August 2011 Archives

Jelle Vandenbroucke, 30, has been the chef at ART in the Four Seasons Hotel for six months, taking some of the pressure off Exec Chef Kerry Sear, who also shoulders the job of the hotel's Food & Beverage Director. When a directive came down from the luxury chain's headquarters that 25 percent of all the restaurants' menus had to be "local," Jelle (pronounced "Yelleh") knew he was on safe ground. "We're already at 82 percent!" he said. A native of Bruges, he left after completing culinary school and has never worked in Belgium. Instead, he caught the travel bug with a year in New Orleans. He joined Four Seasons as a sous-chef in Provence, then moved to the chain's Westlake Village property outside Los Angeles before moving to Seattle "without any preconceived notions" of what he would find. ART is a training ground for Jelle, whose goal is to become an executive chef for Four Seasons. So he's finding his footing, with some hits, some misses, and not a few safety dishes.

Safe: cucumber & Dungeness crab canelloni. Safe: potato & ricotta gnocchi with rainbow cauliflower. Wildly off the mark: a salmon salad hidden under a thicket of "crisp" rice noodles with plums and quail egg; the noodles were soggy, the plums too sweet and the egg irrelevant. Nice idea, poor execution: diver scallops with mussels, garlic scapes and caper-flower tartar; the capers overpowered the delicate scallops. Solid: lamb three ways: a pistacchio-crusted lamb chop was fine, as were lamb riblets over ratatouille and a lamb merguez sausage from Uli's Famous Sausage in the Market. The duck breast was tasty, and the accompanying brioche and red-onion jam provided the most interesting seasoning of the night, a French curry spice called Vadouvan..

We drank wines by the glass from several local wineries, notably the Aix from Delille Cellars, a syrah-cabernet blend in the style of Eloi Durrbach's Domaine de Trévallon, not far from Aix, whose rich berry flavors jumped out of the glass.

ART Restaurant, Four Seasons Hotel, 99 Union St., Seattle, 206-749-7070  

A year ago, Cornichon ran a post about the ethereal pasta served at Jason Stratton's 30-seat Capitol Hill storefront, Cascina Spinasse. Since then he's doubled the size of the place and appended an entirely new venture, an Italian aperitivo bar called Artusi, where he continues to demonstrate levels of creativity and technical prowess unique in Seattle.

Artusi, on the quiet corner of 14th and Pine, has a high ceiling, a concrete floor, a neutral gray color scheme with bright yellow accent tiles and hand-rolled paper lampshades. There's seating for a total of 50 at two bars (one at the cooking station, one for cocktails) and a string of tables for two overlooking the sidewalk. The place is named for Pellegrino Artusi, a northern Italian silk merchant who wrote Italy's first post-unification cookbook ("The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well"), wildly popular in Italy at the end of the 19th century and only available in English since 1997.

The concept is for folks to come into Artusi for a drink at one of the counters, a cocktail or maybe a glass or two of wine, maybe a stuzzatino (snack) of fried capers ($3) or a crisp semolina wafer with fresh ricotta ($6), then meander over to Spinasse when their table was ready. They way you would in Italy. An aperitivo and a bite in a caffè or bar, then dinner somewhere else. And some folks, to be sure, do just that. But no sooner you think that Seattle gets it, gets the Italian lifestyle, you fine that many more folks don't want to leave for dinner at all.

Gulp! Seattle wants more: bigger portions, more full-meal options. Sheesh. But Stratton's not a dogmatic chef, he's the soul of attentiveness to what his customers want . (Helps that he's got a great staff of business professionals working with him.) So dinner-size portions it is.

Which brings us to Stratton's dilemma. Can't put handmade pasta on the menu at Artusi, that's cannibalizing his own specialty. So instead he's doing some remarkable dishes that can be prepped in the Spinasse kitchen and finished on the induction cooktop at Artusi: duck leg with prunes ($15), lamb braised with olives ($16), and the single best dish I've had in months: tripe with bone marrow and local black truffles ($16).

A lot of people, needless to say, have negative experiences (or negative expectations) about tripe.

