January 2011 Archives

Black Bottle, the gastro-tavern at 1st and Vine in Belltown, has been a hit since the day it opened, five and a half years ago. They added a second dining room, they added space for private events, they added a buck or two to the price of their menu items (but kept the food studioiusly unfussy). And shortly they're going to open a second Black Bottle on the eastside, just down the street from Bellevue Square.

But that's not the subject of this item, which is to sing the praises of a modest, $11 dish of braised oxtail and malbec demiglace. Brian Durbin, Black Bottle's chef (below, right), had to recalibrate the ovens to ensure the proper seven-hour cooking of the dish; he won't put anything on the menu until it's just right. Notable hits: grilled lamb with hummus, pork belly with kim chee, and a dish called "broccoli blasted." Although, truth be told, the kitchen isn't foolproof. Early on, Matthew Amster-Burton, writing in the Seattle Times, hated the broccoli, which was served charred to a crisp. And last week (one hight when Durbin wasn't in the kitchen), the party seated next to me at the bar was served a brocoli that tasted as if it had been blasted with bitter garlic. But, you know what? It's not Canlis, it's a tavern in Belltown. Get over it.

The oxtail dish, which landed on the menu in December, starts with the raw material, fresh oxtails, from MacDonald Meat in South Seattle, the same folks who deliver burger patties to Dick's. The oxtail is just that, 7- to 10-lb chunks of tail (minus the very tip) that the kitchen crew breaks down, severing bone by bone and trimming off any remaining fat. The pieces are seasoned, seared over high heat, then braised. Meanwhile, they create the base for the demiglace: malbec (the Bordeaux variety that's taken off in Argentina and Washington), soy sauce, brown sugar, aromatic herbs.

When the time comes, one of the line cooks, Ezra Schwepker on a recent weeknight, drops two or three pieces of meat into a pan, adds a scoop of the jellied glaze, and sets the sauté pan over high heat for several minutes so oxtail can absorb heat and moisture through the sauce. From time to time, he turns the tails so they're well coated. When all is right, he hands the pan off to a kitchen assistant, Stacy Ellison, who plates the dish, strains what's left of the reduced sauce through a seive, adds a garnish of tarragon and rosemary, and sends the oxtails out.

Speak to the dish harshly and the meat will fall off the bone. It is exquisitely tender and intensely flavorful, redolent of beefiness. You can't stop yourself; you pick up the bones, nibble the cartilege and suck down every last skerrick of meat. What's left on your plate resembles the "Vertebrae" sculpture by Henry Moore at Safeco Plaza on Fourth Avenue.

Black Bottle, 2600 First Ave., Seattle, 206-441-1500  

Black Bottle Postern opens at the Avalon Towers, 10349 N.E. 10th St., Belleuve, in mid-February.

Flickering, flappering, the black & white glamor of moonshine is making a comeback.

The drink on the left may look like a vodka martini with a twist, but it's not. It's that steakhouse staple, a Manhattan. Except that this one is clear, without any of the vanilla notes or amber color of your grandfather's bourbon, unless your grandfather happened to own a still in the hills of Kentucky or Tennessee or West Virginia during Prohibition. In which case, you'd probably understand the notion of a perfectly clear, unaged spirit called, variously, White Whiskey, White Lightning or White Dog.

Now, the woods of Woodinville are not exactly crawling with revenuers on the hunt for illicit stills. It was entirely legal for high school buddies Orlin Sorensen and Brett Carlile to set up shop (as Woodinville Whiskey Co.) in an industrial park backing on the Sammamish River. Carlile had made a career in sales, Sorensen flew Bombardier jets for Horizon but had lost the chance to fly bigger planes because he didn't have perfect eyesight. (Rather than feel sorry for himself, he started a motivational program to help others improve their vision through eye exercises.) At any rate, both men harbored a strong desire for some sort of joint commercial adventure and decided on a craft distillery, a business category authorized in Washington since 2008.

Better yet (not "better still," that would be overkill) Sorensen and Carlile had the good sense to hire a savvy consultant by the name of David Pickerell, who was the Master Distiller, no less, for Maker's Mark for almost 15 years. Pickerell helped several small distilleries get off the ground last year, has a dozen clients lined up for 2011, and loves what he sees in Woodinville. "These guys work their tails off," he says, "and they're willing to experiment. That's the strength of the small distilleries, experimenting."

Woodinville's first release, bottled while the rest of the production was aging, was White Dog. Yes, Pickerell's boys will eventually release an aged whiskey, but they're in no great hurry. Meantime, you can age your own. Seriously, they're selling age-your-own mini-barrels, a huge hit. (In photo above, l ro r, Carlile, Pickerell, Sorensen)

The federal government has a few rules about liquor labels. No flags, no living persons (without their permission), no cartoon characters. The state imposes a production limit for "craft" distillers. Dry Fly, in Spokane, was the first under the new "Craft" category, and is still the largest. In fact, the authorized production of a craft distillery was tripled, from 20,000 to 60,000 gallons by the last legislature because Dry Fly was bumping up aganst the lower limit.

