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Mashiko's Sage of Sustainable Sushi

2010-03-13T18:00:00Z

This week's news: a sushi chef in Santa Monica is charged with selling whale meat. Last week's news: European countries want to ban the fishing of bluefin tuna.

We are global omnivores, are we not? Eating our way indiscriminately around an international buffet of cuisines, pizza one night, tacos the next, our noses twitching at fancified French, then embracing Japan's briny simplicity. Sushi, in fact, has become as American as apple pie; with beginners nibbling on inglorious California rolls while passionate partisans seek out the bliss of bluiefin tuna.

If Sherlock Holmes could solve a crime because of the dog that didn't bark, Hajime Sato is running a sushi bar in West Seattle, Mashiko, without the industry's most famous animal. Call it the fish that didn't swim. At the heart of the international sushi experience, supposedly, swims maguro, the foie gras goose of sushi, the giant bluefin tuna with a fatty belly. But it was not always so; the ancient samurai considered bluefin unclean. And bluefin today is overfished, endangered, the subject of vitriolic debate. Yet the Japanese taste for soft, buttery bluefin tuna is relatively recent (post-World War II), when Japanese fishing vessels could venture far afield and track down the elusive bluefin, which sells for astronomical prices at the fish market in Toyko. Pre-war, Japanese palates had been satisfied with smaller, more affordable fish from local waters.

No one questions the fact that o-toro is delicious, but "We are loving it to death," writes the environmental activist Casson Trenor in his 2008 book, Sustainable Sushi "The bottom line is that bluefin is more than a delicacy, it is an essential but extremely vulnerable part of our ocean ecosystem. it should be venerated and protected, not wiped from the face of the deep in a relentless crusade of greed and gluttony." The oracle of the ocean (a Washington native who now lives in San Francisco), Trenor found an eager disciple in Hajime Sato, a lad from the Tokyo suburbs who opened his own place in West Seattle 15 years ago and who followed Trenor's suggestion to transform Mashiko from one of 200 sushi parlors in Seattle alone to one of only three "sustainable sushi" restaurants in the entire country.

As recently as eight months ago, a diner here could swoon over a gorgeous dish of pink monkfish liver medallions atop thinly sliced octopus (we took the photo on the left in 2008). No more. Neither is sustainable; they're both off the menu. But there's no self-conscious political correctness at Mashiko. You don't miss the fish because, after all, you're eating fish. It's not like going to a vegetarian restaurant and ordering "pork chops" made form tofu.

So let's look, instead, at a couple of the fish that Chef Sato does serve. Catfish, first. Farm-raised, And it substitutes for, of all things, eel. Now, you might not think that eel, wriggly things that ought to to survive anywhere in the universe, would be endangered, but they are. So Hajime (as he prefers to be called) looked for a sustainable alternative and found catfish, long considered a junk fish raised in muddy ponds of backward, backwater southern states. But no. Mashiko's catfish come from the ecologically correct Carolina Classics catfish farm in North Carolina, where a closed system is used to purify the water, and the fast-growing fish are raised without antibiotics (they're the rabbits, if you will, of the sea). The catfish makes an appearance atop the $9 Southern Roll: tempura sweet potato, avocado, and "namagi," a made-up word that combines namazu (catfish) and unagi (eel).

The star of the show, on a recent visit, was a salmon and asparagus roll, $10, which combined asparagus and tobiko with slices of bright red salmon, tightly rolled not in the usual black nori (seaweed) but in a rice paper called mamenori, then handed over to the kitchen, where it was tempura-battered and lightly fried in peanut oil until the surface was barely crisp. Cut into sections like most rolls, the roll was plated with soba noodles and a light broth of soy sauce, shiitake-kombu (mushroom-kelp) stock and ginger. The salmon was a farmed coho from SweetSpring Salmon, a Washington State company that's pioneering so-called "closed system" fish farms that avoid polluting coastal waters by operating miles inland. The layering of flavors was remarkable, enhanced by the contrasting mouthfeel of the tempura, the salmon, the asparagus and the tobiko. No, it wasn't o-toro, it wasn't monkfish liver, it wasn't foie gras. But it did provide a rich, intense and memorable experience.

