April 2010 Archives

Unpretentious and folksy, the Original Pancake House in Crown Hill is an unlikely outpost for what's become a national chain of breakfast restaurants. Founded in a red-roofed, white-sided house in suburban Portland in 1953, OPH is now in 111 locations.

Ken Naito, whose family developed a signifcant part of downtown Portland over the decades, bought the Seattle franchise (100 seats at the Crown Hill location, 150 in Kirkland) in 1995. No reservations; the waiting room is the front porch, lined with benches that look like they've come from Home Depot. The plain-spoken dining room is panelled in knotty pine, though a surprising bright spot on a couple of recent visits were original watercolors of Paris by Queen Anne artist Leslie Jenkins.

The signature dish here is the Dutch Baby, $10.83 these days, which arrives at the table still quivering from the oven, a baked soufflé rich in eggs and cream, slightly custardy on the bottom, crisper on the sides, dusted with powdered sugar, begging for lemon juice, melted butter and maple syrup. Now, Seattle residents with very long memories may tell you, with some legitimacy, that the original Dutch Baby was served at Manca's Café, an establishment originally at Second and Cherry, later at First and Columbia. Victor Manca based his "original" recipe (90 cents in 1942) on the traditional, oven-baked German apple pancake. By 1987, Sunset Magazine's version came in second to a chicken-artichoke casserole in a poll of reader favorites, but by then the Dutch Baby was already a staple of the popular OPH on Portland's Barbur Boulevard.

Back in the spotless kitchen on 15th NW, it's Manuel Ramos's job to whip up the batter for the Dutch Baby, its cousin the apple pancake, and the oven-baked omelets. (Officially, the recipe and techniques are closely guarded secrets, but you can find plenty of reasonable imitations online.) Ramos started at OPH as a busser 12 years ago and today he's the only one Naito trusts as Baby-baker. Into an 8-inch teflon-coated pan goes the batter (unbleached hard wheat flour; several AA eggs, cream, a touch of lemon, perhaps?), then 20 minutes of intense heat in the 85,000 BTU Montague Vectaire convection oven. Ramos sends a wireless page to the waitress, and not until she's waiting, across the passe, does he remove the pan, slide the Baby onto a plate, and sprinkle it with confectioner's sugar.

The Dutch Baby clocks in at 700 calories and 9 grams of carbs, about the same as a waffle, before you add whipped butter, lemon, powdered sugar or maple syrip. (it's the apple pancake that'll get you, with 1,530 calories and 309 grams of carbs.) The Crown Hill location alone serves some 2,500 a year. It is decidedly not "gourmet," just amazingly good.

Original Pancake House, 8037 15th Ave NW, Seattle, 206-781-3344  

from SeaDevi's Flickr stream, used with permission

Our favorite daily (heck, our only daily), the Seattle Times, is going through interesting times. First, it won a Pulitzer for breaking news coverage (the Lakewood shootings), then it got its ass kicked by the kids at The Stranger (the defeat of the "aggressive solicitation" ordinance).

What's a girl to do? Fairview Fanny's fallback: raise a stink about the new "Red Menace" of urban blight: graffiti. Easier to complain about homeless artists than, say, to look into the interlocking corporate structure of criminally faulty construction of high-rise buildings, right?

Now, Cornichon ran a typically snarky item three years ago about a zonked-out dude commissioned to paint a graffiti-style mural in Belltown, didn't raise an eyebrow. Since then, though, the local editors at the Times have hooked up with half a dozen microblogs that cover neighborhood news. The first target of this project: urban art. Specifically, the cost of removing unwanted paintings. There's a sop to neutrality, a profile of a prolific tagger, that results, predictably, in a vitritiolic comment thread.

Used to be, publishers would use their resources to whip up hysteria in favor of a war. Now, alas, the best the Times can do is scold like a schoolmarm. Meanwhile, the architects and contractors, lawyers and landlords, inspectors and bureaucrats responsible for building cheap-jack skyscrapers get off scott-free.

We're heading into May, the first "non-R" month of the year and so, by folk wisdom, the end of the oyster season. Not so. Oysters are great year-round in the cold-water climate of the Pacific Northwest. (It's those flat-tasting Gulf oysters you've got to watch out for.) But what wine to drink with our succulent local bivalves?