The first legal distillery since Repeal within Seattle city limits opened in that no-man's-land called Interbay a month before Woodinville Whiskey. It's called Sound Spirits, and it's the dream of Boeing engineer Steven Stone. The first release was a craft vodka called Ebb+Flow, an unfiltered, single-malt distilled from Washington barley. Rather than a bland, iceberg lettuce of spirits, Ebb+Flow has a floral nose and sweet, multilayered flavors. Coming soon: gin and more. You can legally buy two 750-ml bottles of the vodka at the distillery, $31 apiece. Location is 1630 15th Avenue W., phone is 206 651-5166.

Who else is in this racket? At least two dozen licenses have already been issued, and another two dozen applications are pendng, according to the Liquor Board's website. Some licensees look forward to selling their premium brands through the state-approved channels, with on-premise sales a welcome bonus. But many new distilleries want to be more appealing than the warehouse-style state-run liquor stores; they see themselves as neighborhood cafés that happen to offer spirits rather than coffee or beer.

There's Pacific in Woodinville making gin and absinthe, two spirits that require a good knowledge of herbal lore. Find them at18808 142nd Ave. NE #4B in Woodinville, 425-491-9535. The distilery's Pacifique Absinthe was singled out by Wine Enthusiast in its selection of the top 50 spirits of 2010 and its Voyager Gin has been featured on a couple of TV travel shows.

There's also Bainbridge Distillers, the state's first organic distillery and an old-fashoined, father-and-son operation to boot. The waiting list for their whiskey (still aging) is already closed, but gin and vodka are available at the distillery, 9727 Coppertop Loop, Bainbridge Island, 206-842-3184.

And many more to come, to a neighborhood near you.

A similar version of this post appeas today on Crosscut.com.

They're known, collectively, as social media coupons: Groupon, Goldstar, Living Social, Bogopod, Tippr, Gizmodo, Wrazz, DealPop and others. They offer a "deal," half off some product or service (often meals in a restaurant but it could be hats or haircuts, spa treatments or medical consultations), or free, if you get three or four of your friends to sign up with you.

Retailers--small, independent, not particularly skilled at numbers--jump at the chance to offer their products to a wider audience, but they're making a big mistake.

As consumers, we like the notion of a deal, of paying less than retail, of something for nothing. Our collective Puritan heritage of thrift has instilled in contemporary American culture a distaste for profligacy and virtually demands that we seek the lowest price. (Now, that doesn't mean we should dine-and-dash; we're still expected to pay up.) Even so, in jumping at the chance of getting something for next-to-nothing, we're only helping the merchants commit suicide.

We have to assume that retail businesses price their goods and services accurately. That is, cost of goods (supplies, ingredients, whatever) plus overhead (labor, occupancy, administration) plus profit. Where's that 40 percent discount going to come from? Payroll? Rent? Even if you lose a couple of bucks on every transaction, you're not going to make it up on volume. If a neighbhood restaurant, day spa or boutique can show me that their 40 percent Groupon discount comes from a budgeted promotional campaign that's part of their budgeted admin expenses, well, I'll eat my hat. Otherwise, I have to assume that the original price was bogus.

The business model we've become used to is a relic of supermarket wars: the weekly specials, announced in vivid color every Tuesday. Buy one chicken, get a second chicken free. Hamburger, $1.29 a pound. A free bag of carrots. Yogurt, 4 for $1. Tuna, 50 cents a can. But we forget two important points. First, the average supermarket carries 50,000 items on its shelves, and discounting the price of a dozen or so best-sellers (carrots, chicken) is built into the budget. Second, the rest of the promotions in the weekly mailer (the yogurt, the tuna) are actually offered by the manufacturers or their distributors, and don't cost the store a dime. The point is to entice shoppers into QFC rather than Safeway, the fight is between half dozen supermarkets, not 4,000 restaurants. (Similarly, the Cascade yogurt guy's competition, once you're in the door at QFC, is Tillamook.)

Supermarkets have a captive market, and they know it. Their promotions aren't designed to help shoppers but to take business away from the competition. If the supermarket model were transformed to the world of restaurants, there'd be six restaurant chains in Seattle, plus maybe a few quirky, neighborhood burger bars, and they'd be the only places in town where you could buy anything to eat. Each restaurant would have 1,000 or more seats; there might be a weekly steak special for $5, but sides, drinks and dessert would be extra. Your tab, every time you sat down, would wind up the same, about $75, regardless of which restaurant you patronized or what you ate.

Oh, but we just want people to come and try our pizza / burgers / spa treatment, the retailers say. To which I reply, recast this. they're really saying "We're so sure that our pizza, etc., is so fabulous that after you pay $10 the first time, you'll come back and pay $20." One more time: "We're going to train you to think that our $20 pizza is only worth $10." I call this the Happy Hour falacy.