"There's something deeply satisfying about taking such an overlooked and even off-putting ingredient and transforming it into something delicious and tender," Stratton tells me. "I've had many guests be surprised at how much they like it."

Beginning to end, the tripe dish is a three day process. First, Stratton's crew blanches honeycomb tripe (from Nicky USA, a specialty purveyor in Portland) in a vinegary poaching liquid with white wine onions, garlic and spices. The pot goes on a very low simmer for about an hour, with a cook standing by to skim off the scum as it rises to the surface.

Most of the "funk" contained in tripe lies in the fat, and poaching helps render some of it. Once it's chilled, the honeycombs are scraped with a spoon to remove the rest of the fat that resides in the folds and near the valves of the stomach. Then it's cut into thin strips.
Meanwhile the cooks prepare a brodo, a meat broth that begins with a soffrito of finely diced carrot, celery, onion, garlic, chopped rosemary and a little sage, pancetta and prosciutto rind. After it caramelizes and gets deglazed with white wine, the trips is added back and simmered for about three hours. When it's done, the brodo is thick and stew-like.

Stratton's line cooks (Bobby Palmquist on a recent weeknight) finish the dish with grilled bread, julienned black truffles from Oregon, sourced by Jeremy Faber of Foraged and Found, and discs of bone marrow (from Silvies Valley Ranch), seared in a hot pan and added at the last minute.

"This is sort of a Northwest ode to cooking tripe in the style of Piedmont, where bone marrow is often used to enrich tripe dishes," Stratton explains. In any event, the tripe is rich and flavorful, with the texture of sliced mushrooms. The best wine? Schiopettino from Friuli, Primitivo from Puglia, Negroamaro from Siciliy, Canonau from Sardinia, Barbera from Piedmont. This is a dish that transcends wine.

Artusi, 1535 14th Avenue, Seattle, 206-251-7673  

The Washington Wine Commission today pledged $7.4 million over the next decade toward the construction of a wine science center on the Richland campus of Washington State University.

It doesn't hurt that Ted Baseler, ceo of the state's largest wine company, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, is also chairman of WSU's board of regents. "All of the world's great wine regions have a benchmark institution to conduct research into grape growing and wine making, Baseler said. "The Wine Science Center will enable us to properly educate our industry's future leaders." (Baseler's on the left in this picture, standing with Bob Betz, founder of Betz Family Cellars, at the annual Auction of Washignton Wines picnic.)

The center is expected to be a gathering place that will spark innovation, fuel economic development, support local, regional, national and international collaboration, and provide a catalyst for research breakthroughs, according to the Campaign for Wine website.

The industry's contribution will be raised through assessments on grape and wine production, beginning with the 2011 harvest. Says Kent Waliser, general manager of Sagemoor Vineyards and chairman of the commission, "This critically important project....will be seen as a significant milestone in the evolution of our industry."

The research and teaching facility will house the WSU's rapidly expanding viticulture & enology program led by Dr. Thomas Henick-Kling. The new building will be situated on land donated by the Port of Benton, developed by a new public development authority to be created by the City of Richland), and will be turned over to Washington State University.

Marty Clubb, president of the Washington Wine Institute and owner of L'Ecole Nº 41 Winery, says that the research expected to take place at the Wine Science Center will help ensure the continued growth of the state's wine industry in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

With over 700 wineries and more than 40,000 acres planted statewide, the Washington State wine industry contributes more than $3 billion annually to the state economy and $4.7 billion annually to the national economy. Additional information from the Wine Commission in the PDF linked to this page.

Knives, these are. Wüsthof brand (No umlaut in the email, that would be too taxing, eh?) And, unelievably, no link to the client's website.

How can this happen? Only, it seems to me, if the PR people in Noo Yawk aren't paying attention, and the person sending out the release is an unpaid intern. But you better believe Wüsthof's going to get a hefty bill for "services."

The culprits, according to the signatures at the bottom of the long, long text-only release, are Julia Stambules (note I resisted the temptation to type "Stumbles") and Keith Sivera, described as principals of an agency called JS Public Relations. Am I wrong to be picking on them? Comments, please.

