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08/22/1999 Archived Entry: "My Trip Out West"

So I took off a little longer than scheduled. You’ll excuse my hiatus I hope.

After traveling cross country and doing some Naples At Table promotion in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, I felt I could use a tiny summer vacation. I couldn’t be off the radio, so my vacation was not to sit in front of the computer for as many hours as usual.

I went to Seattle to tape a segment of Home Cooking with Amy Coleman, which will be seen on PBS stations sometime in the indefinite future. Seattle was sunny two days in a row. I start with the weather because it was so unusual. In fact, a woman with whom I struck up a conversation at Etta’s, a stylish seafood restaurant near the famous Pike Place Market– she was also eating alone -- told me that Seattle beats the nation in per capita sunglasses sales. “It rains so much that when the sun does finally come out we can’t take the glare.”

It’s true, nearly everyone at the Pike Place Market, both indoors and outdoors, was wearing shades. Looking at cherries and berries through green-tinted glasses?

The weather was gorgeous. The fish were gorgeous. The local fruits were gorgeous. The Washington cherries were gorgeous and delicious, and I am now regretting that I didn’t also buy a basket of blackberries or raspberries to nibble on while I walked. I bought only what was really unusual and I could bring home easily: Washington hazelnuts from Holmquist Orchards, a long, tapered variety that doesn’t require peeling (not that regular round hazelnuts necessarily do), and beautifully crafted braids of so-called Italian purple garlic from Linda Swanson of Vashon Nursery.

I also found wooden spoon craftsman, James Wilson. The last time I was in Seattle I bought one of James’ sinuous ladles, calibrated up to 1 cup, with 1/4-cup measure lines carved into the inside of the bowl. James wasn’t at the market the day I bought it, but I admire his work so much that I called him when I got back to New York. He’s a fascinating man, not only an artist and craftsman but a sort of anthropologist – a student of “material culture” which is what the academics in this area like to be called. James knows about the history of tools, which of course can inform us about many aspects of humankind. Standing outside the Pike Place Market on this unusually sunny day in Seattle, listening to James’ tales of spoons and spreaders … fingering the silky surface of the burled maple spreader I’d just bought … it’s a hard act to follow.

Dungeness crabcakes at Etta’s did it mighty well, though. I even liked the green tomato relish.

Green tomato relish: It’s hard to avoid contemporary idiosyncrasies in restaurants these days. Chefs feel compelled to add their creative touches to almost everything … no, absolutely everything. If the ingredients are great and more or less go together, the cooking is skillful, and the food isn’t too archly contrived on the plate, I can go for it. My big complaint lately is that there is entirely too much sweetness in savory dishes. I never liked mint jelly with lamb chops and I’m not about to give into kumquat marmalade. Sometimes I ache for the days when it was easy to avoid coriander.

Going way beyond coriander, green tomatoes, which, in the East, are generally eaten only as the first frost threatens, seem to be the most fashionable ingredient on the West Coast this summer. Besides the green tomato relish at Etta’s, a restaurant that seems to me to be very deserving of its high reputation, at Andaluca, the Mediterranean fusion restaurant in Seattle’s Mayflower Park Hotel, I ate a very delicious green tomato gazpacho garnished with a generous heap of Dungeness crab. I do believe that green tomatoes and crab have an affinity. And I was thrilled to see how easy it was to get Dungeness crab in Seattle, although not all that thrilled with the crab itself. Even at its sweetest and freshest it is stringy. I think I like our East Coast blue crabs better.

Then in San Francisco, I had green tomatoes again -- at the highly touted but I thought highly overrated Hawthorne Lane. The salad on the luncheon soup-salad-sandwich special, was red, orange, yellow and green cherry tomatoes combined with bias-cut, nearly raw stringbeans. None of the colors of tomato had any flavor but sour. And I hate raw stringbeans. I have to admit that the salad was exquisite looking on a small, square, yellow, sort-of-Asian plate, but shouldn’t it taste good, too? Obviously, taste does not count at Hawthorne Lane. The soup part of the special, a supposed minestrone, was way worse – thin and bitter with barely cooked zucchini. The sandwich was sliced lamb with a fancy pedigree but as much flavor as rare roast beef from a supermarket deli. So much for Hawthorne Lane.

Back to Seattle and the opposite end of the restaurant spectrum, I couldn’t miss Wild Ginger. It was on the list of everyone I asked where to eat in Seattle, and I’m glad I ran over – practically literally -- directly after checking into my hotel when I arrived. I thought I might be eating alone at 10:30 p.m. – I knew the restaurant was still open because I called to check -- and was surprised to find there were still people waiting for tables, both outside on the street and at the bar. I think it’s only recently that Seattle is such a late-night town. In the last few years, it has boomed with the young people who work in the computer industry and outdoorsy types who nevertheless like to live in cities. At any rate, I must have been the oldest person at Wild Ginger that night. No ageism here, though. I was welcomed and offered the one vacant seat in the house – at the bar, where a couple of other people were already eating dinner.