Mashiko is actually far more than sushi bar. There's a whole izakaya side of the menu with Japanese gastropub fare ($4 fried fish ribs with curry salt, $4 chicken yakitori, $5 spinach and bonito Ohitashi, $7 pork potstickers). Seven or eight "small bowls" ($8 smoked turbot and blue cheese) in addition to soups, curries, tempura and bento boxes. I counted half a dozen folks in the kitchen, and, at Hajime's side, a female sushi chef, Mariah Kmitta. Well, why not, unless you're an unreconstructed segregationist, in which case you probably wouldn't have set foot inside Mashiko in the first place. After all, Rule #1, posted on his website, is "Mashiko is a non-discriminatory establishment" and Rule #21 is "Because Hajime said so." There's also a sign at the door that says "Please wait to be seated, unless you are an idiot and can't read." (An online comment at TheStranger.com found it "so offensive that we nearly walked out.") Point being, this is not a traditional spot like the old Shiro's or the defunct Saito's, nor a hybrid like I Love Sushi or Wasabi Bistro. It's irreverent. The website is called SushiWhore.com. Hajime's email moniker is sushipimp. There's a live webcam of the diners at the sushi bar, for heaven's sake. Mashiko's motto, after all, is "Shut up and eat."

Hajime Sato recognizes that his path is perilous. "Everybody's watching me, to see if I can survive," he admits, although, on a recent Saturday, there was a line out the door most of the evening. The faithful, they follow their prophet.

A final note: yes, there's one of those hi-tech Japanese toilets in the ladies room, the kind that, I've been told, spritzes your hoo-ha and dries it with warm air. Standard fixture in Japan, apparently. The men's room urinal, on the other hand, is a traditional American Standard.

Mashiko, 4725 California Ave SW., Seattle. 206-935-4339

Sunday is Pi Day

2010-03-12T19:27:21Z

Sunday is March 14th, Saint Matilda's day. Also Saint Mathilda, with an "h," both 10th Century martyrs. It's also "π Day."

In Europe, they write day/month/year, so it's 14/03/2010, but we 'Merkins write 3/14/10 ... which happens to be the first few digits of Pi (3.14159, if you've forgotten). Pi as in, heh-heh, Pizza Pi (vegan, in the U District), Pizza Pi (vegan, Victoria, BC; that's their store in the photo), and a couple of also-rans: Serious Pie (savory, downtown), Seattle Pie (sweet, in Magnolia), and High 5 Pie (Capitol Hill, Montlake, Wallingford) offering 14 percent off if you buy 3 of their pies.

Nor should we forget our good friends of cyberspace, SeattlePI.com. To you all, Happy Circle of LIfe.

SAM's Busy, Busy 2010-2011 Schedule

2010-03-11T00:00:00Z

The Seattle Art Museum has laid out its exhibit plans for the next couple of years, beginning with its October blockbuster, "Picasso Masterpieces." The French national Picasso museum in Paris is undergoing renovations, so they're sending much of the collection--Picasso's private stash, mostly--on a worldwide tour: Madrid, Moscow, Helsinki, Seattle. Seattle? Yes, indeed. "This is what we built the museum to do," director Derrick Cartwright told a press luncheon. An extremely ambitioius undertaking, 150 pieces, that requires a couple of "Presenting Sponsors" (Microsoft and JP Moran Chase) not to mention a "major sponsor" (Sotheby's) and a hotel sponsor (the Four Seasons, duh, right across First Avenue).

Cultural tourism is expected to be a windfall for the local economy. The last really big show at SAM (Van Gogh to Mondrian, in 2004) drew nearly 300,000 visitors, a third of them from out of state. The Picasso exhibition is expected to be even more of a visitor magnet.

Arts are big business. Leaving aside sports and movies, the non-profit arts sector generates 8,000 jobs, $175 million in salaries and $28 million in local tax revenues. Another study says the city's 4,000 creative industries generate 20,000 local jobs, making the Seattle area number one in the nation in per-capita arts related businesses and organizations. The related good news is that nearly 5 million people attended an arts event in 2008, spending $120 million in addition to tickets. A third of them were out-of-towners, who dropped over $30 apiece as part of their cultural experience.

But even before Picasso arrives, Kurt Cobain gets his own show. For those who remember the days of grunge and roses, it's an altogether fitting notion that Seattle's most mainstream museum would bring together works that comemorate Cobain's life, music and suffering.

There's more, much more, on SAM's schedule. Read the whole lineup here.