You're looking at Tina Hoban and her husband, Ed. She's a grad of Seattle Central's pastry program who apprenticed under Sue McCown at the W Hotel's Earth + Ocean. The Hobans spent several years in St. Paul before returning to Washington, where they now have a seven-acre homsetead (beef, pork, goats, sheep, chickens, eggs) near Bellingham. Ed's a contractor, and Tina has a custom-baking business called Scratch Desserts. Those farm-fresh eggs! What a difference! Keeps her busy, but with her daughters now in school (Lilly's 7, Caitlin's 5), Tina is getting creative again.

You see, when Lilly was a baby, Tina entered her first contest, for Florida Natural Orange Juice, sending in a recipe for chocolate bread pudding with a creamy, buttery orange sauce. She nailed it, winning the $10,000 first prize. But not just luck. This year, she's entered two more. She was a finalist in a Tillamook Mac-n-Cheese competition, and, just this week, one of Washington's two finalists in the 2011 Foster Farms Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest.

We wrote about the first edition of the event last year, held at the Kathy Casey Food Studios in Ballard. Again, 2,000 entries winnowed to 5 by consultant Nancy Piho. This year, two finalists were selected by the tasting panel (in addition to Casey, culinarians Jamie Piha and Cynthia Nims). A big emphasis on fresh, local ingredients, echoing the "Fresh Chicken" theme of the sponsor's advertising campaign. (The national finals are in Napa next month; Hoban and Rebecca Spence of Vancouver will compete against finalists from Oregon and California.)

So what did Ms. Hoban come up with? A mouthful: "Chicken with Cherry Tapenade over Creamy Pancetta Polenta." You make the tapenade by blending dried Washington cherries, Kalamata olives and capers, then stuffing the result inside chicken breasts. The polenta is seasoned with chopped pancetta and goat cheese. Fresh rosemary provides nice aromatics.

It was by far the tastiest of the entries to my palate, probably because Hoban wasn't afraid to use flavorful seasonings (olives, capers, pancetta, goat cheese). Some cooks have an instinctive sense of what's needed, especially when it comes to salt. Though the fashion of the finnicky and ill-informed, these days, is "low salt," the result all too often is so bland as to be inedible. Hoban's not afraid.

Economic development is an engine that runs on many cylinders (manufacturing, education, construction, housing, health care, transportation, to name a few). Easily overlooked is travel and tourism, a sprawling, loosely defined category with a relatively low profile. The hospitality industry in the US isn't particularly well organized, politically, and its customers, "tourists," are often considered a nuisance. It's a huge, decentralized business (as many people work in the restaurant industry as in the automobile industry) but, unlike, say, manufacturing, it has no history of cooperation and mutually beneficial associations, so it has less influence when governments set budgets for economic development that includes tourism promotion.

Coming up over the next few weeks, a look at campaigns to promote tourism destinations in Europe, elsewhere in North America, as well as Seattle.

While Seattle frets at the closing of Washington State's office of tourism promotion, and the local hospitality industry volunteers to tax itself to raise a paltry $5 million or so, other states and other countries are raising bundles of cash to entice travelers to visit, spend money, stay in hotels, rent cars, eat in restaurants, and go shopping.

First, a look at France, where tourism is taken very seriously indeed. La Belle France! No country is more dependent on international tourism, as we've written regularly over the past decade, no country welcomes more visitors (over 75 million in 2010). And yet, et pourtant . . .

Every time there's a study, the conclusions are the same: France offers the most cultural sites of any European country, some of the best food, most spectacular scenery, and liveliest city life, but its sense of welcome is, on the whole, insufficient.

The perceived lack of welcome leads to shorter stays and less revenue from tourism, so the new Minister of Tourism, Frédéric LeFebvre, has a strong financial incentive to improve things. (We'll leave for another time the fact that there's a cabinet-level official in France responsible for tourism development.) LeFebvreee is going to start with the international gateway airports (Charles de Gaulle and Orly), the national railroad SNCF, and the Paris métro to improve, if nothing else, the quality of . . . signage.

