Sauced

Lot No. 3: Bellevue’s Newest Bar

Casey Robison is responsible for the stellar cocktail program at Barrio. Here’s what he’s up to at Lot No. 3.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jun 04, 2010 at 03:36PM 0 Comments

Bellevue’s newest bar is Lot No. 3, a brown-liquor-centric offering from the Heavy Restaurant Group, the people behind both Barrios and all the Purple Cafes. It’s also a much-needed place to have a drink as late as 2am—one of only two or three such spots in all the town of Bellevue.

Say what you will about chain restaurants, there is no denying that Barrio has one of the best cocktail programs in the city. The drinks are challenging, original, some of them esoterically smoky, and nearly all of them very tasty. Frankly, the food there could learn a lot from the drinks. And those drinks you can credit, for the most part, to Casey Robison.

Robison was also responsible for the bar at Lot No. 3. For this new spot, which specializes in simple comfort food and fine beers as well as aged spirits, Robison created a list of classic cocktails and designed a build-your-own Manhattan menu: you choose your whiskey (bourbon or rye) your bitters, and your vermouth. Cool idea, though one he openly admits to stealing from a bar in San Francisco.

Lot No. 3 has been open for about two weeks, and in that time Robinson says he has been surprised by Bellevue’s thirst for cocktails and esoteric spirits. He says he’s already had to reorder Japanese whiskey, which kind of shocked him. (I credit Naga for introducing B-ville to Yamazaki in the first place.)

So will we see a Lot No. 3 in Seattle sometime soon? “Let’s just chill for a minute,” laughs Robison, who helped open three restaurants for Heavy within the space of a year and a half. Still, he says, “it would not surprise me” if another one popped up one day on the west side of Lake Washington.

Lot No. 3 is located in the Bellevue Towers at 460 106th Ave NE. Robison works the bar on Thursday nights.

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Tags: Bellevue, Cocktails, Seattle Bartenders, Whiskey

Five Questions for the Bartender: Mike McSorley

Do not threaten Bellevue’s fiercest cocktail competitor. He’s got weapons.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 13, 2010 at 10:07AM 1 Comments

Mike McSorley

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Mike McSorley

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Cocktails at Naga

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Naga Cocktail Lounge

There’s a bar in Bellevue called Naga Cocktail Lounge, it’s attached to Chantanee Thai restaurant.

Behind that bar, two bartenders are making award-winning cocktails. Evan Martin’s punch just became the official cocktail of Tales of the Cocktail 2010, a massive drinks convention in New Orleans. And Mike McSorley, who is the bar manager over there at Naga, was the regional winner in the verybigdeal 42 Below World Cocktail Cup. And here’s a little-known fact about Mike McSorley: his homemade maraschino cherries will change your cocktail-making life. Guaranteed.

Here, five questions for Mike McSorley.

What is the most underrated spirit?
Well, there are many… but my current vote goes to aquavit. I’m working really hard to make it the new bartenders’ shot of Seattle (the way Fernet is in San Francisco). When frozen, it’s a really delightful shooter. It makes me think of drinking a slice of pumpernickel.

What’s your favorite Seattle bar (other than Naga)?
I can’t say the Zig Zag Cafe, or Vessel, or Naga, so I have to talk about my local: Snoose Junction part dieu on 105th and Greenwood. They have a vinyl menu, and will play an entire side of a record upon request. They also have a great selection of liquors, liqueurs, and absinthe. Happy hour isn’t bad either.

What drink do you order at that bar?
Manny’s Pale Ale and a whisk(e)y of some sort. Excellent bedfellows.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen someone do in a bar?
Threaten to jump over the bar and “teach me a lesson”. I promptly grabbed my fish billy club (which I use to crush ice) in one hand, and then grabbed my 7 1/2 inch Nakiri-style chef’s knife by Ryusen in the other. Needless to say, the customer in question did not stay around to see what I planned on doing with said items.

Scary. Name three reasons you live in Seattle.
I came to Seattle to go to college at the UW. I stayed here because I like how people relate to one another. I keep staying here because of my wonderful girlfriend.

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Tags: Bellevue, Cocktails, Five Questions for the Bartender, Cocktail Competitions

Local Bartender Wins Big Cocktail Competition

Evan Martin’s Death in the South Pacific is the official drink of Tales of the Cocktail 2010.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 01, 2010 at 07:38AM 1 Comments

Death in the South Pacific (Photo: Evan Martin)

I’ve known Evan Martin of Bellevue’s Naga Cocktail Lounge was creative with the drinks ever since he designed this Mad Men-themed cocktail featuring Pepsi ice cubes for Sauced. Cool drink, no?

