Nosh Pit

Savage Street Cuisine Extends Pop-Up Series at Volunteer Park Cafe

Talks of other ambitious plans.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Jan 25, 2012 at 09:09AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy Savage Street Cuisine.

Blogs have already offered plenty of predictions as to what the coming year will bring food-wise. Pardon the delay, but here’s another one: Savage Street Cuisine is a name you’ll hear a lot.

The fledgling venture of Kalen Schramke and David Howe appeared on the local scene in late October. That’s when the two Rover’s chefs launched their street food-inspired, cross-cultural pop-up at Volunteer Park Café. They’ve orchestrated one dinner a month since, and after a string of sellouts and a slew of repeat diners, plan to extend the series there through June, says Schramke.

Dates are set for January 30, February 27, March 26, April 2, and June 4 (all Mondays). Menus for each dinner will rotate and take inspiration from a different country or region: Africa, Korea, India, Italy—which area is TBD—and Eastern Europe (but not necessarily in that order). Schramke noted he and Howe (who’s also worked with Lark ’s John Sundstrom, Tamara Murphy, Scott Carsberg, and VPC owner Ericka Burke) like to dabble in cuisines that allow them to incorporate their homemade charcuterie.

Of course the idea here is Schramke and Howe will capitalize on the momentum and turn it into something bigger. Both are still working full-time at Rover’s but Schramke said he wouldn’t be surprised if soon they are focusing all their energy on Savage Street Cuisine. Eventually he hopes they’ll host three to four pop-ups a month (they’re scouting other locations, any ideas?), as well as one-off special events. The ultimate goal is a food truck. When will that be? Schramke shrugs at a time frame—could be summer, could be winter—but predicts it will happen in 2012.

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Tags: Volunteer Park Cafe, Seattle Pop-Ups, Savage Street Cuisine

Nosh Pit Weekly Planner

Volunteer Park Cafe’s fifth birthday, gluten-free Asian food at Book Larder, and chef-guided tours of Pike Place

Posted by: Brian Colella on Jan 09, 2012 at 11:45AM 0 Comments

Happy fifth birthday to Volunteer Park Cafe.

WEDNESDAY January 11

Join Volunteer Park Cafe for its fifth birthday celebration during dinner service from 5:30 to 9. In honor of the anniversary, dessert will be on the house. Call 206-328-3155 or go to VPC’s site to make a reservation.

THURSDAY January 12

Head to Book Larder to learn how to make gluten-free Vietnamese-style roasted pork meatballs with nuoc cham sauce, mixed vegetable tempura pancakes, and other previously-off-limits foods with the help of Laura Russell and her new book The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen. Tickets are $20 and the event runs from 6:30 to 8.

SATURDAY January 14

Starting now, and continuing for the next month, a different Seattle chef will host a weekly tour of Pike Place Market. Simon Zatyrka of Cutters Bayhouse hosts the first tour, which runs 9 to 1 and costs $75 per person (register online in advance). Up to 14 people can sign up; the tour ends with a cooking demo and light meal at kitchen showroom SieMatic Seattle. The next tour is led by Franz Junga of Il Fornaio.

TUESDAY January 17

Mike Easton of Il Corvo brings his digestivo creation Amaro Vittoria to Artusi for a tasting with Spinasse’s Jason Stratton. For $90 per person, you sample amaro, tour Oola Distillery, snack at Artusi and cap it with dinner at Spinasse. Call 206-251-7673 to register.

Dubbed a rock-star chef by the New York Times, San Francisco’s cult meat hero Ryan Farr comes to Book Larder to teach Whole Beast Butchery, his book featuring 500 step-by-step photos, recipes, and instructions for meat handling. To make this scenario even more meaty, neighboring Dot’s Delicatessen is providing food; the event runs from 6:30 to 8 and costs $10 per person.

WEDNESDAY January 18

Cafe Lago continues their Doposcuola series, this time starring Seattle Met‘s own Laura Cassidy teaching you how to Shop Like an Italian. Join Laura at 7 for antipasti and prosecco and she’ll show you the best independent and specialty shops for new or established Italian designers.

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Tags: Pike Place Market, Volunteer Park Cafe, Culinary Events, Seattle Food Events, Book Larder

Heather Earnhardt Leaving Volunteer Park Cafe

One of the best bakers in the city moves on.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Nov 16, 2011 at 03:30PM 1 Comments

Photo: Amos Morgan

Burke (left) and Earnhardt, pictured in 2007.