Yes, signs are important, but so is service. Doesn't help if there are long lines at understaffed immigration, customs, and security checkpoints. Doesn't help if there are shiny new information booths if waiters in the cafés are impatient. Doesn't help if cabbies are rude or the sidewalks covered with dog shit.

"Bonjour" used to be the catch phrase for a nationwide campaign that reminded every retailer in the country that tourists are visitors to be cossetted rather than transients to be ignored. Lefebvre's response is to commission yet another study to elicit the reaction of international visitors to the quality of French welcome.

As for me, I've seen a sea-change over the past 25 years-- most of it coming in just the last few-- in the number and quality of tourism resources for wine and culinary travel. Rare indeed is the Gallic "pfft!" and shrug of indifference. Courtesy is everywhere.

At Rendez-Vous France, a travel industry trade show held in Bordeaux earlier this year, the stars were the newcomers -- small businesses (hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, even wineries) with a commitment to hard work and good service. The 650 French exhibitors welcomed 900 tour operators from 57 countries (almost two thirds from Europe, only one in six from the Americas), with some 20,000 20-minute appointments held in the course of the two-day event. The most sought-after tour operators were the Brazilians and the Russians, whose clients spend the most money when they travel. (Used to be the Yanks, decades ago.)

This was the first Rendez-Vous since UNESCO officially listed "The French Meal" on its roster of intangible World Heritage. With an hour each day for lunch, the trade show's catering company managed to serve a three-course, sit-down lunch to all 2,000 attendees, with white and red wines, sparkling and still water, plus coffee. And not iceberg lettuce, either: salmon gravlax with a mayonnaise dressing; free-range guinea fowl with carrots, and a molded fruit compote.

But no fromage. They save that for dinner.

The good news is a changing of the guard at the French Tourism Development Agency, Atout France. The new cabinet-level minister, a new director in New York. The not-so-good news is a new logo.

Let's start with the original mistake. "French Government Tourist Agency" was a mouthful, but Maison de la France, as it was known on its home turf, had a certain staid logic. It is, after all, a government-sponsored membership organization that is open to any business or public entity involved in travel, a big "house of tourism" (Germany's equivalent was and is Goethehaus.) But someone decided to update the name and put some lipstick on the old girl, so they came up with Atout France.

You see, in French, "atout" is your strong suit, your trump card. But in English, a tout is the guy who gives you bad advice at the track. Not what you want from a government agency.

Now on to the logo.

The designers originally came up with this: A clever way of promoting the sexy image of France with some subtle typography. You do see that the 'r' and 'a' gently show two chaste breasts, non?

With great fanfare, Atout France asked for votes on four variations of a new logo. After parties in three cities where guests voted and an online election, they came up with this desexed version:

What? Frère Jacques, dormez vous?

It could just be a case of tin ear, and it could be that the new name and the new logo play reasonably well in Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia, all sources of more visitors than the US. But the stumbling block, in this age, isn't language, it's online communication.

The new minister said his number one priority (after signage) was a new website. Visitors to France certainly deserve better than they're getting now with the dismal and cluttered www.franceguide.com. The creators and managers of the existing site have hundreds of tiny constituencies to appease and are no doubt doing what they think is required of them: herding the cats. But bureaucracy is both defensive and well-entrenched. Along with the new logo came word that FranceGuide.com has moved up from the number 106 ranking among travel sites to number 64. See? They seem to be saying, we're getting better, we've changed, so you don't have to walk out and start over.

There is, in fact, a slightly better new site in development (currently in beta), rendezvousenfrance.com/fr. Félicitations, I guess. But it may be too late for cosmetic improvements. And a national tourism website is daunting for a destination with 75 million visitors a year.

One interesting development: the tourism ministry is no longer tucked under Culture but has been moved to Finance. Someone noticed that tourism is not only France's number two source of employment (number one remains public sector jobs), but it's the number one source of foreign currency. Culture's a very nice quality-of-life frou-frou, merci and all that, but money? That's serious business, a job for the big boys. When the French finance ministers finish dealing with this week's threat to their country's credit rating, they can pay attention once more to a nice piece of raw-milk Camembert for those 75 million dinners.

