Hotel California
Farm-fresh feasts heat up the new restaurant at the Heathman Hotel in Kirkland.
I cut into a thick slice of hanger steak with my fork, then swabbed it around in its leek sauce and bit. The succulence of the meat grabbed me first, followed close by a roaring freight train of leek flavor. Leeks from Scheeh-ser’s garden suffused the sauce, then further electrified the steak in a mop-top of frizzles. The result was sheer, 100-proof leekitude—fresh, divinely fiery, and as good a foil for the all—natural Angus beef as I could imagine.
Things continued in this hyperbolic vein for the better part of two big meals, as my guests and I nibbled our way through Scheehser’s back 40. A salad built on a scaffolding of whole romaine leaves was laden with plump hazelnuts, big clumps of fine Oregon blue cheese, and a haystack of apple matchsticks. A special of orange flatbread made an unlikely yet happy marriage of thin orange slices and crisped prosciutto with fistfuls of Scheehser’s bitter arugula atop thin pizza crust. The one failure—Manila clams steamed in a way-bland fennel-leek broth—may have even owed to its garden freshness, homegrown herbs being notoriously variable flavorwise.
Scheehser, who spent 13 years in the executive toque at the Sorrento Hotel, knows his craft and revels in it: Dishes that didn’t trace their lineage to Scheehser’s garden nevertheless revealed a chef’s delight in his kitchen. A pan-seared salmon smoked in apple wood nestled alongside Granny Smiths in a silken apple-cider reduction. Prawns swam in a shallow bowl of sure-handed curry with a goat cheese dollop in the middle. Most fun was a plank of thin-sliced Parma ham lustily embellished with grapes, dates, and figs, the whole scattered with shaved parmesan and drizzled with oil.
The sauce and mop-top of frizzles made for sheer, 100-proof leekitude—fresh, divinely fiery, and as good a foil for the all-natural angus beef as I could imagine.
It was this exuberance on the plate that finally convinced the cynic in me that Scheehser is more than the sustainability poster boy of the month. Indeed when it became apparent to him that the Heathman’s scheduled May opening would be delayed—to October, it turned out—the good chef did what any nimble gardener would do: He froze and canned and cold-stored; turned heirloom tomatoes into sauces, sweet strawberries into jam. If Trellis is this good in the stony dead of winter, I can’t wait to see what Scheehser will make of the fresh harvests of August.
But any restaurant this horticulturally oriented toward food ought to make sure its waiters share the passion and effectively share it with diners. Not like the server who, when asked about the piri-piri on the Penn Cove mussels, replied that it was the sauce the mussels were served in. Or the one who meant well but sounded like a pedant and a prig when intoning the Scheehser-in-his-garden sermon. (This, by the way, included a description of the anatomical origin of hanger steak that rather dampened our appetites.) Maybe in time they’ll all end up sounding like the server, who with friendliness, efficiency, and blessed brevity oriented us toward the menu and the terrific wine list, which offered excellent choices in all price ranges.
It all adds up to leave me a little fonder of Kirkland, which though still overrepresented by chains and meet markets now claims a more substantive eatery. The Heathman joins the vital new core in that once-bedroom community that feels authentic and outright urban. Sitting in Trellis I could see folks hustling to make their curtain at the Kirkland Performance Center up the block, and a lively trade in the famous pay-what-you-can coffeehouse Terra Bite, across the street. My friend had it only partly right: The Heathman is one of a few good establishments heating downtown Kirkland.
Published: February 2008