Mark Netsch, who writes PerformanceScope, an industry newsletter, recalls going to a new wine bar in his neighborhood, lured by a Groupon discount. The staff was woefully unprepared. He wrote some advice to merchants, "Groupon and similar services are indeed a good way to bring in new customers. But before you Groupon ask yourself if you and your team are ready." Unless the restaurant is guest-ready to deliver on all its marketing promises and its brand's points of differentiation, Netsch warns, "You will undermine your mission. Redeeming 3,000 Groupons at 50 percent off is not the objective, converting those trials to loyal customers is."

Groupon boasts some 20 million bargain-hunting subscribers, and they pounce quickly. In Chicago, there's a two-year waiting list for merchants to get into a Groupon promotion. Portland recently, a neighborhood coffee shop called Posie's offered a $6 Groupon for a $13 item. A thousand people showed up, swamping the small shop for three months. In a blog post, the owner said that the volume of sales coupled with the steep discount threatened her business, forcing her to spend $8,000 of her personal savings to pay her employees and the rent. "The single worst decision I have ever made as a business owner thus far," she wrote. The true cost of a Groupon promotion is almost impossible to calculate. Here's the math.

Another misreading of discounts is to confuse lost capacity with lost opportunity. A cruise ship sails whether or not its 2,000 cabins are filled. One assumes that an analyst knows exactly how many full-price cabins are needed to cover operating costs, after which every additional passenger is "gravy," so you can, indeed, get space on some cruises for insanely little money. Fancy hotels are in a similar bind. Come 6 PM, they've probably run out of customers for the night, though they may not want to cheapen their brand by dropping their price too far. Airlines have similarly inflexible capacity, but they've mastered the art of flexible pricing; it's called "yield management," and it works. When's the last time you were on a flight with more than a couple of empty seats?

But a restaurant, oh my. Fifty seats, let's say, capacity of 100 dinners a night, 700 a week. Average check in Seattle these days, industry stats tell us, is $30. In theory, then, a modest restaurant could gross $3,000 a night, a million clams a year. Could, but, for whatever variety of reasons, doesn't come anywhere close. But Otto the Owner, he hears the siren song of coupons and makes a pact with the devil. "I'll gladly take an extra 200 clients a week," he thinks, and his fate is sealed. The 200 coupons spend $15 instead of $30 and tip like misers. It costs Otto ten bucks a plate to feed these mooches, who fill up tables and keep his kitchen busy, his servers frantic, and annoy the hell out of his regulars. But we're not done. Otto's gross is up slightly, true, but he had to add a cook and a server for the week of the promotion, he had to buy extra food for those 200 dinners, and he still has to pay the promoter for the coupon campaign. Otto didn't understand the costs involved; all he saw was empty tables. He was giving away the store, not realizing that the cheapskates who showed up with a coupon weren't the kind of customers he wanted in the first place.

Leigh Fatzinger, founder of Seattle-based Nology Media ("connecting brands with their audiences"), says the problem with online coupons is that they are sent to mass e-mail lists. "If you and your friends score a $400 dinner for $200, will you really come back at full price, when the merchant has to make a profit?"

Another online marketing guru Edward Nevraumont, over at Expedia.com, sees three issues for restaurants that use Groupon and its ilk. "Big volume spikes, lots of cannibalization, and brand dilution through discounting." It shows just how much restaurants need--or think they need--volume.

Enter a site called Restauranteers.com, going fully live in January, which promises an "opaque" model, in which the merchant controls the number of promotions that will be available on any given day. Capitol Hill's Thomas Street Bistro (five tables) needs to make sure they're filled, but would be nuts to offer the kind of coupons needed by, say, Cheesecake Factory (400 seats).

One recent coupon offer did make a certain kind of sense, to me at least: a limo rental. What better way to convince someone that a limo ride is really worth the $150 than to offer a trial run at half price? You don't confuse a limo ride with discount Mexican food. Yes, you essentially give away the store, but it's such a personalized luxury that a trial run stands a strong chance of resulting in repeat business.

Repeat business is the key. It's what marketers call the lifetime value of a customer relationship. It's what the limo driver wants to build; it's what the clothing salesman at Nordstrom wants to build. Nordy runs the occasional sale, sure, but it doesn't send out 50-percent-off-coupons. (That's Nordstrom Rack, a discount store that feeds off the value of the company's name.) No, unbelievably, Nordstrom has trained its customers to pay more, because of the perceived value of customer service."They treat me with respect, and if it isn't right, I can always take it back." Ask 100 Seattle diners the name of the city's best restaurant, and more than half will tell you Canlis, even if they've never been there, because--regardless of price--its reputation for peerless service. To celebrate its 60th anniversary, Canlis didn't lower its prices; it did something much more sophisticated. It staged a treasure hunt that emphasized the low price of its 1950 menu.

One wonders, why throw that investment in an existing customer relationship out the window by offering discounts to newbies who only want a cheap dinner? Take that promotional budget you were going to spend on social media coupons (or, for that matter, on Dine Around, or Restaurant Week) and spend it, instead, on your regular customers. Build a mailing list to track your customers, treat them like royalty when they visit, add back-of-house staff so the chef can spend time with the guests, or front-of-house staff so servers can take the time to cosset the guests. Do more for your existing customers, and convert them into ambassadors. Think like Nordstrom, think like Canlis.