In case you've forgotten, my trip to France earlier this year was co-sponsored by Atout France and Air France.

We assume, don't we? that our pets lead untroubled lives. After all, "It's a dog's life" doesn't refer to an existence of misery and starvation. Domesticated animals in Seattle households are, by and large, well cared-for, and respond to humans with gentle affection. What a pleasure, then, to be able to offer pet owners an afternoon of chilled libation (called a "dogtail," woulnd't you know).

All this tonight on the sun-drenched patio between the Pan Pacific Hotel and Scraps Dog Lounge. Among the visitors, Randy Hale (drinking a $7 Salty Dog) and her 9-year-old chocolate labrador, Dylan. Also on hand, a beautiful labradoodle named Yafi.

Happens the second Thursday of every month, we're told. Not just Salty Dogs, but Greyhounds and Whippets, too.

Evening Land is a project develped by a New York lawyer and Hollywood producer, Mark Tarlov, that combines Oregon and California vineyards with French viticultural know-how. The wine making consultant is none other than Dominique Lafon, the rock star winemaker of Burgundy.

Lafon's involvement (in Oregon's Eola Hills) is chronicled in Katherine Cole's brilliant Voodoo Vintners, but there's a followup that's not in the book.

"The Demeter people [who hold the copyright on the Biodynamic name and whose imprimatur is law when it comes to Biodymic certification] came to the vineyard and told Dominique he'd have to do something differently," Stone told me during a visit to Seattle this week. "The tisane was in the wrong cow horn, or something. And Dominique told them, hey, this was his vineyard, and he knew best for his vineyard, and they could go eff themselves." Which is why Seven Springs isn't an official BD. (One is tempted to add, "TS, suckas.")

Stone was in town for an appearance at RN74 for the first in a series of wine dinners (scallop, squab, strip loin, vacherin, served with five Evening Land wines). As it happens, Stone was a mentor to RN74's wine director Rajat Parr. Next up: Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat.

RN74, 1433 4th Avenue,

Ferragosto is Italy's big mid-summer festival, a combination of the Fourth of July and Labor Day. The actual date is always August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption, and big celebrations are held in seaside towns where vacationing Italians gather to listen to music and watch fireworks on the beach. (Far more civilized than Seafair.) The tradition predates Christianity; the festival was named for Augusto, the Roman emperor. Adding to the festivities, Ferragosto is almost always the week of the Perseid meteor shower, so the main celebration is often called "The Night of the Stars."

(In other countries, in other cultures, Assumption is known as Maria Himmelfahrt, la Fête de l'Assomption or Asunción de la Virgen. In Italy, it's known simply as Ferragosto.)

Two big events in Seattle this year. The oldtimer is Osteria La Spiga on Capitol Hill,which launched the local version of Ferragosto three summers ago. Their solution to the scheduling issue (a scant three weeks after Capitol Hill Block Party, a week after Seafair) is now to call the thing "12th Avenue Neighborhood Festival." It will be the second year for this formula, which includes $5 bites from a dozen or more restaurants along 12th.

The Ferragosto newcomer is Enza Cucina Siciliana (where, yes, I occasionally serve as maitre d' and sommelier) on Queen Anne. "Mamma Enza" Sorrentino, whose extended family also operates restaurants in Magnolia and Belltown, will prepare a seven-course "Night of the Stars" dinner on Sunday, Aug. 14th, and I'll be on hand to pour matching wines.

In the mid-80s, one spring afternoon, I stood in a magnificent vineyard overlooking the Loire Valley in the Savennières appellation of central France, listening to a mild-mannered investment banker turned gentleman farmer (corduroy work pants, dress shirt, well-worn blazer) talk about cow horns and phases of the moon to explain what he was doing to his mother's vineyard. It made little sense to me at the time (and I was not alone, believe me), but the wine itself, La Coulée de Serrant, was incredibly focused, an expression of chenin blanc that I had never tasted. Similarly impressed two decades later was the distinguished wine journalist Robert Camuto, who devotes a chapter to Joly in his book about independent thinkers in French wine country, Corkscrewed.

