June 2011 Archives

A five-pound bag of frozen meat from the American Lamb Board showed up at the front desk in a cryovac bag the other day. Without opening the bag, I let it defrost in the fridge, wondering what treasures it held. Behold, it was leg of lamb, cut into 2-inch cubes for kabobs. The outdoor grill was off limits that night, so we opted for stove-top searing in a cast-iron skillet.

Seasonings? Ah, there's the rub. We tried two: a ground-coffee and garlic salt blend, and a beautifully fragrant and complex garam masala with some extra salt and garlic powder. In the end, we mixed the two; the coffee provided a rich bitterness, and the garam masala added heavenly aromas. We browned the lamb on all sides; perhaps five minutes in all, and it came out a perfectly cooked medium rare. Homemade béarnaise, too, almost too much.

Oh, we drank Bordeaux, of course. Nothing wrong with homegrown grapes, but the Bordeaux Supérieur blend from Château Moulin de Beauséjour, something like $8 from Trader Joe's, was a modest pleasure from beginning to end. Olivier Cadarbacasse sells his wines at his cellar door, to be sure, but it looks like TJ's gets most of the rest. The winery itself has no website, and has limited distribution on the internet.

Anyway, thank you, American Lamb Board! Thank you, Seattle Lamb Jam (October 23rd at Bell Harbor, tickets at fansoflambseattle.com).

Barton Seaver's in town this week for a string of appearances and readings to promote his cookbook and responsible-eating manifesto, "For Cod and Country." Seaver's a classically trained chef (Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park) who specializes in sustainable seafood. Only ten years out of school, he's been named a National Geographic fellow, helped create their Seafood Decision Guide and hosts a TV series called Cook-Wise. (Lots more background on Seaver's own website)

The Seafood Decision Guide is particularly interesting because it avoids the yes/no duality of most lists of "sustainable" fish. It explains that there are four levels of seafood (plants, small vegetarian species, larger carnivores, and top-level predators). They're not necessarily what you think, either. Dungeness crab is a top-level predator, for example. Oysters, mussels, clams and bay scallops rank highest on the sustainability scale. Other indicators rank sustainability and Omega-3 content. All the criteria can be queried on an interactive website.

The cookbook, which was published last month, is organized by season, and features recipes for dozens of aquatic species, not just the handful we find on restaurant menus. It's by expanding personal horizons, Seaver writes, that we'll save the oceans and save the planet.

"For God and Country" is being touted as one of the two fish cookbooks you need; the other being Becky Selengut's "Good Fish," reviewed last month here on Cornichon.

For Cod and Country: Simple, Delicious, Sustainable Cooking, Barton Seaver, 304 pages, Sterling Epicure, $30

Reading and book signing: Thursday,June 30th, 7PM at University Bookstore, 4326 University Way NE Seattle.

That's Jay Soloff with the bottle of Chaleur Estate's sauvignon-sémillon blend at this weekend's "Pour on the Plaza," a charity fundraiser held at El Gaucho in Bellevue. (Does he look familiar? We wrote about him back in 2008.) Soloff was the sommelier at El Gaucho over 30 years ago, left to start a wine brokerage, and is now a partner and Exec VP for marketing for DeLille Cellars. Chaleur Estate Blanc is one of thier labels, and arguably the most serious white wine produced in Washington State.

It's the fifth vintage of this blend, roughly a third sémillon from Boushey Vineyards, the rest, sauvignon blanc, from Boushey, Klipsun and Sagemoor. It was a warm, abundant vintage, but there's less of it than there was, from the same sources, in 2008 because DeLille's wine maker, Chris Upchurch, treats the grapes as if they were ingredients in a premium red wine: low crop levels (three tons to the acre), whole berry fermentation with native yeasts, moderate use of French oak. Most white wines get little respect because they're based on high yields and quick-and-dirty winemaking; they sell at low prices because the wine makers don't make much of an effort at quality. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The proof of Chaleur Estate Blanc's quality is in the glass, and here the wine writers are having a field day. Dried apricots, figs, grapefruit, gooseberies, lemon, lime, hazelnuts, grilled bread, toasted straw, flint. No question that it has a rich and silky mouthfeel, and a lingering, nutty finish. At $34 a bottle, it's hardly a wine for casual drinking. Rather, it's as good as the white Bordeaux blends it emulates (names like Domaine du Chevalier, Château Smith Haut Lafitte, or Château Carbonnieux), yet it's only half their price.

Tiberio Simone decorates two models at a party to launch his book, La Figa.

Loving women, loving their bodies, a passion long-celebrated, has fallen into disfavor, what with sordid sex scandals at home and abroad. But there is nothing shameful about Tiberio Simone's delight in the human form (in all its forms).

He's a chef, first and foremost, with a business called La Figa Catering. Literally, the fig. Metaphorically, symbollically, and in Italian slang, it's what you think it is. "Bella figa" is the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, Tiberio writes. "And since when is that a bad thing?" he asks in his book, also called La Figa, subtitled Visions of Food and Form, which features some 40 short essays about food, 20 recipes, and artful photographs by Matt Freedman of models covered in food (cucumbers, berries, zucchini, radishes).

"Our need for food and sex goes way beyond pleasure: we wouldn't exist without them," Tiberio writes. And, just as vegetables come in assorted shapes and sizes, so do the models, young and old, fat and skinny, all shades of the rainbow.

This is a book about the sensuality of food and sex; there's almost nothing here for the prurient. It officially premiered at the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival last month, then had a more public "coming out" last night at Wine World Warehouse. Tiberio probably slept with half the women at the party, I suggested to a mutual acquaintance. "Probably," she said, then added, with a smile, "But I'm not one of them."

La Figa: Visions of Food and Form, Book Publishers Network, 192 pages $39,95

If there is a guardian of Friuli's food culture, a student of its sometimes opaque history, a defender of its origins and a champion of its traditions, that would be Josko Sirk, whose country restaurant La Subida just outside Cormòns has evolved into a legend.

It's a legend that brooks no compromises, but it does demand the fulltime attention of every member of the Sirk entourage.

On a recent Sunday evening, when tourists as well as local families tend to wander off to the Adriatic beaches, Josko Sirk was dressed a bit less formally (no jacket, rolled up shirtsleeves), wheeling the cart bearing a Prosciutto d'Osvaldo to every table so he could personally carve a few slices as a token of welcome. (When we were here this past winter, Sirk welcomed visitors at La Subida's hearth, the fogolar.)

Sirk's wife, Loredana, glided from table to table to chat with guests. Their 32-year-old daughter, Tanja, acted as the principal server ("I've worked here da sempre," she said with a charming smile, "since forever"). Her husband, Alessandro Gavagna, runs the kitchen. There's another daughter, Erika, whom I didn't see on this visit.

