Best Restaurants 2012

Best Restaurants 2012 Directory

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:33:00 -0700

Altura 617 Broadway E, Capitol Hill, 206-402-6749; alturarestaurant.com

Artusi 1535 14th Ave, Capitol Hill, 206-251-7673; artusibar.com

Bar del Corso 3057 Beacon Ave S, Beacon Hill, 206-395-2069; bardelcorso.com

Blind Pig Bistro 2238 Eastlake Ave E, Eastlake, 206-329-2744; blindpigbistro.com

Brave Horse Tavern 310 Terry Ave N, South Lake Union, 206-971-0717; bravehorsetavern.com

Canlis 2576 Aurora Ave N, Queen Anne, 206-283-3313; canlis.com

Cascina Spinasse 1531 14th Ave, Capitol Hill, 206-251-7673; spinasse.com

Delancey 1415 NW 70th St, Ballard, 206-838-1960; delanceyseattle.com

Dick’s Drive-In 115 Broadway E, Seattle, 206-323-1300
500 Queen Anne Ave N, Seattle, 206-285-5155
9208 Holman Road NW, Seattle, 206-783-5233
12325 30th Ave NE, Seattle, 206-363-7777
111 NE 45th St, Seattle, 206-632-5125
21910 Hwy 99, Edmonds, 425-775-4243; ddir.com

Essex Bar 1421 NW 70th St, Ballard, 206-724-0471; essexbarseattle.com

Full Tilt Ice Cream 9629 16th Ave SW, White Center, 206-767-4811
5041 Rainier Ave S, Columbia City, 206-226-2740
4759 Brooklyn Ave NE, University District, 206-524-4406
5453 Leary Ave N, Ballard, 206-297-3000; fulltilticecream.com

The Herbfarm 14590 NE 145th St, Woodinville, 425-485-5300; theherbfarm.com

Homegrown 3416 Fremont Ave N, Fremont, 206-453-5232
1531 Melrose Ave, Capitol Hill, 206-682-0935
2201 Queen Anne Ave N, Queen Anne, 206-217-4745; eathomegrown.com

Madison Park Conservatory 1927 43rd Ave E, Madison Park, 206-324-9701; madisonparkconservatory.com

Matt’s in the Market 94 Pike St, Ste 32, Pike Place Market, 206-467-7909; mattsinthemarket.com

Pantry 1417 NW 70th St, Ballard, 206-436-1064; thepantryatdelancey.com

Paseo 4225 Fremont Ave N, Fremont, 206-545-7440
6226 Seaview Ave NW, Ballard, 206-789-3100; paseoseattle.com

Ray’s Boathouse 6049 Seaview Ave NW, Ballard, 206-789-3770; rays.com

Restaurant Zoë 1318 E Union St, Seattle, 206-256-2060; restaurantzoe.com

Revel 403 N 36th St, Fremont, 206-547-2040; revelseattle.com

Rione XIII 401 15th Ave E, Seattle, 206-838-2878, ethanstowellrestaurants.com/rionexiii

Shiro’s Sushi 2401 Second Ave, Belltown, 206-443-9844; shiros.com

Sitka and Spruce 1531 Melrose Ave E, Capitol Hill, 206-324-0662; sitkaandspruce.com

Skillet Diner 1400 E Union St, Capitol Hill, 206-420-7297; skilletstreetfood.com/diner.php

Spur Gastropub 113 Blanchard St, Belltown, 206-728-6706; spurseattle.com

Sutra 1605 N 45th St, Wallingford, 206-547-1348; sutraseattle.com

Tamarind Tree 1036 S Jackson St, Ste A, International District, 206-860-1404; tamarindtreerestaurant.com

Tilth 1411 N 45th St, Wallingford, 206-633-0801; tilthrestaurant.com

The Walrus and the Carpenter 4743 Ballard Ave NW, Ballard, 206-395-9227; thewalrusbar.com

Service in Seattle Restaurants

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:32:00 -0700

Image: Shutterstock

First rule for diners? Don’t be a jerk. Restaurant employees aren’t your lackeys and you’re not their only customer. Once that’s settled, there is a baseline expectation of service that every diner ought to be able to count on in a fine restaurant—and thanks to cultural shifts from technology to allergies, it’s evolving. As a professional diner I’ve been on the front lines. I’ve been taking notes.

1. Staff a phone already.
Happens all the time: You call mid-afternoon for a reservation and there’s no one there—sometimes, in down--market joints, not even a recorded greeting. (Really? The easiest and least costly method of restaurant marketing, wasted?) Yes, there are online reservation tools, a la OpenTable and Rezbook. And—as anyone knows who needs clarification from a human on, say, that night’s vegetarian options, or a table sometime between those ever popular OpenTable reservation hours of 5pm and 8:30pm—web interfaces are not enough.

2. Greet the guest. Right away.
I don’t need a host to sprint across the room and recite me a sonnet. But languishing unacknowledged for five minutes at the entry, as I did twice last week alone—especially when an employee sees me and still ignores me—makes a girl feel unwelcome. (Or uncomfortable, as in Seattle’s many boutique restaurants where the entryway doubles as the legroom for Table 1.) The first impression does last. Even if you’re a buser and greeting guests isn’t in your job description—a smile and a “Hello!” should be considered every hospitality professional’s job, period.

3. Put away the stopwatch.
Last year, the host of a beautiful high-end restaurant showed us our seats, took our coats, then sweetly informed us that we’d have our table for two hours. I’ve only started getting this in about the last year or so, as restaurants grow increasingly brazen about passing their economic anxieties onto their patrons. (The very same anxieties also brought us the communal table, never mind all those pretty words about the joys of dining together.) There may be no greater buzz kill at a beautiful dinner than a waiter with a stopwatch. Must restaurants do this? For decades they’ve accommodated next reservations just fine. We dine out to escape the budget drudgery of everyday life, so making me feel responsible for your bottom line—whether with the table-turning routine, or asking me to keep my icky-with-salad-dressing fork for the next course, or offering me the opportunity to buy beer for the kitchen—cheapens the experience.

