Nosh Pit

Raclette Returns at Cafe Presse

The cheesy French dish is the ultimate winter warmer.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Jan 26, 2012 at 10:30AM 3 Comments

It doesn’t get much better than this. Photo courtesy Jim Drohman.

Raclette is a cheese you eat in the winter. It is cultivated in the French Alps in late summer, when the cows’ milk is at its best (read: fattiest), then matures four to six months before it’s ripe, right around the holidays. Consume the “chalet cheese” elsewhere in the year and you’re either having stale goods or something improperly aged. For these reasons, raclette surfaces only seasonally at Cafe Presse.

To be clear, we’re not talking about some cheese plate on the starter menu. Raclette also refers to a traditional French Savoie meal in which the eponymous dairy is melted then scraped onto cuts of meat and warmed potatoes. Often this happens with a table-side grill (like this) where diners cook the ingredients at their leisure using individual trays. It makes for a most fun dining experience—and a most pleasing winter splurge.

But at Presse that set-up is logistically not possible, so the chefs lay the cheese in a cast-iron skillet, cook it in the oven for four or five minutes, then finish it under the broiler. The result: a perfectly melty spread for the accompanying hams—two kinds—steamed spuds, and salami.

Though raclette is one of owner Jim Drohman’s most requested plates (thanks in part to some TV crushing), he won’t budge on the matter of freshness. “The heart of the dish is the quality of the ingredients.”

Raclette resurfaced at Presse earlier this month as a special, but as of the 24th it’s on the menu daily. A five ounce serving of cheese, plus the proteins, will cost you $16. (Downtowners, find a similar preparation at Drohman’s other restaurant, Le Pichet.) Vegetarians can sub the meats for winter fruits and walnuts. Order both versions and you’ve got quite the nice combo, suggests Drohman.

Right now there’s plenty of cheese to go around—Drohman guesses the raclette will be on the menu through early spring—but once it’s gone, you won’t see it for many moons. Act accordingly.

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Tags: Cheese, Comfort Food, Cafe Presse, On the Menu, Jim Drohman

Met Maps: Restaurants to Indulge Comfort Food Cravings

Seattle is besotted with down-home dining. Here’s where to dig in.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Nov 29, 2011 at 09:15AM 0 Comments

Photo: Olivia Brent

Bread pudding at Boat Street Cafe: comfort food at its finest.

Arteries be damned, comfort food continues to infiltrate practically every menu out there—and what better time to indulge than the inky evenings of December.

Since there’s no shortage of places to get piggy, we winnowed down forty-some favorites. Included are breakfast standouts, mom-and-pop cafes, recent arrivals, and neighborhood staples serving mac and cheese, grilled cheese, roast chicken, fried chicken. At some spots the comfort food is an artful affair, at others it’s downright down-home.

Find the favorites by clicking that link up there, and by all means chime in with yours.

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Tags: Comfort Food

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup in Seattle

A sad, soggy forecast looms. Fight back with the ultimate comfort food pairing.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 08, 2011 at 10:15AM 5 Comments

Much tastier than Paxil.

Photo courtesy Whatwereeating.com

In some parts of the world, rain is a sign of spring. Here, however, rain is just a sign that you’re in Seattle, and it’s not June.

To compensate, we excel at being indoor people. Thus the reason everyone in your office saw most of this year’s Oscar finalists and has read (the first 30 pages of) Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. Thus grilled cheese and tomato soup still sounding like a good idea as the ides of March approach. Endless winter? Fine. So long as melted cheese and tart tomato are involved.

Here are five places for getting your GCTS on.

1. The new thing in grilled cheese is a grilled cheese menu, with variations that feature novel breads and spreads. Grim’s, the Capitol Hill bar and lounge from the lady who brought you Po Dog and Autobattery, offers three variations on the grilled cheese. There’s one with tomato, basil, prosciutto, and gruyere. There’s another with chipoltle spread, pico de gallo, and cheddar. Finally there is the sandwich with truffled leeks, herbs, and havarti. Tomato soup is sold separately.

2. The winningly rustic Row House Cafe in South Lake Union, a place that will remind you of breakfast joints you ate in while visiting friends in small college towns, is also offering riffs on the classic grilled cheese. Five variations named for monuments and museums (the Colosseum, the Louvre, the Smithsonian, etc.) come on Essential Baking breads such as potato and walnut raisin.