Photo © Estate of Pablo Picasso, courtesy of SAM

Under the Skagit's Sheltering Sky

2010-03-05T22:30:36Z

Paul Havas, the formidable painter of Skagit Valley landscapes, has a seminal show this month at the Woodside/Braseth Gallery. The new paintings show a calmer, more confident artist, no longer shrouding his scenery in mists and fog but giving them stronger light, cleaner lines and evanescent reflections of sheds and cabins on the ponds and backwaters of the valley floor and coastal estuaries.

Havas graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University in 1962 and earned a Master's from the University of Washington in 1965. He lives in Madrona and paints urban scenes as well: shaded staircases and dappled passageways. But his new landscapes, flecked with birds and distant human figures, show a new focus on light and shadow, form and reflection.

"I actively look for painting sites, for places or subjects that might trigger my interest," Havas says. "Sometimes it seems they find me, the unplanned glimpse through piers of a bridge or the reflections of a window on a black piano. If I see a hint of color from some electric light, I just take off." Still, his most profound inspriation seems to come from minutely observed elements--a cannery, an oyster shed, a barn, a flight of gulls--beneath the great cloudscapes of northwestern Washington. In tender greens and opaque whites, Havas creates an idealized world of stillness and peace.

Woodside/Braseth Gallery, 2101 9th Ave., 206-622-7243, 11 am-6 pm Tuesday-Saturday.

Vulcan Lands Douglas

2010-03-04T00:20:00Z

Terry Avenue Building. Photo courtesy of Vulcan Real Estate

The shoe has dropped: Seattle restaurant entrepreneur Tom Douglas has finally confirmed what everyone suspected for months: his next restaurant(s) will be in South Lake Union. Cornichon anticipated the news in a report on the neighborhood back in January.

Douglas is going to open at least one restaurant in the historic Terry Avenue Building, a former truck factory from the early 1900s between Thomas and Harrison, surrounded by the rising concrete bookends that Vulcan Real Estate is building for Amazon.com's headquarters campus, around the corner from the new.Flying Fish location.

"It's an exciting area full of new opporutnities for us that we couldn't pass up," Douglas says. No names announced yet for the restaurants to be housed in the two-story building, which will be completely renovated inside but maintain its landmark brick exterior and connect to an outdoor plaza and streetscape.

The new Amazon.com campus includes 11 buildings (totalling 1.7 million square feet) on 6 blocks in the heart of South Lake Union. The first space will open next month with full occupancy by 2013.

"South Lake Union has become a true extension of downtown with lively shops and restaurants, a diversity of housing, vibrant parks and world-class employers who call the area home," says Vulcan's Robert Arron, adding that the Tom Douglas restaurants "will further activate the exciting retail landscape...attracting even more new amenities and visitors to the area."

The City's "Terry Avenue Street Design Guidelines" [PDF] draw on the rich historic character of Terry Avenue to create a new type of street where pedestrians have priority on 31-foot sidewalks enhanced with benches, trees, and bike racks. Vulcan sees similarities to Portland's Pearl District and Vancouver's Yaletown, and hopes that the pedestrian-friendly elements being incorporated along Terry Avenue will create "a lively retail corridor that accommodates pedestrians, bicyclists, cars...and the streetcar line."

As for the restaurants, whatever they turn out to be, Vulcan is delighted. "We're positively thrilled to welcome Tom Douglas to South Lake Union, and his new restaurants will contribute greatly to the neighborhood's growing retail district.," said Vulcan VP Ada Healey.

Seattle Opera's Falstaff: Fat can be funny

2010-03-01T19:30:00Z

Giuseppe Verdi's final opera, Falstaff, composed when he was 80, has no great melodic lines, triumphal marches or consumptive heroines; at its center there is only a drunken old man who imagines himself a seducer. Falstaff's lack of self-awareness permeates the opera and gives it broad brushes of comedy. Handsome once, he has grown grotesque and fat, yet not without wit ("I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift"--and "If Falstaff were thin, no one would love him"). He behaves like a boor; oblivious to his own hypocriscy, and lectures his servants about "honor."

It's Verdi's only comic opera, based on Shakespeare (mostly The Merry Wives of Windsor, with bits of Falstaff's character adapted from the Henry plays), and it uses sprightly.language and brilliant orchestration to tell the story or Falstaff's comeuppance.