And then there was their son, Mitya, just 18, in jeans and a polo shirt and a funny little beard, but with the poise and grace of a ballet dancer, already a professional maître d'hôtel (clothes don't necessarily make the man) and a precocious knowledge of Collio's wines. No shy, gangly teenage mannerisms but a bearing of self-confidence that will stand him in good stead as he makes the rounds of the top Italian, Slovenian and Croatian restaurants in the US this summer, starting with Lydia Bastianich's spots in Manhattan. (The Bastianich family has a winery in Udine, not far from La Subida.)

Game has pride of place on the menu here; the full name of the restaurant is Trattoria al Cacciatore de la Subida, the hunter's tavern. And cervo with polenta is but one example. That after several appetizers and pastas, and before a panoply of desserts. The region's best wines, of course. The kitchen displays none of the frantic, frazzled activity of an American restaurant; the staff knows what's expected and they deliver, confidently and without fuss.

Now that the kitchen is firmly in the hands of his son-in-law, Josko Sirk can devote his time and energy to another project: artisanal aceto. Just down the drive from the restaurant he's built a star-shaped wooden house; inside is a distillery where he uses whole grapes to produce an exquisite vinegar, sweet enough to flavor ice cream. You spritz it onto food as if you were squirting it with a lemon. Industrial production takes 20 minutes, but he ages aceto his for two summers. The vinegar even has its own website.

And let us not neglect to mention that my visit to Italy was sponsored by the Consorzio Collio Carso, the marketing association of Collio and Carso wine makers. Grazie, grazie mille.

RICHMOND, BC--You know the dilemma of ordering dinner in a foreign culture. Faced with a menu you can't read in a language you can't understand, or dishes you've never tasted and can't imagine eating, you point. "I'll have that," you say, and hope for the best.

No need to be nervous in Richmond, though. Our group of Seattle food writers had banquet-style meals (one lunch, two dinners) in three of this city's top Asian restaurants, expertly guided by Melody Fury (she's the one on the right in the picture).

First order of business: XLB, a specialty of Shanghai. (So, no, it's not an extra-large burrito.) It's a pork-soup dumpling, Xiao Long Bao, handmade in the large open kitchen of Richmond's Shanghai River Restaurant. Sometimes, though not today, you can also see the cooks hand-pulling homemade noodles. But before we got to the XLB, we sampled pan-fried noodles with pork, bean curd with vegetables, wonton soup with steamed chicken, Shanghai-style pan-fried shrimp (heads on), sweet and sour rock cod, and Peking duck (served in two--or was it three?) courses.

From Shanghai at lunchtime to Cantonese for dinner, at Jade, where Tony Luk was named Chinese Chef of the Year in the 2011 HSBC Chinese Restaurant Awards. His specialties included a pan-seared jumbo scallop with a morel and porcini sauce, a grilled and braised short rib, a chicken roasted in a clay pot, and, best of all, a soup of fish maw with crab meat.

Our final Asian excursion was a quick dinner at a Hong-Kong style café, the Spicy Stage, where the specialty is a do-it-yourself noodle hot pot.

Melody's a Vancouver native who writes a popular food blog, gourmetfury.com, and operates a company called Vancouver Food Tour that actually reaches foodie destinations well into the BC hinterlands.

Richmond, in case you've forgotten, is a community of 200,000, just south of Vancouver. It's home to the largest immigrant community in Canada; half the people who live here are foreign-born, two-thirds of them Asian. The "Golden Village," four square blocks of downtown Richmond, has malls that remind travelers of Hong Kong, with some 300 shops and countless restaurants (Alexandra is called "Food Street"). And you have to parse "Chinese" into authentic Cantonese, Szechuan, Shanghainese, Northern Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Malaysian cuisine (let alone the rest of Asia, such as Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, Cambodian, Laotian, Indian, and so on.)

Now, should you be interested in replicating these banquets, you're in luck. Tourism Richmond, which sponsored the media tour that brought me here last month, is offering "the Ultimate Food Experience" as a contest prize or as a freestanding travel package.

Shanghai River Restaurant, 7831 Westminster Hwy, Richmond, BC, 604-233-8885  

Jade Seafood Restaurant, 8511 Alexandra Rd., Richmond, BC, 604-249-0082  

Spicy Stage Café, 150-4731 Garden City Rd., Richmond, BC, 604-270-8873  

Moonrise over the Grand Canal, shot last week from Marco Giol's wooden motor launch.

VENICE--This densely packed archipelago, an intricate latticework of some 120 islands and 400 bridges, is home to perhaps 50,000 people. (Higher numbers, which you may have read here, refer to the commune of Venice, which extends well into the mainland.) On any given day, there are probably 100,000 tourists wandering about as well, some of them enjoying the schmaltz of a serenade aboard one of La Serenissima's 450 gondolas. Even as its foundations crumble, the city remains an enchanted place, drawing sustenance from its love of edgy art (especially the Bienale) and the vitality of its swarming tourism.

If you visit Venice, you wander. You might have a map in your pocket with the name of your hotel to rescue you, when you can no longer bear the lightness of being lost. Venice is a city of lost tourists looking for that special doorway, that magic courtyard, that perfect palazzo. They haunt the souvenir shops along the Rialto bridge, they line up outside churches and museums, they congregate in restaurants with tourist menus in five languages. They eat bad pizza, and those who know it's bad hunger for an authentic trattoria where locals eat after the daytrippers have gone back to their cruise ships and pensiones for a good night's sleep. (Venice is tiring. Try walking around for hours on end with a five-pound camera around your neck--those lenses, that's your Venetian glass, by the way!--without anyplace to sit except, perhaps, the steps of the bridges. Up and down the goddamn steps, Martha, I'm calling it a day.)

There's no shame in being lost in Venice; that's the whole idea. And from time to time you come across a narrow fondamento with a bar, or a campo with some tables outside, the sound of clinking glasses and lilting Italian conversations filling the night air, and you want to join in, you wish you spoke the language better, you wonder how to order what that table is having over there.

Well, what I'm having are those cozze-vongole (mussels and clams in tomato sauce). You're looking at me enviously because I'm the one sitting at the table under the umbrella, drinking local white wine with Marco Giol (the man behind WineTTand the owner of the motor launch that navigated the canals and is tied up at the end of the rio); he's having the sweet cape longhe (razor clams). We're being pampered by Francesco Agopyan, the owner of this secret spot, Trattoria Antiche Carampane, named for the neighborhood, which may have been, long ago, Venice's red light district. Then again, maybe not.

There are maybe a dozen fishmongers down at the Rialto market; Francesco (that's him in the picture above) trusts only two. His clientele, regardless of passport, is Venetian (or enterprising enough to have a Venetian make a reservation). They don't scorn tourists, far from it, they just don't eat dinner with them. The sign on the door is quite clear. "We really don't know to make pizza and we're too stupid to learn."

And here's Marco in the launch, which he pilots like Luke Skywalker flying his starfighter through the narrow canals, occasionaly calling out "Oh-AY" on the blind corners.