For the past 16 years, oyster-guru Jon Rowley has been searching for crisp white wines with the particular, knife-edge flavor profile that produces a "bliss factor" when combined with the briny oyster. Under the sponsorship of Taylor Shellfish, It's become a mini-industry, with dozens of participating wineries submitting upwards of 160 wines. A preliminary screening reduced the number fo 30, a second screening to 20, and, this week, a final round in three cities produced 10 winners.

The Seattle taste-off was held at Anthony's Homeport at Shilshole, where a dozen wine and food professionals (a Seattlest contributor among them) were challenged to rate a random sequence of wines. We were particularly taken with a Chateau Ste. Michelle sauvignon blanc and a pinot gris from Oregon's tiny Anne Amie winery. The top ten:

• Acrobat 08 Pinot Gris (OR)
  
• Anne Amie 09 Pinot Gris (OR)
  
• Anne Amie Cuvee A 09 Müller-Thurgau (OR)
  
• Chateau Ste Michelle 08 Sauvignon Blanc (WA)
  
• CMS 08 White (WA)
  
• Columbia Winery 08 Pinot Gris (WA)
  
• Franciscan 08 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)
  
• Heitz Wine Cellars 09 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)
  
• King Estate 08 Pinot Gris (OR)
  
• Kunde 09 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)

Rowley was inspired by Hemingway's description of oysters in A Movable Feast: "...and as I drank the cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy ..." A worthwhile sentiment, no?

You've seen the billboards or ads, perhaps (The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a cute idea), or the backlit rooftop signs on cabs (The New Busy Use Cabbies as Therapists). The New Busy is an ad campaign dreamed up by Microsoft and the boutique Seattle ad agency Creature, on behalf of WindowsLive, apparently to promote its faltering Hotmail service.

The official explanation: "The new busy are not like the old busy. Let the old busy have their stress balls, their antacids, and their crazy eyes. We are the new busy. We are redefining busy. Because we know that having a full calendar means having a full life. Take a look around, explore the world of the new busy, and check out how Hotmail can help you do it all."

Some of the slogans are kinda cute (The New Busy "put their pants on both legs at a time" or "wake up with stamps on their hands" -- what, because they went clubbing and got shitfaced?); some get more technical (...prefer one-stop inboxing). Clicks take you in a dozen directions (urging you to install Silverlight, whatever that is). Are these supposed to be funny? Aren't ads supposed to show you how the product or service solves a problem?

Makes you think of all the other misguided ad campaigns the big Softie has run. The one wirh Bill Gates comes to mind. Bing comes to mind (Daddy, what's a Decision Engine?). The "Windows 7 was my idea" comes to mind. The New Busy roll their eyes.

Mixing infectious enthusiasm with world-weary self-awareness, Pink Martini comes to Seattle Friday (all the way from Portland), on tour for their latest album, Splendor in the Grass (taken from a line in the poem by Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality). "Nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower." Sigh.

"Je ne veux pas travailler," sings the zaftig China Forbes, the anthem of a Gen Xer who just wants work to be over so she can get a smoke. (A big hit in the US, an even bigger hit in France, where it was originally performed by Edith Piaf.) You could hear that same irony on the next album, "Hang On Little Tomato," as well. By then, Pink Martini had become iconic: lush orchestrations, razor-sharp lyrics, tightly disciplined performances.

Harvard grad Thomas Lauderdale, spiky blond hair and all, put the group together to play at fundraisers for progressive political causes; he hit just the right note of yearning and self-control, a Big Band for our times. This Friday, the band is the entire Seattle Symphony, directed by associate conductor Joseph Crnko.

Pink Martini at Benaroya Hall, 8 PM, Tickets $35 to $120.

The apocalypse is nigh: the McGuire, a 9-year-old, 25-story, 272-unit apartment building, will be torn down by the end of the year. Dismantled. Carted away like a tar-paper shack. All that scaffolding, all those repairs: for naught.

The first inkling actually came yesterday from CHS, the Capitol Hill Seattle blog, which reported on a "move" out of Belltown to 12th Avenue by The Local Vine, the wine bar at Second and Vine. The owners of Local Vine had often talked about cloning the concept in other neighborhoods, and had in fact scouted the 12th Avenue location for a second venture. But what's up?

More news on Igor Keller's ironically titled blog, Hideous Belltown, especially in the comments. The formal announcement came this afternoon from the building owner, Carpenter's Tower LLC, citing "extensive construction defects, which principally involve corrosion of post-tensioned cables and concrete material and reinforcement placement deficiencies."

