By Their Cocktails Ye Shall Know Them

Fortunate we are, in Seattle, to have lounges for serious drinkers of cocktails, connoisseurs of the art (as opposed to cocktail lounges for "serious drinkers," another category entirely). The best cocktail bars, the ones that care, cluster downtown, in or close to hotels. ZigZag, for one (a cocktail called the Toronto), Suite 410 (that's their Pisco Sour), Oliver's, Vessel. They're not flashy (Milk & Honey in New York is almost anonymous.) They hire experts to run the bar; they quickly develop a devoted following.

So when Vessel parted ways with Jamie Boudreau last month, it was a scandal. Bethany Jean Clement wrote about it on Slog, Nancy Leson on All You Can Eat. Seattle's leading cocktail gurus are incensed. This from Robert Hess of Drinkboy:

Jamie is one of the most dedicated and talented bartenders I know, and was the sole reason that Vessel got on the map. To look for a silver lining in his recent departure I can only hope that he is soon able to open his own joint, AND that Vessel is able to hang on and maintain the quality standards he set. Seattle deserves more great bars.

When Jamie Boudreau came to Seattle to help start up Vessel, it was a huge step forward for the city's cocktail community. While we were already very fortunate to have bartenders like Zig Zag's Murray Stenson working here, Jamie's arrival was really a breath of fresh air. Jamie's an immensely talented bartender, and he was a significant addition to Seattle's overall culinary scene--he really raised the bar for everyone. I think it's tragic in a way that he's leaving Vessel, but with any luck he'll stay in Seattle, hopefully in a capacity that will give him the room and the freedom he needs to flex his considerable mixological muscles.

Not unexpectedly, Clark Niemeyer, Vessel's owner, has his own take on the situation.

Vessel was conceived and developed prior to hiring Jamie. He was hired to develop the cocktail program, train our staff, and develop the recipes. We have a huge library of them. He did a marvelous job, and we wish him well. It was a mutual agreement for him to move on.

Complicating matters is the disappearance of Vessel's onetime finance guy, none of which makes like for Boudreau any easier. On his erudite blog, SpiritsAndCocktails he writes that he finally got a catering gig. An earlier entry was titled "Will Muddle for Food."

Seattle's First Food Critic

Nancy Leson's blog, All You Can Eat, pays tribute today to this guy, John Hinterberger. No, he hasn't gone to that great Buss Tub in the Sky, he's still very much with us, some 17 years after "retiring" as a regular columnist, restaurant critic and talk show host. Proof that there's life aplenty after the fromage is eaten and the tiramisù is cleared. (His recipe for clam spaghetti, by the way, is a classic.)

Without Hinterberger's clear-eyed, take-no-crap critiques, Seattle would still be a culinary wasteland, without baguettes or panini to feed us, without San Pellegrino or Ste. Michelle to slake our thirst. Without food blogs (kindled by his spirit) to guide, us we would have wandered another 40 years in the desert. Hint is truly our Moses; it's heartwarming that he made it through. Again.

A New Downtown Supermarket

Escalators will glide customers from the 3rd Avenue sidewalk to the terrazzo-tile lower level, where flowers, fruit and vegetables await, along with wines, desserts, artisan breads, gourmet cheeses, sushi, fresh sandwiches, a deli, a salad bar, a full-service butcher. Not much baby food, nor giant packages of toilet paper, however. An everyday place with supermarket prices, not mini-mart rip-offs.

If the Pike Place Market is first and foremost a tourist attraction, the new Kress IGA is a neighborhood grocery. "They'd recognize it in New York," Myers says. He expects to open in June.

Whither Belltown Fine Dining?

First Mistral, temple of gastronomy, hushed inner sanctum of the molecular, closed six weeks ago. Then Lampreia, sacred (and almost secret) destination for Seattle devotees of haute-cuisine, put itself up for sale. Now Cascadia, that hardy and trendy hybrid, is out as well.

All three owner-chefs have their reasons, and they're not even the same reasons. Mistral's William Belickis is on to a more ambitious project, a suite of restaurants that needs more space (and more investment) than his 32-seat chapel. Scott Carsberg of Lampreia has long wanted a space he can actually own, and is moving to the Gallery building, under construction at the corner of 2nd and Broad. And Kerry Sear, having hit his stride by combining popular mini-burgers with high standards of Northwest cuisine, is leaving Cascadia's grand, high-ceilinged space after ten years and returning to the fold of the new Four Seasons at First & Union.