Want to find this magic spot? Here's how, according to Carampane's website: From the Campo San Polo, take Sottoportago De La Madoneta at the rear of campo (on the right side coming from Chiesa). Turn left at Building #1414- Enter Calle dei Cavalli. Cross Ponte Furatola and take Sottoportago de la Furatola. There will be a small canal on your right. Before you get to the next bridge, turn left onto Calle del Tamossi. You will pass a house with a large courtyard. Then go right onto Ramo del Tamosi. Make a left onto Rio Tera de la Carampane - the restaurant is about one block on the right."

Or you could see if Marco is available and zigzag your way in by water.

Antiche Carampane, San Polo 1911 (Rio Tera delle Carampane), Venice. (39) 041.524.0165

RICHMOND, BC--Dawn Peng's new coffee shop in Steveston Village is called Rocanini, which sounds Italian (it's not) but is meant to convey a sense of strength and European style. Her baristas don't "pull shots," they grind the beans to order (single-origin, of course) and brew each cup individually using a Japanese Bonmac cold-water syphon. If this all sounds a bt much, you can also get a simple drip-filter coffee, but be warned: this showcase is what the future looks like. Peng and her partners are planning five to ten similar coffee shops in the Vancouver area within the next two years.

That giant gadget on the counter? The one that looks like a high-tech James Bond torture machine? Ice water goes into the big glass bowl at the top and drips slowly, slowly, slowly through the tubes, into a couple of cylinders filled with finely ground, single-origin coffee. One drop in, one drop out. (More technical details on the topic in this New York Times article.) This is for the latest craze, Japanese-style iced coffee, which obviously gets made ahead: from ice-water-in to coffee-concentrate-out, it's an 18-hour process. A creamy mouthfeel, it's said, dark, smooth and intense. So far, this is the only such device in Canada.

The resulting brew is also enjoying a surge of popularity in New York City, where the website Eater.com has even published an interactive map of Manhattan coffeeshops with especially good iced coffee. One of the best is the Gotham outpost of Portland's Stumptown. (Parenthetically, a New York private equity firm has recently taken a major ownership position but left founder Duane Sorenson in charge..for now.) No plans for a cold-brew system at either one of Stumptown's two Seattle stores, although they do sell "Stumptown Stubbies" of cold-brew coffee locally.

UPDATE 6/21: Seattle Coffee Works has one of these contraptions as well, has had for over a year. (Gulp.) James Ross Garner wrote about it in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine.

Rocanini Coffee Roasters, #115-3900 Moncton St, Steveston, BC, 604-284-5126  

Our excursion to British Columbia last month was sponsored by Tourism Richmond as part of a media preview of "Richmond's Ultimate Food Experience."

They make a lot of noise, those clattering, old-fashioned, arrivals-departures signs ("Real-Time Information Display Systems") on the walls at Michael Mina's new RN74 on the corner of 4th and Pike. They're not announcing trains but wines, last bottles of whatever's about to sell out.

They were custom-made by Solari in Udine, one of the provincial capitals of Friuli, in northeastern Italy, where I coincidentally spent the past week, zipping around the Collio hills. And yes, they do have a ribolla gialla from the Slovenian side of the border on their list ($61, must be a typo), but the real star here is Burgundy.

True, this is a Michael Mina restaurant, but that's welcome news, since Mina's a local boy who made good (born in Egypt, grew up in Ellensburg, worked at the Space Needle and at Anthony's in Kirkland, comes back regularly to visit family), but don't think for a minute that it's burdened with the fussy-fancy frou-frou of his eponymous, ultra-high-end restaurant, originally at the Weston St. Francis, now on California St. in San Francisco. Not that there's anything wrong with elegant, even fussy, high-end food, but RN74 is different.

For one thing, it's as much about wine as it is food. Wine in a relaxed, burnished wood setting, without the heavy pretensions of, say, Purple, just up the street.

The wine side of the concept is under the watchful eye of Rajat Parr, wine director for all 19 of the restaurants in the Michael Mina group. Parr, born in Calcutta, started his wine career at Rubicon, tutored by former Seattle sommelier Larry Stone and soon fell in love with Burgundy. Hence RN74's name, the road that connects many of Burgundy's most picturesque villages. Purists will complain that it's no longer called RN74 but D974, but we can all agree that D974 would be a ridiculous name for a restaurant.

Parr (on the left in the photo above) also teamed up with Jordan MacKay to write this year's James Beard award-winning wine book, "Secrets of the Sommeliers." No secret: the initial inventory at the Seattle outpost of RN74 involved an outlay of over $500,000 to stock the cellar with 8,000 bottles. Parr plans "Behind the Bottle" wine dinners every two weeks to help drink them up.

The kitchen, which opened for evening service on Thursday, is guided by Executive Chef Michelle Retallack, a veteran of 12 years with Mina. (Big hit: Snake River Farms braised beef shortribs.) We've already heard the good news that Murray Stenson will soon take up his post as head barman, with a platoon of local stalwarts joining him, headed by former Cascadia and Café Juanita sommelier Jeff Lindsay-Thorsen along with Black Bottle's barkeep Noah Goldman. You can expect more detailed reports in the months ahead.

Mina isn't making the mistakes that have befallen other big-name chefs (Wolfgang Puck, Todd English, Terrence Brennan) who basically left their babies in the hands of daycare workers far too soon. He and Parr are staying onsite for several months to make sure the place runs the way they want.

Cornichon's colleague Jay Friedman, Seattle's other sex guru, has already written that the Solari board shouldn't make you rush into things; take the time, he says, to get the most pleasure you can, every step of the way. (His column, "Sexy Feast," runs in Seattle Weekly's food blog, Voracious; you can read the whole thing here.) I'm not sure I agree with Jay. I rather enjoyed the periodic detumescence of the Solari board; it felt like a Happy Hour quickie. But, as with wine, it's whatever turns you on.

RN74, 1433 4th Avenue, Seattle, 206-456-7474 (get it?)  

The road formerly known as Route Nationale 74 in Burgundy, as it runs below the village of Aloxe Corton.

The year was 1985. Jeff Miller, 23 years old, Pittsburgh city kid, CIA-trained chef, veteran of Jeremiah Tower's Stars in San Francisco, straps on a backpack filled with seeds (seeds!), climbs on his Honda Hurricane 600 and heads from the Bay Area to Washington State. He's never farmed, but he finds land to rent near Monroe. Backbreaking work, 90 hours a week, but by 1997, he's done well enough to buy a farm of his own, which he names Willie Green's Organic Farm, Willie being his middle name.

He starts selling organic produce to farmers markets in Seattle, to a network of 100 CSAs, to produce wholesalers like Charlie's and Rosella's, to Whole Foods. When he bought the property, it was nothing but grass. Today, he's growing 60 to 70 different vegetables, pays a big staff (30 field hands to work the 60-some acres, half a dozen people to work eight markets, plus admin, marketing, social media updates).

