Get a sneak peek of the bold new Ballard project from Tilth chef Maria Hines.
The 85-seat Golden Beetle includes a bar area (capacity 45) and dining room (capacity 40). Twenty-five lanterns hang from the ceiling, all custom made for Hines in Istanbul, Turkey.
“It cost more to get them changed over so they would be legit in the US—the electrical or whatever—than it did to buy the lanterns,” said the chef. “But they’re really pretty.”
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
The 85-seat Golden Beetle includes a bar area (capacity 45) and dining room (capacity 40). Twenty-five lanterns hang from the ceiling, all custom made for Hines in Istanbul, Turkey.
“It cost more to get them changed over so they would be legit in the US—the electrical or whatever—than it did to buy the lanterns,” said the chef. “But they’re really pretty.”
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
Eating her way through the street food of the Eastern Mediterranean, Hines was struck by the ingenuity of the vendors, and how openly they cooked and assembled their food.
“It’s about as exhibition as you’re going to get,” said Hines, who prefers her own restaurants to have open kitchens. “I like having that nice flow. We’re all connected: the servers, the cooks, and the guests.”
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
Hines loves the inherent juxtaposition of installing a super-precise combination oven next to the rustic wood-fired oven. “It’s the meeting place of the ancient, the beginning of times, all the way to the most contemporary equipment. I think it’s going to be fun to eat here and experience having snails sous vide and then have, like, a goat flat bread coming out of a smoky, wood-fired oven.”
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
The Wood Stone oven came with the space and is part of what attracted Hines to it. She commissioned Seattle Mosaic Arts to cover it in tiles matching the Mediterranean palate of the restaurant.
“That was the one luxury that I splurged on,” said Hines.
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
Tables will be set with a pot of housemade harissa (a Tunisian chili sauce) as well as cumin for seasoning.
In the Golden Beetle kitchen, says Hines, “we’re seasoning the food with spice, not just with salt. Whereas at Tilth everything is so clean—it’s just a little salt and a little lemon juice—here it is handfuls of cumin, handfuls of cardamom, toasted spices. All the food is big, bold, and spicy.”
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
Also on each table: Pink Flake salt from Murray River in Australia
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
Hines’ rock-climbing partner Frank Huster traveled with her through countries like Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt, snapping the photographs that decorate the new restaurant.
“I told him: ‘I have this fantasy that when I go to the Eastern Mediterranean to check out the food scene, you come along and take photos and I just pay for your room and board because that’s all I can afford to do,’” recalled Hines. “He was like: ‘Let’s do it.’ We stayed in hostels, we backpacked. It was like $60 a day for the two of us.”
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
Hines visited the only farmers market in Beirut, she said, whose organizer owns a restaurant nearby. “This guy is so forward-thinking and progressive. There are probably 30 vendors, and he has this great little restaurant down the street where he features a vendor every week.”
Another inspiring moment: a guy with a sweet-potato smoker in Cairo. “How fucking cool is that?” Hines marveled. “The thing probably never gets cleaned, it’s perfectly seasoned. With street food, what you see is what they’re doing. There’s nothing hidden.”
View Slideshow »
Illustration:
Golden Beetle will serve dinner six nights a week starting Friday, February 18.
A chef trained at some of the fanciest restaurants in the world, James Beard award-touting Maria Hines made a reputation for herself cooking elegantly simple, pure-flavor-promoting food at Tilth, her organic eatery in Wallingford.
When she opens her second restaurant, Golden Beetle, this Friday in Ballard, she’ll become associated with an entirely different sort of food: boldly spiced dishes inspired by Eastern Mediterranean street food.
“I spent some time in Morocco ten years ago,” Hines told me last week when I dropped by the nearly complete restaurant, “which is kind of what kick-started my love for street food from that area.” When it came time to open a second restaurant, “it was pretty quickly formulated in mind. But I didn’t want to open up a restaurant based off of research out of cookbooks. I wanted to go and be on the street tasting the food.”
So a few months ago she and her friend Frank Huster, a photographer whose photos of the trip now line the restaurant’s walls (see slideshow for details), set out to soak up the region. They traveled to Cairo, Istanbul, and Beirut among other cities, meeting street vendors who created inspiring eats composed in tiny nooks or atop ancient carts pushed down cobblestone streets.
“There’s a soulfulness about this kind of food,” said Hines. “Tilth is minimalist and restrained and the flavors are really clean. [At Golden Beetle] the food is big, bold, and spicy. I’m definitely comfortable having a broad range.”
Tilth alum Forrest Brunton will be chef de cuisine at Golden Beetle, and Hines will split her time between the two restaurants. Expect, among the dishes, lamb kibbeh fried in beef fat, turkey doner kebabs, and lamb tagine with green olive, cauliflower, and couscous. You can click on the slideshow above for a tour of the restaurant and more details, and read about the restaurant’s bar and happy hours here.
0 Comments