4. Sweat the small stuff.
Most restaurateurs get that rude staffers perpetrate the boldest breaches of good service. Less obvious to them, it appears, are the myriad smaller ways service can be compromised. The absence of a restaurant sign to signal a newcomer that she’s found the right place. Menu descriptions so cryptic they tell the diner nothing about the dishes. Music that’s distractingly loud or out of synch with the ambience. Curvy-sided plates that slide a diner’s utensils directly into her lap. (Yowch!)

5. Know what’s good.
Wise diners know to ask what’s really terrific that night. (Hint: It’ll almost always be a special, made from ingredients selected for their freshness and prepared according to the chef’s passion.) So when the server burbles, “It’s all good!” that whooshing sound you hear is steam shooting out my ears. That’s not service; it’s PR. It communicates either the server’s indifference toward the diner’s experience or his lack of engagement with the kitchen. A server ought to at least be able to direct diners with a standard more meaningful than what his own favorites are. The fact that you happen to like pork belly doesn’t make it the best dish in the house. Know what your kitchen does reliably well.

6. Get orders right.
No one knows better than you, restaurants, that dietary restrictions and food allergies have soared in the last five years, rendering orders at once more complicated and more important to get right than they’ve ever been. Do whatever it takes to remember them. It might mean—horrors!—writing them down or repeating orders word for word. We’re pretty sure you hate these plebeian techniques, but here’s good news: Studies show that exact repetition of a diner’s order increases tips by up to 70 percent.

7. Serve the diner, not the kitchen.
The meteoric rise of restaurant reality shows and celeb chefs has shifted an age-old emphasis: Where restaurants once served at the diner’s pleasure, the diner is now expected to bow to the almighty kitchen. A little of this is warranted, as when a sushi chef lays down a piece of pristine sashimi and barks, “No wasabi!” Chefs know how dishes taste best—they’re the artists, after all. But withhold the wasabi altogether and you’re guilty of culinary arrogance. You see it wherever restaurants leave salt off the tables—an overconfident practice that’s increasing by the minute—or cook meat to a certain temperature regardless of the diner’s request, or announce to a party (as happens increasingly) that the small plates will be brought out not so that every guest has something to eat, but in the order they come out of the oven.

You see it, in short, whenever a kitchen reveals more allegiance to its ease or its ego than to the diner.

8. Act normal.
Not like girlfriends or brahs. Surly service is not our regional tic. Overly familiar service is. The Bellevue waitress who took a seat to take our order. The waiter—this happened at a very popular Kirkland restaurant recently—who kept touching my husband and calling him “buddy.” The fellow downtown who introduced himself at each of his first three visits to the table. The maitre d’ in a Seattle neighborhood joint who jabbered so long at our table he neglected other guests. I wish waiters would just be themselves: No scripts, no forced chipperness, no faux familiarity. The best servers know that there is a magic formula for eliciting the warm feelings (which lead to good tips), and it has nothing to do with impersonating a waiter. It’s genuine engagement with your guests.

9. Honor the diner’s budget.
The waiter who tells you everything about the special but its price tag. The host who fails to remind the party of six that the gratuity will be included on the bill. The server who upsells consistently, swoops away a half-eaten plate of food without asking if a to-go box is wanted, encounters a pile of cash and asks whether he ought to bring back change. Honor the diner’s budget. Be mean, be foulmouthed, be AWOL—diners are least likely to forget the server they suspect was gunning for their wallet.

10. Ask it like you mean it.
Used to be I loathed the insipid “Is everything all right?” interruption, which registered as little more than fishing for compliments. Now I see that it’s part of a groundswell of aggressively servicey service, where every Starbucks cashier wants to know about your day and every grocery store checker asks whether you’ve found what you were looking for. I don’t like those displays of faux sincerity any better—but in the age of online insta-venting (I’m lookin’ at you, Yelp), it’s crucial to give diners a chance to get problems addressed on the spot. Every restaurateur I’ve ever spoken to far prefers that to the anonymous online flame. What this means for servers is a real inquiry inviting a real response. “I hope everything is to your liking. If not is there any way we might rectify it?” is one approach—as long as it’s sincere.

Best Restaurants 2012

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:20:00 -0700

Image: Olivia Brent

Brave Horse Tavern
Cheesehead burger with fried curds and cheddar

Restaurants that capture the soul of Seattle.

Seattle is a city whose story can be told through its restaurants. From their banquettes to their timber ceilings, their fresh-that-day oysters to their inspired microseasonal innovations, these 25 restaurants etch a portrait of Pacific Northwest values, passions, and quirky idiosyncrasies. Without them, Seattle just wouldn’t be Seattle.

Sitka and Spruce
1531 Melrose Ave E, Capitol Hill, 206-324-0662; sitkaandspruce.com

Within the breezy urban farmhouse space in Melrose Market breathes a culinary artistry as unbound by convention as any fine-dining room in Seattle. Thank Matt Dillon (who also brings us the Corson Building) for revering the purest seasonal ingredients, then composing them according to the spare dictates of his higher vision: perhaps pristine albacore with cherry tomatoes, purslane, sumac, Winthrop rye berries, a kale-yogurt salad, and—credit his ongoing Middle Eastern fascination—the Persian crisp nan-e lavash. This rarefied, minimalist food won’t be for everyone, but no chef showcases the perfect Northwest ingredient better than Dillon.

Revel
403 N 36th St, Fremont, 206-547-2040; revelseattle.com

At their noisy, breezy food lab in Fremont, chefs (and spouses) Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi pour their years of formal training into the most thrilling, unrestrained cuisine in Seattle—the Asian-fusion street eats we call sophisti-comfort food. Korean is the primary dialect, but the menu roams the Orient: corned lamb–mizuna salad with spicy nuoc cham; rice bowls with short ribs, mustard greens, sambal daikon, and a rich, velvety egg yolk; the famous pork belly–kimchi pancakes—done with exacting exuberance, a rare combo. It’s loud, frequently pokey, beautifully lubed (their very good cocktail bar, Quoin, adjoins), and best in summer (on the big patio). Where to show off the Seattle palate to out of towners.

