Legends in the Making

Chefs reveal their inspirations for the best dishes in town.

By Kathryn Robinson

Café Campagne

Lamb Burger

Grilled lamb burger with balsamic grilled onions, roasted red peppers, aioli, and pommes frites
Tamara Murphy (see Brasa) was chef and Peter Lewis the owner when their elegant country French restaurant, Campagne, spun off its more casual satellite in 1994. Which one was responsible for the dish that would fix Café Campagne on the gastronomical map of a thousand foodies? “I think it was me,” remembers Lewis, who sold the café a couple years back but remains a nominal presence in the restaurant—as “Minister of Culture,” he quips. “The idea was that we needed a burger to make the menu accessible, because of the location in Pike Place Market. But I wanted to give it a Provençal twist. So we made it from lamb, seasoned it with rosemary and garlic, and topped it with roasted red peppers and aioli.”
Café Campagne, 1600 Post Alley, Pike Place Market, 206-728-2233; www.campagnerestaurant.com

Volterra

Oil Soup

Cannellini bean and pancetta soup, topped with focaccia croutons and a generous drizzling of Volterra’s own Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil
Don Curtiss, proprietor and chef of Volterra, found inspiration for his restaurant’s signature item on his wedding trip to the Tuscan village of Volterra. “The night after our wedding, our friend who had catered it, Genuino del Duca, took us to a wonderful villa on a beautiful Tuscan hillside next door to his merlot vineyard,” Curtiss recalls. “And we had a soup there that was absolutely amazing—a bean soup topped with, I’m telling you, two, maybe three inches of pure, amazing olive oil. There was more oil than soup. It was incredibly fresh, right after the olive crush, and I said, ‘This is perfect.’ When we got home we played around with the recipe, added more beans, removed an inch or so of oil—sometimes you have to Americanize a bit—but still drizzled a good tablespoon over each bowl. Now we have our own olive-oil blend, made just for us in Tuscany. I think we’d have an uprising if we ever took this soup off the menu.”
Volterra, 5411 Ballard Ave NW, Ballard, 206-789-5100; www.volterrarestaurant.com

Etta’s Seafood

Crab Cakes

Dungeness crab cakes, pan-sautéed, served with green cocktail sauce, French fries, and a seasonal vegetable
“I first learned how to make crab cakes at the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware—but that’s certainly not the first time I ate them—no, no, no,” says Tom Douglas, the busiest restaurateur in Seattle and architect of its finest crab cake. “From the boardwalk to the boardroom crab cakes rule the mid-Atlantic menu. Reputations are at stake. Careers can blossom or die with the simplest critique of a chef’s crab cakes. When I arrived in Seattle during the fall of ’77 there wasn’t a crab cake to be had in this town, so I seized the opportunity. Of course I transitioned from my Chesapeake Blue crab to meaty Dungeness, but I never forgot my ‘cheap’ white breadcrumb roots. My cakes have a crispy butter-crumb surface and creamy, herb-laced centers, heavy on the crab.”
Etta’s Seafood, 2020 Western Ave, Pike Place Market, 206-443-6000; www.tomdouglas.com