Nosh Pit

For Your Weekend Consideration: St. Dames

The dinner house on MLK Way is at the top of the vegetarian game.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Mar 04, 2011 at 11:03AM 0 Comments

Vegetarian yumminess at St. Dames. Photo: Lucas Anderson.

Seattle’s veg set has landed itself a new hot spot, it seems. In-house critic Kathryn Robinson recently ventured south to try St. Dames and returned with glowing words for the diet-disciplined dining spot.

“Dismiss the vivid little candlelit destination dinner house at your own peril,” Robinson cautions, “for it has swiftly soared to the top of the vegetarian heap in this town for its nuanced way with brunch and dinner comfort foods.”

Vegans and gluten-free folk: yay for you, a good chunk of the dishes can be made as such. For more on St. Dames, click click click.

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Tags: Vegetarian/Vegan Whatnot, Rainier Valley

Taste of the Town: KEXP’s Kevin Cole

The host of the Afternoon Show talks Twizzlers, veganism, and the five songs nobody should die without hearing.

Posted by: Clancey Denis on Feb 16, 2011 at 03:43PM 0 Comments

You probably always wondered with the host of KEXP’s Afternoon Show looked like.

Some questions are easy for Kevin Cole to answer.

What does he do? He’s the Senior Director of Programming at KEXP and hosts the Afternoon Show every weekday from 2 to 6pm. How long has he been into music? Ever since he was a kid, glued to the radio, hanging on every song. Did he always want a career in music? Yes and no. He wanted to be a rock star, but he also wanted to be a priest, a photographer, and an Olympic athlete. His favorite artist? Prince, hands down. Cole even DJ’d at Prince’s 30th birthday party.

Other questions aren’t quite so easy. The best local bands right now? Seattle has the best music scene in the country, says Cole. But if he had to pick two artists that are “on the precipice of international appreciation for their enormous talents,” it would be Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and the Head and the Heart.

And the hardest question of all, the one that took Cole weeks of hand-wringing concentration to answer: What songs should no person die without hearing? Here is his painstakingly conceived list: The Five Keys, “The Glory of Love; ” Lorraine Ellison, “Stay With Me;” Sigur Ros, “Svefn-G-Englar;” John Coltrane, “A Love Supreme;” and the Arcade Fire, “Wake Up.”

After all that agonizing about music, talking favorite foods was no problem at all.

Eat to live or live to eat?
My whole life is pretty much organized around food and music. While eating one meal I’m thinking about the next. That said, I love clean, healthy food, and definitely eat to live.

Are you or have you ever been a vegan?
Yes, I’ve been every kind of vegetarian. I’ve been vegan, a health food vegetarian, a candy bar vegetarian, macrobiotic, and I am currently a non-dairy occasional fish eater. I’m sure there’s a name for it.

Where do you take out-of-town guests to eat?
Sutra, Bakery Nouveau, and Marination Mobile.

What’s your guilty food pleasure?
Dark chocolate or red Twizzlers.

Favorite way to burn calories?
Jump up and down to Ramones records—or as I like to say, Ramonesersize!

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Tags: Taste of the Town, Vegetarian/Vegan Whatnot, KEXP, Seattle Restaurants

The #8 New Dish of 2010: Chickpea Puree and Carrots at Sitka and Spruce

A simple lunch item that’s hard to forget.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Dec 22, 2010 at 09:56AM 0 Comments

Sitka and Spruce moved from Eastlake Avenue to Capitol Hill’s Melrose building this year.

2010 was a biggie for restaurant openings in Seattle. Nosh Pit looks back on the year with a survey of new standout foods we couldn’t stop talking about.

I met a friend, a food lover of the first order, at the new Sitka and Spruce for lunch this fall. We opted to share three or four small plates. Among them: a dish of chickpea puree and carrots.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “You silly foodies ordered hummus and carrots—a snack one generally eats standing over the sink before rushing off to spin class—at one of the city’s best restaurant. That’s dumb”

But it wasn’t dumb. The carrots were gently softened and served warm over the airy puree and the dish was pinged-up with just enough harissa, a Tunisian chili sauce, and then cooled with fresh mint. We soaked up the puree with crusty bits of Columbia City bread, savoring—really, truly savoring—every bite of lovingly seasoned, expertly textured veg.

We ate other things that day. I believe there was cake at the end of the meal. And we had a bibb lettuce salad, I recall, with some sort of lovely vinaigrette, and medallions of chicken, each wearing a little tent of crackly skin. On other visits to Sitka I’ve had richer fare—a duck that took an hour to cook, beefy scallops, soupy-headed shrimp. But I dunno, the carrots and hummus dish stayed with me, inspired my own humble cooking while helping me better understand what the heck Matt Dillion is up to over there in the Melrose Building.

Carrots and hummus, he served us. But oh, so much more.

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Tags: Capitol Hill, Vegetarian/Vegan Whatnot, Top 10 Dishes of 2010, 2010 in Food

Favorite Seattle Salads

Good places to get your greens (and fried chicken, too).

Posted by: Seattle Met staff on Jun 29, 2010 at 11:44AM 4 Comments

Salade verte from Bastille recreated at home
Photo: Jess Thomson

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Salade verte from Bastille recreated at home
Photo: Jess Thomson

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Baguette Box, home of the drunken chicken salad.

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Goi is good at Tamarind Tree in the ID

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The salade verte at Le Pichet downtown: a hazelnut-enhanced classic

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The big salad changes daily at Nettletown and may take longer than an hour to eat.