The current Seattle Opera production is homegrown. Originally designed by Peter Kazaras three years ago for the company's Young Artists program, it migrated to Los Angeles and Cleveland before returning to Seattle, where the set needed only a slight stretch to span the proscenium at McCaw. It's a stylized version of the Globe in London, with a raked stage bordered by bleachers, where the singers retreat when they're not performing. In the third act, a cantilevered cloud of chairs descends to create a stylized forest.

As always Jonathan Dean's supratitles capture the essence of the Italian libretto, often returning to Shakespeare's original language for the perfect couplet. Under Riccardo Frizza's deft baton, the orchestra sounds like they're playing Mozart. Indeed Kazaras directed Seattle's staging of Marriage of Figaro last year with several similar scenes of letter-reading and singing at cross-purpose.

Peter Rose, whose previous appearance at McCaw was as a randy Baron Ochs in Rosenkavalier, triumphs in the title role, a sympathetic character despite his considerable flaws, surely not deserving of "death by a volley of turnips" but saved from drowning by his own swollen belly.

There's no curtain; the performers arrive in street clothes and change into costume in full view of the audience. Stephanie Blythe waves to her fans; Doug Jones is on a cellphone, Peter Rose puts on a preposterous fat suit (shades of Pagliacci's "Vesti la giuba"). And when all is said and sung (Falstaff properly humiliated and chastened, "I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass"), he leads them all in a cheerful chorus, "Tutti gabbati," Hah-hah, it was all a put-on! He who laughs last, laughs best.

It's the perfect opera for self-doubting Seattle in these angst-ridden times, full of linguistic curlicues and wink-&-nod references that we're all in on the joke.

Seattle Opera presents Falstaff at McCaw Hall through March 13, For tickets ($25-$168), call 206-623-0800 or go online..

Seattle Opera photos © Rosarii Lynch.

Hot Dog University: Something I Ate

2010-02-25T19:31:13Z

One of those all-American hotdog carts, the kind you see in Belltown late at night, will cost you about $500, give or take. And, for another $700, there's an outfit in Chicago that will teach you how to run it. (Sample from the weeklong curriculum: dress the dog, not the bun.)

That would be Vienna Beef, longtime purveyors of tube steaks to vendors in the Windy City, and looking for new markets. "We have been trying to export Vienna to other cities for years, but it's very difficult," says ceo James Bodman. So, a year ago, he came up with the notion of a training program. Enrollment surged with the unemployment rate, as layoff victims started looking for a fast track to entrepreneurship.

Vienna, for its part, hopes its graduates will crack new markets around the country. "Hot Dog University has given us dozens of new accounts around the country, and it's priceless for us," Bodman tells Chicago Business.

Here in Seattle, Joe Jeannot recently sold Slo Joe's, his hotdog storefront in South Lake Union and is tending bar at Toulouse Petit. (In its place, a sandwich shop called Yellow Dot Cafe.) Jeannot knows from hotdogs, however, and would scoff at shelling out tuition for his nighttime vendors, where a five-spot buys you the definitive "Seattle dog" (i.e., with cream cheese).

Which brings us to the latest Harris poll: many Americans attribute a recent illness to "something they ate." That's the takeaway, as it were, for the food industry. Says Chain Leader, an trade publication, "the perception that a food-attributed illness poses a major problem for our nation's food manufacturers and suppliers. In fact, seven in ten (69%) of those who attribute an illness to a food item think they know what made them sick."

Not to mention what makes them fat: 57 percent say sedentary lifestyle, the remainder say individual food choices and eating habits. Right, like eating hotdogs.

The Prince of Chicken Livers

2010-02-23T20:00:00Z

Le Pichet, the French café on First Avenue, owes a lot of its charm to the neighborhood bistros of Paris, but perhaps even more to the informal bouchons of Lyon, where workmen gather noon and night to eat hearty plates of pork sausage, pike quenelles, and beef tripe in side-street storefronts that once housed stables and made themselves known by hanging a bundle of brush --known locally as a bouche--over the door. Hence bouchon, which means cork in Bordeaux and Burgundy; no corks at a bouchon, however; the wine comes straight from the cask. Chicken livers are also on the menu, not as a mousse or pâté but puréed and baked and served with tomato sauce. Paul Bocuse, the towering Lyon chef who reinvented French gastronomy, has a highly refined version, gâteau de foies blonds de volaille de Bresse, sauce écrevisse that's served warm, with a delicate sauce of crayfish.