So it makes perfect sense that an invention of Evan’s will be the official drink of Tales of the Cocktail 2010. But it’s still very exciting. Tales of the Cocktail is a massive bartender’s convention that takes place every year in July in New Orleans, it’s attended by drink luminaries across the land.

For this contest, bartenders around the country were asked to submit variations on a planter’s punch.

Evan’s recipe, purloined from the TotC web site, is below. Even if you don’t plan to make it, be sure to read Evan’s instructions for the garnish. I love a drink that doesn’t take itself too seriously. And then wins big. Go Evan!

Death in the South Pacific
0.75 oz. Appleton Estate Extra 12 Year Old rum
0.75 oz. Rhum Clement VSOP rum
0.5 oz. Grand Marnier
0.33 oz. Trader Tiki’s Orgeat Syrup
0.33 oz. Fee Brothers Falernum
3 dashes Absinthe
0.5 oz. Fresh Lime Juice
0.5 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice
0.5 oz. Fee Brothers Grenadine
0.5 oz. Cruzan Blackstrap rum
Add all ingredients except for the grenadine and Cruzan Blackstrap to a Zombie shell glass and fill with crushed ice. Swizzle the drink well to mix and frost the glass and then pour in grenadine. Overfill the glass with crushed ice and then pour in Cruzan Blackstrap.

Garnish
Take a bamboo skewer and put a brandied cherry through at the very top followed by 1 pineapple leaf (insert through the middle) and then cut off skin from 1 large orange slice and then cut the strips in half. Insert the ends through the skewer having them hang on opposite sides of each other. Then insert the straw through the loop in the bamboo skewer. It should look like a guy hanging off of the drink (cherry=head, pineapple leaf= arms, citrus peel dangling away from each other are the legs)

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Tags: Bellevue, Cocktails, Cocktail Recipes, Tales of the Cocktail, Evan Martin

Make This: Homemade Maraschino Cherries.

A simple recipe for homemade maraschinos from Naga Lounge bar manager Mike McSorley

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 22, 2010 at 11:55AM 2 Comments

My parents rarely made cocktails, but they always had maraschino cherries. Stuffed into the top condiment shelf on the refrigerator door, the glass jar full of goopy fruit would rattle against the Miracle Whip and the Grey Poupon whenever you opened or shut it. The cherries came out sometimes at parties, but mostly they were there for when my great grandmother came for a visit, bringing with her the world’s most fabulous white cake with coconut frosting and a strictly adhered-to policy of imbibing one Manhattan cocktail every day at dusk.

Oh, how I loved that cake. But such treats were a rare sight in our largely sugar-free household, and when my desires for sweet stuff could not be quelled by yet another carrot, I would reach into the maraschino jar and pluck, by its skinny stem, one fire engine-red cherry from the pile, relishing the shock of sugar that coursed through my veins upon ingestion.

Now I find those cherries gross. Especially when I see them languishing at the bar in their little germ-incubating metal container. In fact, one of the first thing that hooked me about fine cocktails were the purpley cherries that garnished Manhattans and old fashioneds at the better cocktail bars. Delicate, not too sweet, delicious when soaked in booze: housemade maraschinos are an essential piece of the truly well-made drink. And the good news is they are easy to make. Check out the recipe I got from Naga Cocktail Lounge bar manager Mike McSorley here.

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Tags: Bellevue, Cocktails, Cocktail Recipes

Free Tasting: the Wines of Georgetown at Wild Ginger Bellevue

A tasting that ends, serendipitously enough, when happy hour begins.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 18, 2010 at 02:50PM 0 Comments

Wild Ginger Bellevue hosts a free tasting on the third Sunday of every month. This Sunday: the wines of Georgetown.

So you may have heard tell about a burgeoning community of winemakers in Georgetown, now here is your chance to try the wines. In Bellevue.

The South Seattle Artisan Wineries group will hold a free tasting at Wild Ginger’s Eastside outpost in the Bravern shopping center from 1 to 4pm this Sunday, March 21. (The restaurant hosts a free tasting on the third Sunday of every month.)

In a happy coincidence, Wild Ginger Bellevue’s seven-days-a-week happy hour starts at 4pm. And here is the thing about that: there are fragrant duck sliders on the HH menu, three of them for $4. If you’ve ever had the deconstructed version of those little babies at Seattle’s Wild Ginger, you know what you are in for. And you know it is good.