Canlis
2576 Aurora Ave N, Queen Anne, 206-283-3313; canlis.com

The Legend, in its third generation of family ownership, is about as Seattle as it gets—from architect Roland Terry’s angular midcentury masterpiece to its sweeping view over Lake Union; from its singular reputation as the big night out in this town to the kitchen’s consistent fulfillment of that promise. Canlis is the rare spot where the genuine care in the front of the house matches the quality of the product coming out of the back; where enduring favorites like Peter Canlis’s vermouth-lime prawns vie winningly with chef Jason Franey’s dazzling innovations, like a foie gras terrine with blackberries and chamomile on a recent starter menu. Psst: Reservations are essential everywhere but the super suave piano bar, where drop-ins can savor perfect cocktails and order off either the dinner menu or the (more affordable) bar menu.

Spur Gastropub
113 Blanchard St, Belltown, 206-728-6706; spurseattle.com

Before Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine put Seattle on the molecular gastronomy map and every bar went all craft-cocktails-with-effete-noshes—there was Spur, pioneering both trends in Seattle and daily perfecting them. Draped in classy grays and wood tones to soothe a Seattleite’s winter soul, Spur is comfortable in its skin; a thinking drinker’s bar conveying stylish intelligence through frank and personable servers, Sam Cooke on the sound system, original house cocktails (like the boldly refreshing West Coast Pimm’s), and a genuinely dazzling menu. The famous bar eats include shoestring fries suffused in smoky oil, and pork belly sliders with sweet onions and peach mostarda—perhaps the best of that happy hour warhorse in town. Dinner plates are full of supremely thoughtful modernist compositions like slow-cooked pork cheeks over spaetzle and mustard seeds in beery puree. Desserts, fantastical melanges of foams and meringues and flavor-rich sorbets, simply rock.

Skillet Diner
1400 E Union St, Capitol Hill, 206-512-2000; skilletstreetfood.com/diner.php

Want your lemonade in a mason jar? Your waiter in a plaid shirt? A side of fennel tater tots or caramelized grapefruit? Then pop over to Skillet Diner, the breakfast nook of Pike/Pine that grew out of an Airstream trailer (the original mobile dining operation in Seattle) to become the sunny chrome-and-lime love child of an old-school soda fountain and a microseasonal culinary innovator. Here, after waiting in line at least 30 minutes—amid every conceivable style of Capitol Hill facial hair—you choose among comfort carbs like burgers with bacon jam, garam masala–spiced lamb sloppy joes, fried chicken with beguiling honeyed crusts, and all-day breakfasts like griddle cakes with lemon butter. Don’t expect exacting execution, perfect experimentation, or swift service. Between the crowds, the coffee (Fonté), and the cocktails—do expect a buzz.

Image: Olivia Brent

Madison Park Conservatory
Arctic char gravlax with cucumber salad, yogurt, spruce tips, and rusks

Madison Park Conservatory
1927 43rd Ave E, Madison Park, 206-324-9701; madisonparkconservatory.com

The classy sophisticate at the viewy lake end of Madison Street has found its footing, with a youthful kitchen that’s slyly broadening the palates of the Madison Park establishmentarians that use the place like a private club. The menu, once impetuously novel, now has its old reliables—the crab deviled eggs, the impossibly tender grilled beef tongue. Even the novelties shine more dependably than they once did, as in a recent wood-roasted quail wickedly confited in foie gras butter, lavished with huckleberry sauce, and complemented by sweet corn pudding. Both the twinkling twilit main room and the cozy upstairs bar make swell date spots.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
4743 Ballard Ave NW, Ballard, 206-395-9227; thewalrusbar.com

Can we just declare Renee Erickson a civic treasure? No chef in town spins a more storybook ambience or crafts a more charming menu—at Boat Street Cafe with Provençale-kissed meats and seafoods; at the forthcoming Whale Wins with innovations from her wood-fired oven. But only her Walrus and the Carpenter, the Ballard oyster bar from whose patio you can smell the tide, embodies Seattle’s soul. The quirky assemblage of not-quite dinners in the magical whitewashed room features pristine crudo, house-smoked seafood, fruit--garnished cheeses, and artisan cocktails; the crowd (and I do mean crowd) is all hipster locavores and tourist pilgrims, for whom W&C just nails Seattle’s je ne sais quoi.

Blind Pig Bistro
2238 Eastlake Ave E, Eastlake, 206-329-2744; blindpigbistro.com

Here in this closet-size nook in an Eastlake strip mall with a blackboard menu and an ’80s pop soundtrack, chef Charles Walpole (former chef at Anchovies and Olives) lets his freak flag fly
on whatever’s freshest that day: perhaps a lemony salad of tender baby turnips with mizuna, pine nuts, and mint over chickpea puree; perhaps crackling pork belly with anchovy aioli, corn puree, and chorizo hash. Sometimes experiments don’t work—a price food sophisticates willingly pay for the kind of low--overhead, high-innovation food labs one finds all over Portland. What always works is the chocolate crémeux for dessert: dense mousse sprinkled with sea salt and Turkish pepper and served in a puddle of olive oil.

Tamarind Tree
1036 S Jackson St, Ste A, International District, 206-860-1404; tamarindtreerestaurant.com

Seattle does a better job with Vietnamese food than any other ethnic cuisine, and you can’t do much better than here in the geode of Jackson Street. Expectations are low from the sloping and potholed parking lot, but once through the bamboo entry you’re in a sleek, sophisticated room, in shades of dark wood and mango, with a patio for sunnier months complete with burbling fountain. The menu surveys the rolls and rice balls, the phos and salads, the rice dishes and curries of Vietnamese cuisine. Go with the crispy Tamarind Tree salad rolls, the char-grilled la lot–lemongrass chicken, any of the bountiful salads, or the beef seven ways—seven courses for a ridiculously cheap $33. Perky cocktails complete the experience.