So, by the end of summer, Belltown's top three dinner houses will be g-gone. What will come in their place? The rent's too high for mid-range chains like Red Lobsters or Applebees...though not for dance clubs and lounges. With food costs skyrocketing and labor shortages climbing, it makes less sense than ever to fill the menu with $20 tuna tartare and $30 salmon en papillotte. But a super-premium cosmo for $15, shaken by a $10/hour bar dude with a dollar's worth of booze, that's a no-brainer.

Between Lampreia and Cascadia stands Del Rey, a Capitol-Hill-style lounge (dark inside, live music, tequila) with a line out the door. Could this be the future of Belltown? Or indeed of fine dining everywhere?

Bellini's "I Puritani" at Seattle Opera

God damn Bellini for writing an opera that requires four incredibly brilliant bel canto singers. And damn him again for a piece that runs well over 3 hours without a skerrick of a plot. God damn Seattle Opera for waiting until now to stage this rough beast.

Damn those effing Puritans for populating the set with lavish costumes that have about as much historical relevance to early 17th century as a turnip green. Damn the set, while we're at it, which looks like a tenement fire escape designed by Piranesi. Damn the international cast (French soprano, American tenor, Polish baritone, Canadian basso, Italian conductor), which stumbles unevenly through the first two acts until a rousing.duet (baritone, basso), Suoni la tromba, that sets up the transcendent third act.

At last, the soprano, Norah Amsellem, no longer trills and swoons like a lovesick madwoman. At last, the tenor, Seattle's own Lawrence Brownlee, gets to hit those amazing Bellini high notes. At last, the ensemble comes together, and even that damned torture-chamber of a set, draped with 50 banner-waving, axe-wielding, sword-brandishing singers and extras, looks stunning.

Did I say damn Bellini and damn Seattle Opera? No, God bless Bellini for his genius, God bless Seattle Opera for waiting, God bless Amsellem and Browlee for their talents! And in that same spirit of reconciliation, God bless CNN, MSMBC and Fox News as well.

Seattle Opera photos, above, by Rosarii Lynch and Bill Mohn. Alas, the video preview, produced by Seattle Opera, stops short of reuniting the lovers.

Don't Google the Google Chef

Employee number 53, Charlie Ayers was hired in 1999 to run the lunchroom at Google. Before that, he'd been catering for musicians (including the Grateful Dead) around San Francisco. By the time he left six years later, still a hippie at heart, his staff of 150 was feeding 4,000 googlers a day at 10 locations. ("Well, wouldn't you know it,some people got fat.")

In a new cookbook, Food 2.0, Ayers wraps his "earth-friendly" culinary philosophy in elegant packaging from the folks at Dorling Kindersely. Divided into sections titled Smart Choices, the Smart Pantry and Smart Recipes, interspersed with "smart" words of wisdom like this: "Each meal is an opportunity to make a difference--in your body and your world."

The basic philosophy is expressed early-on: "Fast, raw, and organic: that's what I'm thinking when I cook." The emphasis, all too often, is on fast, though Ayers also confesses to liking beer ("a happiness item") and chocolate ("a non-geotiable part of my life"). Lots of granola, lots of smoothies, as one might expect. He freezes things with abandon: meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, and disdains the microwave in favor of the crockpot. I was confounded, however, by a recipe for something called Glace de Vien, a reduction of bourbon, port, beef stock and herbs. What's that, pray tell? Googled it, I did. "No results found." A non-traditional, cutting-edge meat glace de viande, ya think? Or was the copy editor just out to lunch?

Decide for yourselves! The publishers will send free books to the first three Cornichon readers who ask. Click here to request a copy. Don't forget to include an address where the escargot can find you.

UPDATE: No more books, but...If you want to ask him in person, you can check out his
Seattle-area book signing:

Thursday, May 8
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM - Talk & book signing

Third Place Books
17171 Bothel Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155

Pandan Brown Ale: No Laughing Matter

Two local techies, Chris Castillo and Joe Valvo, owners of the new Laughing Buddha brewery, follow the market price of hops with rapt attention. Five bucks a pound six months ago, a spike at $50, now settling down at a relatively affordable $20. Galena and Northern Brewer they buy for the bitterness in the brown ale, a Czech variety for the lager. So far, they've been getting what they need from other breweries. The grain comes from Larry's Brew Supply in Kent. The pandan? From Viet Wah, the Asian supermarket group.