Now the next step. The Fields at Willie Greens, turning about 10 newly manicured acres into an event venue for weddings and the like. The flip side of farm-to-table, if you will, bringing people from the city out to learn about organic farming, people who've never been on a farm. You can get here on freeways and divided ribbons of asphalt, or you can take the back roads, over Novelty Hill and along the Snohomish River, past stately barns and horses grazing in fields of clover, Mt. Pilchuck to the north, Rainier to the south. Ironically, the scenic route is faster.

It's a great location for a summer wedding (chapel-style seating area, main tent, greenhouse, fire pit, parking), or a grand harvest gathering. Summer Saturdays go for $2,500, pretty much the standard price for a ten-hour, countryside rental. To start, Miller has given exclusive rights to one of his best clients, Herban Feast, the SoDo caterer, but he foresees adding a few additional companies. Miller also looks forward to acting as sous-chef for "guest chef" nights (he's done that for Lisa Dupar Catering), when a smallish group of urbanites might come out for supper under the Raj tent (custom made in India). Eventually, even overnight accommodations, in yurts. Eventually, the possibility that his son, now 14, could take over.

Until then, Miller is content. Surveying the grounds (landscaped to his own design), he takes a breath. "It's a dream finally come to fruition."

So set 'em up, Joe. I've got a little story you ought to know.

There are two challenges to the state liquor monopoly this summer, one from an unproven private proposal, the other facing huge odds to demonstrate public support. Let's start with the one that the legislature passed, SB 5942, and which Governor Gregoire signed on Wednesday.

Down in Olympia, late one night during the special session, a couple of legislators snuck a bill into the hopper to privatize the supply side of the state's liquor business. That's right, to lease the big distribution center in SODO to a Tacoma consultant financed by a New York private equity firm.

Why'd they do that? After all, the centralized warehouse is the crown jewel in the state's antiquated liquor distribution system, the only part that's properly computerized and automated. Ah, follow the money. The consultant says he'd pay the state $300 million. That's a big piece of the amount the state needs to balance its budget.

It's not a done deal by any means. The bill, SB 5942, names no names, but it does direct the Liquor Board and the State Treasurer to investigate the possibilities of a long-term lease. But it's got an emergency clause, making it take effect immediately, with a fast track for bids and contracts, assuming the governor signs it. (The names, in case you're interested, are 33-year-old Tom Luce, a former district director for Rep. Norm Dicks, and Sandeep Kaushik, a political consultant who formerly wrote for the Stranger; the financing would come from Lindsay Goldberg, the firm that bankrolled a similar deal in Maine in 2004.)

The bill carries a clause declaring what the Seattle Times calls a "liquor emergency," though the Liquor Board takes no official position on the matter since it hasn't been signed yet. Officially, the Board's only input was to insist that the jobs of state employees be protected.

As it happens, it costs the state about $3.25 to receive, inventory, warehouse and deliver a case of booze to a state-owned or state-franchised liquor store, and it's hard to see how any private party could perform the same service for less, especially if the new operators have to protect the existing workers' jobs. A second warehouse east of the mountains would be helpful, but no outfit that provides logistics services exclusively can do much to increase its customer's business.

One is left with the feeling that there's got to be a catch somewhere.

I got the routine, So put another nickel in the machine ...

And sure enough, Joe, here's the catch. It's called Costco, the Issaquah-based, big-box giant who sells more booze than any other retailer in the United States.

Governor Gregoire''s action was called "unfortunate" by Joe Gilliam of the Norhtwest Grocery Association. "It would trade a state monopoly on liquor distribution for a private monopoly held by a single company, and would keep the state-owned liquor store monopoly in place," The result, contends Gilliam, is actually less revenue to the state. But then, Gillian has a dog in the fight: he's the spokesman for I-1183, the so-called Costco initiative.

Costco sponsored a bill during the regular session that would have privatized liquor sales (like the defeated I-1100) but made licenses more expensive (providing more revenue for the state) and limiting liquor sales to larger premises (no gas stations, no mom & pop grocery stores, for example). But the Costco bill died in committee.

Now Costco has returned to the initiative process we've become all-too-familiar with. The attorney-general has yet to certify a ballot title, and opponents have a week to appeal in court before signature-gathering can begin. Then, by July 8th, Costco has to come up with nearly 250,000 valid signatures to quality for a spot on the November ballot. That's not a lot of time.

Under the language of the initiative, private liquor stores must have at least 10,000 square feet of retail space. So no gas stations, no mom & pops, no convenience stores. Retailers would pay 17 percent of their gross revenues on spirits to the state. Most important for Costco, it would allow wineries and wine distributors to give volume discounts to restaurants and retail stores. (Costco says it's not interested in getting into the liquor business unless it can negotiate discounts, which wouldn't be possible under ESSB 5942.) The initiative would allow retailers to buy directly from wineries and distilleries but wouldn't completely eliminate the existing distribution network. (Beer distributors poured millions into a competing initiative last year to preserve their share of the pie). Finally, the intiative would double the penalties for selling liquor to minors.

Costco has learned that going it alone, as it did with the I-1100 campaign, is not a good political strategy. Its allies this time around are the Northwest Grocers Association and the Washington Restaurant Association, two powerhouse lobbying groups with tens of thousands of members who would benefit from the opportunity to buy booze at lower costs.

(The state may be efficient when it comes to distributing cases of liquor, but it charges a 34 percent markup before adding taxes; Costco typically operates on a 2 percent margin.).

Privatizing the liquor business would raise money by immediately selling off existing facilities, then paying increased tax revenues to the state.

But there's that pesky "competing" measure, SB 5942. Says Kaushik, who wrote that bill, "Costco wants their initiative to be the only thing out there. They didn't want the public to have a chance to see the bids that would come in through a competitive bidding process."

But others disagree and think the only purpose of SB 5942 is, once again, to muddy the waters. "Cities and counties don't lose a penny under the Costco initiative," says beverage-industry consultant Bob Stevens, "and the state gains revenue."

So make it one for my baby and one more for the road.

The main Shrine Hall at Thrangu Monastery in Richmond, British Columbia; below, Lama Rabjor Daw

So the Canucks didn't bring home the trophy, but it's okay.

In medieval Burgundy, the Cistercian monks--who knew how to read, so they understood the value of writing things down--came up with notion of identifying specific plots of grape vines, the beginnings of the modern system of appellations. And to this day, they make some of the best cheese in France, Cîteaux. We have come to expect that tireless devotion and unquestioning obediance (on the part of others) lead to something delicious (for us).

Bhuddist monks, on the other hand, are under no obligation to "produce" anything. Their monasteries serve as a refuge for study, prayer and meditation (called, simply, "practice") undisturbed by worldly concerns. "In this way, monasteries serve as a means to accumulate wisdom," says 25-year-old Lama Rabjor Daw, the Thrangu Monastery's emissary to the outside world, and the only monk with a cellphone.