Image: Olivia Brent

Dick’s Drive-In
115 Broadway E, Capitol Hill, 206-323-1300. 500 Queen Anne Ave N, Lower Queen Anne, 206-285-5155. 9208 Holman Rd NW, Broadview, 206-783-5233. 12325 30th Ave NE, Lake City, 206-363-7777. 111 NE 45th St, Wallingford, 206-632-5125. 21910 Hwy 99, Edmonds, 425-775-4243; ddir.com

It opened in 1954, all windows and stainless and acreage of Wallingford asphalt, with milkshakes made of ice cream, fries cut from potatoes, and ketchup-and-mustard-topped burgers for 19 cents. The ensuing six decades has seen Dick’s colonize five other neighborhoods and raise the price of its ridiculously craveable burger to a whopping buck-twenty-five—but the ice cream and the potatoes are still in the house, and so is a cityful of rabid faithful from across the tax brackets. Sure, you see plenty of change scroungers at the most democratic restaurant in town—but legend has it Bill Gates once tried to pay for his burger here with a thousand-dollar bill.

Delancey / Essex Bar / Pantry
Delancey, 1415 NW 70th St, Ballard, 206-838-1960; delanceyseattle.com. Essex Bar, 1421 NW 70th St, Ballard, 206-724-0471; essexbarseattle.com. Pantry, 1417 NW 70th St, Ballard, 206-436-1064; thepantryatdelancey.com

Image: Olivia Brent

Essex Bar
Urbane sips and snacks

Three enterprises—pizzeria, artisan bar, and family-style dinner venue—share a single kitchen, just one of the trendy bona fides that makes this Ballard triumvirate the poster restaurant for Seattle gastronauts. At the popular Delancey it’s not unusual to find among the hordes young tourists photographing their flavorful crackling-crusted-and-sparsely-topped pizzas, a function of co-owner Molly Wizenburg’s fame as author of the food blog Orangette. Even better is the urbane wallpapered Essex Bar next door, where modern-day apothecaries wielding house-aged spruce bitters spritz ice cubes with just that much smoky Scotch, then pull soft beer-boiled pretzels out of the pizza oven to serve with artisanal accents like sweet red onion–currant chutney. A lineup of cooking classes and dinner parties are served at Pantry in back, the endeavor of Wizenburg’s husband and partner, Brandon Pettit, and two associates, melding a gently educational tone with gusts of joie de vivre and simply exuberant food.

Homegrown
3416 Fremont Ave N, Fremont, 206-453-5232. 1531 Melrose Ave, Capitol Hill, 206-682-0935. 2201 Queen Anne Ave N, Queen Anne, 206-217-4745; eathomegrown.com

Yes, the Portlandia quotient is high in a lunch bar where you ponder long over the waste bins determining which of your throwaways is bioplastic and whether those chip pouches qualify as paper. Still, what the earnest young Homegrown guys call “sandwich environmentalism” rides Seattle’s favorite wave—not just in environmental sustainability but in breakfasts, sandwiches, and salads made from real food for vivid flavor. Big love to the pork sandwich with apple butter and sage aioli, housemade breads, and genuinely inventive seasonal sandwiches: zucchini, sweet corn, green bean, tamari onion, and sweet pea pesto being one recent home run. Adding a lineup of home-baked desserts to the three locations was sweet.

Tilth
1411 N 45th St, Wallingford, 206-633-0801; tilthrestaurant.com

Maria Hines was a culinary force even before she handed Iron Chef’s smoked Pacific cod to him on a platter. This humble Wallingford house restaurant is why. By prioritizing perfect ingredients—sometimes listing their provenance on her menu—Hines maintains Oregon Tilth’s supremely high-standard organic certification. (Only eight other restaurants in the country have attained it, one of which is her Ballard Middle Eastern restaurant, Golden Beetle.) None of which would be enough if not for Hines’s flawless ability to conceive a dish. She’ll intelligently partner a beautiful hunk of Skagit River Ranch pork belly with salted peach, black garlic, and farro, for example, to add up to a rounded whole of keen, balanced flavors. This place just keeps getting better.

Paseo
4225 Fremont Ave N, Fremont, 206-545-7440. 6226 Seaview Ave NW, Ballard, 206-789-3100; paseoseattle.com

Recipe for a cult favorite: Divide one underrepresented cuisine (Cuban) between two mostly takeout huts in very residential neighborhoods (Fremont and Ballard). Add a menu of meats and shellfish in exotically fruit-kissed sauces, and feisty Caribbean sandwiches like the Caribbean roast: hunks of tender pork shoulder in a crispy baguette with aioli, cilantro, pickled jalapenos, and big chunks of caramelized onion. Season with a few Annoyances Fans Willingly Overlook—line ever present, cash required, sandwich goo ridiculous, stains inevitable—and one Insider Tip guaranteed to make those fans feel part of the club: The Paseo Press sandwiches always sell out. Serves several zip codes full of slavering, in-the-know foodies.

Image: Olivia Brent

The Herbfarm
Duck breast with pumpkin-seed granola, squash, and matsutake mushrooms

The Herbfarm
14590 NE 145th St, Woodinville, 425-485-5300; theherbfarm.com

Twenty-six years and there’s still nothing like the Woodinville tour de force that invented farm-to-table dining. Yes, the themed nine-course meal is an outlay (around $200 per person, including matched wines) that takes a while (plan on five hours), in a room too floridly overwrought. Thankfully the food is another story—the quintessential seasonal, sustainable Northwest story—brought to us by owners Ron Zimmerman and Carrie Van Dyck, who decided that their perfectionist oversight was a better bet than a name chef. They’re right. As ever, expect a guided garden tour, a speech about the meal, the most fascinating salad of your life, a couple of breathtaking marvels, some creative flights of fancy relating to the theme of the dinner, and the most awe-inspiring wine list in the region. All brought off with the same down-to-earth integrity that has distinguished the Herbfarm since a gardener named Lola Zimmerman found herself with a few extra herbs and an empty garage.

Image: Olivia Brent

Sutra
Vegan magic

Sutra
1605 N 45th St, Wallingford, 206-547-1348; sutraseattle.com

Underpriced, underheralded, and cozily undersized—the homespun house restaurant of yoga master Colin Patterson goes toe to toe with the best in town…and it’s vegan. The setup is that Seattle darling—the prix fixe, chef’s choice, communal table, set-time four courser—with dinner preceded by a gentle gong to signal a moment of gratitude. Grateful you shall be when Patterson’s clever, sometimes stunning, always wordy dishes begin to issue from his open kitchen: perhaps mung bean crepes stuffed with shiso, cashew cheese, and smoked broccoli, or red quinoa and -elderberry-chili mole. The counter, where you can watch Patterson work his transfixing magic, remains the best seat in the house.