Meantime, Groupon and its clones have taken hold; the battle for full-time, full-price pricing seems lost. According to the New York Times, Groupon has spurned a takeover offer of $6 billion from Google in favor of an IPO rumored to value the company at, ahem, $15 billion. That would represent a bet by investors that the lifetime customer value of Groupon is worth $100. Imagine! A company value that says every wired adult in America will buy from you several dozen times. Those are Apple-Miscrosoft-Google numbers, unsustainable for a company that offers no value of its own except access to a customer base. It is nothing short of delusional.

UPDATE Saturday, January 22nd: Google says it will launch a competing service called Offer.

Okay, last week we were fooling around in the lobby with The Barber of McCaw. This week it's time to get serious with a rollicking show that could be called "The Bachelor of Seville."

The more-than-suitable suitor is Count Almaviva. The rose? Technically, it doesn't show up until Rosenkavalier a full century later, where it's pure invention on the part of Richard Strauss. We have to make do, in Gioachino Rossini's hilarious opera, with the notion of a romantic serenade. The commedia dell'arte genre requires a collection of stock figures: a young hero, a beautiful heroine, an old meddler, a dashing soldier, and so on. Youth versus age, servants versus masters, women versus men. Rossini, not yet 24 when Barber premiered, was clearly on the side of the newcomers, the subjugated, the females.

Figaro, well, he's the barber at a time when barbers did a bit of everything, from shaves & haircuts to bloodletting to mailing letters. A Fixer, if you will, or, in the Seattle Opera staging of the piece, a combination reality show host, field producer and location manager.

And lest we forget, there's a hefty element of "American Idol" here as well. Each of the characters is called upon to sing an aria (or two) designed to showcase their best stuff. In the Saturday cast, Lawrence Brownlee blew the field away with a dazzling and rarely performed aria at the end of the opera, "Cessa di pi&ù resistere, Resistance is futile."

The two Rosinas, Sarah Coburn and Kate Lindsey, do their best as well with duelling versions of Una Voce Poco Fa, a sort of "Dear Diary" that starts with dreamy thoughts of the man behind the voice that has just serenaded her, then digresses into a headstrong "my guardian's not going to push me around" fantasy.

Every character lives in a fantasy, it turns out. Figaro thinks he's a sought-after big shot capable of fixing anything; Almaviva thinks he's irresistible (he serenades the audience, not his beloved); the doddering Bartolo thinks he's reasonable and charming; Basilio spins empty-headed evil plans of slander. Only the housemaid Berta knows the truth, that the cruel march of time is threatening to leave her an old maid. Sally Wolf, who sings this part, has the vocal chops to play leading roles; in fact, she's a semi-retired diva with a long list of starring credits. Far from being wasted in a minor role, she reminds us of what depth Seattle Opera has when it comes to casting its supporting singers.

Dean Williamson does double-duty in the pit, keeping up the frenetic orchestral pace and playing the fortepiano during the recitatives as well. Peter Kazaras had the pleasure of directing many of his former Young Artist Program performers and resisted the temptation to turn Barber into slapstick with the notable exception of the first half closer. Seriously, colliding robots? Bachelor, I mean Barber, is plenty funny without another layer of artifice.

In the end, of course, love conquers all, Rosina graciously acccepts Almaviva's figurative rose, and even the bad guys are accorded a measure of respect. It's an opera without a mean bone in its body, The Barber of Civility, if you will. .

Seattle Opera presents Gioachino Rossini's Barber of Seville, through Janusary 29 at McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer Street, Seattle. Tickets cost $25 to $208; during a Family Day matinee on Jan. 23, up to four $15 student tickets can be purchased with one full-price ticket. Tickets are available by phone (206-389-7676), at the box office (1020 John St., Seattle), or online.

Photo: Soprano Sarah Coburn with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, Seattle Opera photo © Rosarii Lynch

Click, click, click. Gulp, gulp, gulp. Gag, gag, gag.

In British Columbia, a researcher at Simon Fraser University says the trouble with the province's wine industry is "a failure to communicate." Surprise to me. Ten thousand acres of vines, hundreds of producers, great government support. Wait, the government's "too protective." (Wines & Vines).