Seattle Met recently featured a recipe for Bastille’s salade verte, I highly recommend you try it at home. When the French decided that hazelnuts should be a regular ingredient in salad dressing they were very much onto something.

Here are some more of my other favorite everyday, easy-to-come-by salads around town:

A salad need not be light. The drunken chicken salad at Baguette Box is a total calorie whore, but who really cares when you’re looking at a bed of mixed greens—spruced up with orange slices, almonds, croutons, and caramelized onions, and covered in fried balls of chicken that have been crisped to perfection? Nobody, that’s who cares.

On the lighter side are shredded-veggie Vietnamese salads (gỏi), although my favorite does come topped with beef. It’s the gỏi bò at Tamarind Tree: slices of tender beef in an herby fish sauce lie on a bed of shredded cabbage, carrots, herbs, pickled onion, and roasted peanuts.

Le Pichet is a great place to remember when you’re downtown on the weekend in search of a late lunch—the menu is available from 11:30 to 5:30. When I’m there, I must order the cafe’s version of the classic salade verte with hazelnut vinaigrette. It’s basically a ball of bibb lettuce drizzled in perfect vinaigrette with a smattering of toasted hazelnuts tossed on top for good measure. On Capitol Hill, an identical salad is to be had at Cafe Presse (same owners).

It’s been a few months, but I’m still freaking out about Nettletown. The big salad changes daily, and features whatever foraged goodies have made their way into Christina Choi’s kitchen. The first time I went for lunch, I ordered a sandwich and one of my dining companions went for the salad. I actually had to leave her there after an hour to go back to work, she was still digging her way through that big old bowl of greens, and happily.

The insalata mista at Tutta Bella gets big points from me for having white beans as well as white balsamic vinaigrette. White balsamic is less syrupy than its brown counterpart, and when it has its zippy way with a plate of raw veggies the results are mighty fine. It also has carrots, olives, sweet red onions, roasted peppers, and the option to add Gorgonzola cheese. By all means, add it!

So there you have some of my favorites. But come now, good readers. Surely you have some favorite salads of your own. Please, tell us about them.

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Tags: Vegetarian/Vegan Whatnot, Nettletown, Le Pichet, Salad, Vegetables, Summer Eating, Tamarind Tree, Bastille

Earth Day Dinner Picks

Five last-minute choices for celebrating your favorite planet.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 22, 2010 at 02:25PM 0 Comments

Mac and yease at Plum Bistro

You have until 3:30pm to get to lunch-only Nettletown for an Earth Day lunch served up by forager extraordinaire Christina Choi. If you can’t swing that, make a reservation for dinner tonight at any of the five eco-friendly picks.

I checked for you, there are still availabilities at all of them.

1. Overfishing. That’s some scary stuff. Good thing you live in Seattle, home to Mashiko, the third sushi bar in the country to go 100 percent sustainable.

2. Phinney Ridge stalwart Stumbling Goat may have changed owners in 2009, but it remains a restaurant committed to sourcing proteins and veg from local farms. If it is sustainable meat treats you’re after, this is your spot. And you can wash down all that grass-fed goodness with a biodynamic NW wine.

3. Eat lower down the food chain but higher up the tasty ladder at Seattle’s number one destination for classy hippies: Cafe Flora. Make sure to order the pate platter appetizer, whose centerpiece is a beguiling lentil-pecan pate.

4. If you’re a vegetarian anyway, you might want to ratchet things up a little for the occasion. Plum Bistro on Capitol Hill is the 100-percent organic vegan eatery where Tobey Maguire gets his tempeh on when he’s in town. I hear great things about the mac and yease (really), but I’m partial to the quinua sliders. Trust me, it’s all better than it sounds.

5. Every day is pretty much Earth Day at Seth Caswell’s Emmer and Rye. Emmer’s motto is “seasonally inspired, locally derived,” for crying out loud, and Caswell is not joking around. The Chef’s Collaborative president can be counted on to use the best ingredients plucked by local foragers and raised on farms nearby. As I write this, there are currently three reservations available at E and R tonight—you’ll be eating at 4:30, 9, or 9:30pm. The choice is yours.

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Tags: Special Dinners, Vegetarian/Vegan Whatnot, Earth Day, Sushi

This Weekend: Two Very Seattle Food Events

Vegfest and Cook the Books

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 09, 2010 at 12:42PM 0 Comments

Pride and Prejudice, as interpreted by a past contestant of Cook the Books.

Some stereotypes are awesome and should be not only lived up to, but celebrated. Seattle’s much-noted penchant for hippie food, along with its frequently expressed devotion to literature, can be honored in two ways this weekend. Behold:

April 10 and 11 is Vegfest, held at the Exhibition Hall at Seattle Center. “There are over 500,000 free food samples from over 200 companies for you to taste,” reads the website “with foods such as Italian baked tofu, garbanzo bean curry and even Chocolate Silk soy milk.” Even chocolate soy milk! Love it. The fest runs from 10am to 6pm on both days, and costs just $8. Kids under 12 get in free.

The there is the 5th Annual Seattle Edible Book Festival—AKA Cook the Books—at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford. Here, contestants create edible interpretations of their favorite works of literature. It starts at noon on the 10th, admission is $10. Prizes (“most pun-derfull,” “most booklike in structure”) are awarded at 1:30pm. After that everyone eats the art and talks about how they don’t have cable—how they don’t even know what this Jersey Shore even is.

I can’t think of two better ways to teach your kids to be good Seattleites.

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Tags: Wallingford, Food Events and Festivals, Vegetarian/Vegan Whatnot