No biting the personnel

Provence-7Originally uploaded by Fizzz.

Food was the main reason we chose to vacation here. S has a huge respect for this cuisine. It’s certainly one of the hardest to muster. Thus, having surveyed book after book, she figured the best way to appreciate it besides another dinner at Rover’s would be to come here. Here are some notes from our experiences eating out.

French cookbook cuisine and French cuisine are two different things. Brasseries are very popular. They serve simple fares: steak frites, salads, etc. We have yet to find one with French onion soup on the menu. For take-out lunch, baguette sandwiches are the norm. Unfortunately, the options don’t include paté de campagne but saucisson-beurre, fromage de chèvre, etc.

“A Vietnamese restaurant with a Thai chef that makes good sushi.” People here, like elsewhere, enjoy the cuisine of others: Asian, Döner Kebab, Italian, Tex-Mex, Irish pubs, and North-African cuisines are well represented. Since I’ve never found a rotating spit in Seattle, I was happy to satisfy my kebab craving. True, most Asian restaurants combine multiple cuisines, which shatters their credibility for us. While I’m sure there are plenty of very good foreign-cuisine restaurants, guide books tend to keep their tourists in the touristy parts of town.

What saved us from eating Pho one night in Avignon was the hotel receptionist who happily referred us to a tourist joint on la Place du Palais des Papes with a great French onion soup. That’s when we gave up and decided that the French cuisine of S’s cookbooks would be found, in towns, only in the same place other tourists would go to, and pay a premium for. While she still complains that these meals are not quite as good as what we eat at home, we have generally not been disappointed since. Her plat principal for last night was a leg of duck.

The pink stuff is everywhere. I understand it is cheap and flavorful but we did not come to Provence to eat farm raised Norwegian salmon. Especially when the fishing season for Alaska’s wild salmon on the Copper River started one week ago and Seattle is going gaga over it. Given that we are driving next to the Mediterranean Sea, I was surprised and saddened to see so few of the local species advertised.

It’s not like we live in Texas. We ate fresh local seafood twice. The first was paella and a fricassee in Nice at Chez Freddy. The meal was reasonably priced by our west-coast standards and had us wondering why, oh why, we can’t find decent paella easily in Seattle. Our second was bouillabaisse at the Brasserie des Catalans in Marseille. Their fish stock in the bouillabaisse was mind blowing. Being shown the fish we would eat before it went off to the kitchen was a nice touch, reminiscent of eating crab in a Chinese restaurant.

Wow… that takes guts. As I mentioned, we’re not the only tourists. We’ve heard a fair amount of French Canadian, Italian, German, Mandarin, Japanese and some of those Scandinavian languages that I can’t distinguish between. There is a shift though from a few years ago: we’ve seen large groups of Chinese but twice now we have encountered 2~3 young Japanese women traveling together. Even without a guide, you’ll find them poring over menus outside restaurants. While the waiter at Le Fetiche last night appeared to cherish teasing the young women at the table next to us on their use of broken English instead of proper French – a sarcastic humor that was lost on them – they successfully ordered bouillabaisse, white wine and crème brûlées. They seemed a bit dumbfounded as to why they had to ask for spoons, which the waiter conveniently forgot to bring, to eat the soup and were surprised when a second dish of fish showed up afterwards. S and I, probably like a few of the other tourists near that table, left wondering what warnings the Japanese travel books include for France.

Anyways, more later.

Spring has arrived in Seattle. While it’s still cold at night – temperatures have neared 0 C – the last few days have been gorgeous: goodbye to dreary clouds and hello to the Olympic range. In a few weeks, I’ll probably see Mount Rainier on my daily commute.

On Friday, we headed off for a lazy dinner at Tutta Bella in Columbia City, on Saturday afternoon we visited Ranch 99 in Edmonds and on Sunday we strolled through the UVillage and the Ballard Farmers Market. Our favorite creamery was selling an older tomme. A few stands down S bought fresh foraged fiddleheads, the first time I have seen her want “rabbit food.” Finally, as we stocked up on ground meat and bacon, we heard the best chicken in town would be back in a few weeks along with the sign-up list for Thanksgiving turkey. This year, we’re lining up.

In short, all of this made a great enjoyable weekend to cap off the month of March. This is good since, during the same period, I twice took out candidates for a “post-interview day closing dinner.” I have another one next week. In 7 years, I have had only one candidate who did not like the city by the end of the evening. The fun of this past weekend reminds me that, beyond my sales skills, the city stands on its own. That is a good thing for my conscience.

This makes me wonder what to think of this report by the Mercer Consulting group. Seattle is the 49th best city to live in the world. Geneva is 3rd, San Francisco 29th and Tokyo 35th. Geneva???

Go Canada though: Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Calgary all make the list, in that order.

P.S.: Yes, yes, I know. I’m presenting one-sided arguments about the fun of wandering a city while shopping, for groceries mostly.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently at Vivace’s new location across from REI in downtown Seattle. As a friend of mine said: they don’t serve drip coffee; only espresso based drinks. It’s incredible how the folding of the milk or its temperature impacts the taste of the latte. If ever you’re looking for something sweeter, try out their Cafe Caramel.