Here’s some big news: Heather Earnhardt, preternatural pastry maker at Volunteer Park Cafe, is moving on from the restaurant, according to a release.

Earnhardt, who helped to open and was with the cafe for five years, is leaving to teach baking and consult on projects. (Something she’s familiar with: High 5 Pie’s Dani Cone enlisted her help in early 2011.)

Two of Earnhardt’s “protégées” will take over for her, and VPC chef and owner Ericka Burke will have a hand in the baking as well. Anyone who has sampled Earnhardt’s baked goodness (especially those chocolate chip cookies) knows those are big red shoes to fill.

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Tags: Restaurant News, Volunteer Park Cafe

Erik Jackson Cancels Remaining Pop-Ups at Volunteer Park Cafe

The former Cuoco toque has a new gig at the forthcoming McCracken-Tough joint.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Aug 18, 2011 at 10:56AM 0 Comments

No more Monday pop-ups at Volunteer Park Cafe, at least for now.

Erik Jackson is joining the kitchen of Brian McCracken and Dana Tough’s new venture in the former Restaurant Zoë space, and so is bailing on A Square Meal, the short-lived bi-monthly pop-up he helmed at Volunteer Park Cafe. The Monday night series took shape in late June; two more of the dinners were scheduled for August 29 and September 12.

When asked whether chef/owner Ericka Burke might host more pop-ups, a rep for the restaurant said, “Ericka loves the idea of having a pop-up at VPC on Mondays. She likes to help out fellow chefs and would totally do it again if the fit were right.”

Jackson, an alum of the Tom Douglas enterprise (Serious Pie, Dahlia Lounge, and most recently Cuoco) and of McCracken and Tough’s Spur Gastropub, had approached Burke, taking his tenure at Dog Mountain Farm in Carnation as inspiration for the locally minded pop-up.

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Tags: Volunteer Park Cafe, Seattle Chefs, Seattle Pop-Ups

Seattle Beer Week: Best of the Beer Dinners

Some of Seattle’s top restaurants have paired up with brewers for multi-course feasts in honor of SBW. Reserve now.

Posted by: Katie Ormsby on May 20, 2011 at 09:34AM 0 Comments

Hope you are hungry: During Beer Week, Seattle restaurants pair up with craft brewers for multi-course pairing feasts.

We’ve been covering the drinking events over on Sauced, but our city’s restaurants are also playing host to a ton of beer-pairing dinners in honor of Seattle Beer Week—here are the five that sounded most promising to us.

Most of the meals are comprised of five courses, each course paired with a different beer. We called around to get as many menu details as possible, but some of the restaurants had yet to finalize their food.

This Saturday, May 21 Stone Brewing will be at Elemental at Gasworks for a five-course beer pairing dinner from 6 to 8pm. It costs $75 per person and reservations are recommended. The menu hasn’t been set.

On Monday, May 23: Crow hosts Pike Brewing for a five-course meal from 6 to 8pm, which runs $50 per person. The menu includes housemade pretzels, carved porchetta, and spring carrot cake for dessert.

Also on the 23rd: SoDo’s Epic Ales heads to Tilikum Place Cafe for a meal that begins at 6:30pm. That’s $70 per person.

Another meal with Cali’s Stone Brewing: Stone co-hosts a dinner at Volunteer Park Cafe that will take place starting at 7pm on Thursday, May 26 and costs $85 per person.

Here are the pairings: citrus seafood ceviche and Stone Levitation Ale; potato gnocchi, truffle fonduta, and shiitake mushrooms and Stone Pale Ale; sea bass in curried beer broth and Stone IPA; spicy braised pork spareribs and Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale; braised oxtail with bone marrow mashed potatoes and Green Flash/Pizza Port Carlsbad/Stone Highway 78 Scotch Ale; toffee browned butter brownies with vanilla ice cream and brûléed banana and Stone Old Guardian BELGO Barley Wine.

On Friday May 27, Portland’s Hopworks Urban Brewery pairs up with Trellis in Kirkland for a multi-course pork-centric dinner that begins at 6:30pm (expect to wrap up around 9:30pm).

It’s $65 per person and the dessert course is an ice cream float with a Hopworks stout as an accompaniment. Not a bad way to end an evening.

Check SBW’s website for a complete list of events.