In China, empty bottles of Château Lafite and other famous wines are in high demand. Counterfeiters buy and refill them. (Telegraph)

In Virginia, the governor wants to close the state's 330 state-run liquor outlets and replace them with 1,000 private stores. Haven't we heard that one before? The proposal leaves intact the wholesale distribution system, focuses on retail. Good luck! (Washington Post)

In Noo Yawk City, food prep workers are supposed to keep their heads covered, lest a stray hair fall into the soup. Probably a good idea, right? At various Starbucks in the Big Yapple, the baristas are saying no to hairnets in favor of colorful caps. (Yes, this is fit to print in the New York Times)

Groupon, the company that bamboozles anxious restaurant owners into giving away the store to drive customers into the store, said "Up Yours" to a $6 billion offer from Google, is expanding on its own into Israel, India and South Africa. Cheapskates will soon be able to clobber the bejeezus out of struggling retailers all over the world. (Wall Street Journal)

Concerned, are you, that the brown-skinned kitchen worker might not understand what the French restaurant owner means by brunoise? Not just in Seattle, where fluency in Spanglish is, ahem, de rigueur. You ain't heard nothing till you head to Hong Kong. Oui, chef! (Wall Street Journal)

And finally, the demonization of food continues in Massachusetts, where restaurants will have to employ a Food Protection Manager lest a patron choke on a nut or a grain. When peanuts are outlawed, only outlaws will have peanuts. Okay, take ten. All you imaginary allergies, sneeze 'em if you got 'em. (WCVB Boston)

The scene: shaggy dudes and long-tressed ladies getting makeovers and shaves on the grand concourse of McCaw Hall while a barbershop quartet croons Lila Rose. At the top of the stairs, a voice sings in Italian, "Largo al factotum," make way for "The Fixer." That would be baritone David Adam Moore playing the part of Figaro, Seville's busy barber (and fixer). All this commotion, at McCaw's first open house since 2003, was part of a promotion for Rossini's comic masterpiece, The Barber of Seville, which opens a run of nine performances on Saturday night.

The "mane event" (Moore's aria aside) had little to do with the specifics of the opera beyond its title. Instead, it was an old-fashioned PR stunt, a welcome sign that Seattle Opera isn't too stuck up. "Barber is as entertaining an opera as you can find," said the erudite Jonathan Dean, the Opera's director of public programs, who proved a good sport by entering the "closest shave" contest.

The real event starts Saturday under Dean Williamson's baton. The biggest draws will be two graduates of the Opera's Young Artists Program, tenor Lawrence Brownlee as Count Almaviva and Sarah Coburn as Rosina; roles they've both sung before to great acclaim (Brownlee at the Met in New York, Coburn in Los Angeles). The other singer known to Seattle audiences, mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, who created the title role of Amelia last year, performs Rosina in the second cast. Lindsey, a mezzo who is being touted as the successor to the great Frederica von Stade, will bring a completely different, duskier shading to Rosina's character and turn the Friday and Sunday performances into a truly alternate interpretation.

The rest of the production is a reunion of sorts for the Opera's Young Artists Program. The stage director is Peter Kazaras, who is also artistic director of the YAP (and a superb tenor himself); Brownlee, Coburn and Moore are all YAP alumni and Williamson (who now directs the Cleveland Opera) spent five years as YAP's musical director.

You might think you know this Figaro from the famous Bugs Bunny cartoon, "The Rabbit of Seville," but that music was Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." Barber is a prequel, setting up Figaro's role in Almaviva's conquest of Rosina. It's a classic of commedia del arte, with stock characters well-known to audiences at the time. By the time Mozart rolls around, Figaro himself is getting married and Almaviva, bored with Rosina, wants Figaro's bride for himself. It's a darker, more complex and even revolutionary plot, since the commoner, Figaro, outsmarts his aristocratic master at every turn. Rossini's opera eschews politics for laughs, as good a reason as any to go see the Barber of McCaw.

Seattle Opera presents Gioachino Rossini's "Barber of Seville" at McCaw Hall, January 15-29. Tickets $25 to $208, by phone (206-389-7676) or online at seattleopera.org.

South Lake Union, a generation ago, was where you went to browse for antiques or drop off your car for a change of tires. Well, the Firestone store is still there, in the 400 block of Westlake Avenue N., repainted in a shade of cream that reflects and diffuses the late afternoon light straight into the windows of Soul Wine across the street. Michael Teer, the owner, is grateful for the clear, clean glow across his tasting bar. Teer loves jazz but loves wine produced by owner-operated wineries even more.

"It's a passion, not a business," Teer explains. For the past 20 years, he has also owned Pike & Western the iconic wine shop in the Market just south of Tom Douglas's recently opened Seatown Seabar. As it happens, Teer's wife, Pamela Hinckley, is chief executive officer of the Tom Douglas corporation, and that's where the rest of the old Napa Auto Parts building comes in.

Downstairs, it's going to be a retail bakery (all the production for Dahlia Bakery) as well as a neighborhood coffee and sandwich shop. Then, at 3 PM, it turns seriously Italian, with hand-carved prosciutto to nibble while you're waiting for a table upstairs.

And upstairs, the new, applewood-fired oven is still idling at 645 degrees for now; the pizzaiolo on duty, Mike Mearns, isn't pushing it too hard. Seven kinds of pie, not your usual cheese-covered buffet but serious stuff: Yukon Gold potatoes, sweet fennel sausage, Yellowfoot chanterelles, Penn Cove clams, Brussels sprouts. It's Serious Pie, a brand new, South Lake Union offshoot of Tom Douglas's ever-expanding restaurant empire.

