Nosh Pit

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

Triangle-Shaped Restaurants

Newsflash! Recent openings of Terra Plata and Macleod’s Scottish Pub reveal triangular trend!

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Jan 03, 2012 at 09:00AM 4 Comments

Macleod’s in Ballard is one of the latest additions to the triangle team.

Maybe it’s Seattle’s colliding street grids, maybe it’s just our penchant for idiosyncratic spaces. But the recent openings of Terra Plata and Macleod’s Scottish Pub remind me that Seattle’s long been one for three-walled dining.

Make that drinking. Consider Fremont’s 9 Million in Unmarked Bills (nee the Triangle Tavern), Olive Way’s Clever Dunne’s, The Triangle Pub in SoDo, Knee High Stocking Company on Capitol Hill, and Mac’s Triangle Pub in White Center. Not to be forgotten: The Saint on Capitol Hill; Matador in Ballard.

And for coffee: Caffe Vita in Pioneer Square, with its Pizzeria Napoletana in the corner.

(Speaking of pizza: The Independent in Madison Park has three sides.)

As for restaurants, I’m thinking Pasta Freska on Westlake, Ristorante Machiavelli on Capitol Hill, MistralKitchen downtown, and the legendary Pho Bac at the International District confluence of Rainier, Boren, 14th, and Jackson Streets—now painted and reconfigured to resemble a brilliant red boat.

What have I missed?

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Tags: Restaurant Trends, Critic's Notebook

A New Trend in Restaurant Design: Wallpaper

Specifically, ornate floral wallpaper.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Dec 16, 2011 at 11:30AM 0 Comments

Photo: Andrew Waits

Cure

Timber trimmings, subway tile, and Edison bulbs have all but defined recent restaurant/bar design. Lately though, industry folk have eschewed (or in some cases supplemented) said trends with another aesthetic: wallpaper, particularly of the damask variety.

Back in March when I was profiling Eric Hentz of Mallet Inc, he was in the midst of designing Cure. Hentz styled a portion of it in textured fleur-de-lis–esque wallpaper, a coat of Dutch gloss paint on top. He chose the paper to blunt the boite’s cold, concrete interior; also, because at 750 square feet and with a wall of windows flanking one side and a lengthy, well-stocked bar the other, Cure left little room for surface detailing.

“Wallpaper? I think of my mom and aunt with wallpaper in the bathroom and I’m like, Ugh, what a nightmare,” said Amy Haldane prior to opening Cure on Capitol Hill in May with husband Eric. “But it’s a great solution—and a creative one.”

The Sexton. Photo courtesy Brandon Cook.

Indeed, wallpaper is no longer the purview of blue hairs (or tiny restaurants). Elsewhere in Capitol Hill, Canon, Bako, Tavern Law, and Grim’s —all relative newcomers—boast damask patterns of some sort.

Hub of trends the Hill be, the wallpaper is now emanating across I-5 and over Ship Canal. Phinney Market Pub and Eatery is outfitted with a striking black wall of curlicues (see a pic here). You’ll find something similar at The Sexton, the spankin-new Ballard Ave den of southern hospitality, and the just-opened The Upstairs in Belltown.

Word has it when Manhattan Drugs debuts it’ll be decked out in damask, bringing the trend full circle—the restaurant and bar is smack in the heart of Pike/Pine.

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Tags: Restaurant Trends, Restaurant Design

What’s With All the Grandma Restaurants?

Some of our hippest new establishments are ancestrally named.

Posted by: Allecia Vermillion on Nov 29, 2011 at 12:40PM 4 Comments

Awww. Dot’s Delicatessen owner Miles James’s grandma Dot outside his Fremont meatery. Photo via Facebook.

In Seattle we’ve seen our fair share of restaurants named after kids (Quinn’s, Restaurant Zoe, Cafe de Lion), moms (Marjorie), and a whole heap of establishments named after the old buildings that house them (Auto Battery, Uneeda Burger, Staple and Fancy).

This year, however, it’s grandma’s turn. Seattle Magazine’s Allison Scheff said today that unstoppable hospitality duo Laura Olson and Chris Pardo are planning a Scandinavian small plate destination in Ballard dubbed Queen of Norway. It’s an homage to Pardo’s grandmother, who won that title in a Ballard parade in the 1930s.

