Surrogate Hangout
The Volunteer Park Cafe fills in where a long-gone Capitol Hill favorite left off.
But let’s get back to that pear-cardamom muffin. Dewy with fresh fruit, softly crusted up top, whispering its cardamom—it was perfect. I mean just-one-more perfect. All-is-forgiven perfect. I-still-don’t-have-my-latte-but-who-needs-coffee-anyway perfect.
And performance was all uphill from here, as subsequent months found me overresearching in earnest. Baked goods, which almost all come from Earnhardt, have been uniformly right: the chocolate cakes rich and fathomless, the biscuits (for a towering strawberry shortcake dessert) dense and sugar-crusted. The exception to the home-baked rule is Le Fournil’s almond croissants—the pastry every pastry chef ought to order out for.
One particularly memorable breakfast visit ended after lunch. It’s that kind of place. All morning we feasted on apple-brie croissants—sheer decadence drizzled with lavender honey—and brioche French toast, in which plump slices of the gilded bread arrive stuffed with ricotta and vanilla bean custard, and decorated with caramelized banana chunks encrusted with cinnamon sugar and roasted walnuts. The result was like a danish, to the power of 10.
We took a little breather—talked to friends, read the paper—before launching into lunch, its savories the province of Burke. We sampled organic salads: a well-populated chop salad where the usual suspects were moistened with sweeter-than-usual basil vinaigrette, a crunchy-fresh chicken-apple salad whose creamy herb dressing recalled the tarragon-kissed classic at seminal takeout café Gretchen’s Of Course. The mushroom tart featured roasted cherry tomatoes, caramelized onions, and the mushrooms on a handkerchief of flaky phyllo, the whole scattered with fresh arugula. A Caprese panino was all long strings of mozzarella on craggy well-oiled peasant bread, with tart oven-roasted tomatoes providing the friskiness and basil aioli supplying the swoon.
Frisky and swoony could, for that matter, describe Burke and Earnhardt. As they joshed with regulars and sustained a girlish banter between themselves, at one point admiring one another’s T-shirts behind the counter, I wondered if anyone had ever underestimated these pros. What a mistake, for their kitchen brings intention and care down to the crumb level. Call it comfort food for the 21st century. Burke’s macaroni and cheese was a velveteen masterpiece of gruyère, white cheddar, and fontina. Her potpie placed a buttery roof atop a ramekin of, that day, lamb shank, braised so long and so tenderly its threads became the sauce, along with vegetables and sweet, firm red bliss potatoes.
We were finally, urp, finished. Had they been open for dinner we would have stayed for that too. So when they began dinner service in May, adding pizzas and a whole new set of sophisticated starters, we wondered how they’d heard us.
Such are its folksy charms. The Volunteer Park Café and Marketplace represents a gentle revisit to small-town Seattle. Savoring my pear-cardamom muffin and latte—it finally arrived—I realized that this place is the spiritual successor to Surrogate Hostess, the dessert-and-coffee-all-day lunch spot that a couple of decades ago functioned as communal parlor for North Capitol Hill. Remember the laid-back vibe, the masterful quiche, the fact that everyone was there? Now, thanks to this bright newcomer, you don’t even have to have been there to remember it.
Published: July 2007
