April 2011 Archives

So here's the deal, says Jon Rowley, organizer of the 17th annual Oyster Wine competition: it's not about the wine, it's about "the next oyster." (Oysters courtesy of Taylor Shellfish, the event sponsor.)

Rowley reads aloud Ernest Hemingway's passage from A Movable Feast:

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their 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 and to make plans.

We wrote about this event last year, in what seems a simpler time. This year, Pulitzer-Prize winner Jonathan Gold was on Tuesday's panel in Los Angeles. Patricia Wells, based in Paris, turned up for the tasting in San Francisco on Wednesday. Cornichon was a humble participant in Thursday's final round of taste-offs at Anthony's Homeport in Shilshole. But between last year and this, there seems to have been a sea-change (forgive us) not in the oysters but in the wines.

Some 119 wines were entered in the competition, but among the 20 finalists this year, no rieslings. No semillons, It was a battle between bottlings of grassy sauvignon blanc and muted pinot grigio. Washington and Oregon used to be shoo-ins; this year, the majority of the finalists are from California. Gulp!

A Japanese journalist, writing a book about oysters, observes closely. We smell the oyster (not the wine). We chew the oyster. We sip the wine. We swallow. We move on to the next oyster. We move from glass A to glass T. Riedel glassware at that.

The Kumomotos are perfectly shucked and chilled to the same frostiness as the wines. Propelled from one oyster to the next by the wine.Sometimes propelled, that is, sometimes not so much. No clunkers, a couple of standouts The formal announcement awaits a final tally of 50 or so tasters. We wonder, we wonder: how would Hemingway measure bliss?

UPDATE, Sunday, May 1: Anyway, the list of winners has now been posted.

A garden, some might argue, is an artificial ordering of nature, an attempt to tame her wild and unpredictable unkemptness. Others would reply that the tranquil beauty of a garden is its own reward. So is the careful catalog of species in the arboretum more like a teaching hospital (studied for the betterment of mankind) or a zoo (visited for personal pleasure)?

Civilization gave us gardens, yet it's hard to imagine a civilized country that doesn't also value wilderness. Domesticity is symbolized by the flower bed, where a rose, it's safe to say, may be more than a rose to its caretaker.

Well, before we get all tied up in metaphors, let's just say that the third annual National Public Gardens Day, is coming up, as it always does, just before on Mothers Day Weekend. That's Friday, May 6th, this year.

To celebrate the country's botanical gardens, arboreta, conservatories, educational gardens and historical landscapes, many of the 500 institutions that make up the American Public Garden Association will mark the day (hard on the heels of Earth Day, we realize) with special events and activities (some running through the weekend) for schools, families and thousands of visitors.

There's only one "official" APGA garden in Washington, PowellsWood off Dash Point in Federal Way, but several attractive Seattle parks and gardens are also expected to participate (400 public parks and gardens, 6,200 acres), and the Seattle Parks Foundation, which promotes citizen support for public parks, supports the spirit of the project. This page has links to additional public gardens after you enter a radius around your starting city.

Finally, the publication at the heart of the home & lifesyle "domesticity" industry, Better Homes & Gardens, is offering a voucher for free admission to PowellsWood on its website, www.bhg.com/freegarden.

Bellevue skyline, looking east. The former Bellevue Bowl is in the foreground.

The State Supreme Court upheld a decision last week to permit a light rail line on the Interstate 90 bridge. Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman, Jr., concerned (perhaps) about the arrival by the trainload of unwashed Seattlites, opposed the plan, and vows to appeal. In the meantime, however, he's making getaway plans.

Freeman's escape pod is an old-fashioned helicopter with a twist: it won't have to land in Bellevue proper but will be allowed to touch down on the roof of his highrise. The Bellevue City Council approved his application for five takeoffs a week from the roof of the 19-story Bellevue Place / Bank of America building at NE 8th and Bellevue Way. A hearing examiner had twice denied perfmission for safety and noise reasons; the council, as councils are wont to do, overruled.

Fresh Bistro, the restaurant offshoot, in West Seattle, of BJ Duft's Herban Feast catering center, in SODO, is taking summer barbecues to the next level with a series of featuring "culturally themed" pig roasts.