Jumpcut to Seattle and a restive Jim Drohman, UW grad, aeronautical engineer at Boeing, who chucks it all, moves to Paris, and spends 18 months learning to cook professinally at the École Supérieure de Cuisine. Back in Seattle he begins to work as a line cook, eventually becoming exec chef at Campagne. His wife's uncle is Joe McDonald, who owns the private supper club The Ruins, where he meets his business partner, Joanne Heron. Together they open Le Pichet and Drohman decides to adapt the Bocuse recipe for his new place.

The chicken livers (free range chickens, naturally) come from Corfini Gourmet, a classy restaurant supply house. Poached, then emulsified and blended with cream, eggs and a madeira reduction. Seasoned with orange peel, thyme, clove and allspice, the whole thing strained through a fine seive to remove the fibrous bits. Then it's baked, like a terrine, in a bain-marie, unmolded, and served chilled:a thick, four and a half-ounce slice for $6, topped with a line of gros sel that provides crunch as much as saltiness. At Le Pichet, the garnish is cornichons and two kinds of mustard; at Café Presse on Capitol Hill, it's served with a cherry compote.

"We take modest products and turn them into tasty food," Drohman says. Food that pleases Drohman himself. You can't get a Caesar salad at Le Pichet, certainly no caviar. It's not an "I want" restaurant for fussy diners, it's a "show me" place for 32 eaters at a time, lucky enough to eat whatever Drohman and his kitchen turn out. Fortunately, the gaˆteau au foie de volaille is on the "anytime" Casse-Croûte menu.

Unctuous seems the right word for the gâteau, a mouthfeel much smoother in texture than traditional chopped liver, with richer flavors than a foamlike mousse and lighter than a traditional pâté. Spread it thickly on the crusty slices of Grand Central baguette that they serve alongside it, add a petite salade drizzled with hazelnut oil and wash it down with a glass or two of Beaujolais, and you will be happy.

Le Pichet, 1933 First Avenue, Seattle 206-256-1499
Café Presse, 1117 12th Avenue, Seattle 206-709-7647

Seattle's Best Crab Cake

2010-02-16T18:00:00Z

It takes nothing away from Tom Douglas, who chronicled Seattle's love affair with crab cakes (and wrote a cookbook with 50 crab cake recipes), that the best example in town comes from a competitor's kitchen. It's the highest ingredient-cost item on the Steelhead Diner menu, $15.95. Most restaurants start with lesser grades of crab (a couple of ounces at most) and typically extend it with cracker-crumbs or other filler; not here.

Kevin Davis, Steelhead's chef and owner (with his wife, Terresa), developed the recipe when he was at the now-defunct Oceanaire: start with plain white bread, properly moistened with homemade, whole-egg mayonnaise and Dijon mustard, seasoned with garlic, cilantro, green onion, Hungarian paprika, a touch of habanero, a drop of tabasco and a splash of lime. For each crabcake, take a handful of Dungeness crab meat, the good stuff (legs and claws that costs $27 a pound, wholesale) and add just enough of the base to hold it together until you've got a hefty, six-ounce wad, about the size of a tennis ball. You won't taste the breading at all; its only a mortar of flavors to support the briney crab legs.

A prep cook, Juan Allegria, who's been with Davis for eight years, actually puts them together and delivers them to the kitchen. These days, Davis himself is busy transforming the Oceanaire, which he'll reopen as Blueacre Seafood on March 19th; his chef de cuisine at Steelhead, the talented Anthony Polizzi, fried up our most recent order, topped with flash-fried parsely and served on a bed of traditional Louis sauce. It's a dish you can share as an appetizer, or make into your main course.

Davis himself, as we've written in this space more than once, is not a fussy innovator. "There's a reason for culinary classics, dishes that stand the test of time," he says. "When it's done right, a crab cake can be as good as anything you'll ever eat."

Steelhead Diner, 95 Pine St., Seattle, 206-625-0129

Steak Knives are for Losers

2010-02-11T16:46:35Z

Here are the leads, you schmucks. Names and numbers of deadbeats and crazies who might, just might, buy that piece of Florida swampland you're peddling. "Put a closer on the job," you say? "Always Be Closing," you say? Bull. The way you get through this, you dickhead, you fuckin loser, is to act each day without fear.

It's fear that motivates the polished cast of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross at Seattle Rep, which premiered last night, fear of losing their jobs, fear of losing what self-respect they've got left. They berate one another without mercy, fuckin losers every one, drowning men trying to survive by holding their partners under water. First prize in the monthly sales contest: a Cadillac. Second prize: steak knives. Third prize: you're fired.

If Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman was the classic American tragedy about a man with nothing to sell but a smile and a shoeshine (and about the honor of an honest day's effort), Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross updates the futility of the American dream (and the delusion that there's any good at all in mankind).

At the Bagley Wright, the actors (especially John Aylward as Shelly Levine, R. Hamilton Wright as Ricky Roma, Charles Leggett as Dave Moss) fuss, bluster and kick their way through Mamet's dark night of dread. If you've seen the movie, it's Alec Baldwin's character, Blake, who gets the memorable lines (not to mention the endless parodies, including this SNL skit). But Blake wasn't even in the original, Pulitzer-winning stage version; Mamet added him in the screenplay to give menace and doom an explicit, onscreen voice. Without Blake, the unseen menace of fear and failure is all the greater.

Seattle Repertory Theater presents Glengarry Glen Ross, through Feb. 28th. Tickets: 206-443-2222 or online

R. Hamilton Wright (r) and John Aylward. Photo by Chris Bennion.

Google's Superbowl Ad

2010-02-08T03:39:49Z

Two or three good things (depending on how you feel about the Saints) coming out of La Grande Soupière, the Soup Bowl in Miami. Referring of course to the Parisian Love ad from Google.

You'll notice the ad needs no catchy muslc, artwork or flashy tricks to tell its story. There's no gimmick, no celebrity endorsement, no photoshopped images, no dubbed voices. It's the simplest of stories: guy gets girl. Even shows you that you don't have to know how to spell Louvre. Chocolat, oui; freedom fries, nah.

Meatman

2010-02-02T22:30:00Z

What a week! First, the world's best oyster. Now, the world's best piece of meat, called Ohmi (sometimes spelled Omi) Gyu, abbreviated Omigod (Just kidding, sort of.)

Superlatives are open to debate, of course, and taste is subjective, but Cornichon's tastebuds have spoken. Let us pray.

By now, we know about Wagyu, literally "Japanese beef." Not to put too fine a point on it, there's an American wagyu as well. Coddled cattle, well-fed, well-housed, regularly massaged, soothed by classical music, as pampered as lapdogs.

Comes now a third Gyu, a subset of Wagyu, raised by farmers in the ancient Omi region, the modern-day Shiga prefecture on Honshu island 300 miles southwest of Tokyo, site of Lake Biwa, Japan's largest, whose mineral-rich waters nourish the cattle. Only six head a month from two particularly conscientious ranches, Sawai and Takara, are licensed for export. Only boneless meat that meets the Japanese A5 standard for color and marbling is imported, to be served by half a dozen top steakhouses in the US. In the Pacific Northwest, only one: Metropolitan Grill.

Which brings us to exec chef Eric Hellner, a 21-year-veteran of Consolidated Restaurants, now on his third stint at the Met. He sears the 6-ounce ohmigyu tenderloin, seasoned with only salt and pepper, on a cast-iron griddle, brings its internal temperature up slowly to keep the fat unctuous. Served with a drizzle of veal demi-glace and a few yukon gold potatoes poached in garlic butter, it's $100. (You can also get raw Ohmi as a carpaccio appetizer for $20.) Don't listen to people who say it's not worth it, the best steakhouse meat is never cheap.

Thanks to elevated glutamate levels, not to mention inosinic and oleic acids, Ohmi provides an umami experience like no other. It's like cutting into a perfectly seared lobe of foie gras, redolent of meaty char, rich blood and exquisite liver. If you pay attention to taste, you will remember this for the rest of your life.

For this blessing, for this food, let us give thanks, amen.

Metropolitan Grill, 820 2nd Avenue, Seattle, 206-624-3287

Oysterman

2010-01-29T18:30:00Z

It's normally a one-lane track from forest to shore along Totten Inlet, but under last night's full moon and extreme low tide, there's now a couple hundred yards between the treeline and the water's edge. Underfoot, it's all wet sand and oyster shells. Behind us, wearing LED headlamps, a work crew is picking oysters out of the ground, first into plastic buckets, then into 20-bushel wire cages. Totten Inlet Virginicas they are.

