Nosh Pit Blog

Food Events

Slideshow: Foodportunity Returns to Palace Ballroom

Check out what everyone was eating at Monday night’s networking event.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Feb 07, 2012 at 01:20PM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

Metropolitan Market whipped up mac and cheese made with a nutty-sweet gouda.

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Gastronomes and media folk descended upon Palace Ballroom Monday evening for Foodportunity, the network-and-nosh event put on by Keren Brown (aka Frantic Foodie).

Brown has organized Foodportunity for several years now, both here and in Portland. The idea behind these events is to come and converse with fellow food obsessives while sampling bites from top-notch restaurateurs and local purveyors. The chefs talk attendees through the dish they chose to prepare, which is a neat opportunity to get inside their heads. Name tags facilitate the networking side of things, as does the cash bar (it’s amply stocked). So convivial is the atmosphere even foodportunists flying solo will find someone with whom to chat.

Many of the people at Foodportunity are repeat attenders and will eagerly share lessons learned from past events. For example, they’ll tell you it’s best to arrive when doors open at 6, when few others are there. That way you can go nuts with the food and avoid the awkwardness of trying to converse while doing so. (Or worse, getting grub stuck between your teeth during a gab session—definitely a networking no-no.) Also: it’s easy to miss the booths hidden in the back right corner of the foyer, but they’re some of the best of the bunch.

Check out the slideshow for more from the event and a sampling of the food on offer.

All photos by Seattlemet.com photographer Lucas Anderson.

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Tags: Palace Ballroom, Seattle Food Events, Foodportunity

Gift Idea

Tom Douglas Announces Family Cooking Classes

Spotlight on nutrition

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Nov 22, 2010 at 09:00AM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

Some of the freshness you’ll be learning to cook with.

Tom Douglas and Premera Blue Cross have joined forces to offer a Sunday family cooking class geared toward inspiring healthy, practical meals that families can prepare together.

Students (ages 10 through adult, please) will work directly with the chefs from Tom Douglas’ burgeoning empire (here are the newest two, Seatown Seabar and Rotisserie and Seatown To Go) to learn and practice cooking techniques from grilling to vegetable steaming to making lettuce wraps.

And then…you eat.

Class dates are Sunday, December 5 or Sunday, January 9 (it’s not a series), 11am-1:30pm; cost is $50 per person. Sign up here.

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Tags: Tom Douglas, Palace Ballroom,

Here piggy piggy piggy

Baconopolis! Returns, Third Year in a Row

It’s all about the exclamation point.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Aug 23, 2010 at 08:00AM Speech Bubble 8 Comments

Baconopolis! happens day after tomorrow folks.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 to be exact, from 6 to 8pm at the Palace Ballroom.

For those who haven’t attended the past two years, Baconopolis! pays homage to the world’s greatest food, offering several bac-o-centric dishes ($25 per guest) along with a cash bar. And plenty of water.

This year’s speaker is Ari Weinzweig, whose new book Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon is the source of all eight recipes to be prepared for the event—including Dutch bacon and gouda potato salad, cheddar bacon scones, and apple bacon crisp. The meat comes from Seattle’s legendary Bavarian Meats.

Getcher tix here.

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Tags: Tom Douglas, Bacon, Palace Ballroom, Culinary Events

Inside Tom Douglas’s Culinary Camp 2010

What are they doing over there at the Palace Ballroom? Here’s a photo tour.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jul 13, 2010 at 03:01PM Speech Bubble 5 Comments

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Every year, Tom Douglas hosts a week-long culinary camp at the Palace Ballroom.

The booze flows from 8:30am onwards. I arrived Monday morning to find the happy campers accessorizing their bloody marys and grazing the offerings of a Nordic breakfast—Swedish pancakes, smoked salmon, and lots of cheese—as they studied their daily challenge: 20 or so different roots set up on a table for them to identify. Over the speaker system, Sheryl Crow crooned loudly about her plans to soak up the sun.

Chef demos are a main attraction at culinary camp. When I stopped by yesterday, the buzz was all about chef Vikram Vij of Vij’s, the famous modern Indian restaurant in Vancouver, B.C. He was scheduled to come by in the afternoon to make savory raw jackfruit, a cream curry with sturgeon, mussels, and baby carrots, and a chicken curry. Other notables teaching this week include Holly Smith of Cafe Juanita, Christina Choi of Nettletown, and Armandino Batali of Salumi.

But the first demo of the day was by Douglas. Just after 9am, he divided the camp into two groups. The first group watched him break down a pig—the 65-pounder in question was a lean little guy, as you’ll see in the slideshow. The second group went next door to Palace Kitchen to compete in a veggie-based cookoff.