Wines to be tasted:
Cadence Winery
Fall Line Winery
Note Benne Cellars
O-S Winery
O’Shea Scarborough

You can also visit the Georgetown wineries themselves on the second Saturday of each month, now through August, for a sampling. Each tasting is $5, but the fee is waived if you buy a bottle. Find details here.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Bellevue, Wine, Wine Tastings, Locaboozers, Georgetown

Closed: Stir Martini and Raw Bar and Twisted Cork

Two Bellevue drinks destinations call it quits.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 15, 2010 at 09:12AM 0 Comments

After about eight months in operation, Stir Martini and Raw Bar closed its doors this weekend.

The list of places to get a good glass in downtown Bellevue just got shorter. This weekend marked the closings of Stir Martini and Raw Bar as well as Twisted Cork Wine Bar. Both venues belonged to the Solstice Restaurant Group.

Steel-accented Stir opened just this past summer, touting specialty cocktails and a bountiful array of tasty sea creatures.

An early sign of trouble at Twisted Cork came this January, when Solstice announced it was shuttering high-end 0/8 Seafood Grill, the restaurant adjoining Twisted Cork, and expanding the wine bar to fill the entire space. Oh and then there was the fact that Chef/radio personality Dan Thiessen, who originally headed up the kitchen at both Stir and Twisted Cork, had left several months earlier. He now runs Archery Bistro in Normandy Park.

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Tags: Bellevue, Closings

Happy Hour Changes at Grand Cru and Fonte

New HH wines and foods Downtown and in Bellevue.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 04, 2010 at 08:47AM 0 Comments

Happy hour at Grand Cru wine bar in Bellevue is all night long on Mondays. Tuesday through Saturday it runs from 4 to 6pm, luring Eastsiders with half-price wines by the glass and half-price foods from the dinner menu.

The wine bar has added four new dishes to the HH menu: Thai-style Dungeness crab cakes, red curry steamed Penn Cove mussels, a salmon pate, and a Tuscan white bean dip. There are also snackies like feta dip and a crostini trio, prices range from $3 to about $8.

Downtown, Fonte’s happy hour has changed as well. The coffee shop/wine bar used to offer “sommelier’s choice” wines—one red, one white—for $3, now it is charging half price for the entire wine list. This is a great development, in my humble opinion, this chance to try a lot of new wines at a discount. All draft beers are now $3 during HH, and some of the prices on food have changed too: The spicy lamb sliders, always a solid choice at Fonte, are now $5 instead of $3. That was a little too good to last, I suppose.

The HH runs Fridays and Saturdays from 5 to 6:30pm and again from 9 to 10pm, and Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 6:30pm and 8 to 9pm. That’s a little tricky to remember, but you can always get one of those happy hour iPhone/Android apps designed by competing local alt weeklies. The question is: which one?

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Tags: Happy Hour, Bellevue, Downtown, Wine, Wine Bars

Wine Tasting Picks for Tonight: Thursday, February 25

Free Indian syrah at Vino Verite, Airfield Estates at Picnic, and five Australians plus snacks at Grand Cru.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 25, 2010 at 01:44PM 0 Comments

So you’ve probably spent the afternoon thinking about how you haven’t ever tried a smoky syrah from India, right? Well tonight you can. Portland-based distributor Rupert Kanuri of Premium Vintage will be at Vino Verite on Capitol Hill pouring the Indian wine, plus an aged pinot noir from Oregon and a couple of other bottles (thanks for tip CHS). The tasting runs from 6 to 8pm and is free.

And in Bellevue, Grand Cru has a $15 tasting at the bar: try five Australians while you snack on truffled popcorn, cheese, bread, nuts, and olives.

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Tags: Bellevue, Capitol Hill, Phinney Ridge, Wine Tastings

Living Large and Eating Cheap: Artisanal Table’s Extended Happy Hour

Every Monday, the pizzeria in the Bravern offers HH through 9pm. Here’s the deal.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 15, 2010 at 01:19PM 1 Comments

Eat for half price every Monday at the Artisanal Table, when happy hour is extended through 9pm.

Everyone needs to go to the Bravern shopping center in Bellevue at least once. It might not be for you, but you need to see it, at least. To know it is there.

If you’re accustomed to squeezing yourself into tight banquettes at the tiny eateries of Queen Anne and Capitol hill, you’ll marvel at the dining rooms that go on forever, at the full moon-sized platters that arrive at your table overflowing with edibles. Everything at the Bravern is huge, crazy huge, and crazy clean. And most things are also, of course, crazy expensive. I mean, you’re not going to get a Tory Burch dress for cheap people, let’s face facts.