Huh? Turns out, the cables are corroding because they were not properly protected with corrosion-preventative paint, the grout used to seal the cable ends and anchors was not the specified non-shrink grout, and it was defectively installed. "As a result," the announcement continues, "water leaked into these areas and caused the cable ends to rust, and then corrode." What's more, reinforcement in the building's exterior frame turns out to be defective, resulting in structural impairment and cracking of the building's concrete shell.

In other words, a nightmare. The problem is intractable, the owners have concluded, and they've decided to dismantle the building. "The McGuire is not in imminent danger of a structural failure," according to Brian Urback, a consultant hired by Carpenter's Tower. However, he acknowledges, "the experts have advised that the building be vacated by the end of 2010."

Seattle's Department of Development is not requiring immediate evacuation, and Carpenter's Tower is providing an incentive package to help tenants relocate. "We recognize that this is a major inconvenience so we are trying to make it as easy as possible under difficult circumstances," according to the official statement. The landlord is providing "what we think are generous financial incentives if they move quickly. We are paying moving expenses. And we are having our building staff help them find new apartments."

Says one tenant, on the HideousBelltown blog, "All tenants are urged to move out, with staggered incentives if they leave before June 30. For instance, if you rent a 1-bed apartment and move out before May 15, they pay you $2,000 (for the 1-bed apartment) plus three times your monthly rent."

The Centennial Tower, an apartment complex just east of the McGuire, is already picking up some of the slack; their leasing office reports seven units rented this afternoon.

But the McGuire isn't the first Belltown building with "issues." Five years ago, Seattle Heights was similaly swathed in scaffolding, with the added indignity of a Tyvek shroud, while work crews replaced every window and sliding door in the 28-story luxury condo. Lawsuits flew, insurance companies settled, and homeowners gritted their teeth and eventually paid large assessments to cover the shortfall. The problem had to do with improperly installed and slowly rotting window insulation, a condition that appeared to spread like a measles outbreak across several Belltown highrises.

The McGuire--built as a joint venture between the Carpenters Union and Harbor Properties as a showcase of "everyone wins" land use--seemed to suffer a series of unfortunate relapses. Now they're pulling the plug. And just how do you remove a 25-story concrete building in the middle of Seattle's most densely populated neighborhood? Very, very carefully.

Worst irony: the Harbor Properties website touts the McGuire as a "success story."

In its campaign against the proposed Dale Chihuly museum, The Stranger reviews the Space Needle's restaurant, SkyCity, and--except for the splendid view--finds it woefully wanting.

If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones. If you're trying to build a glass house for a Dale Chihuly glass museum, as the Space Needle owners are, you're going to be judged by the house you've already built.

Such, at least, is the argument of The Stranger's managing editor, Bethany Jean Clement, who thoroughly trashes the Needle's revolving restaurant, Sky City, in today's issue under the headline "The Travesty of Dinner at the Space Needle." No aspect of the restaurant escapes her withering fire: the crab cake tastes like damp bread, "what they do to a pork shop ought to be punishable by law," even the mashed potatoes are terrible ("unrich, unsmooth"). As for the seafood trio, "scallops suffered a grilling that eradicated ocean-sweetness and tenderness, while grittiness was preserved; the wild salmon was also cooked very, very thoroughly, attaining a tinny taste."

Now, the Space Needle's restaurant "has always been overpriced, and it has never been good, and everybody knows it. Its last review, 10 years ago in the Seattle Times, earned it 'far from perfect.'" But then how are we to account for the award to SkyCity last year, as Restaurant of the Year by the Washington Wine Institute? Well, the wine list is almost exclusively Washington, including several "Space Needle Wines" featuring labels by "local artist, Dale Chihuly." Aha! Which sets up the punchline of the review: "Like the Space Needle, the Chihuly museum would be a for-profit business--one built on public land that the public would have to pay money to get into. The profits--like the profits of SkyCity--would go to the company that runs it, which is owned by the Wright family." Pausing briefly to note that the Wrights donate heavily to conservative Republican candidates and causes, the Stranger review concludes that SkyCity could be, should be, a source of civic pride, rather than "a rip-off and a joke, something the average Seattle citizen gets exactly nothing out of..We have no reason to believe the museum would be different.."

It may be the first time in civic history that a museum project founders on an overdone scallop.