Douglas taught the campers how to butcher each cut of the pig, and volunteers came up and carved as well—one very likable little lady stood on tiptoes in order to reach around and lob off a hunk of ham. Douglas talked about butchering knives, “boners” as he calls them. Apparently flexible boners are good for quail, while stiff boners are best for lamb. Larger animals require a butcher boner.

When the poor piggy was all in pieces, Douglas ground up some of the porky bits for stuffing a porchetta —he seasoned it with garlic and fennel pollen, the latter is an amazing, potent ingredient I think you’ll want to buy as soon as possible.

Later, journalist Leslie Kelly joined Douglas on stage to wrap a rabbit in smoked pancetta and stuff it with whole herbs, onion, and lemon. Douglas cooked the rabbit on a rotisserie at 300 degrees F for about an hour. (He mentioned something about a rotisserie making him feel manly and virile.) As with all the dishes at Culinary Camp, the piggy rabbit was passed around for tasting. It was unspeakably delicious—juicy and tender from the rotisserie and augmented greatly by the smoky pancetta.

Meanwhile at Palace Kitchen, the second group of campers had broken into four teams. Their challenge was to create a dish using a selection of ingredients from the pantry—they could augment with animal products like bacon and smoked salmon, but vegetables were the focus. By the time I got there they were already plating, and the energy was Top Chef intense. Check out the end results in the slideshow.

Aside: Here are some random things I learned from Tom Douglas yesterday morning. Jade Garden, the dim sum restaurant in the I.D., is officially too dirty to be okay. “It was gross!” said Douglas of his last visit. If he goes to dim sum in Seattle, he goes to Harbor Village. The Yukon salmon currently on sale at Mutual Fish is the best he’s been able to buy for years. When buying salmon, by the way, the biggest fish are the best. Marcus Samuelsson—the recent Top Chef Masters winner—“could be a model,” he’s so good-looking, and Gordon Ramsey is just as mean in person as on TV.

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Tags: Tom Douglas, Pigs, Pork, Palace Ballroom, Tom Douglas Culinary Camp

Country Fare

Seattle’s best artisan ice cream vendors offered up the sweet stuff yesterday at Palace Ballroom. Seattle Met got the scoop.

Posted by: Seattle Met Staff on Aug 12, 2009 at 03:00PM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

Photo: All photos Nick Feldman

Lena Moses of Empire Ice Cream scoops out some sweet corn carmel ice cream, resting near the strawberry basil and blueberry lavender.

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Finally, someone figured out what to do with all the gourmet ice cream being churned out in this town. That someone was Tom Douglas, who, on Tuesday, August 11th converted the Palace Ballroom into an old-school country fair complete with a ring toss, photo booth, and treats galore. Dahlia Bakery was on hand with delicacies, and Douglas invited artisan ice cream enterprises Poco Carreto (the gelato cart featuring flavors from Holly Smith of Cafe Juanita), Parfait, Molly Moon’s, Empire, Half-Pint, and Full Tilt to share their wares. A sweet time was had by all.

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Tags: Tom Douglas, Palace Ballroom, Ice Cream, Seattle Food Events

Food Events

Inside Tom Douglas Culinary Camp

Just what are they doing over at Palace Ballroom this week?

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jul 14, 2009 at 02:00PM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

This week at Palace Ballroom, Tom Douglas holds court at Culinary Summer Camp, an annual program that includes cooking demos, cook-offs among campers, (with prizes ranging from olive oil to dinner at the Corson Building) and, I learned, a certain amount of drinking before noon.

The campers pay $2,500 for the weeklong program, and local guest chefs like Maria Hines (Tilth), Renee Erickson (Boat Street Café), and Thierry Rautureau (Rovers), show up to teach and taste alongside toquers from San Francisco, Chicago, and Germany.

The TD entourage—his daughter Loretta, Chef Eric Tanaka, and Shelley Lance (coauthor on the cookbooks), among others—is on hand to participate in that teasy, TD-behind-the-scenes banter that Douglas and staff have practically trademarked.

At the session I sat in on this morning, very enthusiastic TD pastry chef Garrett Melkonian demonstrated butterscotch pudding topped with glazed lardons (Bavarian bacon in a maple, scotch, and coca-cola—“preferably Mexican Coke”—syrup).

Douglas himself then detailed the ins-and-outs of boning a duck (oh, behave), offering up useful details along the way—to facilitate confident carving, for instance, a home chef should have a boning knife with a sticky handle.

(If you love double entrendre, by the way, you’d also love culinary camp. At one point TD held two duck breasts he had seared up to his chest. “How do you like my breasts?” He asked “They’re two different sizes,” replied a cheeky camper. “I’ve found that’s often the case.” Bah dum chish!)

Before I reluctantly went back the real world around noon, my stomach full of duck-egg stuffed ravioli, I’d seen one group of campers do a round of Makers Mark shots, several others swigging on champagne, and I myself had the chance to sample a tasty lambrusco: “La Luna” from Cantini Ceci—a semi-sparkling (frizzante) wine served chilled.

