Nosh Pit

Marjorie Has A(nother) New Chef

Josh Davenport arrived to help out temporarily, and decided to stay.

Posted by: Allecia Vermillion on May 16, 2012 at 03:25PM 1 Comments

Josh Davenport in the kitchen with Lauri Carter. Photo by Geoffrey Smith.

The kitchen at Marjorie has seen its share of changes since the popular restaurant moved to Capitol Hill in 2010. Most recently Lauri Carter came over from Lecosho to temporarily captain owner Donna Moodie’s diminutive kitchen. Carter brought along Josh Davenport, a friend from culinary school, to give her a hand, and it turns out Davenport will be staying on as the restaurant’s new chef. Carter will still be around, says Moodie, doing some consulting and catering.

“I had been interviewing for the chef position, and Lauri and I kept coming back to how great Josh would be,” says Moodie, who raved about Davenport’s enthusiasm and leadership. She says her new chef “has an even temperament” and was “deliberate, and thoughtful in making the final decision to take the position,” which sounds like code for “he’s planning to stay awhile.”

Davenport spent six years at the Sorrento after culinary school, was the executive chef at Ristorante Simone in Sammamish, and much earlier in his career he worked for a catering company that fed firefighters and first responders, cooking in semi trucks outfitted with commercial kitchens. “By no means was it gourmet,” he recalls. “They just needed calories.” The chef says his menu is simpler than previous iterations, and this time of year he’s particularly excited about pristine seafood from places like Hawaii and the east coast.

Davenport’s new (official as of two weeks ago) post at Marjorie happened just in time for patio season; the restaurant has one of the best on Capitol Hill.

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Tags: Marjorie, Shift Change, Shift Change, Josh Davenport

Rising Trend in Seattle Restaurants: “Only 30 Chickens a Night!”

Scarcity marketing comes to the dining room.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Feb 27, 2012 at 09:00AM 1 Comments

Ma’Ono Chickens: Get ‘em while they’re hot. (And before they’re all gone.)

We’ve all been to restaurants that run out of stuff—barbecue joints that close when the meat goes, sushi bars that nimbly switch specials according to what disappears, taco trucks that fold up earlier and earlier the more popular they become, bakeries that run out of their special brioche or—hey Nook !—freakishly delectable biscuits, a certain Cuban sandwich joint that routinely stabs its fans in the heart by hanging what might be the world’s saddest sign: No Bread.

(“I will buy them some bread,” muttered my devastated companion last time this happened. You want his number, Paseo?)

We all know why this happens: freshness demands it, and sometimes the best demographic demand prediction models—ie. guesses—are off.

So why not turn it into a marketing strategy?

Last week we were informed by our warm and welcoming waiter at Marjorie that its signature, The True Burger—a big freakin’ ball of beef with Worcestershire onions, harissa ketchup, bone marrow aioli, all the fixin’s, and a strip of bacon thick as a blade steak, on one strained-to-the-limit bakery bun—is only available to 10 lucky customers a night. “If you want one, you might want to tell me now,” our waiter confided when taking our drink orders. The place was starting to fill up.

Whew…we got ours! (It was fine, by the way…though insanely messy.)

Spring Hill did the same thing when it transformed itself a couple of weeks ago into the Hawaiian-tweaked Ma’Ono. The savvy joint knew how popular its fried chicken dinners were—periodic chicken-dinner-night test drives at Spring Hill had made that manifestly clear—so announcing that they’d be frying just 30 chickens per night and pricing them at $38 per couple seemed not just a safe strategy, but a savvy one.

Indeed, when I called for a table last week they were not only out of tables for the night—they were already out of chickens.

We will see more of this; from a restaurant’s standpoint what’s not to love? It sends the message that the kitchen cares about freshness. It (artificially) vaults a dish to star status. It has the potential to sell those tough-to-fill early tables. It grabs attention, of the sort I am bestowing right now.

And if it’s annoying for a customer to be told her favorite dish is already sold out for the night—it is, in equal measure, human nature being what it is, alluring. Indeed, call scarcity marketing the back-of-the-house’s version of a dining room’s no-reservations policy: A restaurant’s way of making itself look as popular as it possibly can.

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Tags: Marjorie, Restaurant Trends, Food Trends in Seattle, Critic's Notebook, Critic's Notebook, Ma'Ono Fried Chicken and Whisky, Nook

A New Burger For Your Consideration

Marjorie beefs up its menu—but only ten of the patties are available each night.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Dec 05, 2011 at 10:40AM 0 Comments

New on the menu at Marjorie: a burger. Photo courtesy the establishment.