Pandan, you ask? It's also known as screwpine, a plant native to Indonesia whose leaves give up a fragrant extract that's typically used to flavor rice and an assortment of baked and frozen desserts. Laughing Buddha uses it in their brown ale, which has a delightfully nutty taste and makes a terrific accompaniment to Asian food (from the subtlest sushi to fiercest phad thai).

Other flavors, too: ginger, mango, lychee, all designed to complement Asian food. Laughing Buddha is in an industrial building in South Park around the corner from Baron Brewing, a five-year-old outfit that rolls its eyes at such doings. They follow the Rheinheitsgebot, a Bavarian edict in 1516 that limited ingredients in beer to water, barley and hops. Germany actually repealed the regulation in 1987, but many brewers continue to maintain its standards. (American industrial brewers like Budweiser at one point switched from costly grain to cheaper rice, only to watch as rice became more expensive; the saving grace is that spent brewer's rice can be sold as dog food.)

Back to the Laughing guys: they got picked up by a serious distributor, Click Wholesale, and are brewing as fast as they can. Big ambitions: Castillo's hero is Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery, the godfather of the new wave of American craft brewers. Pandan in all 50 states? Why not?

Through a (Clear) Glass, Darkly

We humans are delusional; we think we have free will and immaculate perception. We don't rob Peter to pay Paul, we borrow from our friends so we can buy oil from our enemies. We turn our food supplies into even more fuel, and we'd grow yet more if only we could afford to import still more fertilizer from our neighbor to the north, even as we build a fence to keep out our neighbors from the south.

In this climate of public mistrust, we are encouraged to rely instead on the personal and private: our own sense of taste. Especially when it comes to wine, that most variable of beverages, we're told to "drink what you like." In this bottle, in that glass, we seek salvation.

Salvation from bad wine? No, improvement of good wine, but subito, vite, schnell, quickly! Can't wait for the subtle ravages of time to smooth tannins and ameliorate acids, gotta getta gimmick and, presto! The wine doesn't breathe, the glass breathes. So say wine gurus Robert Parker and Ronn Wiegand. Sez Cornichon, not so much.

We tried this new Breathable Crystal stemware with a second-tier Bordeaux, a Beaujolais and a Chinon, all decent wines that showed promise of improvement with time. Yes, tannins were tamed, but the wines seemed to lose their balance. In growing up so fast (two or three years in two or three minutes), they lost their youthful intensity.

We see the future with no more clarity than any mortal; but through this glass, our conclusion is "don't grow up too fast." Live within your means, live within your time.

Restaurant Exec: Keep On Forking

For two days earlier this week, over 10,000 restaurateurs swarmed into the Convention Center, where some 500 exhibitors at the Northwest Foodservice Show were offering samples (deep-fried churros, prepackaged burgers, imported desserts), showing off new equipment and point-of-sale systems, offering consulting services. Keynote address from Anthony Anton, CEO of the Washington Restaurant Association, who took us on a quick tour to show off ecologically correct green packaging (forks made of cornstarch). "We have to get ahead of the regulators," he maintained.

The R-word was never spoken. Other parts of the country might be in trouble, he says, but not this state. Instead, Anton talked about rising food costs (not getting better anytime soon) and the growing labor crunch (going to get worse if there's an immigration crackdown this summer).

Over 50% of all food dollars are being spent outside the home, Anton points out. Five meals a week, on average. And the economic drivers in this state remain strong: Microsoft, Boeing, agriculture (the weak dollar helps exports), ports (again, exports), and construction (with transportation projects picking up the slack of the weak housing market).

Two solutions for restaurants: sell lottery tickets (seriously), and buy labor-saving equipment.

Oh really? Our inbox gets a flurry of press releases from restaurants, and the theme past month has been downsizing: simpler food, comfort food, even (at Veil) TV dinners. One longtime restaurant operator, facing skyrocketing food costs, lack of qualified staff, high gas prices, and an increasingly nervous clientele, says "the industry's response is head-in-the-sand denial."