But here’s a little something that’s good to know about the Bravern: on Mondays, you can eat cheap there. Because every Monday Artisanal Table’s happy hour, which usually runs from 3 to 6pm, is extended until 9pm. Which means you can eat anything on the entire menu for 50 percent off. All. Night. Long.

The main attraction here is pizza, which at the discounted prices cost between $6 and $9. There are also pastas like papardelle lamb ragu and tagliatelli carbonara, plus salumi plates, salads, etc…. House beers are $3, house wines are $5.

Artisanal Brasserie next door also has a generous happy hour from 3 to 6pm daily, no extension on Mondays, with a dozen oysters on the half shell for $13.50 plus a bunch of wine, beer, and cocktail specials. I like the sound of white-wine sangria ($5)—hey, it may be February, but the sun is out—with St. Germain and peach. The full menu is here.

If, after indulging at the larger-than-life shopping mall, you need to readjust your perspective at a more small-scale venue, I suggest you stop by nearby Naga, the cocktail lounge attached to Chantanee Thai restaurant. It is absolutely a one-of-a-kind sort of place, and it serves very serious cocktails.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Bellevue, Pizza, Deals

A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Seastar’s sommelier tells us when we can (and can’t) send the bottle back.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 25, 2010 at 01:00PM 4 Comments

Yashar Shayan says you can send a bottle back if you don’t like it, but he himself employs a wait-and-see approach.

The questions in this new series aren’t really stupid. But the whole wine thing can be so (unnecessarily) intimidating. Good thing for you I have no shame.

This week’s expert is Yashar Shayan, a sommelier at Seastar Restaurant and Raw Bar (Bellevue, South Lake Union). Shayan says he loves the way wine allows you to “experience the world’s cultures and history one glass at a time.” Another reason he became a sommelier: “I thought it would make me look cool.”

When he’s not at Seastar, Yashar helps out in the cellar at Woodinville winery Efeste.

Here, a stupid question for Yashar Shayan.

When I order a bottle of wine, can I send it back if I don’t like it, or only if it’s bad? Also, how can I tell if it has gone bad?

Many restaurants will take the wine back simply because you don’t like it. We won’t force you to pay for, and drink, a wine that you don’t like, because we like our guests to enjoy their dining experience.

Personally though, when I have wine, I don’t really analyze it on that first taste. I don’t look at color and legs, or consider things like complexity. When I get the first pour, I smell it and make sure it’s drinkable, meaning it doesn’t have any off smells or serious faults like TCA (a compound present when a wine is “corked,” more on that below) and oxidation. From there, I’ll take my time and examine the wine over the entire course of the meal, see how it opens up and how it interacts with various foods. I’m almost always surprised how a wine that may not have really grabbed me at the beginning has me wanting more by the end.

The main reasons a sommelier pours you that small taste of a bottle before serving it are: 1. TCA (I think we should stop calling it “corked” and figure out a new, more accurate name for it) and 2. oxidation. Corked wines, which smell like moldy newspapers or damp basements, get that way when chlorine (specifically a group of chemical compounds known as Chlorophenols) interacts with fungi found in nature to produce the compound 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, or TCA for short. Though the cork is the most common carrier of TCA, it can lurk on a variety of surfaces porous enough to grow fungus. I’ve had shoes with “corked” soles, I’ve eaten carrots and scallions that were tainted with TCA (or something like it), and even been served corked water at restaurants. This means that wines using cork alternatives—yes, even screwcaps—can be tainted if they pick it up from a bad barrel or another source before bottling, but that’s far less common.

An oxidized wine is exactly what it sounds like, a wine that’s gone bad due to overexposure to oxygen. To me, oxidized wine smells like vinegar or an apple that was peeled and left on the counter for a day or so. That vinegar smell is caused by acetic acid, which you’ve smelled in your bottle of vinegar at home. The old apple smell I typically associate with Acetaldehyde. If you find your wine is oxidized when it’s freshly opened, it could mean that the cork was bad in the sense that it didn’t seal perfectly. Screwcaps can also fail here if they were damaged or crushed during assembly or shipping. I have opened several bottles of the same wine and found they all seemed bad, which led me to think they were oxidized before being bottled.

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MORE STUPID QUESTIONS!
Dawn Smith explains what to do when a sommelier hands you a cork.

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Tags: Bellevue, South Lake Union, Wineries, Booze 101, Wine, Sommelier stuff, A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Have a Round for Haiti

Help relief efforts by raising a glass at these local drinkeries.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 21, 2010 at 11:00AM 1 Comments

Boom Noodle offers its happy hour menu during a silent art auction to benefit relief efforts in Haiti. Twenty-five percent of food and drink proceeds will also be donated.