“It’s new to the menu, but it’s not a new thought,” says Donna Moodie of the True Burger, the Painted Hills patty she just started serving at Marjorie. She’s thought about doing a burger for years (five, in fact), but the chefs she was working with were reluctant.

You see, burgers are such crowd favorites they tend to outshine other, more signature offerings—how many times have you sat at a table, glanced at the menu, and decided, “I’ll have the burger.” But in new chef Paul Hyman Moodie found her first cohort. (The man likes meat: tattooed on his forearm is “charcuterie,” big and black.)

They did their research but it didn’t take long to pin the winning recipe. “When we started taste testing, we were like, ’That’s it,’” she says of the beefwich, ground in-house and served on a bun from Columbia City Bakery. Naturally, pommes frites come on the side.

Perhaps to impede too many patrons from rebuffing Hyman’s original handiwork, only ten are available each night—and they’ve been a hit, says Moodie.

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Tags: Capitol Hill, Marjorie, Burgers

Menu Descriptions that…Aren’t

Beignets with pepitas, Bottarga, and Banyuls, anyone?

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Oct 18, 2010 at 09:00AM 2 Comments

Dined at the new Marjorie recently; noting once again its breezy, angular dissimilarity to its previous incarnation in Belltown. Charming still, with the ever-gracious Donna Moodie hosting masterfully…just no longer oozing that gypsy-trader’s-tent comfort of the former spot, in food or in mood.

Indeed, the food’s admirable but now quite foofy and composed. Not to mention, on the menu, nearly unintelligible. To wit, this menu description: “Squash Beignets with pepitas, Bottarga, Banyuls.”

“Well…I know what beignets are!” ventured one at my table of worldly sophisticates.

Banyuls, I half-knew, was a dessert wine; pepitas the Spanish word for pumpkin seeds. But would Joe Q. Eater know this?

And what the heck was Bottarga?

“Oh, that’s the roe of mullet,” our otherwise very helpful waiter explained, by way of non-explanation.

In fact it’s a sort of poor-man’s caviar, only sun-dried and cured to a substance that can be grated onto dishes for a bit of briny tang. Of course when our waiter described it as roe, I pictured tiny fish eggs.

The point being: We never would have known from either the menu description nor the waiter’s amplification that this beignet dish was in fact more of a frisee salad (beautifully dressed, by the way), scattered with pumpkin seeds and shavings of Bottarga roe, with six sweet squash beignets alongside.

Quite lovely in fact. But would a meaningful description have been so hard for the menu to give us?

We humbly posit that any menu that cares to identify the particular variety of salt crystals crowning its housemade butter—that’ll be Murray River salt, Your Highness—would be much better advised to identify the parts of the meal the vast majority of diners actually care about. And we’re not just talking to you, Marjorie.

Now, if they’d just tell us what cobia was…

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Tags: Menus, Marjorie, Menu Descriptions

How Many Restaurants in Seattle are Named for Family Members?

Bet you can think of a few we missed

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Jun 28, 2010 at 08:00AM 6 Comments

Meet Marjorie!

So I was sitting in the brand new Union Street Marjorie the other night, unfairly early for an actual review—though I couldn’t help noticing that its two swoony signatures from the charming gypsylike original Marjorie in Belltown, Miss Marjorie’s Plaintain Chips with grilled pineapple salsa and the freakishly divine Bourbon caramel bread pudding are still on offer, and still terrific—and it occurred to me that this restaurant, named for owner Donna Moodie’s mother, is in good company around town.

Etta’s Seafood is named for owner Tom Douglas’ daughter. Another Douglas restaurant, Lola honors his wife Jackie’s Greek grandmother.

Thierry Rautureau’s latest, the swanky little bistro Luc, is an homage to his father, a bulldozer driver from Brittany. (And no, Rautureau’s original restaurant Rover’s was not named after his dog—he inherited the name from the former owner.)

Restaurant Zoe and Quinn’s Pub are owner Scott Staples’ love notes to his kids.

Carmelita, the beautiful vegetarian sensation on Phinney Ridge? Co-owner’s mother.

Are there others?

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Tags: Restaurant Names, Etta's, Lola, Restaurant Zoe, Quinn's Pub, Marjorie, Carmelita, Luc