Elsewhere in Ballard, Corson Building veteran David Sanford is readying his restaurant, Belle Clementine, which also happens to be the name of his father’s mother. Her photo (she’s a sharp dresser) even graces the restaurant’s website. Earlier this year, Miles James opened his divine temple of meatery, Dot’s Delicatessen, named for his grandmother.

Even grandfathers got a bit of love this fall. Chef-owner Sam Crannell’s new Queen Anne restaurant, LloydMartin, combines the surnames of his maternal and paternal grandfathers, both entrepreneurs.

As far as naming trends go, this one is far dearer and more personal than our restaurant community’s never-ending love of ampersands. And now I feel especially guilty that the most lasting tributes I ever created for my grandparents involved misshapen clay objects and third-grade art class.

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Tags: Restaurant Trends, Trending, LloydMartin, Queen of Norway, Belle Clementine

Latest Trend in Restaurant Menus: Listing the Staff

First it was the farm. Then it was the name of the fisherman. Now it’s the name of the dude who’s schlepping your plate.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Nov 21, 2011 at 09:00AM 9 Comments

Soon you’ll know their names, genealogies, and whether they were raised on corn or grass.

Photo courtesy Patric Gabre-Kidan.

Restaurant menus are curious and getting curiouser, increasingly exploding with information diners do not need—the provenance of the salt on the butter (yo Spring Hill!), the (health department mandated) warning that undercooked or raw foods may kill you—even as they stint more and more on the food description a diner critically needs to make an informed menu choice, like what the heck beef bò mỡ chai is. (I’m lookin’ at you, Ba Bar.)

But shame on me for calling out a couple of offenders by name. There are, after all, so many.

The latest trend in menu verbiage may be most interesting of all: Naming the staff. The opening menu at the new Marché in Pike Place Market lists both chef (the great Daisley Gordon, who piloted the kitchen of Marché’s predecessor, Campagne) and sous. Maria Hines has been spreading the love for years at Tilth with this practice, naming the chef de cuisine and the sous in addition to herself; when she opened Golden Beetle earlier this year she also threw the lead line cook in for good measure.

Artusi, the aperitif bar on Capitol Hill, gives us the whole kitchen crew, then lists the floor and bar staff as well. Meanwhile its sister restaurant next door might as well have rolling credits. In my fall visit to Cascina Spinasse the menu named the chef—Jason Stratton—and the sous chef, Carrie Mashaney…followed by the names of the nine kitchen staffers, the pastaiolo (pasta maker), the business manager, the wine director, and all 12 floor staffers.

What’s going on? Credit where credit is due, in part. The best chefs in town have long been spreading the kudos around when asked to comment or pose for photos; a nice egoless touch.

But it strikes this professional diner that a little of the opposite impulse might be at play here too. The last decade or so has seen a sea change in the way restaurants view themselves: No longer mere dining rooms, they are now status symbols, the highest status among them offering the cachet of Michelin stars, impenetrable tables, long lines, or rock-star chefs. More than anything else, a lavish list of menu credits would appear to hint at a restaurant’s sense of its own impressive culinary gravitas, no?

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Tags: Menu Descriptions, Restaurant Trends, Critic's Notebook

Trend Report: What Chefs Really Think of Foam, Food Trucks, and Foodies

For our Best Restaurants issue we asked the chefs and they answered. Boy did they answer.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Oct 31, 2011 at 09:08AM 1 Comments

The food photos in our Best Restaurants issue will make you salivate—but our feature entitled Chefs Bite Back may be even more delish.

We asked the city’s finest chefs for their uncensored, anonymous opinions of their competitors, their customers (that’s you, bub), the critics (uh—that would be me), and more—including the biggest culinary trends afoot this moment.

What they like? Farm-to-table dining. Shared plates/small plates. Molecular cuisine (er…in a telling tie with moving away from molecular cuisine." Ha.) What they loathe? Let’s just take their comments straight-up, shall we?