Using a La Caja China (Chinese Box) set up on the restaurant's front porch, executive chef Dalis Chea slow-roasts the beast for six hours. Depending on the theme, a dry rub or marinade glaze is also involved. For $16, you get a pound of pig, a choice of sides and condiments appropriate to the day's cultural menu. Chea, who's also a part owner of the company, broke in the Chinese Box last season, when this picture was taken.

The first Porcine Feast of 2011 takes place on Mexican Beer Day (also known as Cinco de Mayo), officially Thursday, May 5th, and includes tamales with lime salt zucchini and Oaxacan cheese; a salad of cotija-grilled cactus; grilled sweet corn with chipotle butter; a pickled jalepeno and carrot guacamole, and a further buffet of traditional Mexican accompaniments.

Porcine Feasts will continue through August, on the second and last Tuesday of each month.

Fresh Bistro, 4725 42nd Ave SW, Seattle, 206-935-3733

No blaring horns or annoying klaxons, thank you very much. Just a kazoo or two to, ahem, trumpet Seattle Opera's upcoming production of Mozart's Magic Flute.

The company will hold a musical open house at McCaw Hall on Saturday, May 7th, from 10 AM to 1 PM, featuring some of the most familiar music from the opera, including Papageno's endearing "Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja" and the Queen of the Night's coloratura tour-de-force, "Der Hölle Rache." (That's Emily Hindrichs in the photo.) If those two arias don't make an opera-lover out of you, you're stone-hearted, bone-headed, and tone-deaf. The University of Washington's flute choir will be on hand in addition to the opera singers. If all that singing and the kazoo orchestra aren't enough, there's also a treasure hunt and guided tours of McCaw (at 10 and noon).

The preview is free, but online registration is suggested for the tours, beginning Monday, May 2nd, at seattleopera.org/rsvptour. The opera itself opens Saturday, May 7th and runs for nine performances, through May 21st. Tickets ($25 to $128) online at www.seattleopera.org, or, by phone at 206-389-7676.

Three new books about food. The first, John F. Mariani's How Italian Food Conquered the World, was reviewed yesterday), Today, two more.

Cathy Erway is the opposite of Mariani, throwing herself into a first-person blog, NotEatingOutInNY.com. While not as sappy and pretentious as Julie Powell's "The Julia Project," its premise is no less annoying: "Look at me, I'm going to do something no one like me, who has a decent job and lives in New York has ever done before: I'm not going to eat out, I'm not going to order in, I'm going to cook all my meals at home for the next two years."

She dutifully types out recipes, doubts and triumphs, concerns about her social life, and, mission accomplished, writes a book about her experience: "The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove." How do you not eat out if you're on a date? Make dinner together at home, and organize supper clubs.

Early on, Erway quotes Mariani's claim (in "America Eats Out") that American restaurants all seem to have a gimmick (or, more likely, a recognizable theme). But staying home is Erway's own gimmick. She doesn't exactly "dumpster-dive," but comes close, calling her quest "urban foraging." She gets off a couple of good lines along the way: "the world is our oyster bar" and "Little lamb meatball, who made thee?" But overall, "Not Eating Out" suffers from a tedious writing style and a treacly moralism, part Thoreau and part Holden Caulfield. Is this a coming-of-age memoir, an anti-materialist manifesto or a chirpy cookbook? Erway's many admirers claim it's all three (SeriousEats.com even named it one of 2010's top ten cookbooks), but that's asking a lot more than this delivers. Better by far is her new blog, LunchAtSixPoint.com, about urban gardening and "reviving the working class lunch." It's still a bit too chirpy and self-conscious for my taste, but Erway has lost the preachy tone.

What does deliver is Kurt Timmermeister's "The Growing of a Farmer."