Image: Olivia Brent

Bravehorse Tavern
High-tech energy

Brave Horse Tavern
310 Terry Ave N, South Lake Union, 206-971-0717; bravehorsetavern.com

Packed, youthful, and deafening—like, hearing-loss deafening—the brick-and-timber Brave Horse in the Amazon complex embodies all the buzzing, caffeinated, high-tech energy that created South Lake Union and defines Seattle for the world. Culinarily it’s Tom Douglas’s most down-market project—think impeccably sourced Super Bowl party food—but conceived to his culinary standards: sliderlike burgers with smoky sauce on Dahlia Bakery’s sensational buns; chewy-yeasty housemade pretzels in burly dipping sauces like smoked peanut butter with bacon; deviled eggs; brats; fried cheese curds; and an encyclopedic array of boutique brews. Where frat partiers segue into their shuffleboard years.

Rione XIII
401 15th Ave E, Capitol Hill, 206-838-2878; ethanstowellrestaurants.com/rionexiii

Yeah, it’s early yet. But this new tribute to the singular delights of Roman cuisine from Seattle restaurant machine Ethan Stowell hit the Capitol Hill corner of 15th and Harrison so old-souled and vibrant it already feels essential. It’s urban cozy, with medieval notes—stone walls, clerestory windows, warm wood-burning hearth—that strike a winning contrast with the mod mix of Hillsters who pop in for lunch and dinner. They’re chewing golden pizza crusts topped with housemade ricotta, roasted tomatoes, charry padron peppers, and pickled red onions; they’re spreading terrific salted housemade mozzarella and peach mostarda onto crusty toasted baguettes; they’re swooning over toothsome bucatini pasta with smoky guanciale and not just a little chili pepper. Also on the card are big meat plates, terrific Roman-style (made with semolina not potato) gnocchi, and a fried artichoke appetizer that’s already sparked a fan club.

Bar del Corso
3057 Beacon Ave S, Beacon Hill, 206-395-2069; bardelcorso.com

Sure, Seattle is known for its seafood and coffeehouses. But its soul resides in the mom-and-pop neighborhood restaurants that dot the city like a starry constellation. Jerry Corso’s Beacon Hill pizzeria provides the blueprint for how it’s done. The sleek storefront has terrific food—its blistered, pillow-crusted pizzas topped with combos like chanterelles, caramelized onions, cherry tomatoes, and crisped coppa; its Italian side dishes like ripe, barely dressed panzanella salads, or the fried risotto balls called supplì. But what fills it with soul is the happy burble of neighborhood esprit: the invariable wait for a table, the family-friendly demographic, the affable service, and the chatting-across-tables vibe that turns a restaurant into something so much more.

Image: Olivia Brent

Shiro’s Sushi
2401 Second Ave, Belltown, 206-443-9844; shiros.com

Long before everyone saw last year’s documentary film Jiro Dreams of Sushi, over four decades’ worth of Seattle cognoscenti already revered Shiro Kashiba, who apprenticed with Jiro in Tokyo before opening the first full-service sushi bar in Seattle. At Maneki, then Nikko, and now Shiro’s, he consistently presents immaculate cuts of the freshest fish—Hokkaido scallops to Hood Canal geoduck and every edible stop along the way. His tidy little Belltown box is understatedly elegant, but to score the sublime immersion that is the omakase experience you’ll want a seat at the bar—for which you’ll have to wait on the sidewalk at least a half hour before opening. Shiro-san works Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays but every chef behind the bar (including another Jiro alum, Daisuke Nakazawa) is a maestro—and a far sight more twinkly, it must be said, than a certain taciturn octogenarian in a Tokyo subway.

Full Tilt Ice Cream
9629 16th Ave SW, White Center, 206-767-4811. 5041 Rainier Ave S, Columbia City, 206-226-2740. 4759 Brooklyn Ave NE, University District, 206-524-4406. 5453 Leary Ave N, Ballard, 206-297-3000; fulltilticecream.com

If there were a dive bar for kids, it’d be Full Tilt. These scoop shops are a bit dingy around the edges, buoyant with neighborhood energy (in the White Center, Columbia City, and Ballard locations; less in the teensy U District location), loud with occasional live music, and chock full of the two things children love most: ice cream and pinball machines. For the soccer parents there’s beer, really great beer, like Maui Brewing Coconut Porter, Stone IPA, and Pike Kilt Lifter; it’s what you drink between licks of Full Tilt’s sensational ice cream, with its luscious, almost fondue-pot consistency and all-natural ingredients, many of them organic. Flavors (some vegan!) are vivid and ethnically inspired; two greatest hits are the butterscotchy ube, a purple yam popular in the Philippines, and horchata, Mexican cinnamony rice milk. Prices are too low for ice cream this good; lower still since its richness means one scoop may just do you.

Cascina Spinasse / Artusi
Cascina Spinasse, 1531 14th Ave, Capitol Hill, 206-251-7673; spinasse.com. Artusi, 1535 14th Ave, Capitol Hill, 206-678-2516; artusibar.com

Piedmontese rusticity and European sophistication wow side by side at Seattle’s two essential Italian restaurants. At his swank and minimalist Artusi, chef Jason Stratton delivers
a lineup of amari and grappas and brilliant bitter cocktails to complement vivid Euro nibbles like tripe with corona beans or velvet tuna mayonnaise over new potatoes; next door at the twinkling farmstead Spinasse, the dewy rabbit chicory salads and braised duck legs with plums and olives and—swoon—otherworldly rich and reliably stunning tajarin pasta, with ragù or butter and sage, that comprise dinner for people who really know how to eat dinner.

Image: Olivia Brent

Ray’s Boathouse
6049 Seaview Ave NW, Ballard, 206-789-3770; rays.com

The classic Seattle fish house that food snobs long since relinquished to anniversary celebrators and visiting Kansans is smooth and masterful—the main downstairs restaurant, that is—and newly energized under the helm of chef Wayne Johnson (late of Andaluca). If the decor feels a little stodgy, no one’s looking at it anyway, what with the whole pewter panorama of sea and sky just outside the glass. No one’s saying these Mediterranean- and Asian-influenced fish preparations (Dungeness crab cakes with coriander cream, mussels in Thai red curry) break new ground. But the kitchen’s careful execution and avid commitment to sourcing more than compen---sates, delivering the rarest quality there is: consistency. The Chatham Strait sablefish in sake kasu remains one of the finest plates of fish in the Northwest.

