Nosh Pit

Montreal Winter Festival Imports Six Seattle Chefs

A seriously gastronomic Canadian crowd gets a chance to sample our local fare.

Posted by: Allecia Vermillion on Jan 19, 2012 at 02:55PM 0 Comments

Montreal chef Guillaume Sparks-Beaule is letting Matt Dillon take over his restaurant Pullman for two nights. And hopefully sharing a few tips on posing awesomely with ingredients.

Every year, the Montreal en Lumiere winter festival showcases the culture and cuisine of both a region and a particular city. This time around, Seattle is in the spotlight, along with Brussels. The festival, known to Anglophones as Montreal High Lights, runs February 16 to 26. Organizers are importing six of our city’s most notable chefs: Jason Franey (Canlis), Jason Stratton (Spinasse and Artusi), Thierry Rautureau (Luc and Rover’s), Jason Wilson (Crush), Matt Dillon (Sitka and Spruce and the Corson Building), and Ethan Stowell (lots of things).

Each chef takes over one of Montreal’s top kitchens for two nights, essentially putting on an upscale pop-up restaurant. As the Puget Sound Business Journal’s Glenn Drosendahl noted recently, Franey’s duo of dinners at Montreal restaurant Les 400 Coups are already sold out (reportedly within a day).

What does this mean for Seattle? Well, our city will be rather bereft of award-winning chefs named Jason for the duration of the festival. But it’s also a chance for some of our culinary talents to share this region’s cuisine with a new and broader audience.

Washington’s wine will also get some love. The festival will showcase Bergevin Lane, Gordon Brothers Family Vineyards, Hedges Family Estate, L’Ecole No. 41, Long Shadows, Milbrandt Vineyards, Precept Wine, and Rotie Cellars.

Montreal chefs are also doing a few Seattle-centric events, like a lunch exploring our local street food (prepared for eat-in or takeout). There’s also a grunge night that celebrates the music, wine, and food of 1991 for $65. Or $95 with wine.

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Tags: Ethan Stowell, Thierry Rautureau, Jason Stratton, Jason Wilson, Jason Franey, Matt Dillon

Artusi Chef Jason Stratton Explains the Mural

He put the art in Artusi…but should he have?

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Nov 14, 2011 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Photo: Lucas Anderson

The mural at Artusi.

Since his aperitif bar Artusi opened last June, aesthetes about town have been abuzz over chef Jason Stratton’s truffle tripe, his salsa tonnata, his dazzling Amari selection. Not to mention the 47-foot mural the good chef himself painted for the space.

Girdling the room, the panels splashed with vivid blues, yellows, pinks, and greens gives the clear impression of, well…preschoolers at the finger-painting station. “I remember the very first comment we heard about it,” admits Stratton. “That it looks like something someone’s autistic little brother would’ve done.”

This the good chef shares without a whiff of shame. “Frankly I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to paint a 47-foot mural while I was opening a restaurant,” Stratton chuckles, not even mentioning his other project, the stunning Piedmontese restaurant next door, Cascina Spinasse. “But I wanted to put my stamp on the room, in a personal way. I love the piece.”

In both the eats and the décor of Artusi, Stratton was interested in exploring the chaos of the organic form; the way natural elements are disorderly but we can impose order upon them. As against the rows of hex tiles that make up a visual trope in Artusi, Stratton yearned to introduce chaos. “Marks of the human hand,” he explains.

Aka: finger-painting.

“Like any art, some will like it,” Stratton philosophizes. “And some will loathe it.”

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Tags: Visual Art, Critic's Notebook, Jason Stratton

What did you do on your day off, chef?

Spinasse’s Jason Stratton gets up to a lot during his down time.

Posted by: Kristin Cordova on Sep 24, 2009 at 01:00PM 1 Comments

“I put my bang down flip it and reverse it.” Jason Stratton likes to work it on his day off.

Whether he’s tasting rare wines, bargain shopping for pig products, or belting out Missy Elliot tunes, Jason Stratton, executive chef at Cascina Spinasse, manages to get up to a lot during his down time.

Here’s what he did on his last day off.

I woke up late-ish, maybe around 11. I did boring things you have to catch up on after a week of not being in the house—recycling, etcetera.
I was also working on a playlist. My friend Emily Crawford, who works down at The Corson Building, just got married a couple months ago. Tomorrow she’s having her reception, so she asked me to DJ. She loves to dance, so it’s a mix of crazy old soul. I’ve been playing around a lot with old hip-hop samples and looking at the genealogy of R&B, modern radio stuff. I’m particularly fond of The Meters. That’s my own little weird obsession.
Next I went over to Spinasse and tasted some single vineyard barbarescos, which was exciting. It’s the newest vintage of the Produttori del Barbaresco. They have nine vineyards. In really good years, they release barbarescos from each one. So we tasted wines from the Pora Vineyard and Montestefano.
And then I went down to Fetherston Gallery on Pike. We have been talking to the owner Betsy [Fetherston] about focusing on some of her artists and having them hang work at Spinasse. I was like a kid in a candy shop looking through all those paintings. There’s an artist, David Konigsberg, who does these really fun, somewhat surrealist landscapes where people are dancing on a plane, or this lonely airplane is flying overhead with these fluffy clouds. I bought a piece there, and I’ve admired their shows for a while.
After that I went and got some pork shoulder for dinner at QFC. It’s like 99 cents a pound on some ridiculous half-off special! So I got a shoulder, some radishes, and collard greens and braised them all up with a little coconut milk and herbs. I’m kind of halfway moving towards fall, but I don’t want to quite let go of summer yet. I had that stew for dinner.
Later I met my Wednesday night crew at Bottleneck Lounge to watch Top Chef. I had Manny’s Pale Ale. After the show we always debate whether or not to extend the debauchery and go to karaoke at The Crescent. Missy Elliott is my calling card. I always sing “Work It.” But this time we just stayed at the Bottleneck.

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Tags: Jason Stratton, Cascina Spinasse, Chef's Day Off