Anyone who's lived in Seattle for the past couple of decades has seen the evolution of Capitol Hill, has watched Broadway transform itself from a battle-scarred no-man's land and freak show to an increasingly gentrified thoroughfare. Anchoring Broadway for much of that time was Café Septième, which its owner, Kurt Timmermeister, had moved up the hill from Belltown (where it was replaced by Marjorie's and then Buckley's). Septième became a Capitol Hill institution, whether for morning coffee and pastries or nighttime drinks and steaks. The usual complaints: one customer's leisurely dinner would be another's nightmare, but Septième also provided work for a squad of servers who would later move into full-time writing, chief among them Dan Savage.

The best parts of Timmermeister's book read like "procedurals," in the same way that the first look at Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" (excerpted as "Annals of Gastronomy, Hell's Kitchen") made such an impact in "The New Yorker" exactly eleven years ago this week. (And how far we've all come since those innocent, pre-Food Channel days!)

Consider, for example, the chapters on killing chickens or slaughtering pigs. Farming isn't just about deracinating vegetables or tugging at udders, it's about slitting throats, too. We may buy pork chops on styrofoam trays wrapped in plastic, but Timmermeister knows better. "I feel that food is intrinsically good. Food is from the earth. It provides us with nutrition to live. It is the source of all life, it has the power to make us healthy."

Standing in opposition, symbolically and practically, are the public health authorities. "Their view," he writes, "is that food is intrinsically dangerous." Rather than fight the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Washington State Department of Agriculture, he stops selling raw milk and raw butter.

How did Timmermeister get from Broadway to a self-sufficient, 12-acre farm, two thirds of it pastureland, on Vashon Island? The journey unfolds over two decades, as the urbanite becomes, first, a suburban homesteader, then a cautious gardener, before selling Septième and acquiring, in its stead, a Jersey cow named Dinah. His days become defined by the bookends of a farm, morning chores and evening chores. The four dozen birds and beasts (chickens, ducks, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs) on his property have to be milked, watered and fed. He has no farmhouse wife to help, no farmhouse kids, only a Mexican laborer (without whom, it's clear, the place would fall apart).

Craigslist is a huge help (for used tractor parts, for baby pig "weaners"). Two-day-old chicks come by US Mail. When it's time for the chickens to be dispatched, the wings get fed to the pigs, "smart, attentive, aggressive, stubborn and charming." Before Timmermeister brings himself to the painful business of killing a pig, he takes the reader through the agony and the joy of buying a gun. The dairy prospers as Kurtwood Farm, as it's now known, begins to produce a highly regarded, creamy cows milk cheese called Dinah.

And once a week, Timmermeister opens his kitchen table to a dozen visitors for a farmhouse dinner, a multicourse feast produced almost entirely from his own land (exceptions made for flour and salt). And yes, there's plenty of farmhouse butter.

How Italian Food Conquered the World, by John F. Mariani, Palgrave Macmillan, 270 pages, $25
The Art of Eating In, by Cathy Erway, Gotham Books/Penguin, 320 pages, $16
Growing a Farmer, by Kurt Timmermeister, W.W. Norton, 336 pages, $24.95

Three recent books provide us with quite different ways of looking at the most fundamental element of life: what we eat. Their stories are esepcially relevant as we approach Earth Day, since they touch on how we grow the things we eat. The most ambitious tells the story of America's slow romance with Italy, the most frustrating grew out of a blog about eating at home, and the most satisfying is the memoir of a Seattle restaurateur turned farmer. We'll do one-a-day here; you can read about all three books over on Crosscut.

Italian food, says John Mariani, has conquered the world. Maybe not the entire globe, but there's little doubt that pizza has become as American as apple pie. Not since Waverly Root wrote "The Food of Italy" in 1953 has there been such a comprehensive look at the contribution Italian cuisine has made to the American way of eating. Mariani's "How Italian Food Conquered the World" probably overstates the geography of the conquest (Italian cuisine is popular in Japan, but has made few inroads in the rest of Asia, Africa or South America.) Still, there's no denying that Italian food has become enormously popular in Europe and North America, and very quickly, too, considering that 100 years ago pasta was considered street food prepared by peasants, to be eaten with the fingers. (Don't believe it? The book has pictures!)

Of the five million immigrants who came through Ellis Island in the 30 years before the First World War, 80 percent came from southern Italy. At the end of the war, one of every four immigrants who lived in the US had been born in Sicily, having left to escape the grinding poverty of farm life as contadini.

