humble opinion at least, would be a significant upgrade over Chehalem. However I don't really like the idea of them forcing a meal to fit with a single winemaker's offerings. The old madeira is always a highlight for me. I love to think about what was happening in the world back when it was made. The saddest part of their original restaurant burning down for me is that they lost the largest collection of the 100+ year old madeiras in North America. As you noted, the D&P show is grating, and this was just your first visit! The whole thing is so geared to first-timers, that I think they really discourage repeat business. I like your idea of getting up and leaving duing the introductions and am embarassed that I thought of it before. If I have to sit through the guitarist's life-story again (he IS from the Spanish Royal Conservatory you know!), I think I will scream. What other places in the area did you try? [Non-food question: what did you think of Sahalee, there sure was a lot of bitching and moaning about it from the players]

It's a nice thought and there certainly is no evidence that moderate alcohol consumption is bad for you, but.... In addition to the above criticisms (which I second), these studies never mention the fact that they typically cannot control for all the other diet/lifestyle factors, not to mention genetic predisposition, that contribute to health. It could easily be that beer consumption is simply closely correlated with some other factor that contributes to good health. As in, the number of hours spent watching TV is highly correlated with your chances of being overweight, but do you really want to argue that watching TV causes people to be overweight?

Does this mean that you are a kept man?? If only we were all so lucky.... Sounds like a great meal. I've been wanting to go there for a long time. Thanks for the reivew!