Thrangu is the first traditional Tibetan monastery in the northwest of North America. It was founded last year by the Very Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche ("Precious One"), who, in addition to his role as a spiritual leader, is also among the foremost scholars of Buddhism. When he visits the monastery, he doesn't deliver sermons; he comments on and interprets holy texts.

A young Tibetan monk named Karma Dradu, 32 years old at the time, designed and executed all the decoration. The centerpiece of the sanctuary is a 16-foot, gold-plated statue of the Shakyamuni Buddha, flanked by 35 Buddhas of Confession and 500 Medicine Buddha statues.

The rationale for a monastery in British Columbia, according to the website: "to help spread the genuine Dharma in many lands, thus quelling the misfortunes of epidemics, famine and war in this world and helping peace, education, and prosperity to flourish." Sounds like the thrills of winning the Stanley Cup will have to wait here, as well.

Lama Rabjor, the one with the cell phone and keys, says it's important to welcome tourists, to show the public what Buddhism is all about. He betrays none of the impatience or defensiveness one might expect of a young man in his 20s. No less important, of course, is to serve the tens of thousands of Buddhists who now live in the Vancouver area.

The monastery's resident monks and the occasional visitor live in simple rooms (indoor plumbing, but no TV). So there wouldn't be any temptation to watch to hockey. The monks are vegetarians, of course; the pleasrue of food is not part of their lives. That barbecue in the courtyard? It's for a ceremonial fire, nothing more.

Thrangu Monastery, 8140 No. 5 Road, Richmond BC

Our visit to Richmond was sponsored by Tourism Richmond.

UPDATE, July 2, 2011: Three weeks after this post appeared, the New York Times runs a big interactive feature by Ingrid Williams about, yes, riding a Vespa along the Collio trail.

I admit it, I'm a sucker for scooters. I drive the Yamaha Vino in Seattle, so I jumped at the chance to tour the Collio hills on a sunny Sunday afternoon on a bright yellow Vespa.

And what a sweet machine it is. Room under the seat for Michael's D80 loaner with its 12mm lens. Off I go, into the hills, toward San Florian (church square under reconstruction), down again to Oslavia (World War One ossuary, remains of 60,000 soldiers), stop on market square in Cormòns for Aperol spritz and bowl of gulasch soup.

Photos online here.

Here's the embedded slideshow:

Collio on a Vespa

Scooter outing courtesy of the elegant resort Castello di Spessa. My trip to Italy is being hosted by the Cosorzio Collio Carso, whose motto, I need not remind you, is "I Love Collio!"

The vine-covered Collio hills of northeastern Italy, right on the Slovenian border, produce some of the country's best white wines.

True, it's not quite a Pulitzer. But it did mark the first time since the Premio Collio (Collio Prize) awards were launched, eight years ago, that the winning entries were written in English. John Brunton, the distinguished travel writer who lives half-time in nearby Venice, published a series of excellent pieces in the Financial Times over the past year.

And a second award went to the writer of a modest blog published in Seattle, Cornichon.org. First online winner ever! (The individual posts ran in December, 2010, and January, 2011. They're all together in this PDF).

Consorzio Collio e Carso (the marketing association of the region's wine makers) sponsored the awards, which also honored academic researchers and a film maker. Its acting director, Alessandra Gruppi (pictured below at the awards ceremony last Friday) who teaches marketing at the nearby University of Udine, recognizes the fierce competition of the world's wine regions, and is helping the Consorzio develop a brand, "I Love Collio," that goes beyond a simple wine label.

The first element, the Consorzio now understands, is a signle "signature" wine that everyone can produce: Collio Bianco. As well as a distinctive Collio bottle. For European travelers, increased amenities like B&Bs and restaurants, better signage, bike and Vespa rentals. And for the rest of the world, international trade shows and an ambitious communications strategy to tell the story of Collio.

That's what brought me to Collio last winter. I had first visited seven years earlier and jumped at the chance to return. What I found were delightful wines that rivalled the best French and German whites (bright acidity, mouth-fillng flavors), produced in artisanal quantities by hard-working yet sophisticated families. They export two-thirds of their production and recognize the need for in-person marketing, so they send the younger generation off to the United States, to England, to Asia to pour their wines and tell their story..

And what a story! Collio is only 3,500 acres (one tenth the acreage of Napa Valley) with some 200 wineries producing 7 million bottles from a unique terroir. The soil, variously called marl & sandstone, flysh or ponca, contributes a unifying characteristic to all the wines from Collio: minerality. Even the lightest wines have backbone, and some, especially ribolla gialla, have so much potential that they are vinified and aged like red wines

And now I'm off, on a bright yellow Vespa, to scoot around the hills! If I were giving the Collio Prize, I'd give it to Collio.

What you notice first is the discrete vroom-voom of a motor launch easing its way through the quiet neighborhood canals, the muted sounds echoing off the walls of an 18th century palazzo. Nothing like the semis, the half-ton delivery trucks, the roaring Metro diesels buses, not to mention the incessant drone of mention rubber on concrete throughout even the more remote Seattle neighhborhoods. No, you realize, Venice is quiet. Hushed, reverential.

And Venice is crowded! Tourists from Lithuania, tourists from Brazil. Nikon-wielding Japanese, Gucci-wielding Chinese, .gelato-wielding Texans. They jostle one another along fondamento, calle, campo, and ponte. They compete for passage with deliverymen pushing rubber-wheeled carts and dollies. Venice, city of maybe 200,000 iinhabitants, is overrun by visitors. And then you realize why: no cars.

Instead of driving to McDonald's or Starbucks, Venetians (and tourists) walk to the caffè:, walk to the corner bar, walk to the market, walk to the square; They walk because water taxis are not only slow but prohibitively expensive. If you're heading to the fish market at the Rialto bridge, just take the local vaporetto.

A gondola? Sure. For romance, not for point-to-point You see them gondoliers at strategic intersections, in their black or red striped shirts, calling out to tourists, "Gondola, gondola!" with a practiced rhythm in between drags on their cigarettes, taking off their beribboned straw hats to wipe their brows when the traffic slows. On one boat, a balding businessman ignores the other passengers (three stout women in red jackets) and speaks loudly into a cellphone. Another businessman in a green tie and carrying a briefcase alights from a traghetto (a gondola devoted only to crossing the Grand Canal) and pays the ferry man his 50 cent ransom. If he's a lawyer or a banker, he's got style, la bella figura.

The North Africans have returned to the piazzas; no umbrellas today since it's sunny at last, but with a panoply of "designer" (illegal counterfeit) bags and purses. And some weird flying doodads that light up, zoom skyward and drop slowly to the ground. Nothing like that in Seattle any more.