• “I think Happy Hour is the worst thing for our industry.”
• “Cocktails with bacon.”
• “The food truck thing.”
• “Anything to do with foam.”
• “Cheap-at-all-costs: It limits how we can treat our employees.”
• “Communal tables. I will never eat at one.”
•“The absolute worst trend is Groupon-style vouchers: They train people to expect something for nothing.”
• “Chefs who open so many restaurants they can’t focus on one in particular.”
• “Deification of chefs.”
• “‘I’m a foodie’ has to be one of the most annoying things I’ve ever heard in my life.”
• “Pork belly is played out. I mean, I have it on my menu right now but I think it’s definitely past its prime.”

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Tags: Restaurant Trends, Food Trends in Seattle, Critic's Notebook

Restaurant Trend of the Year: A Water Bottle on Every Table

Guzzlers, take heart. Ice lovers, you’re outta luck.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Sep 19, 2011 at 08:30AM 1 Comments

Frequent diners have surely noted that the last year or so has seen a water refilling revolution: Reusable swingtop water bottles on every table, so diners can replenish their own glasses.

Bottles like this have been recently spied at Sitka and Spruce, Ba Bar, Local 360, RN74, and Golden Beetle. So has this revolution gone, it feels newsworthy when a restaurant doesn’t offer a bottle—as Harvest Vine recently did not.

Instead, a busser came around periodically with a pitcher. Trés 2010.

And yet…strangely appreciated, allowing several more touchpoints of human service than we’d have gotten otherwise. A moment to order another cocktail, perhaps, or ask a question about a dish.

So you tell us: In your opinion do water bottles on tables represent better or lesser service?

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Tags: Restaurant Trends, Critic's Notebook

Trend of the Week: Purches

Is this a new design/utility trend or have I just been staring so hard at my food I haven’t much cared what my purse was up to?

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Aug 08, 2011 at 11:09AM 5 Comments

Behold the purch.

Heretofore there has been no word for purse perch, but we feel pretty good about having combined it into purch: A hook or shelf or otherwise designated resting place for a handbag. These are particularly useful at counter seats in restaurants or bars, which are too elevated to enable diners to remain grabbing distance of their valuables on the floor.

Anyway, who wants to put her purse on the floor?

The original Serious Pie on Virginia has nice fat hooks hanging under the high tables for this purpose. So, we noted the other night, does the new aperitif bar, Artusi. Going them both one better is the fancy setup at Crush, where our waiter slid a little white stool up alongside my white table and white chair. “For your handbag,” she murmured, reinforcing my sense that Crush is, at its heart, really not a Seattle sort of place.

Purse-stools are reportedly all the rage in Europe, and have recently been spied at the blingier restaurants in cities like Miami and Vegas. And yes, they serve a clear purpose for the diner—who this far up the food chain is likely to be carrying a spendy designer handbag. But don’t forget their utility for the restaurateur, who doesn’t want your chain handles grinding up his chair backs any more than he wants your slouch bag tripping his waiters.

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Tags: Restaurant Trends, Critic's Notebook

Volunteer Park Cafe Latest to Embrace Pop-Up Trend

Bimonthly dinners will feature Cuoco toque Erik Jackson.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Jun 09, 2011 at 11:47AM 0 Comments

Erik Jackson’s pop-up dinners at Volunteer Park Cafe are planned to run through mid-September.

Pop-ups, long a retail trend and a burgeoning culinary one in other cities, have been slow to gain footing here in Seattle, but that’s not to say we haven’t seen some evidence of the come-cook-in-my-kitchen philosophy.

There was Dumpling Dojo last year on Broadway. Skillet tested out the menu for its now-open diner during several dinners around town. Before opening Emmer and Rye, Seth Caswell clocked in at Art of the Table. And of course there’s the popular Shophouse at Licorous, helmed by Lark sous Wiley Frank and happening every Monday.

Which now has competition. Volunteer Park Cafe sends word Erik Jackson, toque at new Tom Douglas joint Cuoco, will cook in the northern Capitol Hill restaurant every other Monday starting June 20.

Per press materials, A Square Meal is inspired by Jackson’s tenure at Dog Mountain Farm in Carnation, “where he crafted multi-course meals created from the farms bounty.” His VPC dinners cost $65, begin at 6pm, and are BYOB (wine or beer only. Speaking of trends Seattle should adopt…) Give 206-328-3155 a jingle to make a reservation.

Don’t forget to snag a cookie on your way out.