In the interim, Joly has become the guru of the biodynamic winemaking movement. His book, Le Vin du Ciel à la Terre (Wine from Sky to Earth), has been translated into nine languages. He describes the four tragedies of modern agriculture (herbicides, chemical fertlizers, interfering with the vine's sap, and "technology" generally--commercial yeasts specifically) that replace the grape's natural flavor with genetically engineered substitutes.

And Joly, for his part, had fallen under the spell of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian cultural philosopher who attempted to reconcile science and mysticism, and, in 1924, came up with the concept of biodynamic agriculture. (Earlier, Steiner had developed the theoretical basis for the Waldorf schools; he also wrote plays and political books. Hitler attempted to discredit Steiner, after his death in 1925, because he called for better treatment of Germany's and Austria's Jewish citizens. Biodynamic practices were banned under the Nazis.) But in the last decades, Steiner's agricultural manifesto has taken on a life of its own, especially among the most elite wine growers.

In addition to Joly's Coulée de Serrant, several of the leading vineyards in Burgundy, the famous Domaine de la Romanée-Conti among them, converted to biodynamic viticulture, and in the summer of 2001 the DRC's feisty, diminutive co-owner Lalou Bize-Leroy arrived at Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., to address the annual meet-up known as the International Pinot Noir Celebration. The scene is recounted in detail by Katherine Cole in Voodoo Vintners, her new book about biodynamics in Oregon.

Within weeks of Bize-Leroy's talk, several wineries began incorporating biodynamic practices in their viticulture, and six months later the indusry established a formal biodynamic study group. The Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association made Oregon its home, and Demeter, an international organization that actually owns the trademark of the term biodynamic, and has the exclusive right to certify farms as biodynamic, has since established its American headquarters in Philomath, Ore.

Seattle-born Cole, who now lives in Portland and writes about wine for The Oregonian, takes her readers on a guided tour of vineyards run by cast of Carhartt-wearing characters. They may only farm five or six percent of the state's vineyards, but they produce an outsize share of its best wines, especially the elusive pinot noirs for which Oregon has become famous. Many of the practitioners come to the wine-grower lifestyle with what Cole calls "good genes, good fortune, good work ethic and good credit," the good credit being particularly important, in my view, in an industry with 800 competitors state-wide. (When I wrote the first guidebook to the nascent Oregon wine country in 1981, it proudly proclaimed to cover "All 37 Wineries"!) So far, 68 vineyard properties in the US are Demeter-certified, 16 of them in Oregon.

So what's the point of biodynamic, or BD (as it's called)? Above all, it's a respect for the land and its connection to the cosmos.

Prior to the original planting of a conventional vineyard, Cole points out, earthmoving equipment uproots trees, bushes and boulders, then smooths the soil. Weeds sprout among the vines, so the grower spreads herbicide, which kills off benign cover crops that might restore nutrients to the soil. Meantime the roosting spots for birds and insects have been bulldozed, so there are no longer any owls to eat gophers or birds to eat larger insects. This calls for pesticides, which in turn curtail the aerating and phosphorus-releasing capabilities of earthworms. Fungi move in, the dirt gets rock-hard, lifeless and brittle; the farmer tills the rock-hard soil, dispersing dust and whatever organic matter was left. Without humus to store moisture and nutrients in the topsoil, the vine droops, gets sick and attracts pests, for which the conventional solution is, you guessed it, chemical fertilizers, "a steroid shot straight to the vein of the plant, pumping it up for now but setting it up for a future heart attack or stroke."

True believers have several homeopathic remedies: Preparation 500 (a cow horn packed with the manure of lactating bovines), Prep 501 (a cow horn packed with ground quartz); 502 involves yarrow flowers, 503 camomile, 504 stinging nettles, 505 chopped oak bark, 506 dandelions, 507 valerian, and 508 a giant cauldron of tea steeped from horsetails rich in silica. There are strict prescriptions as well for their application (burying the cow horns in the vineyard during specific phases of the moon among them). But how much of this is legit, how much is quasi-religious ritual, how much of it is voodoo?