Booker T. Washington, visiting Sicily in 1910, found children working in the mines like slaves, while millions of Italian immigrants, most of them ex-farmers, were lucky to make $10 a week in hostile American cities. Despite the terrible conditions in their homeland, half would return. Those who remained would transform those tenement enclaves into Little Italys.

By 1929, there were more pasta factories in the US than any other country outside of Italy. The first canned sauces were Italian marinara, the classic red tomato sauce. Still, not until 1905 was there a pizzeria in New York, and newspapers in the late 1930s were still explaining that pizza pie wasn't pie.

Seattle, for its part, never had a true "Little Italy" neighborhood, but it did have "Garlic Gulch," the Rainier Valley, of which Remo Borracchino's bakery is the last remaining vestige. Vito's and the Rosellini restaurants were located closer to downtown. An immigrant named Angelo Merlino opened Seattle's first Italian grocery store; his grandson Armandino would open Salumi after his retirement from Boeing. And Armandino's son Mario Batali, well, Mario's version of Italian cooking conquered New York.

Mariani is considered something of a throwback, an old-fashioned, magazine-feature food writer ("Esquire's" annual Best New Restaurants list, for example). Gossipy, chummy with his subjects, he also does extensive, footnoted research (though occasionally inaccurate; the Roman vomitariums were amphitheater exits, not facilities for purging banquet overdoses). He catalogs the Italian names of California wine makers (Gallo, Italian Swiss Colony, Martini, Sebastiani, Trinchero, Mondavi), Italian wines sold in the US (Lambrusco, Riunite, Chill-a-Cella, and Italian-American purveyors of processed food (Hector Boiardi, who became known as Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Rice-A-Roni, Spaghetti Os).

It's not in the book, but there's a fascinating condensed history on "Esquire's" blog. Some highlights:

There was no Italian pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair even though "La Dolce Vita" had, four years earlier, begun a half-century media campaign orchestrated by the Italian Trade Commission, to glamorize the Italian way of life. Julia Child never mentioned olive oil, but Rachael Ray has made the acronym EVOO part of the language. Fed Ex eventually made overnight delivery of real Parmigiano cheese and Prosciutto di Parma possible. "Under the Tuscan Sun" whipped up fresh appetites for the Italian experience; Olive Garden even promised dinners prepared by chefs who had studied in the village of Riserva di Fizzano.

In Chicago, a tour operator named Karen Herbst put together a loose network of home-based cooking schools in Italy under the name of The International Kitchen, creating a new category of leisure activity for American vacationers. (Note: I'm the company's director of wine tours.) The carbohydrate-phobia induced by the Atkins diet was barely a speed bump in America's love affair with pasta. "Ciao Italiano," on PBS with May Ann Esposito, is the longest-running cocking series on American television. Playwright Neil Simon says that the love of Italian food is a law of the universe. Calvin Trillin suggests replacing the Thanksgiving turkey with spaghetti carbonara.

One of the good things about international travel conferences is that they feed you. And feed you reasonably well, for the most part. (They, in this case, being the French Tourism Development Agency known as Atout France.) But that's also the downside, because, if you know your way around, there are both specific new things they don't serve, and familiar things you yearn to taste again.

I've been back from the most recent trip for over two weeks now, and can still taste these two dishes, which I consumed with great pleasure on a night that I played hookey.

On the left, above, a plate of oysters, fines de claire vertes to be exact, identifiable by the distinct green tinge on the gills. That comes from the algae in the tidal ponds where they "finish" these oysters, in the estuary of the Marennes river north of Bordeaux. They were 9 euros for 6 at a lively spot called la Boîte à Huîtres, on a broad pedestrian street behind the Grand Théatre. Add 2.50 euros for a glass of bracing Bordeaux Blanc, and another 2.50 for a little sausage that's (almost) always served with local oysters here. Didn't need the sausage.