The crust of a Serious Pie pizza is remarkable: all things to all people. It's chewy, it's crisp; it's thin but not too thin. It holds its shape but it's not a cracker. The Brussels sprouts pie starts with a base of smoked pancetta and caramelized onions; not until it's been baked for eight minutes or so does it get its final topping of blanched and shredded Brussel sprouts, and then just long enough to heat them through.

Mearns drizzles the pizza's crusty edge with olive oil, applies a healthy squirt of ricotta cream and grates a shower of parmesan over everything. You don't have to eat a lot of pizza to recognize this as something special. Connoisseurs, however, may have just one complaint: not enough pancetta. Then again, they've been open less than 24 hours at this point, they'll find their sweet, serious spot before long.

Soul Wine, 401 Westlake Ave. N., Seattle, 206-436-2350
Serious Pie, 401 Westlake Ave. N., Seattle, 206-436-0050  

North Shore mountains reflected in downtown Vancouver BC building.
Below, seared foie gras at MARKET by Jean-Georges, one of 215 restaurants in the upcoming Dine Out Vancouver promotion

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of Dine Out promotions (see this post in which I suggest that patronizing local restaurants during special promotions, hurts, not helps).

Lo and behold, Vancouver, BC, has come up with a twist. Dine Out Vancouver is a two-week promotion that differs in significant ways. First of all, three price points for the restaurants ($18, $28 and $38), rather than a one-price-fits-all. So you get high-end joints as well as smaller, ethnic restaurants. If there's a shortcoming, it's a paucity of Vancouver's thrilling Asian places. On the other hand, there are additional culinary events, such as cooking classes. And (this is the part I'm thrilled about) reduced rates at a couple dozen good, better & best hotels (rates at $68, $98 and $138 a night).

Targeting a promotion to visitors rather than bargain-hunting locals is nothing short of genius: it's clear from the outset that your buyers aren't going to become regulars, except, perhaps, on a turn trip to Vancouver. The hotels put happy, sated bodies into their beds, and the whole promotion is run out of the Tourism Vancouver offices. It's a business builder for the entire city, not just one or two dinner houses

Says Mayor Gregor Robertson explains why: "Vancouver is consistently named one of the top dining cities in the world and Dine Out Vancouver certainly contributes to our city's food culture and reputation."

Dine Out Vancouver runs from Monday, Jan. 24th, to Sunday, February 6th. Full list of restaurants, menus, and participating hotels at www.tourismvancouver.com/dov

Comes word that Campagne, the fancy-pants restaurant in the courtyard of the ideally located Inn at the Market, will close starting Sunday for several months of renovations (much-needed, if truth be told). If you're the sort of fancy-pants person who frequents Campagne even once or twice a year, this is grim news, because January is 20-Buck Duck month. Where are you gonig to get your fix? First course: poached duck egg atop potatoes fried in duck fat. Second course: duck confit with lentils. This is gastronomic heaven, people!

A note to explain the fancy-pants part: on Bastille Day, Campagne has been offering a pricey dinner for aristocrats. The real action, as everyone knows, is in the street below, where Cafe Campagne provides a menu of plebian sausages and bawdy entertainment.

Back to the ducks. Relief is on the way. Same 20-Buck Duck menu will be served downstairs, at Cafe Campagne, nightly through January. Cyril Frechier remains on duty as sommelier. Daisley Gordon continues to run the kitchen. No revolution after all, unless you count the "off with their heads" part, suffered by the duck.

VENICE--The tourist axis is between the Rialto and San Marco, but the wealth of the city, fashion windows and tourist galleries aside, is in the vitality of the smaller waterways and the network of campo, calle, fondamento and ponte. Sixty thousand people live on the 117 islands that make up historic Venice, and shop they must for their daily bread, not to mention daily fish.

The fish market, just off the Rialto bridge, has existed for centuries, selling varieties of seafood not seen anywhere else.

They go by many names, these stomapods. Latin, squilla mantis. Everyday Italian, canocchie. Romantically, they're cicala di mare, cicada of the sea. But in Venice, they're known as canoce, (you'll sometimes see it spelled canocce) pronounced ka-NOH-chay, 6- to- 8-inch mantis shrimp, paler and smaller than the giants of the Barrier Reef, fished in cold-weather months in the shallow, sandy lagoons of the northern Adriatic. (Those "eyes" on the tail are decoys, a defense against short-sighted predators.)

A seasonal treat, they're sold live in the fish markets of Venice, marinated briefly in lemon juice and olive oil, then boiled quickly in acidulated water. Housewives and chefs sever the canoce's head with scissors, then snip open the abdominal carapace, extracting the meat from its thumnb-sized fleshy tail to be served as a part of a shellfish platter or stirred into a creamy risotto.