And the pigeons have returned to the Piazza San Marco. Thousands of them. I read last year that pigeon shit does enormous damage to the fragile underpinnings of San Marco, so the city fathers banned the sale of piegon feed. Don't know what magic potion the Japanese tourists are scattering on the stones, but pigeons are everywhere. More pigeons, many more, than dogs (for example). Reverse of Seattle.

A gaggle of teeny-boppers interrupts the sately scene in front of the Frari church. Giggling American schoolgirls. One would think their chaperones had warned them that halter tops and obscenely short jeans were inappropriate. One would be wrong. But Americans don't have a monopoly on provocatve dress or boorish behavior. Shlubs from all nations, it seems, converge on La Serenissima, armed with water bottles, cargo pants, combat boots, oversize fanny packs, outsize cameras, huge jackets tied around their ample waists. The locals arrive dressed for the office (briefcase, jacket & tie) or pulling a lightweight shopping cart as they head to the ancient fish markets.

Tourists don't visit the market to buy food but to gawk, The markets are surrounded by storefont booths hawking gew-gaws and cheap souvenirs. 8.99 for a "hand-painted" mask. They eat in cheap restaurants where the flavorless pizza crust comes out of a box, sauce and toppings well dusted with a magic flavor-removing powder called "MancaSapori." (Just kidding.)

Summer is coming. It's warmer, and it stays light out for a long time. On the other hand, just like Seattle's it's going to rain again tomorrow.

View of the Grand Canal from the Accademia brdge. More new pictures of Venice online. More coverage of wet weather in Venice (last December) here and here.

It feels like winter. The sky is leaden, and the piazzas are almost empty except for a handful of North Africans who have materialized with 5-euro mini-umbrellas; they stay in touch with each other by cellphone. From the Accademia bridge, a German tourist tries to pierce the gloom with his camera flash.

On the periphery of the Camp San Stefano, half a dozen cafes serve lunch under a canopy of canvas. Bored waiters wielding brooms poke and nudge the accumulated water to the edge, where it cascades onto the outermost row of tables. "Cambia domani," they say, without conviction; it's going to be better tomorrow.

The Biennale is on. Art of all kinds is on display and being performed in museums, gardens, public squares, palazzos. Venice itself is a giant living museum, of course, even with the lights turned low. Along the maze of side canals are neighborhood bars where young and old stop for a glass on the way home. Prosecco, spritz, Campari Soda. Cicchetti are nibbled.

Back on the square a couple of tourists hurry past, protected by hooded white ponchos; they look like they're going to a KKK rally. Everyone wears sensible shoes. The wind shifts and my tablecloth gets soaked. All is quiet except for the church bells.

Venice June 2011

I'm on assignment in Italy this week but Lisa Dupar's IACP award needs to be recognized!

Cookbooks are the largest-selling category published in the United States, everything from "The Meatlovers BBQ Guide" to "365 Ways to Cook Carrots." Agents who specialize in cookbooks maintain websites with detailed instructions for authors eager to nvaigate the shoals of mainstream publishing. And, hey, it can be done. Among the local celebrity authors, Kathy Casey's recipes are published by Chronicle Books, Ethan Stowell has Ten Speed Press, Braiden Rex-Johnson has John Wiley, Kurt Dammeier lined up Clarkson Potter.

Publishers are the architects, designers and general contractors of the book world, but the best ones do far more than produce the author's book; they sell it as well. (Notwithstanding innumerable tales of their abject failure to promote it much further than the Remainder table.) Publishers also operate in an alternate universe where time itself can be made to stand still; years can pass before a project goes from manuscript to galley proofs to production; the notion of royalties an arcane relic. Hence the importance of agents who know which publisher is doing what, and who can hold publishers' feet to the fire if needed.

Hence as well the popularity of online publishers like Lulu, Dog Ear and Cafe Press, where you can print a perfectly respectable copy of your manuscript for 20 bucks or so. Won't be an elegant, case-bound coffee table volume, but just fine for a collection of book-club recipes or a souvenir montage of photos from your African safari.

And then there's Redmond's southern belle, Lisa Dupar, whose Fried Chicken & Champagne was just given the Julia Child Award for best first book by the International Association of Culinary Professionals The publisher is Southern Accents, Inc., with an address in Redmond, which sounds suspiciously like Pomegranate, Dupar's award-wionning catering company and bistro.

Dupar's self-published book beat two established authors, Mark Bitterman (Salted) and Jessica Theroux (Cooking with Italian Grandmothers) released by mainstream publishers. (We reviewed Theroux's book last winter when she visited Seattle.)

"I'm still on Cloud Nine," Dupar told Cornichon by email. "I'm flabbergasted," she told her publicist, Norma Rosenthal. And to the audience of 600 who attended the awards ceremony in Austin, Texas, she acknowledged the contributions of the creative team behind the book (all women, by the way): photographer Kathryn Barnard, creative director Callie Meyer, designer Alicia Nammacher, and copy editor Miriam Bulmer. "They made my dream come true," Dupar said. "In my wildest dreams I never even conceived of receiving an honor like this."

Dupar grew up in Atlanta, started cooking at home because her mother wasn't interested, and entered an apprenticeship at the Peachtre Plaza hotel after high school. She made her way to Zurich and cooked in European hotels, and, in 1984, landed in Seattle at the Palm Court, the first female chef at a Westin Hotel property.

She left the hotel biz to open herown place, Southern Accents, as well as a catering company to provide stylish, high-quality food for private events in the growing market on Seattle's eastside. Six years ago she and her husband, Jonathan Zimmer, opened Pomegranate Bistro in Redmond, an intimate spot adjacent to the spacious catering kitchen.

Yes, there's a yummy recipe for comfort-food fried chicken in the book (saltine crackers do the trick for the crust) but her favorite sophisticated recipe is for Barolo osso buco (there's a source for veal demi-glace if you're not making your own). The book is filled with handwritten observations and kitchen tips ("Mash Notes"), as well as vignettes and charming photographs of eastern Washignton wine makers. What comes through, above all, are Dupar's culinary intelligence and generous spirit.

Fried Chicken & Champagne, Southern Accents, 256 pages, $38.

Pomegranate Bistro, 18005 NE 68th St, Redmond, 425-556-5972  

UPDATE on May 11, 2012: the NY Times weighs in on PNB's Giselle research.

With enormous care, intensive scholarship, and the exhilaration that comes with the rediscovery of long-lost sources, Pacific Northwest Ballet has reconstituted, reimagined and restaged one of ballet's greatest classics, Giselle.

It's a timeless tale of a young girl's love for the wrong kind of guy (Albrecht, a philandering prince) and the first half ends with her early death after her broken heart gives out. In the second half, she's become part of a flock of winged nighttime spirits, the Wilis, who lure men to their deaths, but the girl comes into her own, defies the Wilis, and saves the rogue who betrayed her. A contrived story, to be sure, but so are the plots of Romeo and Juliet and La Bohème, to name but two stories of young love that end badly.

