Greatness Visible
The Book Bindery soars with meat, potatoes, and je ne sais quoi.
BEFORE CHEF SHAUN McCRAIN returned to the Northwest of his youth, to take the helm at the restaurant that is going to make him famous, he had already put in two years at a Michelin two–starred restaurant in France, where he and his colleagues crafted fresh ravioli to order. He had already been called upon to create an entirely new seasonal nine–course card every day at New York’s celebrated Per Se, under celeb mentor Thomas Keller’s strict injunction against repeating a single ingredient in any of a night’s courses.
“I learned how to push myself,” the 35-year-old McCrain reflects. “And I learned that, if you’re given enough support, there’s no end to what you can do.”
Throughout his astonishing apprenticeship the Eastside native nevertheless longed to return to the Northwest, and one day his old chum Patric Gabre-Kidan called with an idea. Gabre-Kidan was Ethan Stowell’s restaurant partner and co–owner at Tavolàta, How to Cook a Wolf, and Anchovies and Olives; a popular and seasoned young front-of-the-house maestro who had been approached by a deep-pockets boutique vintner to open a restaurant in the former book bindery on the south shore of the ship canal. Gabre-Kidan had been looking for a project of his own; ideally one where he might install his talented buddy in the back of the house. And McCrain, given enough support, saw there was no end to what he could do.
He arrived in Seattle to find Gabre-Kidan hard at work in what looked like a low-rise warehouse, but was in fact one of the more fortuitously located dining rooms in Seattle. Waterfront restaurants being oddly rare in this waterfront town, ship canal restaurants are rarer still; the only other being Ponti just east. Gabre-Kidan was fashioning the interior of the Book Bindery to showcase that view—subtly. Creamy wainscoting, soft gray walls, fields of marble, globe pendants emitting romantically low wattage—it all formed an understated backdrop, refined with built-in bookcases filled with vintage books. And between them…the Seine. Or a piece of Seattle that glimmers uncannily like it.
Walking in from a snowy evening, stomping snow boots in the entry, we were welcomed by Gabre-Kidan with his signature wry hospitality—the man greets everyone with a shy, expectant grin, as if he just knows they’re about to tell him a fabulous joke. The warmth of the room owes partly to that impish charm, and partly to its situation between a well-stocked little bar on one side and windows to the barrel room of the winery on the other, and partly to the books, which make the place feel like the library of somebody’s mansion. Taken together the scene radiates pedigree. Etta James and Mama Cass croon from the rafters. Aristocrats dot the tables, giving the Book Bindery an establishment feel one hardly sees outside Madison Park or First Hill.
But here the contrast begins, for as dinner begins to unfold—as you’re sipping from your shot glass an amuse-bouche of frothy forest mushroom and Parmesan soup, say—you notice Gabre-Kidan is padding around in sneakers. A few of the waitstaff sport scruffy jeans, pierced young foodies sit alongside the bankers, and shuffling in and out among the Etta James is music of a considerably more alternative stripe.
Before long you discover that the same tension—establishment versus creative—drives McCrain’s culinary aesthetic. His menu is peppered with the buzzwords of the moment. Dashi gelee, check. Castelvetrano olives, check. Mysteries like sylvetta (a tiny cousin of arugula) and puntarella (a variant of chicory) left pretentiously undefined, check. But many of the preparations they’re used in boil down to meat and potatoes. Sometimes literally, as in the velvet cut of Mishima Ranch beef alongside twice-baked fingerling potatoes, a bone-marrow stuffed cipollini onion, and bordelaise sauce; a stunner created for the bankers but fit for any foodie.
Published: January 2011
Poor seattlediner. I found The Book Bindery to not only have incredible ambience and a lively and enlightening tasting room, but an incredibly all-over fantastic experience. Too heavy on the superlatives, you ask? I think not. The food, the wine, the staff, the place itself….superior. All exceptional, but not pretentious or stuffy. You should go back. I can’t wait to.
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I was frankly disappointed with my meal at the Book Bindery. Given the rave reviews and the chef’s pedigree, I expected to be wowed. Our appetizers were excellent but the entrees included some significant technical flaws: the gnocchi served with my sturgeon, though delicate, was woefully bland; the cubed squash was unevenly cooked (some crunchy, some soft); the pureed squash served alongside the fish overpowered the beautifully cooked sturgeon; my husband’s braised lamb shank did not “fall off the bone” and the fat had not been rendered correctly – it was chewy. Service was pleasant, but rushed.