Most of the weekend was spent cleaning. Over the last few month I’d accumulated too many magazines, Toastmasters documents, etc. It’s in sorting one of these pile that I found an old edition of National Geographic on “why we love caffeine.” What a coincidence! I delighted myself knowing that the barristas of my favorite spot could all outdo the latte art pictured: the leaf and the heart I see all the time.

There was one part of the article I thought I should write down here for you to read. Here’s the chart about caffeine from page 11 from the January 2005 edition: 

• Hershey’s milk chocolate almond bar, 6 oz — 25mg
• Espresso, 1-oz shot — 40 mg
• Brewed tea, 8-oz cup — 50 mg
• Coca-cola, 20-oz bottle — 57 mg
• Red Bull energy drink, 8.3-oz can — 80 mg
• Excedrin pain reliever, 2 tablets — 130 mg
• Brewed coffee, 12-oz cup — 200 mg
• Mountain Dew, 64-oz Double Big Gulp — 294 mg

A cup of joe has 5 times the caffeine of any drink with 1 shot of espresso.

A few Sundays ago we decided to make one of our favorite dishes: gumbo. For this, we use the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated book. The results are always amazing and there’s always enough left overs for a few days. Cooking gumbo, it turns out, takes a while but is not difficult. The biggest unknown is the roux.

Here’s the step on roux from the recipe:

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or large, heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat until it registers 200 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and gradually stir in the flour with a wooden spatula or spoon, working out any lumps that form. Continue stirring constantly, reaching into the corners of the pan, until the mixture has a toasty aroma is deep reddish brown, about the color of an old copper penny or between the colors of milk chocolate and dark chocolate, about 20 minutes. (The roux will thin as it cooks; it is begins to smoke, remove the pan from the heat and stir the roux constantly to cool slightly.)

The first time we did the recipe, it took us more than 80 minutes to get the roux to a copper color. We got a nice copper roux without ever burning the oil. You need dedication to your stomach though to move a wooden spatula in oil and flour for that long. You can’t let the roux alone otherwise clumps of flour will form. The entire recipe took more than 4 hours to complete.

So what’s the trick to obtaining a dark roux in 20 minutes or less? Notice the words “reduce the heat to medium?” If you raised the temperature to 200 degrees then reduce the heat, will the temperature keep rising or will it drop below 200 degrees? The recipe doesn’t say. The sentence is misleading. This time, having other plans for my evening, I cheated; I raised the heat up to 350 degrees after adding the flour. By continuously stirring and monitoring the temperature, I kept the mixture right below the burning point. Low and behold the white roux became a dark roux in ~18 minutes.

There are two lessons here:

1. Although America’s test kitchen’s recipes are wonderful, their recipes are often misleading and confusing. Read between the lines.
2. Get yourself an instant read thermometer.

P.S.: Our other pet-peeve with Americas]’s Test Kitchen is that, in their big book, they didn’t total the preparation and cooking time for the recipes. You have to read the recipe very carefully ahead of time. Otherwise, what you think will take an hour turns into 3.

After the last seminar at the Seattle Cheese Festival, I met up with acquaintances who had been wandering the market. S caught up with us. The four of us spent the next hour sampling the cheeses. S usually doesn’t like cheese: the taste and texture are foreign to her palate. I’d never thought of cheese as an acquired taste but it makes sense. If your parents immigrated from europe, you probably ate a lot of cheese unavailable at the regular grocery store. The festival was perfect of her.

Soon out-of-town friends of our acquaintances joined us. They’d already been walking the concourse for some time and had bought one cheese: a camembert from Mt. Townsend Creamery. I’d also bought myself one cheese to bring home that day. The same cheese actually. This camembert has the usual attributes of a camembert: a white rubbery-like exterior, a yellow-ish or beige creamy interior which changes from soft at the edge to hard in the middle. The selection was still too young to be runny and pungent. It was a lot milder, soft (yet still firm) and salty. The light flavor of salt adds a nice contrast to the camembert’s classic taste. Out of all of the cheeses of the festival, we’d both decided on this hidden gem.

Once home, I couldn’t resist and cut my self a slice. Out of habit I also cut one for S. When I think of accessible cheeses, Camembert doesn’t make the list. Surprise of surprises, S likes it. She likes it enough that since then we have bought 3 at the farmer’s market. Now I need to convince her that Pont-Levesque and Munster are only slight variations.

As a newcomer artisan cheese maker, Mt Townsend Creamery has some incredible cheeses. The creamery is only 10 months old. They’re based in Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. They make 3 cheeses: a tomme, a camembert and specialty cheese. Their tomme is also wonderful although they don’t yet have any aged one. We’ll certainly buy more and more of them in the future. We wish them luck and, if the opportunity arises, we’ll go visit.

P.S.: Seattle Times review.

A few weeks I spent the good part of a day at the Seattle Cheese Festival. The event is organized by Delaurenti - we love that store - in Pike place Market. The festival is a great opporunity for all to discover wonderful cheeses and meet local and foreign producers. In addition to the concourse, there are the educational seminars. This year I attended two.