Giselle premiered in St. Petersburg 170 years ago with Carlotta Grisi (pictured) in the title role and has been a staple of the romantic ballet repertoire ever since, though it had never been performed by PNB. Peter Boal, PNB's artistic director, writes that he wanted to do more than recreate another company's production but didn't want to choreograph one himself. The solution came from PNB's director of education, Doug Fullington, and the historian Marian Smith (PhD from Yale, on the faculty at University of Oregon), who reconstructed long-overlooked elements of the ballet's original music and choreography. Their scholarship may become the new gold standard of future Giselle productions; certainly the premiere Friday night at McCaw Hall was received with great enthusiasm.

Alas, the great good will and intelligent collaboration of the creative team were not enough to overcome what appeared to be a lack of precision and lightness by the principal dancers or the sluggishness of the corps de ballet. The sonorous orchestra, led by guest conductor (and music director-to-be) Emil de Cou overwhelmed the performance, and, on more than one occasion, seemed out of sync with the dancers.

As Albrecht, Cuban-born Karel Cruz brought the heroic stature, if not the virile stage presence, of role's most fabled interpreter, Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Brazliian prima ballerina, Carla Körbes, showed the virtuosity, but not the consistency, of a great Giselle.

The original production, we're told, was almost half pantomime, for which the music was written in a different style. At first the pantomime was a welcome storytelling device, but several gestures became repetitious, like a referee's waving his arms for a first down or an incomplete forward pass. The set, from Houston Ballet, was a serviceable holdover from ballet sets past: a proscenium lushly filled with branches and boughs.

As we noted, the production was noisily acclaimed by an audience of Seattle first-nighters, so my skepticism is clearly a minority viewpoint. But the stage of a theater is not a baseball diamond where runs are scored or a soccer pitch where goals are cheered, not a center court where aces and backhands win points. Performance art demands more. More of its performers, more of its audiences.

Pacific Northwest Ballet presents Giselle through June 12th at McCaw Hall. Tickets ($27 to $185) online at www.pnb.org or by calling the box office at 206-441-2424.

Steveston, BC--This fishing village, home to the largest commercial salmon fleet in North America, they say, and part of a community of over 100,000 Asian immigrants, has also produced an anomaly: a barbecue joint called the Hog Shack.

Now, there is barbecue and there is barbecue, and the debates are theological in intensity. For some, barbecue means "falling off the bone." But, say the Protestants, that's braised meat, considered apostasy by those whose salvation lies in meat that is "dry-smoked."

Into this culinary minefield, last October, jumped Allan Yeo and John Lim Hing, business partners and owners of a local steakhouse, the Mandalay. Their inspiration, they claim, was Kansas City barbecue, although any reader of Calvin Trillin knows that's way too high a standard.

Their most interesting concept, to my palate, was a dish of pancakes layered with pulled pork and served with maplejack syrup and bacon butter. Perhaps that's because I fall into the agnostic camp of prefering moister barbecue? It's not on the menu; when the kitchen rustles up a batch, the owners put it out on Twitter (@hogshackca), then sit back and wait for the crowds. So far, they say, the strategy is working.

I was less taken with the dino bones (beef ribs, smoked for five or six hours) and the burnt ends (brisket trimmings, smoked for another six hours). Hog Shack's side dishes (coleslaw, baked beans, corn bread) didn't particularly impress me, either. There's no beer on tap, just a modest selection of bottled microbrews.

Hogshack's Facebook page features a Wall of Shame filled with pictures of glassy-eyed eaters who have attempted the five-minute Flat Liner challenge (a burger-eating contest). To my taste, all this is frat-boy fare, food for 20-somethings whose palates are still developing. Not that there's anything wrong with that; far from it.

It's a gorgeous weekend, and the Tall Ships are in the harbor. Harbour, sorry.

My visit to Steveston was hosted by Tourism Richmond.

Hog Shack Cook House, 3900 Bayview St., Steveston, BC 604-272-7264  

Spot prawn platter at Tapenade Bistro overlooking Steveston's harbor

Steveston Village, BC--You can feel good eating spot prawns; the fishery is local and sustainable. Two thirds of the commercial BC harvest comes from the Inside Passage, between Vancouver Island and the Mainland in relatively shallow (200-foot) coastal waters; they're caught in baited, funnel-shaped traps dropped to the ocean bottom attached to longlines. Most of the catch is frozen at sea and exported to Japan, but ten percent or so is sold fresh locally. It's a short season, starting in mid-May, and lasting less than three months.

Spot prawns--the largest of seven commercial species of shrimp found off the west coast of Canada--lead a short, happy life. Immature in their first season, they become male for a couple of years, then turn female. It (or rather, she) can grow to a size of nine inches, but most are harvested at about a third that size. They're sweet and delicate, with fimrly-textured meat. Ocean Wise, the Vancouver Aquarium's list of sustainable seafood, gives the highly regulated catch a big thumbs up, as does the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch.

We had the good fortune to be dockside when the fishing boats arrived with their cargo of fresh, live prawns. Tossed into a simmering court-bouillon (onion, celery, carrot, bay leaf, thyme), or briefly steamed, they're ready in minutes. Twist off the head (and suck the juices out, if you're game), then split the back shell open with your fingers. Mayonnaise or aioli is barely necessary. Chef Alex Tung at Tapenade Bistro in Steveston serves a huge platter with two pounds of prawns, chorizo sausage and fingerling potatoes for $70; it would easily feed two hungry adults or a table of six as an appetizer.

To accompany the spot prawns, Tapenade served a lovely sauvignon-sémillon blend called Alibi from the dramatic Black Hills Winery on the Naramata Bench outside Oliver, in the Okanagan Valley. This is one of the best vineyard sites on either side of the border, and one worth seeking out.

No less impressive than the prawns was the Dungeness crab cake ($14 for a pair), topped with a spoonful of remoulade. No surprise that Chef Tung was named best chef on the Lower Mainland by the Georgeia Straight. No surprise at all.

By the way, the Tall Ships are just outside Tapenade's front door this weekend.

Tapenade Bistro, 3711 Bayview St., Steveston, BC, 604-275-5188  

Cornichon gratefully acknowledges the support of Tourism Richmond for this trip to Steveston.

The bright folks at the US Department of Agriculture have labored mightily and laid an egg.

Six years ago--the blink of an eye, the rumble of an overfed tummy, but still, over 2,000 square meals ago--they released a confusing striped food pyramid to replace the layered, 1992 original, and they added a stick figure climbing stairs to suggest that exercise was a good idea.

Now, in a stroke of revisionist history, the USDA site "MyPyramid.gov" resolves to "ChooseMyPlate.gov." (It sounds like something Network Solutions suggests when the domain name you want isn't available.) But is the plate any smarter than the pyramid? It's not a pie chart (that would be too cute), but does it make sese? Is it at all helpful?