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Tags: Beer, Special Dinners, Beer and Food Pairing, Pork, Volunteer Park Cafe, Special Menu,

Keeping an Eye on Volunteer Park Cafe’s Mac-n-Cheese Sauce

Here’s your homegrown novelty condiment for 2011.

Posted by: Christopher Werner on Mar 23, 2011 at 09:37AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy Volunteer Park Cafe.

We’re calling it now: When the ladies of Volunteer Park Cafe let fly their Mac Daddy Sauce, it’ll really, well, fly.

Consider VPC’s predecessors, other restaurants to recently bottle and merch coveted condiments—people hoard the stuff. You can’t bat a lash without seeing Boat Street Cafe’s pickled preserves lining some shelves somewhere. Skillet’s bacon jam has fans the country over blogging about it. And besides, the VPC sauce is made with enough cow’s milk to shave a few from the ticker—when have you known fontina, parmesan, Tillamook white cheddar, gruyere, and Mount Townsend Camp Fire, combined, not to be good.

Right now the mac-n-cheese sauce (recent subject of T magazine crushing) is available for purchase at the Capitol Hill cafe. An eight ounce helping costs $15. Taking production up a notch so the product is retailed elsewhere is likely. Talks of not only selling here in Seattle but out of state, too, are in effect, we hear.

On a recent visit to the restaurant, just one jar was chilling by its lonesome in the fridge—a sign of things to come, people.

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Tags: Celebrity Chefs, Volunteer Park Cafe, Seattle-Made Condiments,

Update on Volunteer Park Cafe’s Neighbor Drama

DPD to determine whether the Cap Hill favorite can continue to operate at its current location.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jun 30, 2010 at 09:57AM 3 Comments

Last week I wrote a post detailing Volunteer Park Cafe’s troubles with a neighbor who opposed the owners’ plans to start serving outdoors. To see if he couldn’t thwart the anticipated al fresco arrangement, the neighbor researched the property permits and found that the building had never been zoned as a cafe. It was zoned as a grocery store (which it once was).

Both Slog and the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog have reported further on the story. Slog’s Cienna Madrid identified the neighbor as Paul Jones (I guess I should stop referring to him as Mr. Roper), and talked to a rep from the Department of Planning and Development. From Madrid’s post:

“It’s a unique situation but not unheard of,” says DPD spokesman Bryan Stevens. Stevens explains that VPC is the only business operating in an area zoned for residential use. The cafe is housed in a building that was a grocery store a century ago, and the neighborhood essentially grew up around it. When the area was eventually zoned for residential use, the building was grandfathered in. “Technically, a store wouldn’t be allowed there now,” Stevens says.

So now, according to the article, the DPD will treat VPC as if it were a grocery store whose owners planned to turn it into a cafe, and thus they will determine whether Volunteer Park Cafe can continue to operate in its current location. Don’t expect anything to happen over night. CHS talked to Stevens too, and he told the blog that the process would take three to five months.

In closing, I think Madrid is a pretty cool last name.

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Tags: Restaurant News, Capitol Hill, Volunteer Park Cafe

Volunteer Park Cafe Neighbor Fights Outdoor Dining Area

Zoning issue plague the restaurant’s patio plans.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jun 24, 2010 at 02:59PM 7 Comments

Volunteer Park Cafe

As we reported back in April, Ericka Burke and Heather Earnhardt, chef/owners of Volunteer Park Cafe, have been building a patio and backyard garden. Their hope was to offer outdoor dining on the new brick patio, around which they’ve started growing veggies for the restaurant.

Not if their neighbor can help it. On June 24 (today), Burke wrote a group email detailing an unhappy situation with a Capitol Hill resident who wants to prevent the cafe from serving outdoors.

The neighbor researched the property’s permit history, discovering that it was zoned as a grocery store (the building housed a grocery for many years) and not a cafe. Burke says her lease indicates the property to be a cafe. A lawsuit could be forthcoming, she writes, but she hopes to keep her 90-year-old landlady out of the situation by buying the building outright.

Burke asked recipients to help VPC staff see their backyard dreams become reality by sending letters of support, expressing affection for the cafe (and the patio and garden in particular), which she will in turn deliver to the Department of Planning and Development. (If you wish to send such a letter, the cafe address is 1501 17th Street E, Seattle, Wa 98122.)

According to the DPD website, a complaint was filed on May 18 with the following note: “The grocery has expanded its use with a cafe.” The complaint is unresolved.

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Tags: Zoning Issues, Ericka Burke, Volunteer Park Cafe