Watch five minutes of CNN coverage in post-earthquake Port-au-Prince and you’ll want to do something…anything…whatever to help. Do this: head to Liberty Bar on Capitol Hill and plunk down $6 for a cocktail called “the Haiti.” Then have another. One hundred percent of your tab will help disaster relief efforts there.

Here are some other ways to drink for Haiti.

You can drop off donations for Unicef at any of the Purple Cafe and Wine Bars and the two branches of Barrio until January 24. Heavy Restaurant Group has pledged to match from one to 10 percent of those donations, depending on the total.

On Thursday, January 21 (tonight!), The Great Nabob will give away $1 for every drink purchased off its specialty cocktail menu. Dough goes to Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health.

On Saturday, January 23 at the George and Dragon, Seattle Sounders Steve Zakuani and James Riley will be onhand to sign autographs in exchange for a $5 donation. The bar is also selling $5 raffle tickets, prizes include Soudersphenalia and gift certificates.

On Sunday, January 24, Quinn’s Pub on Capitol Hill and Skylark Café and Club in West Seattle are participating in a dine-out initiative where a portion of the night’s earnings go to relief orgs: each restaurant chooses the donation percentage, see other participating restaurants here.

Next Tuesday, January 26 from 7 to 10pm, Boom Noodle will offer its happy hour menu during a silent art auction to benefit Haiti—25 percent of food and drink proceeds will go to Haiti, while 100 percent of the auction earning will be donated. Look out for art from Spike Mafford, Dean Zulich, Matt Larson, and Joe Shlichta; there is a $100 bid minimum.

The benefit “Turning Wine into Water” begins at 5pm on January 31 at Cellar 46 restaurant and wine bar on Mercer Island. There will be food, DJs, tastings, and a wine auction. Make individual donations at the door, suggested amount is $25 and up.

If you can’t find anything you like here, check out the A&E guide to Haiti relief efforts. There’s kind of something for everyone, so go out, give generously, and have a good time.

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Tags: Bellevue, Haiti, Capitol Hill, Drink booze, do good, Mercer Island, West Seattle, LQA

A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Purple’s wine expert tells us what to do with the cork.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 15, 2010 at 10:00AM 4 Comments

Heavy Restaurants Group’s Dawn Smith says a funky cork isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but make sure it’s moist.

Okay, the questions in this new series aren’t really stupid. But the whole wine thing can be so (unnecessarily) intimidating. Good thing for you I have no shame.

This week’s expert is the lovely Dawn Smith, the Wine Director for the Restaurants at Bellevue Towers: Purple Café and Wine Bar, Barrio, and a third top-secret project she’s not allowed to talk about.

“I came to wine through food,” says Smith, whose first-ever instructor (at an International Sommelier Guild class) was Shayn Bjornholm, then also the wine director at Canlis. “I continued my wine education with more advanced classes and about a year-and-a-half later Shayn called and asked me if I would apply for a floor sommelier position at Canlis. Crazy! I got the job.” The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Here, a stupid question for Dawn Smith:

Why does the sommelier hand me the cork after her or she opens the bottle of wine I ordered, and what am I supposed to do with it?

“The primary reason a sommelier hands you a cork,” says Smith, “is so that you may inspect that the wine has been stored properly." The older the vintage, the more important that it’s been stowed right: "on its side, away from light, vibration, and at a constant temperature of 55-58 degrees.”

A moist cork means your bottle has been sitting pretty, but you might also want to smell it to check for taint. (Stop giggling). “The cork from a ‘corked’ wine will smell of cork taint—often described as damp cardboard or wet basement,” says Smith. But, she says, “this is not really the most reliable way to judge the soundness of a wine. Corks, particularly older corks, can smell a bit funky even though the wine is pristine. Most sommeliers will smell the bottle or actually pour a small taste of the wine to confirm the quality before offering it to the guest. Gratefully, most faults in wine are detectable on the nose so you never have to experience the foul taste.”

You can also inspect the cork to make sure you get what you ordered. “Most corks will have the producer and vintage of the wine branded onto the portion of the cork that is within the sealed bottle.” When the sommelier brings the bottle to the table, he or she should show you “the label and state the vintage, producer, name of wine and area of production,” but inspecting the cork is your final chance to ensure you’ve got the right juice.

So there you have it: when it doubt read the cork, make sure it is moist, and smell it, if you are feeling saucy. Then, drink up.

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Tags: Bellevue, Booze 101, Wine, Sommelier stuff, A Stupid Question for a Sommelier