Ask 100 people on the sidwalk "what's a protein?" and I'll bet you get 50 answers, few of them correct. Ask 100 shoppers in the grocery store to point you toward "the protein," I'll bet you get fewer than 10 right answers, even from people who work there. "Protein" is too vague a term to be useful.

Consider the USDA's own language:

Dry beans and peas can be counted either in the Vegetable Group (dry beans and peas subgroup) or in the Protein Foods Group (formerly called the Meat and Beans Group), or in both groups. Generally, individuals who regularly eat meat, poultry, and fish would count dry beans and peas in the Vegetable Group. Individuals who seldom or never eat meat, poultry, or fish (vegetarians and vegans ) would first count the dry beans and peas they eat in the Protein Foods Group, and then any remaining would be counted in the Vegetable Group.

Steveston Village, BC--The CFV Miss Trimar, a 42-foot salmon seiner skippered by Brian O'Brien, goes out for a couple of days at a time to fish the estuaries. She's a tall, sturdy, steel-hulled boat rigged with all the electronics of modern fishing. During last year's "100-year-event" (an enormous run of sockeye on the Fraser) she was one of only 20 commercial boats on a 300-mile stretch of water. Normally, the Miss Trimar can carry 12,000 "pieces" in her hold, 30 tons of fish at a time, but O'Brien's quarter-mile sets were netting as many as 50,000 sockeye at a time. It was overwhelming.

In his 35 years as a fisherman, O'Brien has seen the working fleet here at Steveston go from 600 down to 75. Even so, there are still 160 active licenses, each worth about $250,000, and it's still the largest commercial salmon fleet in North America. The harbor has a capacity of 1,000 vessels, and half the slips are occupied. (Want to tie up your boat? Day rate is $3 per meter; power will cost you another four bucks a day.)

Used to be, the salmon boats would sell to the canneries that lined the waterfront, as many as 40 of them, giving Steveston the nickname "Salmonopolis." Today the only one left in town is the Gulf of Georgia Cannery, and it's a national museum.

On our tour, Roberta Price posed with an instrument called a pieugh (pronouced pee-eew, as in stinky). The French-Canadians refer to it as a gaffe, and it's perhaps more familiar to fishermen as a gaffer's hook. It was wielded at the unloading dock of the cannery to snag stray fish. Getting the salmon ready for canning was a fearsome process, infernally loud, surrounded by revoltingly slimey and smelly fish guts, with hellish dangers from whirring blades, freezing cold, and brutal, numbing tedium. Before the invention of a gruesome machine (like Bennie's car in "Total Recall"), gangs of Chinese men wielded the knives that beheaded the incoming salmon; platoons of Japanese women did the cleaning, children pushed empty cans into position, Native Americans did the remaining filthy jobs. We have no idea, no idea at all.

These days, especially during good weather, fishing boats nuzzle up to the dock below the boardwalk to sell their catch: salmon, spot prawns, sea urchins. Chefs from the restaurants come down to buy; it's not going to get any fresher.

Brian O'Brien figures he'll keep going a few more seasons. His daugher fished with him for ten years, but now she has a family of her own. "I like fishing the estuaries," he says, but it seems to him as if the government is on a campaign to regulate smaller boats like his out of business. "Up in Alaska, they support boats under five tons. Not in Canada."

Cornichon's trip to Steveston was part of a weekend called Richmond's Ultimate Food Experience, sponsored by Tourism Richmond.

Alas, the Spanish team has left the building.

The golden yellow, high-ceilinged space on First Avenue, occupied for the last couple of years by Taberna Del Alabardero (and before that by Cascadia) has closed.

There's been an Alabardero in "the other Washington" since 1989, a fancy spot that caters to diplomats and nearby K-Street lobbyists. But the history goes back even further: to the Palace Honor Guard in Madrid, who wielded ceremonial "halberds"--those fearsome pole-axe blades on pikes.

The story behind the name: some 35 years ago, a priest by the name of Luis de Lazama started a restaurant in a townhouse near the Palace, named it for the guards, and--though he had no experience in the restaurant business--used the place to teach troubled youth how to cook. He went on to open other Tabernas across Spain, and then, 20 years ago, he flew to Washington DC and launched an American version. No delinquent kids this time; this was to plant the flag of Spanish gastronomy.

But the plant didn't flourish in Seattle. Despite some successful and critically acclaimed promotions (a series of Santiago di Compostella dinners, a series of paella dinners, a celebratory brunch when Spain won the World Cup) and some great-value happy hours, Alabardero was too fancy for Belltown.

Not that down-to-earth, no-tablecloth fares any better on the 2300 block of First Avenue. Del Rey closed earlier this year. Across the street, Ventana has been struggling since it opened. But the loss of Alabardero hurts.

Corky Luster, founder of Ballard Bees, with hives on the roof of the Fairmont Olympic hotel

It's the little things.

Ten thousand little worker bees, as it happens, plus one queen, inside a three-pound, $75 "box" of bees. Transfer contents into a 10-frame Langstroth hive and you're ready to take on the world.

Three years ago Corky Luster was a contractor installing Koehler fixtures. When the construction market softened, Luster looked for other ideas. He'd gone to WSU to become a vet and had done some beekeeping, so he started Ballard Bees with a couple of boxes in his back yard. Today the company has 85 hives, most of them in backyard gardens around town, and the homeowners--happy to have the advantages of bees (flowers, birds, seeing nature-at-work) pay him.

Ballard's Bastille Restaurant and Kathy Casey Studios use his honey, but would beekeeping fly in downtown Seattle? Gavin Stephenson, executive chef at the Fairmont Olympic, came to Seattle with a mandate to expand the hotel's "lifestyle cuisine." Serving honey from the hotel's own hives was an attractive alternative to pasteurized commercial alternatives. He called Luster and they worked out a deal. Five brightly painted boxes went onto the roof, and, at the beginning of May, the hives were populated. By the end of the year, each hive will grow from 10,000 to 50,000 bees and eventually produce over 150 pounds of honey.

"A bee can forage in a six-mile radius," Luster says. "We don't know exactly where they go, but they're already coming back with pollen on their legs." Once bees find a particularly attractive site, they do a waggle dance inside the hive to tell the others how to get there. The first thing they do is dive straight down from the roof, then they make (you should pardon the expression) a beeline for their feeding grounds. Trees, gardens, parks, p-patches, anything that blooms is a target. It's a short season in Puget Sound; the weather has to be above 55 degrees for these particular species (the Italian and Carniolian western European honey bees) to leave the hive. "But just wait until blackberry season!" Luster exlaims.

Seattle's a good place for urban beekeeping. Backyard chickens are everywhere. Goats? Well, not so much. But bees, not a problem. Luster has a two-year waiting list of households.

As exec chef, Stephenson oversees food service for 400,000 covers a year. The rooftop hives won't provide nearly enough honey. "What's important is that we're doing the right thing," he says.