On the right, the main course at l'Entrecôte, a grilled flank steak, thinly sliced and topped with a secret sauce. We can go round and round about which cut of beef is best for this; top round works, boneless rib-eye works; it hardly matters. The key is the sauce, which for sure contains butter, probably includes anchovies and mustard, works well whether you throw in a ton of herbs or keep it "simple." At one point, a French gastronome "revealed" that the secret ingredient was chicken livers, a claim flatly denied by the restaurant's owners. (Various incarnations of l'Entrecôte around France are all owned by the same family. There are now several imitators in North America, none in Seattle.)

Dinner starts with a salad of butter lettuce and walnuts, then comes the steak (the only question you're asked is "how do want it cooked?") and unlimited pommes frites. The price is 16 euros, about $22. A bottle of house red is 12 euros, desserts are 6. The Scottish-plaid and yellow decor, if you can call it that, will induce halucinations but the waitresses, in tight skirts and high heels, remain unfailingly cheerful. They may not have a website, but there's always a line out the door.

La Boîte à Hîtres, 36, Cours Chapeau Rouge, Bordeaux, France
L'Entrecôte, 4, Cours 30 Juillet, Bordeaux, France

And, yeah, I know it's 4:20. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

Daniel Beltrá is an award-winning Spanish nature photographer who now lives in West Seattle. A year ago, on assignment for Greenpeace, he spent two months taking pictures of the Gulf of Mexico as nearly five million gallons of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill started to spread. "I witnessed firsthand the largest marine oil spill in history," Beltrá says.

From the 27,000 images shot at 3,000 feet above the water, 16 have been selected for an exhibit titled SPILL that goes up at the Seattle Aquarium on April 20th. One of Beltrá's dramatic aerial images was published last month to illustrate "The New Yorker's" exhaustive analysis of the the spill.

If you go: the Seattle Aquarium is on Pier 59, 1483 Alaskan Way. (206) 386-4300.
Admission for non-members is $19 for adults, $12 for youth under 13. Beltrá will give a talk on May 5th (additional $10). The exhibit runs until August 7th.

It was a dark and stormy night, and, in their neighborhood kitchens, covens of cupcake sirens were beating their batters and whipping their frostings with gleeful abandon as flashes of lightning punctuated the tormented sky.

Then the morning dawned bright, and despite a lingering springtime chill, there was sunshine at the Hiram Chittenden Locks. For the second year, each of the 6 dozen contestants unloaded 30 dozen morsels and more at Cupcake Camp, a feeding frenzy and fundraiser (for the Hope Heart Institute) sponsored by Bella Cupcake Couture. Early adopters bought the $8 ticket ($10 at the door) for 6 mini cakes; some 300 were sold in advance. The doors opened at noon, over 1,000 hungry fans swarmed through the premises like locusts (Passover starts Tuesday!) and by 2 PM there was nary an edible morsel left. All that remained were cupcake-shaped bath salts and baby-shower gifts.

Really? Have you seen the commercials for this stuff, where vividly bright food coloring gets squirted into a perfectly good glass of H2O? And this is supposed to make "water" taste better? Whatever happened to "For 2¢ Plain," we ask? That look at life in the segregated South, by Harry Golden, the progressive publisher of The Carolina Israelite, can be read as wistful today, but nostalgia ain't what it used to be. Thank goodness we've moved past the whites-only lunch counter.

But the next time you pass a fruit vending machine that passes off flavored water as a healthy alternative to candy bars, ask yourself why. Is it for good health or for the vending machine franchise? The answer came from Harry Golden as well. He titled his next book, "Only in America."

Should append this link to a Cornichon post, four years ago, about a mineral-water tasting in France.

Belltown's McGuire Apartments (2nd & Vine) is starting to come down, while a block or so away the Alto (3rd & Cedar) goes up. Spinning wheel must go round.

Contractor for the dismantling is Lease Crutcher Lewis, whose website (with the unfortunate name of LewisBuilds.com), now includes a page devoted to this unprecedented project. It confirms that demolition of the townhouses atop the parking garage (on the left in the right-hand picture above) will come first.

Cornichon's World Headquarters is right across the street; we'll keep you posted.