Matt’s in the Market
94 Pike St, Ste 32, Pike Place Market, 206-467-7909; mattsinthemarket.com

Image: Olivia Brent

Fixed in the heart of Pike Place Market and lined with demi-lune windows framing quintessential Seattle eyefuls—the market sign, the fish flingers, a ferry on the bay, the craggy horizon, and now that skyline hogger of a Ferris wheel—Matt’s ranks as Seattle’s iconic restaurant. The view’s not bad on the plate either, where fiercely local meats and fish get vivid, global treatments, like gorgeous purple grilled octopus and pork belly over eye-popping kimchi. Prices that sting at night ease up by day for crowd-pleasing sandwiches like a terrific crusted catfish. Beneath timber rafters, upon checkerboard floors, the place crackles with urban energy.

Restaurant Zoë
1318 E Union St, Capitol Hill, 206-256-2060; restaurantzoe.com

With its crowded urban fizz, Pike/Pine location, smart seasonal menu, and something-for-everyone versatility, Scott Staples’s second iteration of Zoë makes Seattle’s all-around best night out right now. Wherever you wander in the menu—a nectarine prosciutto salad, a chicken breast with pancetta and medjool date puree, a grass-fed and wood-fired cheeseburger, a killer steak tartare—you will be dazzled with both the gorgeous compositions and the fact that all this modern and all this Euro still add up to food this delish. Different sections provide nice atmospheric variety: Napalike at the entry, Boho-farmhouse in the sunroom, neo-industrial stylish in the main room. Service is careful and terrific.

Seattle Restaurant of the Year 2012: Altura

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:00:00 -0700

Image: Michael Clinard

It’s 8pm on a Saturday night, and inside the twinkling little restaurant at 617 Broadway something momentous is happening. An order is being plated.

You know it’s big; why else would four waiters huddle all eager and expectant around the chef as he swirls celery root puree into paisleys on the dish, spooning black rice alongside, carefully positioning a crackling, golden-skinned duck-fat-poached chicken breast and a forcemeat-stuffed thigh on top, then finishing with fennel fronds? On another plate he carefully heaps turnip greens, then nudges into them the meaty end of three glistening lamb rib chops, smoking from the grill. Brow knit in concentration, the chef changes his angle, surveys his work, wipes a blop of errant sauce off the edge. His brow relaxes, the waiters take the plates, and a nearly imperceptible wave of delight flickers across his face.

Chef Nathan Lockwood wipes the counter and begins again.

The first thing one gets about Altura is its seriousness. Not serious as in solemn: solemnity is the pious affectation that diminishes so many otherwise worthy dining rooms. Solemnity is attitude. It is humorlessness. It is arrogance.

Seriousness is care. Industry. Genuine investment in each diner’s experience: the delight on Lockwood’s face. You see it when you walk through the narrow room to your seat, as waiters and hosts and busers meet your eyes and greet you in authentic welcome. You see it in the big open kitchen, stretching just about the length of the room, where the still focus of the chef and the calm choreography of his team are on view for each of the 11 tables and 11 counter seats. This culinary ballet is the major element of the rustic and elegant room: wood plank tables, wrought iron pendants, spiral stair in the corner, antique angel steadily looking on from the loft.

You see that seriousness, of course, on your plate: your plate which was accorded all the love—it can only be called love—as the ones described above. As every plate at Altura is. The love is in the diminutive amuse-bouche of corn panna cotta at the height of corn season, served in a porcelain cup with a miniature spoon and speckled with drops of olive oil and blue chive blossoms: a dish of tiny ecstasies, food for woodland fairies. The love is in a lushly marbled piece of raw kampachi, delicately smoky, prettied with oil-puddled ribbons of shunkyo radish and scattered with peppercress and lemon zest. The love is really in Altura’s full-throated pastas: perhaps a shallow bowl of plump cavatelli in an earthy, forever-simmered sugo of duck liver and golden chanterelles and fresh sage; all of it cut small so that every flavor conspires in every forkful.

Because of Altura’s novel menu concept—you order in three, four, or five courses, mixing and matching starters and pastas and mains however you please—any flexibility you lose in not easily being able to drop in for a plate of pasta you make up for in the joy of being able to order, say, a four-course meal consisting of two pastas and two desserts.

Not a bad idea at Altura. Particularly if vanilla-rum panna cotta drizzled with black-pepper honey is on the card.

Lockwood honed his craft in San Francisco restaurants, including the Michelin-anointed Acquerello; in Seattle he worked at the exclusive supper club, the Ruins. His greatest gastronomic gift is his radar for unlikely couplings that work, within a seasonally dictated palette of Northwest ingredients—the bold burst of sea urchin brine over veal sweetbreads, the lemony tang of wood sorrel sorbet over a moscato-poached peach. But for all the fuss, all the unapproachables—the octopus, the braised tripe, the grated tuna heart—the plate set before you pulls off the very antithesis of fussy unapproachability. Out of the most sophisticated Northwest ingredients Lockwood wrests rustic Italian preparations with an unlikely preponderance of yum.

So Altura’s food soars about as close to the sun as any in this town: fitting for a restaurant named “height” in Italian. But what truly elevates Altura is that both sides of the enterprise—commonly known as the front and the back of the house—are here, literally and meaningfully, two sides of a whole. Together they make one coherent gift to the diner.

Watching a kitchen love your dinner into existence would be rare enough. Here, the distinction between the desire to please and the pleasing evaporates. Waiter and chef work as two sides of a single coin—waiters know the food, really know it; chefs, even Lockwood, chat up the counter diners. The result is what Lockwood calls a “gathered-round-the-stove, Thanksgiving dinner” vibe, abetted by a waitstaff as unexpectedly unpretentious as this critic has ever seen. Credit Guy Kugel, the longtime Seattle sommelier. Kugel’s demeanor sets a tone of gastronomic intelligence and kind-eyed humility, fixing Altura as a place where every waiter undoubtedly knows about a thousand times more about food and wine than you do—but wouldn’t dream of acting like it.