Right off, the bartender, gives me a nod and assures me I can order half portions of any entree so I can taste more than one dish. I figure he somehow knows I’m a critic, then I read the menu. It explains that the entrees are served family style and are meant to be shared from the center of the table, as in much of Asia. I notice, in fact, that most of the wood-topped tables are large booths that seat four and six.

What do you order when you’re alone and want the taste of a place? Ask for the signature dishes. Essentially, signature dishes are the ones the chef can’t take off the menu because they are so popular. I tried scallops in a black pepper sauce and a Chinese-seasoned duck breast that comes with young greens and, on a separate plate, four bao (steamed Chinese buns) and a mango dipping sauce sprinkled with a blend of salt and pepper. I was instructed to make little sandwiches of duck and greens in the buns, then dip them into the spiced-up fruit sauce. The duck had crisp, fatless, highly seasoned skin -- perfection. The greens added a fresh, tonic, moist note. The buns were soft and hot. I was in heaven. The scallops were sweet and just, just cooked, yet the pepper sauce actually penetrated them. I was very happy with them, too. Topped off with a half-order of mango sorbet – and a spoon of house-made vanilla ice cream that the bartender insisted I try – I thought it was a perfect meal.

Flash forward to San Francisco, where I did a live segment on Bay TV’s morning news, and taped an episode of Bay Café, a local cable cooking show hosted by Jeff Altman, a chef who owns a restaurant in Menlo Park, Wild Hare.

I’ve already mentioned how overrated I felt Hawthorne Place is. I feel just the opposite about Boulevard, which rates in Zagat as San Francisco’s most popular restaurant. From my one experience, it seems like a well-deserved popularity. It’s a huge, handsome, I would have to say masculine space divided into three sections, each with a different ceiling – vaulted or beamed. It’s a bustling place, not sedate, with a friendly not formal wait staff. It reminded me a lot of Union Square Café in New York.

A criticism in the Zagat blurb is that Boulevard’s fare is just gussied up comfort food. I say, “What’s wrong with that.” I had veal sweetbreads that were everything sweetbreads ought to be. If their pleasure has eluded you, it’s their creamy texture that’s so seductive. When skillfully cooked until their surface is crisp, they are like crusted custard with a mild, though heady organ flavor. Boulevard’s came with tiny batons of veal bacon – unusual, but as savory as pork cracklin’ – which added their smoky, saltiness and a counterpoint of chewiness to the dish. My entrée was the best pork chop I’ve had in years … in the U.S., anyway. It had a California “free-range” pedigree, but who remembers exactly what.

Having high expectations usually sets one up for disappointment, but I have to say I was expecting nothing less from chef Nancy Oakes, who, with her husband Bruce Aidells, are students of American meat. Bruce is famous for his flavored sausage, available in supermarkets and specialty stores nationwide, and for several cookbooks, the latest of which is called The Complete Meat Cookbook(Houghton Mifflin, 1998).

After San Francisco, I had appointments in Los Angeles, but at the last minute, all but one was cancelled. I ended up going from LAX to the Santa Monica farmer’s market to meet Evan Kleiman, who is the chef-owner of Angeli restaurant in West Hollywood, a cookbook author, and the host of LA’s public radio food program. Evan was doing a demonstration at the market, which was part of a day-long event sponsored by Saveur magazine. We had a nice visit, I taped 10 minutes for her radio program – I talked about how I would cook the produce I saw Neapolitan style – then I missed my plane. Now having two hours on my hands at LAX, I tried the pizza at Wolfgang Puck’s pizza stand. A barbecue chicken pizza. If the man by the oven – I am reluctant to call him a pizzaiolo – didn’t need to be told to bake the pizza until the crust was puffed and colored, I would give Wolfgang an A plus. “I thought you were in a hurry,” said the oven man when I complained that the dough was still raw.

Anyway, glad to be home.

SEATTLE:
Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards: Lynden, WA 98264; (360) 988-9240
The Garlic Lady: Linda Swanson at Vashon’s Old Fashioned Nursery, 9603 S.W. 264th;
Mailing address -- P.O.Box 906, Vashon Island WA 98070; (206) 463-3760;
e-mail: Garlic4you@aol.com
Pacific Rim Kitchen Copper & Tool: James D. Wilson, 19730 37th Pl. So.; Seattle WA
98188; (206) 824-6268.
Etta’s: 2020 Western Ave., Seattle; (206) 443-6000
Wild Ginger, Asian Restaurant and Satay Bar: 1400 Western Ave., Seattle; (206) 623-
4450
Andaluca: In the Mayflower Park Hotel, 407 Olive Way, Seattle; (206) 382-6997

SAN FRANCISCO:
Hawthorne Lane: 22 Hawthorne St., San Francisco; (415) 777-9779
Boulevard: 1 Mission St., San Francisco; (415) 543-6084