As we've foretold in these columns, the plague of coupons seems inescapable. Like the Egyptian captors of the Israelites, we are smitten by a misfortune of Biblical proportions, a metaphor that's not inappropriate this month, what with the coming of Passover. (What have we done to offend thee, Lord? Ah, yes, we have been greedy. Was it Walmart's promise of low prices? Our warped sense of entitlement? Our selfishness? Will we ever recover from this self-inflicted infestation?)

To deal with the plague, restaurant strategies are evolving. First, there are proactive, targeted coupons and deal-searching software. Three recent ones are Foodcaching, BiteHunter and SnapFinger. Foodcaching, developed locally, is part treasure hunt (like the sport geocaching) and part bargain hunt (as in Groupon-style coupons).

Meanwhile, Restaurant Week starts soon, running April 10-21 with time out for the weekend. Many of the 150 restaurants will serve a three-course, $15 lunch, and all will offer three-course dinners starting at $28. How can they do it without going broke? Your guess is as good as mine.

Seattle's homegrown FareStart is a big winner in the James Beard Awards this year: It's been named the organization's Humanitarian of the Year.

Jason Franey, the talented young chef at Canlis, has been named one of the country's top ten "Best New Chefs" by Food & Wine magazine. Last year it was Jason Stratton, before that Jason Wilson. Is there a pattern, Jason?

Stratton, by the way, is expanding Cascina Spinasse by taking over the store at the corner of 14th Avenue and Pine Street. It will be called Artusi, with a big bar and a menu focused on Italy's aperitivo culture.

Also on Capitol Hill, there are plans for Marination Station to set up shop inside the Harvard Market. For its part, Skillet Diner is moving into the Chloe Apartments at 14th Avenue and Union Street, across the courtyard from Marjorie. Poquitos, an offshoot of the very French Bastille in Ballard, has already set up shop at 10th Avenue and East Pike Street.

A cluster of newcomers around Seattle University. Chieftain, a pub in-progress, and Ba Bar, a Vietnamese sandwich shop, lead the way. On Broadway, look for a new Mod Super Fast Pizza (and be prepared to shell out a standard price of $6.28). Around the corner, on Nagle Place, a tiny spot called Cure, overlooking Cal Anderson Park.

And still more Capitol Hill openings: from Bottleneck (in Fremont) comes Tommy Gun, at 17th Avenue & East Olive Way, a Prohibition-themed eatery, food by Skillet Diner's Brian O'Connor. As if that weren't enough, an actual distillery, Sun Liquor, at 512 E. Pike, will make the move from cocktail bar to selling its own hooch. Where Kurrent failed to catch on, at 600 E. Pine, there's now Kiki, with low-priced, Asian-style small plates. Nearby, at 720 E. Pike, where Maharajah stood, comes Pho Le, a (you guessed it) pho parlor. Closer to downtown, where Bambuza bamboozled no one, there's now 820 Pike, another Asian spot (Vietnamese, Chinese, sushi) for conventioneers.

Elsewhere in Seattle: Look for a new farmers market in Interbay this summer. Madison Park has a new bakery called Belle Epicurean. Greenlake will soon welcome Trattoria Cioppino. Fremont has a new deli called Dot's, Mercer Island gets Stopsky's. West Seattle will welcome Chaco Canyon's raw and vegan fare. Madrona has a new pizzeria where Dulces used to be, called Pritty Boys' Family Pizzeria, owned by the folks behind Belltown's Branzino. Speaking of Belltown, the chef from Cutters Bayhouse, Justin Mevs, is launching Lucky Diner at 1st Avenue and Cedar Street. And the chef from Lecosho, Mike Easton, will open a lunch spot featuring handmade pasta, to be called Il Corvo, inside Procopio gelateria, on the Pike Street Hillclimb.

Continuing our quick around-the-horn of startup and expansion plans: on The Ave in the U District, a new breakfast & brunch spot called Nook.

Downtown, Maximus Minimus returns for another season at the corner of 2nd and Pike. A couple of blocks inland, at 4th and Union, we'll soon see San Francisco chef Michael Mina open a très, très upscale place called RN74, named for the highway that runs through Burgundy's best vineyards.