The time has come, said Cornichon,
For bivalves on the beach:
The moon is full, the tide is out...
We'll have an oyster feast! (*)

"Here, let me open a couple for you," says an oysterman who appears out of the blackness, one of a dozen Taylor Shellfish employees who've come out for this periodic moonlight picnic. He reaches down and plucks a couple of shells from the sand, trots down to water's edge to rinse them, and returns, shucker's knife in hand. Seconds later, we're slurping the Virginicas, firm and icy-cold, chased with a sip of Cedergreen sauvignon blanc. The oyster to end all oysters, the picnic to end all picnics, an event of pure perfection.

Our helpful oysterman, it turns out, is Gifford Pinchot IV, known as Marco. Yes, that Gifford Pinchot, whose great-grandfather was Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture and founder of the US Forest Service, in whose honor the Columbia National Forest was renamed. Though he grew up in Connecticut, Marco came west, graduated from Evergreen and earned advanced degrees in ecology from Western and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute. If there were a poster child for environmental stewardship, it would be Marco.

(*) Apologies to Lewis Carroll, whose nonsense poem, The Walrus & The Carpenter, inspired Jon Rowley to create this event.

Lusty Lady's new neighbor: Lusty Latté

2010-01-25T23:50:08Z

Fonté Coffee was a respected micro-roaster with a thriving wholesale business before it opened a retail outlet on First Avenue back in December. And not just coffee, but a wine bar and small-plates restaurant besides. The spot could be considered awkward: even though it's in the base of the Four Seasons Hotel and has Fran's Chocolates as a neighbor, the (ahem) Lusty Lady peep show is virtually next door.

Well, what's a strip joint between friends? To honor both its neighbors, the elegant chocolaterie and the bawdy porn parlor, Fonté has decided to offer a Lusty Latté and a Strawberries, Lust & Chocolate pairing.

"We've always appreciated Fonté's location between two iconic Seattle businesses – both made famous for two very different things – lust and chocolate," says Tysan Dutta, Fonté's general manager and sommelier."We decided that February was the ideal time to celebrate each of them both."

The Lusty Latté, developed by Fonté's morning latte diva, Melissa Harris, features a seductive and spicy combination of black cherry, clove and pistachio. Prices start at $2.85 for a 12-ounce latté.

Dutta created the Strawberries, Lust & Chocolate pairing, which includes two champagne flutes of Pierre Sparr’s pink bubbles served alongside house-made passion fruit truffles and chocolate sauce for dipping fresh strawberries ($20 serves two).

And the week before Valentine's Day, Chef Mark Shaughnessy will feature menu items with aphrodisiac qualities, such as including prosciutto wrapped figs with goat cheese and honey ($6) and local oysters on the half shell with a pomegranate mignonette ($2 each). Fonté also offers a range of small plates developed for sharing, including dates stuffed with almonds and pancetta and a roasted root vegetable bruschetta with herbed mascarpone and aged balsamic.

Cornichon is licking his lips.

Fonte Wine & Coffee Bar, 1321 1st Ave, Seattle, 206-762-0760

The Purported Decline of French Home Cooking

2010-01-25T02:00:00Z

Alain Ducasse, the celebrated chef who knows a lot about French cooking but less about French living, complains that les mamans françaises are no longer teaching their daughters how to cook. He blames "working mothers" for the trend, which (according to an interview in today's Independent) means that French cooking is no longer a daily ritual but a weekend hobby. Quelle horreur!

Ducasse has been spouting nonsense like this for years. At one point, he joined with a battery of top Michelin-star chefs (and French president Nicholas Sarkozy) to propose that UNESCO give World Heritage status to French cooking.

Last year, Slate's Michael Steinberger published a book titled Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the End of France, which we debunked in a blog post back in September. The world is changing, to be sure, and some of the best "French chefs" are no longer French.

We're not worried. If there's really such a decline in the level of French gastronomy, we don't see it in Seattle, where most of the trendy young chefs still use French techniques (then give their dishes Italian names). We don't see it in Paris, where the thriving street markets are still full of charcuteries, fromageries, pâtisseries...and shoppers. Produce stands are thronged by traditional housewives, pensioners, tourists...and working moms. The kids are in school, of course, eating a traditional three-course lunch.

That picture, by the way: schoolkids learning about escargots and pâté: from the chef at Burgundy's Clos Vougeot.

So here's Cornichon's question for M. Ducasse: what's more important? Une maman who knows how to cook (but only cooks on weekends) or un enfant who knows how to eat (and eats every day)?