The first was a tasting of washed rind cheeses and a conversation with Hervé Mons. Mr. Mons was one of the 4 winners of the title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France in the cheese section in 2000. It was the first time that this discipline was judged in the contest. In short, this title is a recognition by their peers that an individual is at the top of their field in the country. Quite an honnor. Mr. Mons was at the cheese festival representing the Cooperative Isigny Sainte-Mere. They make some of the best known French cheeses including my favorite, le Pont-Levesque, which is often considered “stronger” than camembert (something they also make). If you find their cheeses in the US, you’ll notice that they clearly stamp it Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC); the same laws that protect french wines. Champagne - aka sparkling wine anywhere else - is a good example of this. All of this to say that Mr. Mons makes a great speaker: he knows his subject matter and is passionate about it.

The second seminar was a pairing of Washington wines and cheeses. It was setup as a panel of local cheese makers, local wine makers and 2 food critics. The panel was hosted by someone from Beecher’s. I’m not a huge fan of Beecher’s cheese although I recognize they’ve done a lot for the local cheese industry. It’s hard to walk by their store in Pike Place Market without stopping in to taste their products and watch them work. To their credit, their cheese was one of the best in the wine tasting: it enhanced almost every wine paired with it. One of the critic though was Laura Werlin, author of The All American Cheese and Wine Book. She makes her living educating people about cheese and wine. She ran the panel for the same seminar last year. Her strengh I think is in helping the non-initiated understand how to taste cheese (and wine); what are the motions; what smells, tastes, textures and colors to look for; what’s important to you. After all, as she says, it’s all about you: did you enjoy the combination? I won’t list the wines or the cheeses mostly because I don’t think the experiment was a success: very few of the combinations tasted significantly better than their parts separately. However, it was still a lot of fun. The room was packed and you could see people enjoyed themselves while learning a lot.

Finally, there was the cheese concourse: an opportunity to try a lot of different cheeses. Whatever your taste might be, I’m sure you would have found something. Sadly, I did not see Pont-Levesque. There were also few aged cheeses (typically more expensive). The various representatives in the main section had stuck to cheeses they knew almost everyone would enjoy. There was a special section for local producers of small volume. While the rest of the concourse was free, this section had an entry fee of 5$. Out of all the cheeses, this is were I found the hidden gem of the festival. More on it later.

Worth 25$? Yes.

Location: Six Seven is located on the ground floor of the Edgewater hotel on Alaskan way. Facing the water, you’d have a great view of West Seattle, Alki beach and the Olympic peninsula on a clear day. Walking in on a Sunday night, we got a table next to a window. Sadly, as in many restaurants which such a view, the strong indoor lighting in the evening reflects so much on the window pane that you can’t fully appreciate the view.

Ambiance: There’s something unique about Six Seven. On the one hand, the staff is trim and dressed in cool black, the music is a mix of jazz and lounge, the plates have funky shapes and the bar area has a cool TV wall setup. It’s a bit like Earth & Ocean. On the other hand, everything is like a fake forest. Yes, including faux wood. Sorry, I’m not a fan.

Wait staff: Our waitress promptly showed up to introduce herself. She then proceeded to inquire whether it was our 1st time at this establishment and to explain, with enthusiasm, that the restaurant was participating in the 25 for 25 program this year. No pressure either way (which is nice since some of the restaurants on the program barely mention the word 25). She was very friendly and efficient; within a few minutes she was back to take our orders. Our only complaint is that we had to ask for bread to be served. You shouldn’t have to ask for bread. Then again, having tasted it, we don’t recommend the bread. We suggest you familiarize yourself with Dahlia bakery instead.

Food: The smoked black cod appetizer was very well received: it had a very nice undertone of sweetness and a pleasing buttery texture. The sunchoke and yukon puree was similarly very nice. While I could have done without the breadstick, the piece of gravlax added contrast to the creamy soup. If you don’t know - I didn’t - sunchoke is also known as Jerusalem artichoke. For main course, we had the mahi and the venison. I’ll admit, the grilled Mahi on a bed of rosti was one of the best grilled fish I’ve had recently. Go for it. Although the venison was good, its preparation wasn’t as perfect. The meat could certainly have been tenderized a lot more. For dessert we had the “Green Tea Panna Cotta” and the “Six Seven Charlotte, Espresso and Raspberry Roll with Spiced Rhubarb Compote”. Both desserts were quickly devoured. The creamy panna cotta had a much stronger flavor of green tea than expected; strong enough that the slight bitterness hinted of macha, condensed green tea. Somehow though, it didn’t have the grainy texture of the powder. If you’re a fan of green tea, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The charlotte, although also a wonderful finish to a great meal, was a tad too sweet for my taste; that was redeemed by the strawberry coulis which added a wonderful touch. As I wrote earlier, avoid the bread: it’s soggy, oily, crustless and short on glutten. Moreover, the dipping vinegar is too young.

Parking: after circling for a few minutes in Belltown we found a parking spot right across from the Edgewater, on the other side of Alaskan Way and the train tracks. Free.

Conclusion: For a different review, you may want to read the Seattle Times’ review. In our opinion, at 25$, the price was right. We’ll revisit.