These grandly named sandwiches come with grandly named dipping sauces. The “rustic tomato relish” that accompanies the Smithsonian, for instance, is basically salsa. The tomato soup has a lovely chunky consistency, but true tomato people will find it a tad sweet.

3. I’m not in love with everything on the BOKA lunch menu, but the grilled cheese and tomato soup always works. The sandwich is Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheddar from Wisconsin melted between slices of sourdough, the soup is well-seasoned. That’s kind of all you need on a rainy Tuesday.

4. For those of us who’ve taken our love for comfort food to a whole new level this winter, cutting back a bit may be in order. The happy hour at Oliver’s Twist in Phinney Ridge offers a comfort-food compromise: a teeny little cappuccino cup of tomato soup frothed into a foam, and a mini grilled cheese to go along with it. Isn’t this what we’re supposed to be learning from the French, eating a little bit of really rich food? That and not drinking the entire bottle of red wine with dinner, I think.

5. The Latona Pub serves seriously delicious food, and I don’t even have to qualify that with “for a pub.” One of the best dishes on the menu is the grilled cheese and tomato basil soup. The sandwich is made from sharp white cheddar cheese and Columbia City Bakery’s walnut bread. And as for the tomato bisque that accompanies it, well, I don’t know what witchcraft the Three Pubs people employ to make their many soups, but they are consistently world-rocking, a reminder that comfort food should be as exciting, from a flavor perspective, as it is comforting, from a it’s-been-raining-for-six-freaking-months perspective.

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Tags: Downtown, Lunch, Soup, Comfort Food, Seattle Food Guides

The Nosh Pit Top 10 Edible Hangover Cures

Counteract New Year’s Eve excesses with these tasty local lifesavers.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Dec 29, 2010 at 05:00AM 0 Comments

This burger kills hangovers.

The only good thing about having a New Year’s hangover is that it gives you permission to start the year off eating whatever your heavy little heart desires.

I asked my fellow Seattle Met employees about their favorite foods to help get back in the game on January 1. Those, plus some of my own favorite under-the-weather-options, are below.

10. Plum Bistro’s spicy chili macaroni and yease is the vegan cafe’s take on an old-school comfort food. “Nutritional yeast, aka vegan Parmesan cheese, is fortified with B12,” explained one of our more health conscious editors. Since hangovers have been linked to B12 deficiencies, some believe the vitamin can reduce symptoms. “I feel like I’m getting back on track with food that is also super flavorful,” said our editor.

9. For an entirely different type of hangover personality—the kind that relishes slipping back into last night’s jeans and maybe lights up a clove cigarette on the way to brunch, the thing to do is to toast to the hair of the dog that bit you with a spicy bloody mary (and maybe a breakfast burrito) at Linda’s Tavern.

8. Another of my coworkers, one clearly blessed with an enviable digestive system, suggested the 12-egg omelet at Beth’s Cafe for hangover breakfast.

7. Tomatoes are rich in vitamin C, which always seems to help me when I’m not feeling well, whether the sickness is self-imposed or not. This, plus all the comforting carbs in the crust, is what makes pizza such an excellent hangover option. Here are our opinions on the local offerings.

6. Sometimes, though, a hangover inspires a fried chicken craving. At Ezell’s you can scratch that itch while also loading up on a few buttery, fluffy rolls and a cute little container or two of mashed potatoes and gravy.

5. More adventurous palates will savor a steamy bowl of Korean soft tofu stew, or sundubu, a funky, burbling bowl of cloudy tofu goodness. I like the kimchi and beef version at Korean Tofu House (4142 Brooklyn Ave NE) in the U-District, it’s a little bit spicy and the pervasive fermented cabbage has an anciently medicinal quality while the beef adds meaty richness.

4. Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the perfect combo of Vitamin C plus gooey, buttery sandwich. Taste at SAM has the best in town.

3. Every foodie in Seattle will tell you that if used correctly, the Spring Hill burger could probably cure any ailment that plagues humanity. So your cute little hangover is certainly no match for this half-pounder smothered with thousand island dressing, two slices of cheese, and thick bacon.