I didn’t catch the vintage but it looks like the 2007 retails for $14.99. I’ll be buying that.

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Tags: Tom Douglas, Palace Ballroom, Tom Douglas Culinary Camp,

Oink

What Up With All the Bacon News?

Apparently all is quiet in Hollywood, because bacon’s the new Brangelina

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Apr 13, 2009 at 12:00PM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

Seattle’s clearly in the grip of a Baconic Convergence. How else do you explain the following:

November’s rollout of the Bacon Salt boys’ latest, Baconnaise—yeah, it is bacon-flavored mayonnaise—got a major bump after Jon Stewart famously gagged on the stuff on national TV in late February. According to a recent report in the Seattle Times, online sales of Baconnaise went up “by a factor of five or six” right after the show. And yes, it’s made in a South Park warehouse.

The Culinary Communion cooking school and Lunch Counter restaurant may be going out of business…but their pork biz, The Swinery, just got approval from the King County Health Department to sell its bacon. Which means they have til the end of April (when they lose their building) to sell it to you.

If you pre-order it this week (emailsales@swinerymeats.com) you can pick it up for cash payment next week. Choose $12-per-pound hormone-free Berkshire bacon, along with fresh sausages, ground bacon burgers, and BACON PIMP tee-shirts.

Yes, that was ground bacon burgers.

Finally, Tom Douglas is milking this obvious cash cow—er, pig—with Baconopolis!, an evening of artisan bacon tastings and porky nibbles from bacon hash to butterscotch bacon bites. It’ll be at the Palace Ballroom (the party adjunct of Palace Kitchen) on Friday, April 24, from 6pm-8pm, and cost $20 per mouth. Which includes a drink ticket.

And you will need a drink.

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Tags: Tom Douglas, Bacon, Palace Ballroom, Baconopolis

It's Tuesday

Restaurants Getting Greener, Part II

As in…St. Paddy’s Day

Posted by: Seattle Met Staff on Mar 13, 2009 at 09:00AM Speech Bubble 1 Comments

Yo, lads and lassies. Tuesday’s St. Patrick’s Day. Here are some doings:

Wilde Rover will be serving up corned beef and cabbage, Guinness lamb stew, and shepherd’s pie on March 16th and 17th as part of its two-day St. Patrick’s Day celebration. (Why limit to one day what you can enjoy for two?) Eat first, then dance, to a whopping six Celtic bands in two days, with acts playing simultaneously in the pub’s two rooms on Tuesday night.

They’re starting early at Paddy Coyne’s South Lake Union location, where the live music begins at 10am. (Psssst: A new Paddy Coyne’s opened last night in Bellevue, in the Lincoln Square Building on Bellevue Way. Packed. They will offer merriment Tuesday, too…but at this point they’re just trying to get all the lightbulbs screwed in.)

Here are a couple you weren’t expecting: a party at Palace Ballroom, (the party venue associated with Tom Douglas’ Palace Kitchen), complete with Northwest artisan beer and finger food. For $35 a head, guests can enjoy live music while roaming table to table, sampling snacks and sipping local suds like Scuttlebutt, Boundary Bay, and Issaquah. Chef Peterson will serve Irish-inspired snacks including pulled pork, espresso pudding, and beef mole.

At BOKA Kitchen + Bar, the lunch special on Tuesday will be corned beef with Guinness-glazed potatoes for $10, with $3 Guinness drafts all day and $14 flights of Irish Whiskey (Jameson, Bushmills, and Red Breast) from 3:30pm to close.

Rowdier crowds will find plenty of revelry at Fado and Kell’s, both of which will extend the St. Paddy’s celebration into the streets. Fado will start the nonsense at 7am, enticing groggy patrons with a full-bar beer garden, Irish menu items (hope for shepherd’s pie), and outdoor heaters set up on First Avenue. Kell’s is plenty serious too, closing off Post Alley to make room for a festival tent, which will be up both Monday and Tuesday, featuring Irish bands both days. The $20 admission fee will benefit St. Vincent de Paul’s homelessness projects. Look for Kell’s signature Ethna’s Irish Soda Bread, along with other Irish warhorses.

And… sláinte.

—Karen Quinn

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Tags: Tom Douglas, Taste of Washington, Palace Ballroom, Seattle Irish Pubs, Paddy Coyne's, Wilde Rover, Boka Kitchen and Bar, Fado, Kells Irish Pub

Nosh Pit

Slideshow: Foodportunity Returns to Palace Ballroom

Tom Douglas Announces Family Cooking Classes

Baconopolis! Returns, Third Year in a Row

Inside Tom Douglas’s Culinary Camp 2010

Country Fare

Inside Tom Douglas Culinary Camp

What Up With All the Bacon News?

Restaurants Getting Greener, Part II

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