The night is waning and Lockwood looks across at the soon-to-be recipient of a meaty Abruzzese ragù. “Looks like she’s about seven,” he tells his sous chef. “I think this’ll be enough.” He watches his colleague plate the dish, he knits his brow. “Then if she needs more, we’ll just give her more.”

The waiter swoops the dish away, and the untrained eye might miss the expression that flickers for an instant across Lockwood’s face. It’s delight.

Vij’s Sibling Shanik Comes to South Lake Union

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:41:00 -0700

Image: Victor John Penner

Friday afternoon in September, Meeru Dhalwala sits on an overstuffed black velvet sofa, drinking milky chai tea and politely nibbling on Indian sweets. She speaks in Hindi, and the woman and two men sitting across from her respond in Punjabi. The woman, Pummy, grew up in the same village in Punjab, India, as Dhalwala’s kitchen manager. Now Pummy lives in this home in Auburn, where Dhalwala arrives an hour late for their meeting, having driven her Prius straight from Vancouver.

Leaning forward, her freckled face serious and framed by springy black curls, Dhalwala talks about the restaurant, Shanik, she is opening in South Lake Union. She desperately needs to hire eight people to work in the kitchen, and she wants people without professional cooking experience, a blank slate upon which she can impress her way of doing things. All full-time employees will have health insurance, a benefit unheard of in most U.S. restaurant kitchens.

One of the men is Pummy’s husband; the other will function as a sort of recruiter, spreading Dhalwala’s “help wanted” message through temples and community centers in the area. If he deems her suitable. The hard work and commitment Dhalwala is outlining is a given, he says. He’s more concerned about how she manages her kitchen and whether the neighborhood is safe at night for wives, sisters, and mothers from his community. Dhalwala is the one with jobs to fill, but she is the one being interviewed.

Nearly three hours after her arrival, after Pummy feeds her freshly made flatbread, potato and cauliflower curries, yogurt, salad, and rice pudding, it’s time to get back in the Prius. The would-be recruiter left before the meal, but he did request a help wanted notice, handwritten and in Punjabi, that he could post around the community. Apparently Dhalwala met with his approval.

Dhalwala’s name isn’t familiar to many people south of the Canadian border, but her food already has an ardent fan base here. On any given night, a tenth of the diners at Vij’s and Rangoli, the Vancouver restaurants she owns with her husband Vikram Vij, are from Seattle. Food-obsessed locals drive up I-5 for the sole purpose of eating at the Indian restaurant New York Times food writer Mark Bittman proclaimed “among the finest Indian restaurants in the world.” Here a line forms outside, beneath the neon Vij’s sign, well before doors open at 5:30. And nobody but nobody gets to cut; it’s a tiny reflection of Dhalwala’s master’s degree in third-world development. She considers Vij’s a minute country, where she and her husband are the equitable governing body. Surviving those two-hour waits is a badge of pride, as is receiving the inevitable personal greeting from Vij himself, as he circles the room night after night.

Shanik opens the first week of December, at the corner of Terry and Republican, and finding a kitchen staff consumes Dhalwala’s thoughts, so much that she avoids drinking water at night. Midnight bathroom trips inevitably result in lying awake, worrying about the restaurant’s opening day arriving with nobody in the kitchen making masala. Every one of her 45 employees in Vancouver is female, and first-generation Indian with no professional cooking experience before Dhalwala trained them. It’s a successful formula that might be impossible to pull off in Seattle. Amarjeet Gill, her kitchen manager, is similarly consumed by the hunt for staff, so much so that she almost approached an Indian woman on the street outside the restaurant, until Dhalwala grabbed her by the arm and pointed out that a woman wearing a lab coat probably doesn’t want to trade it in to chop onions and garlic.

While her husband is the face (and name) of Vij’s, the kitchen is Dhalwala’s domain. The recipes have been largely her creation for nearly 18 years, though before that point she was working as a program manager at a human rights nonprofit in Washington, DC, focusing on development in countries like Rwanda, Uganda, and Malawi. She didn’t cook much more than chickpeas and rice. Over Thanksgiving in 1994, Dhalwala flew across the continent for the sole purpose of meeting a guy named Vikram Vij, a guy whose mom grew up with hers back in India. Their mothers had set them up on a phone date a few weeks earlier.

The news that Vij’s parents would also be in town while Dhalwala was staying with him horrified her mother. Heavens—her old friend might think she raised the kind of daughter who regularly shacks up with men she’s just met. Never mind that Dhalwala was 30 years old and had already been married. Still, to appease her parents, she promised to wear some profoundly untantalizing sleepwear. Under duress, Dhalwala bought the cheapest set of long pajamas she could find, a gaudy red and green Christmas plaid.

Vij had just bought a 14-seat diner in Vancouver, and the only unchaperoned time the new acquaintances had was after he left his restaurant at night. They stayed out eating, drinking, or just parking at the beach and talking, usually until 6 or 7 in the morning. On day five, he proposed. His one hesitation, he told her later, was whether he could truly be physically attracted to a woman who wore such ugly pajamas.

The couple married just four weeks later, on Christmas Eve. Dhalwala relocated to Vancouver in February, now married to a man she hadn’t known two months ago. Her plan was to find another nonprofit job, except she had no work permit. She filled her days hanging out with her new husband in the Vij’s kitchen. One day she noticed a milky skin had formed on the chai Vij served in his restaurant. And the particular spice combination he used discolored the milk. Dhalwala wasn’t a cook, but she was a tenacious problem solver. By April, she was experimenting with flavors and recipes.

Her entire culinary education happened in that kitchen. She hunkered down in that room, tasting, testing, and when the day was over, reading. The crusading personality she channeled into her nonprofit work had found a new focus. During Sam Sifton’s tenure as New York Times restaurant critic, he overheard Dhalwala tell a group of visiting Montana residents that she could not, in good conscience, fill a dinner order that consisted only of meat. She instead negotiated to put together a side dish of vegetables, and if the men didn’t like it, dinner was on her. They reportedly devoured her coconut kale and happily picked up the tab.