2. One of my coworkers shared her new favorite hangover cure: The fried egg sandwich with housemade ham and Beecher’s jack cheese from Tom Douglas’s Seatown Seabar. The roll comes from Douglas’s Dahlia Bakery. “The sandwich is great but that ham, man, it really helps,” says my esteemed colleague. Starbucks’ reduced-fat egg-white and turkey bacon sandwiches got a nod from a busy calorie counter on our staff—that suggestion might come in handy to anyone who finds themselves traveling or starting a diet this first of the year.

1. But in my humble opinion, pho Vietnamese noodle soup is the world’s best hangover food. Pho Bac (415 7th Ave S) in the I.D. may not look like much, but it has the deepest, the richest, the most health-affirming broth in town. If you’re looking for a more refined setting, try the oxtail pho with hon shimeji, oyster, and shiitake mushrooms on Monsoon’s brunch menu .

Then see if you don’t leave feeling a whole heck of a lot better about the year to come.

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Tags: Comfort Food, 2010 in Food, Hangover Foods, New Year's

Where to Go for Comfort Food

The perma-gray is settling. Let’s eat.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Oct 26, 2010 at 08:55AM 3 Comments

The roast chicken at Cafe Presse: a Seattle comfort food classic.

“Comfort food is Seattle’s unheralded regional cuisine. Its natural habitat is Irish pubs and barbecue joints, breakfast spots and soul food restaurants, burger bars and country cafes. But comfort food has also spent the last decade ascending the sophistication ladder, showing up as the token down-market wallow on nearly every cutting-edge menu.”

So reads the intro to the comfort food feature we ran in 2006.

Fast forward four years and—credit the economy and its concurrent sweep of back-to-basics—Seattle’s even more besotted with the down-home stuff. Roast chicken, fried chicken, meatloaf, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, pudding, pork chop—people are getting piggy with it.

And as we’ve been mercilessly reminded the past few days, fall is the undisputed time for comfort fooding. That’s why we’ve mapped out the restaurants where we like to get comfy. Peruse the menus and you’ll find a couple, if not more, items guaranteed to warm the dreariest of days.

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Tags: Comfort Food

Rainy Day Comfort Food: Welsh Rarebit

Made at home or ordered up at the pub, rarebit sauce is some cheesy, beer-laced goodness.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 11, 2010 at 11:52AM 0 Comments

My Dad’s mom was a single mom. A hardworking single mom. She didn’t have a lot of time or money, but she did have a lot of funny ideas about food. Like, she stopped buying Welch’s grape juice when the company sponsored an Elvis Presley concert tour. I don’t think she was religious, really, but something about those gyrating hips. They grossed her out, or frightened her. I’m not sure which. Maybe both.

She did trust Stouffer’s frozen foods for whatever reason, and so growing up my dad ate a lot of Stouffer’s spinach souffle and Stouffer’s lasagna and Stouffer’s welsh rarebit.

He particularly loved the rarebit, and can you blame him? Pour some of this thick, cheesy, beer-laced goodness sauce over an English muffin topped with a tomato slice and man, have you got something. When my mom had working weekends, not an uncommon occurrence, my dad would make Stouffer’s welsh rarebit for my sister and me. I remember the thick brown skin that would form as it baked in the oven. I remember running my finger along the side of the plastic container and scooping up all the cheesiness left along the edges before I let my dad throw it away.

Then my family lived in France for a year during one of my father’s sabbatical, and there he developed a love of cooking from which we all benefited greatly. Stouffer’s spinach souffles, once a weekly staple in our house, because real spinach souffles: steaming fluffballs laced with thick green strands of pungent spinach.

Soon enough we started making welsh rarebit from scratch too. It’s super easy, perhaps even easier than throwing a Stouffer’s plastic tray in the oven, and definitely a lot tastier.

Mark Bittman has a good welsh rarebit recipe here. He’s right about the Guinness. Sturdy-flavored stouts are the best choice for a rarebit, but I’d skip the mustard seed and throw in a quarter cup of Dijon instead. Cheddar works well, but use something sharp—I like Tillamook Special Reserve Extra Sharp Cheddar. The only bad rarebit is one where the flavors fall flat, so don’t skimp on the Worcestershire either.

If cooking isn’t your thing, I suggest heading to Kneehigh Stocking Co for a soft pretzel served with a ramekin of dense, cheesy rarebit. Comfort food, indeed. And just the thing for a rainy Seattle day.

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Tags: Cooking, Cheese, Comfort Food