In South Lake Union, look for an offshoot of Cactus to complete the passel of restaurants in the Terry Avenue building, otherwise occupied by three(!) new Tom Douglas restaurants: Cuoco (upscale Italian), Brave Horse Tavern (a beer, burgers & pretzels joint) and Ting Momo (a Tibetan dumpling café). If you're still hungry, a deli called The Wurst Place is about to open at Westlake Avenue North & Republican Street. As their website says, the wurst is yet to come.

A note on the pictures, all from the Terry Building in South Lake Union, from the top: Herschell Taghap makes pasta at Cuoco, Tom Douglas's collection of kitchen string holders, gnocchi with pesto, one of the horses at Brave Horse Tavern, BHT's signature pretzels.

Bob Betz, Seattle native (Blanchett), UW grad (zoology), outgoing yet reflective, a gifted communicator, became the official spokesman for Chateau Ste. Michelle and the unofficial public face of Washington's wine industry. He was a sort of politburo ideologue at Ste. Michelle, with the grandiose title of Vice President for Enology and Research, the one who kept the winery's focus on wine, wine, wine. And when he left Ste. Michelle (where he had hired me), it was to start his own 1,200-case operation, Betz Family Winery.

It's been two decades since we worked together and his beard has more salt than pepper now, but Betz lost none of his enthusiasm for wine. In recent years he earned the prestigious Master of Wine certification. "Seamless syrahs and cabernets," cooed Wine & Spirits magazine, naming Betz one of the best small wineries in America.

Still, Betz and his wife, Cathy, are in their 60s now and have been thinking about retirement. Their daughters Carmen and Carla have both worked in the business but have careers of their own. The exit strategy was to sell, though only to the right buyer. And so, when the South African owners of a private equity firm in Phoenix, Steve and Bridget Griessel (InSync) came along, promising to keep his baby a family-owned company, Betz said yes. An offer he couldn't refuse.

Betz will spend five more years under contract as wine maker, but, as he told Wine Spectator, "Now we can just concentrate on the fun stuff, making wine, instead of talking to insurance agents and finding parts for the coffee machine."

Jason Sheehan, we already miss you and your meandering, pointless memoirs masquerading as Seattle Weekly restaurant reviews. The Surly Gourmand's got your back this week, with nary an effing expletive. But leave it to newly minted editor-in-chief Mike Seely to jump the shark (as it were) with a cover story, no less, about a fictitious "chef" named Lou Kohl and his imaginary restaurant, The Dirt Farm.

If ever a subject were ripe for parody, it would be the sanctimonious restaurant biz, given to oversize egos and preposterous philosophizing, but Seely is so ham-handed (as it were) that his characters bare (bear?) no relation to reality. In short order, the mountain-man chef awakes from his naked slumber, butchers a giant bull, does a line of homegrown coke, forces "visiting author" Michael Pollan to behead a coop full of hens, humiliates his "guests" (who include a passel of plausible locavore foodies like Michael Hebb, Kurt Timmermeister and Matt Dillon, as well as Hollywood types like Gwenyth Paltrow), then dispatches a harmless llama. Pollan says grace.

"What a hoot," concludes Seely. Not.

There's a video, too, deep inside the Weekly's website. Doesn't even try to be amusing.

More fun: this piece in The Atlantic, which at least engendered some lively debate.

Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is tuneful but dark, with interwoven strands of decadence and playfulness. It is, if you will, both "Twilight" and "Twilight of the Gods," so it's a plausible fit for the up-and-coming singers of Seattle Opera's Young Artists Program. Peter Kazaras, who directed Rossini's "Barber of Seville" on the main stage earlier this year, is staging "Don Giovanni" this weekend and next at Meydenbauer Center, four years after the work was performed at McCaw.

There will be only four performances: Friday, April 1st, at 7:30. There's a matinee on Sunday, Apriul 3rd, at 2 PM, followed by two more evening performances Thursday, April 7th and Saturday, April 9th. Adult tickets are $50, student tickets are $20. Tickets can be booked by phone at 206.389.7676 or online. Meydenbauer Center, should you need a GPS to find Bellevue, is at 11100 NE 6th Street.

Video preview courtesy of Seattle Opera.