A baby lobster it's not. The flesh is softer, more tender than a langoustine, the flavor more subtle even than farm-raised Gulf shrimp. The shells do not lend themselves to further extraction, be it for sauce or stock. (There's a reason for crab and shrimp boils seasoned with Old Bay: you're adding the flavor.) Yet canoce are prized by the Italians along the north Adriatic coast, from Venice to Trieste, and by the market shoppers of nearby inland towns. In Gorizia, half an hour's drive from the coast, there's a restaurant called Rosenbar that serves canoce with eggy, housemade linquini.

By their signs ye shall know them. There's nothing more important for a consumer brand than its logo, the thinking goes. McDonald's wouldn't be Mickey D without those Golden Arches, formed by the gracefully rounded "M" of its name. You don't have to see the name on the Nike sneakers to recognize its graceful swoosh, or own an iPod to recognize the bite taken out of a Jonagold.

"Even though we have been and always will be a coffee company and retailer," says ceo Howard Schultz, "it's possible we'll have other products with our name on it and no coffee in it." (He says it, on video, here

That's already happening, frankly, with all the sandwiches, sweets and non-coffee beverages available at the company's 17,000 stores. But this goes a step further, dropping the Starbucks name and the word COFFEE from the logo completely.

"It's a gutsy move," says Terry Heckler, the Seattle graphic artist and ad director who designed the original logo some 40 years ago. Heckler lost the breasts on the first siren because they were sort of an in-joke at the beginning, but the mermaid, the siren, was always part of the logo. The company's founders wanted Starbucks to signify the spirit of adventure and exploring implied by a seafaring image, and the real Mister Starbucks, first mate on the fictional Pequod in Moby Dick, reinforced that.

What now? Even if the public can still connect the image of a mermaid with the company that sells Frappuccino, will that extend to other Starbucks ventures? Clothing? Automotive? Is this just another mood swing by a petulant, moody teenager, as Cornichon suggested in a post just six months ago?

Heckler says it's going to be interesting to see what Starbucks makes of its new nameless logo. "There's no question that the strongest brand signal is the name." If the siren herself (emblematic of adventure on the high seas, a symbol of the yearning for coffee) no longer makes sense, why keep her around? Without the ring of words, of the company's name and its flagship product, she's just "a princess with a crown on her head," Heckler points out.

The upshot? "A horrible misjudgment."

Horses are back in the news today. Federal officials again ruled out slaughtering horses for food even though there are far too many horses on public lands in the west. Remember this post, two months ago? "They Eat Horses, Don't They?"

"I guess I was naive," says one woman, "I had no idea what happened to race horses when they retire." Well, duh, lady. Same thing that happens to any other farm animal past its prime.

Reaction came swiftly from Bruce King, a local entrepreneur who's now into farming and writes a blog called "Meat, Raising Animals for Food in Western Washington." His answer: repeal the ban on the slaughter of horses in the US, a law that forces horses to Mexico and Canada.

"What does horse taste like?" King asks. "That's a question that you, as an American Citizen, probably can't answer. We just don't eat them. They're edible, and other countries do, but we don't."

Well, the Candians are paying attention. In today's Globe & Mail, the Toronto paper, there's an article headlined "Why You Should Eat Horsemeat: It's Delicious"!

And so it is. Here's a horsemeat butcher shop in Venice, where they know what's tasty:

Puledro, that yummy-looking chunk of meat in the window, that's Italian for colt or foal. Now, we're squeamish about horses in this country. We don't like to think of horses as food, but a horse isn't that much different from a cow, is it? Plenty of people, even today, eat small game like squirrel, but most Americans don't eat rabbits or chickens.

Wait, wait! Of course we eat chickens. What do you think we are, crazy?

Allrecipes.com, founded here 14 years ago, is now part of Readers Digest but is still headquartered in Seattle, overlooking Westlake Park. (That's part of their food "museum" on the left.) The site received 435 million visitors in 2010, so they know something about what America wants for dinner.

Less processed food, more fruit and vegetables, for one thing. More South American and Japanese recipes, for another. Less meat in general. More pies. The biggest trend: more frequent neighborhood shopping at local bakeries, farmers markets, fruit stands, wine and butcher shops.

Now, you could say these are self-fulfilling prophecies, that housewives with the inclination to use the internet to look up recipes are more savvy than most, and that trends like "eating healthier" are really nothing new. But it's hard to argue with the data provided by 435 million visits. Says the latest Allrecipes newsletter: "In October 2010, 71 million cooks (1/3 of all internet users 18+ years of age) visited food sites, consuming 1.2 billion pages of content." Recipe sites are said to be the fourth-most frequented internet category, after porn, search and social media. Allrecipes ranks in the top 500 websites worldwide, and saw a 38 percent spike in use in the past three months.

So you better believe it when the stats tell you "that even with all that baking going on, the majority of consumers are not making their [pie] crusts from scratch but buying them from the grocery store fridge or freezer case." The flip side of that is a whopping 1025% increase (since 200) in the use of prepared frosting and a 239% percent increase in prepared cookie dough. Shopping increasingly involves smart phones as well: "Growing across all age groups, the consumer is searching for recipes, checking competitive pricing and making grocery lists with phones...stored in an apron pocket."