Da Best Oysters, Da Best Wines

Puget Sound is home to some of the world's best oyster beds, thanks to cold, clean water and nutrient-rich runoff from the Cascades and the Olympics. Ya got your Kumamotos, your Pacifics, your Olympias, your Virginicas. Yup, Virginicas, "east cost" oysters whose seed was brought to Washington by transcontinental train nearly a century ago, grown on the banks of Totten Inlet. And, get this: in a blind tasting last week, sponsored by the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, those "west coast" Virginicas were judged number one. "Stunning" said Rowan Jacobsen, author of The Geography of Oysters. Local grower Bill Taylor, president of Taylor Shellfish Farms, was humble: "A thrill to have our oysters appreciated by such an esteemed panel."

Meantime, oyster guru Jon Rowley has announced the top oyster wines after a three-state competition. Chateau Ste. Michelle's sauvignon blanc and Willamette Valley Vineyards' pinot gris head the list of repeat winners, along with newcomers from Amity, Covey Run, Simi and Clos du Bois. Complete list here.

Underground Restaurants Get Little Sympathy Here

Couple of weeks ago, we got an email that sounded pretty grim: someone had tipped off the Liquor Board, and now Western Civilization was going to collapse. Around town, bloggers cried foul, falling right into the outlaws' trap. No and no, wrong and wrong. These guys aren't romantic Zorros, they're behaving like petulant teenagers.

Might as well piss off our good friends at Gypsy, Vagabond, Caché, OnePot, KillTheRestaurant and Culinary Communion. You got busted. Somebody called the Liquor Board to complain that a cooking class used—oh my God—wine to deglaze a dish. Argues the state: if you use a controlled substance (like wine), you've gotta get a license. And not just some one-off, ten-buck Class J permit, either.

Well, you'd think the sky had fallen. “Betrayal!” said the email announcement by Culinary Communion's chef Gabriel Claycamp (in photo at right, before auditioning for the Food Network).

Well, now, look, fellas. Every restaurant in the state (except, maybe, Minnie's)--padlocked by the IRS for non-payment of taxes--plays by the rules. They pay rent while you use private premises, they pay utilities and insurance, they pay B&O on their gross receipts, they pay accountants and lawyers, and, above all, they pay their effing taxes. 13.7 percent on liquor sales, my friends, in addition to sales taxes and all the rest.

You want to be like Costco, complain that you're so big you deserve “special treatment?” Think again. Costco lost its suit against the Liquor Board last month. You want “special treatment” because you're edgy and underground? Hey, every legitimate, taxpaying restaurant in the state will fight you, tooth and nail. What makes you think you're so goddamn special that you can thumb your nose at the world?

You've been on national TV, for heaven's sake, with Anthony Bourdain! How can you complain about being betrayed??

Elderflowers On Parade

First, pigs. Wrote last week (previous entry) about new food: pork from Mangalitsas. Drool over this great recipe blog by Matt Wright.

Onward, new drinks. St. Germain has come marching into Belltown. Not the café from Madison Park, which closed earlier this year, but a French artisanal liqueur subtitled "Délice de Sureau," distilled from freshly picked elderflower blossoms. (The website, stgermain.fr, tells the story, probably apocryphal, of a cohort of old men on bicycles gathering the flowers.)

Many drinks are based on the elder, a common name for shrubs that grow in northern Europe, most with fragrant blossoms. Steep them in hot water, you get a very pleasant concoction. Coca Cola sells a Fanta called Shokata (only in eastern Europe) that's flavored with elderblossom.

Yamihll Valley Vineyards smuggled some cuttings into Oregon a few years back, made a delicious elderberry-scented riesling.

Elderberry wine, you may recall, was the poisoned cordial in Arsenic and Old Lace; Elton John even recorded an "Elderberry Wine" video using clips from the movie.

Anyway, St. Germain is but the latest use of the elderberry blossom. It won best-of-show at the World Spirits Competition in San Francisco last summer, and is now available in Seattle, at the Basque wine bar Txori, where barman Brett Paulson tops off a shot of the liqueur with bright pink cava rosada. Smells like honeysuckle and pear blossoms, tastes lemony. Very refreshing summer cocktail, just the thing for Txori's open-any-day-now back patio. Now all we need is summer.