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Tags: Special Dinners, Restaurant Trends, Food Trends in Seattle

Artisanal Mercantiles Are Popping Up All Over

Let’s track the trend.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Mar 15, 2011 at 11:33AM 0 Comments

Eat now, take grub home for later. The mercantile at Belltown restaurant Local 360.

Welcome news for those who prefer to take home a souvenir or two along with their doggie bags: when it opens, Poquitos will operate an in-house mercantile. The for-sale counter will stock yums courtesy our neighbors to the south: Mexican Coke, those fruity, pucker-sweet Jarritos sodas, Rancho Gordo Heritage Beans, chocolates and sugars.

The Pike/Pine restaurant is the latest in a spate of eateries to tempt diners with goodies on their way out. Consider:

Gourmet victuals line the entryway of Sitka and Spruce, which, we shan’t fail to mention, is situated in the granddaddy of Seattle’s mercantile boom, Melrose Market.

Similar in mindset but smaller in size is the still-to-open canteen at Belltown restaurant Local 360. Like Melrose, it, too, will tender cheeses, meats, and produce from multiple purveyors, though you won’t find more than one person proffering in there. Worth noting is the fact that the mart will stock a line of Local 360–branded products; pickles, condiments, and the like. Last we heard from the 360 folks the shop was due to open imminently; we’ll let you know when we hear it’s a go.

The trio of occupants on the corner of Westlake and Harrison also ride the one-stop-shop vibe. Upstairs is Serious Pie II, downstairs a bakery, Dahlia Workshop (Lordy, that fried chicken biscuit), and Soul Wine tasting room and grocer. Not far away is On the Fly, the Flying Fish deli that carries a handful of locally produced goods, like creamed honey from Ballard Bee Company.

Spot the piggybacking anywhere else?

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Tags: Seattle Restaurant Openings, Restaurant Trends, Pantries and Mercantiles,

The Newest Seattle Restaurant Trend: Graffiti

Capitol Hill’s Mod Pizza will be the latest to join the tagged team.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Feb 15, 2011 at 08:48AM 1 Comments

Graffiti everywhere. Here, at Revel in Fremont.

Mod Pizza, “a fast-paced exciting environment” where the pie arrives super fast and is uniformly priced at $6.28, will soon debut its fourth branch, this one on Capitol Hill. When it opens at 519 Broadway East in the last weeks of March (the oven was recently installed), diners will consume their pizza super fast among splashy-sassy walls.

Says company rep Mary Douglas, “Like all the other Mods, this site will look different and have that ‘edge’ to it.” “Edge” will come courtesy of “an amazing graffiti artist” whose paint job will embellish the interior, she reveals.

The pizzeria follows the lead of Revel in Fremont, where an abstract pastel by Seattle artist Pubs (above) flanks the exterior. At Munchbar in Bellevue, neon boomboxes, stars, and marshmallow scribble, courtesy Jordan Nickel, bedeck the walls in a very Fresh Prince sort of way. Belltown’s Dope Burgers does a ragtag beefwich that kinda resembles a flying saucer. And then there’s the midroom mural at Satay.

Five newcomers in three months, give or take—the Banksy effect is sweeping Seattle.

Spot the spray anywhere else?

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Tags: New Seattle Restaurants, Seattle Restaurant Openings, Capitol Hill, Pizza, Restaurant Trends, Mod Pizza

Fifteen Restaurants Where It’s Better to Eat at the Bar

Sometimes the best seat in the house is on a stool.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Jan 10, 2011 at 02:06PM 0 Comments

Photo: Amos Morgan

At Ethan Stowell’s How to Cook a Wolf, opt for a bar seat.

Any shrewd restaurant hopper knows where you sit is right up there with what you order—not for nothing are backroom banquettes and doorway two-tops empty. And the shrewdest of noshers know that the bar, once the turf of happy hour hangers-on and table-waiters, is now the place to perch.

It’s thanks to the ubiquitous open kitchen—and the cocktail counters overlooking them—that saddling up stool-style is occasion to peep some of this city’s finest culinary maestros in action. We’ve put together a list of 15 Seattle restaurants where that’s the case.

So skip the wait, go barside, and make a new friend—the chef.

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Tags: Restaurant Trends, Seattle Restaurants