But by the time Dhalwala felt confident as a chef, “Vikram was already the big personality here.”

Though Vij plays no role in Shanik other than that of supportive husband, he did drop a clue as to its existence the evening of April 23, one so unseasonably warm in Seattle that the windows remained open at Matt’s in the Market even as the nighttime chill rolled into Pike Place Market from Puget Sound. Vij was sharing the kitchen with Matt’s chef Chester Gerl, to cook a joint dinner celebrating the restaurant’s fifth anniversary.

Image: Victor John Penner

Seats sold out within days, and in between courses Vij circulated throughout the room as if he’d been there for a decade. He placed his hand on guests’ shoulders as he asked how they were enjoying the lamb, gazing intently with eyes an unexpected cornflower hue against his dark skin. When Vij addressed the room and listed Seattle as “the one city outside Canada that I’d open a restaurant,” the crowd erupted into an actual cheer, as if he just made an unexpected dash to home plate. The chef concluded with the wish, “Let Seattle smell and taste of good Indian food in the future.” Of course, at that moment, he was aware that his wife was well on her way to making his toast a reality.

Dhalwala’s partner in this venture is Oğuz Istif, the chief operating officer for all things Vij’s—the restaurants, the plant in Surrey that produces Vij’s at Home frozen curries, Vij’s Indian railroad-style food truck. He came to Canada from southeast Turkey, working as a front-of-house manager at Rangoli before going back to school for his MBA. Istif is 12 years younger than Dhalwala, a soft-spoken sharp dresser with impeccable manners and large brown eyes fringed with lashes. Those last two attributes ensure perpetual adoration from the women in the Vij’s and Rangoli kitchens, who always make sure to set food aside for him before it runs out. He also helps distill Dhalwala’s concepts of social justice into sound business practices but will speak up when there just isn’t room in the budget for the custom seat cushions she wants, made with wool sheared and felted by three enterprising moms on Orcas Island.

The plan was to open a restaurant in Istanbul, but a cookbook event Dhalwala hosted at Elliott Bay Book Company last November recentered the map. A group of Vij’s regulars attended, and afterward, over a glass of wine, one of them asked, “Would you ever consider opening a restaurant in Seattle?”

Plenty of people have asked that same question, but it helped that this one, Joe Herrin, is a principal at Heliotrope Architects and offered to actually set up meetings so Dhalwala and Istif could see a few spaces. They looked downtown and in Fremont, but South Lake Union “suited us right away,” says Dhalwala. The sterile, even drab, buildings on Amazon’s new campus might seem an odd choice, but the rapid-fire urban regeneration reminded her of Vancouver’s Yaletown neighborhood. She also likes the fact that Shanik’s building is LEED Platinum certified. Herrin is the architect for the space, creating elements like the champagne-colored steel screen that separates the dining room and vestibule, its floral filigree pattern a mix of Indian and Turkish design elements.

Dhalwala is fond of explaining, “I’m treating Shanik like an unplanned third pregnancy.”

As workers scurry around the construction zone that will soon be their restaurant, Dhalwala and Istif debate the takeout counter to the left of the restaurant entrance. It’s called Tiffin, the British-Indian term for the stainless steel stacked-container lunch boxes. Amazonians can order lunch in these reusable containers, trading in empties with their next lunch order. Dhalwala wants people to wash the tiffins before returning them, but Istif thinks this will lead to fewer returns.

“We have to make people be responsible to something,” Dhalwala argues. “Otherwise we’ll just be mollycoddling them.” Though she moved to the U.S. from India when she was four years old, she retains a lilt that isn’t quite an accent. She’s wearing black jeans and a brown and black tunic her eldest daughter calls her “party shirt,” a last--minute change after spilling milky tea down her front on the way out the door in Vancouver this morning. She made the tea for Istif, since he was more concerned with being on time for their 10:30 meeting in Seattle than with breakfast.

Shanik is named for her younger daughter. The elder, Nanaki, sports an ancient and deeply religious Sikh name that Dhalwala thought inappropriate for a restaurant. “It would be like calling my restaurant Muhammad and serving pork; it would be like calling my restaurant Krishna and serving beef.”

Dhalwala is fond of explaining, “I’m treating Shanik like an unplanned third pregnancy.” Vij’s is like her eldest daughter, “that coddled first child, sensitive and elegant,” while Rangoli is very much the younger child, “playful and naughty and never following the rules.” As for Shanik, says Dhalwala, “even if you’re not planning for it, when that baby is born it’s as special as the first two.”

Shanik has a 40-seat lounge area in the back, with a spray of tiny lights on the ceiling to mimic the Himalayan night sky. It’s designed as a place for customers to have a cocktail while awaiting one of the dining room’s 72 seats—having an overabundance of customers is a given at her other two restaurants.

And yet Dhalwala still lies awake, worries about the restaurant and its currently empty kitchen usurping her usual nighttime worries about climate change. She’s accustomed to having her food under public scrutiny, but when the inevitable restaurant reviews come out, there’s no one to deflect any criticism. Istif has his own warm front-of-house demeanor, and “Vikram is a show,” says Dhalwala of her husband’s legendary greetings in the Vij’s dining room. But she plans to spend most of her time in the kitchen. The idea of her greeting customers with bawdy jokes and her husband’s signature namaste bow strikes her as ridiculous.

However, the idea of designing a menu that isn’t a collaboration with her meat-and-potato-loving husband makes Dhalwala positively giddy. Shanik’s food will be about 40 percent vegetarian and distinct from their jointly owned restaurants, serving some brand new recipes and other favorites Dhalwala hasn’t cooked for years. Beyond that, she’s still feeling her way. This process will extend beyond the day the doors open, as she and Seattle get to know each other. But already, she says, Shanik is indelibly her vision.

“I’ve got this one chance to be a human being. I don’t want to blow it on shit that doesn’t make me happy inside.”

Best Restaurants 2012

Best Restaurants 2012 Directory

Service in Seattle Restaurants

Best Restaurants 2012

Seattle Restaurant of the Year 2012: Altura

Restaurant Info

Vij’s Sibling Shanik Comes to South Lake Union