Matt Kramer, the conscience of Oregon's wine industry, thinks of BD as a sort of kosher practice. Steiner himself modeled his theology on the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia. But lunar planting cycles are paleolithic, recognized in Mesopotamian times, and well understood by farmers of medieval Europe. "Agricultural engineering" was originally part of the industrial revolution in England (a market for threshing machines to replace the farmhands who'd gone off to factory work in the cities), but everything changed with the advent of the First World War and the appearance of synthesized ammonia that could be used as an explosive or as fertilizer. In post-war Europe, Steiner's voice was a lonely, though not entirely solitary exortation, against "progress." (Hermann Hesse was an ally.)

So by the time all this gets down to Oregon, what do we have? Consultants, for starters. True believers, it goes without saying. Neighbors who roll their eyes. But nothing really unusual. "Biodynamic farming," says pioneer Bill Steele, owner of Cowhorn Vineyards in Jacksonville, Ore., is 60 percent canopy management, 30 percent tillage and 10 percent everything else." As Cole says, that's about as banal as it can get.

The voodoo isn't far away, though. Kevin Chambers, who runs Oregon Vineyard Supply as well as Results Partners LLC, sticks a vertical 8-foot piece of PVC pipe in his vineyard; inside is a copper coil. "It's a radionic field broadcaster," he tells Cole, without a trace of irony.

Not surprisingly, there's a blog devoted to debunking BD. It's "bad science," says its author, a California wine grower named Stu Smith, who supports sustainable organic farm practices instead.

"Those who don't understand biodynamics--and don't understand voodoo," writes Cole, "use the term in reference to the preparations: the buried cow horns, the hanging stag's bladders...they're thinking Louisiana voodoo." But in fact it's more like Haiti's voodou, a nature-worshipping belief system, not agricultural but spiritual. Are its viticultural practitioners batshit crazy dreamers or brilliant wine makers?

Cole makes it clear that Voodoo Vintners is not a guide to individual wines. Still, she obviously admires Bergstrom, Belle Pente, Beaux Freres and Brick House. (All "B"s, as is Burgundy! Woo-woo!) In the end, Cole seems content to introduce the reader to BD's practitioners and practices; Voodoo Vintners is meant as a guided tour, not a manifesto. The faithful may complain that Cole lacks commitment, but the rest of us can agree that she gives us a great ride.

Voodoo Vintners, Oregon State University Press, 192 pages, $18.95

Six years ago this week, Belltown got lucky: a wretched tavern at the corner of First and Vine reopened as Black Bottle. Its founders, Chris Linker, chef Brian Durbin and designer Judy Boardman, had done their homework carefully ("hardworking" wines, uncomplicated cocktails, unfussy food) to create what the partners envisioned as a gastropub. Black Bottle has prospered in a fickle neighborhood, expanded its seating, added an event space, kept prices moderate, and earlier this year added an outpost in Bellevue.

Now Linker and company are setting their sights on Belltown again. They will take over the building (right) half a block south of Black Bottle that currently houses Marco's Supper Club, whose owner, Marco Rulff, is retiring after 18 years. With a charming patio in back and a long bar inside, it's an urban bistro that wouldn't be out of place in New York's West Village. A succession of chefs (Joey Serquinia of Harvest Vine, Philip Mihalski of Nell's, Tyler Boring) have run the kitchen; Marco's ex-wife, Donna Moodie, left to start Marjorie in Belltown and Capitol Hill.

Linker doesn't have a name for the new spot yet, nor a menu. But he's not going to mess around with what's a proven formula, both in Belltown and in Bellevue. "People on both sides of the lake appreciate value," he notes. In Belltown the best-selling dish is seared weathervane scallops ($13), in Bellevue it's braised pork tacos (3 for $7 at Happy Hour), but "broccoli blasted" ($8) runs second in both locations. My personal favorites rank right up there as well, the lamb skewers with hummus (photo), and the braised oxtail (both $11).

And tonight, Belltown got even luckier. Not, not just Jason Mevs's The Lucky Diner, though a 24-hour diner is nothing to be sneezed at. But we just got word that the deal has closed and Linker & partners have their lease.