Monthly, casual meals at home were reported by over half the Allrecipes users, as were formal sit-down dinners for special occasions. The rationale for a lot of trends, like home entertaining and "drinking at home" is clearly financial, but that doesn't stop a contradictory trend: more restaurant-style high-end stoves and fancy accoutrements like microplane graters, mandolines,and heat-resistant spatulas. In the unending battle for space on the kitchen counter, the indoor barbecue is on its way out, in favor of more useful appliances like blenders and bread machines, not to mention charging stations for those mobile phones.

Now, Allrecipes isn't the only source of information about what Americans spend at the grocery store. We wrote last year about the not-so surprising data produced by supermarket scanners: Americans buy more soda pop than milk, for example, more cookies than fresh vegetables. And the new Zagat guide says Seattle diners spend less when they eat in restaurants than any city in America except New Orleans. And tip less, too. No wonder Seattle restaurants are in such disarray, throwing money onto the sidewalk in hopes of luring bargain-hunters to their tables. Not money, exactly, but Groupon-style half-off coupons. Same thing. A nation of cheapskates, a city of cheapskates. But that's another story.

Vendor at a floating market in Venice offers late-harvest radicchio di Treviso

First of all, it's not a "radish," it's red-leaf Italian chicory. The root, sure, looks similar to a radish, ravanelle in Italian, but it's one of those "false friends." You eat the leaves, not the root, and delicious leaves they are. Sautéed with a bit of pancetta and garlic, it has a mouthfeel like celery and the flavor of a mushroom.

The best comes from Treviso, north of Venice, in the region called Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where it has gained protected IGP status, complete with its own official growers association (Consorzio Tutela Radicchio Rosso di Treviso) to designate the townships from which it can originate, specify its growing conditions and yields, and defend its good name. Works out to 7 tons per hectare, at about 13 ounces per plant, or 7,500 head per acre.

But it's a labor-intensive bugger, this late-harvest winter crop. After the plants are picked, their outer leaves are to be stripped. Then their roots are trimmed and they're packed into wire cages, immersed in warm water and placed in a dark barn until the leaves, deprived of sunlight and chlorophyl, turn white. The process, invented by a Belgian agronomist, is called imbianchiamento, literally "whitening." (White asparagus is similarly kept pale by mounding dirt over the plant as it grows.) Each step is described in a protocol or disciplinare; you can read it (in Italian) here. Pictures and more background here.

But the tardivo from Treviso isn't the only prized winter version of radicchio. There's also the famous "Rose of Gorizia," from the Alpine foothills of Gorizia, on the border with Slovenia. It doesn't have IGP status, but it's treasured by connoisseurs such as Michela Fabbro, chef and owner (with her husband, Piero) of a charming trattoria called Rosenbar that specializes in traditional local fare. On a recent mid-December visit, Rosenbar served it uncooked, in a salad of cannellini beans and pancetta.

As fireworks go, it was precisely right, not over-the-top, in keeping with a year that we managed to muddle through. We lost a slew (or is that slaw?) of restaurants and a couple of artisan cheesemakers, but look what all we've gained:

In no particular order, Seatown Rotisserie, Lecosho, Staple & Fancy Mercantile, The Walrus & Carpenter, Book Bindery, La Bête, a new Sitka & Spruce, Revel, Bisato (replacing Lampreia) Blueacre (replacing Oceanaire), Luc (adding to Rovers), BuiltBurger, Delicatus. Al Colozzi moved from Belltown Billiards to Pioneer Square. Belltown's Clever Bottle doubled its space. Wasabi Bistro still promises to reopen "next month." A market called Local 360 is about to replace Flying Fish, which moved to South Lake Union. Txori closed but Pintxo opened in its place. Marjorie returned, to Capitol Hill. Noodle Ranch will morph into Dope Burger. Blackboard Bistro opened in West Seattle where Ovio Bistro and Beato closed. Japonessa opened downtown where Union closed. Acquabar takes over from Kelly's. The drumbeat of whisks and ladles in new kitchens continues.

In the midst of it all, somehow, the most venerable restaurant in Seattle managed to reinvent itself. That would be Canlis, founded in 1950, whose management didn't need focus groups to understand its fearsome reputation as a high-priced, high-society dinner house. Another 20 years and its current client roster would be six feet under.

The brothers who now run the place, Mark and Brian Canlis, dreamed up the year's best campaign to celebrate Canlis's 60th birthday, instantly capturing the attention of a younger generation conversant in social media. Rather than apologize for today's high prices, they hid copies of the original menus and sent out clues on Facebook and Twitter: Find the menu and you'd get dinner at 1950 prices! Then they invited the winners to a final scavenger hunt, a "Canlis for Life" card that the finder had to give away each year to a local non-profit. The whole story, including clues and solutions, is here. The restaurant employs a PR firm, but Mark and Brian came up with this project entirely on their own, creating a whole new image (youthful and civic-minded) for their family restaurant. It doesn't get classier.

Canlis, 2576 Aurora Ave. N., Seattle, 206-283-3313