CITYSCENE
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Anchovies & Olives
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Seattleites are long accustomed to measuring the progress of the year in salmon runs. But at his new Anchovies & Olives, Ethan Stowell (Union, How to Cook a Wolf) focuses even more intently on the seasonality of the Northwest's seafood. Every menu is a snapshot of the day's bounty, each dish composed with the purity of a sushi chef: In spring, Shigoku oysters are garnished with a few flecks of pickled beets; a salad of cauliflower and foraged miner's lettuce is tossed in an anchovy-flushed dressing; grilled mackerel is simply set atop roasted hedgehog mushrooms and treviso. Picking from the wine list compiled by Angela Stowell, who delves even further into Italian whites than she did at How to Cook a Wolf, diners can accompany the crudi with the mineral-peach notes of a Muri-Gries Südtiroler Sylvaner and the pastas with the rolling washes of fruit and earth in the bianco Falesco Ferentano.
—Jonathan Kauffman
Anchovies & Olives, 1550 15th Ave., Seattle; 206-838-8080,
anchoviesandolives.com (reviewed W&S 8/09)
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Bada Lounge
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Bada Lounge satisfies the savvy palate and the cautious wallet alike. Stop into this urbane Belltown spot for an under-$10 glass matched to addictive, Asian-inspired bar noshes created by chefs Seisuke Kamimura and Kelly Gaddis; or slip into a plush, white-vinyl booth for a full dinner with a bottle off their surprisingly modestly priced list. Its left-coast leanings provide some excellent deals, such as Oregon's Clos Ladybug Pinot Noir at $35 or Camaraderie's Grace Cabernet from Washington at $36.
—Shelley Grant
Bada Lounge, 2230 1st Ave., Seattle, WA; 206-374-8717
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How to Cook a Wolf
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How to Cook a Wolf Over the past year, Seattle has seen an explosion of microrestaurants —intimate spaces with casually exquisite food.
One of the best of this new breed is How to Cook a Wolf, the third venture from Union chef Ethan Stowell. Paneled in blond wooden slats
and sheets of hammered copper, the 23-seat restaurant features a menu of small plates and pastas. Sommelier Angela Stowell has a fondness
for small-production wineries from France and Italy (pinot grigio from Alto Adige's Peter Zemmer, Les Granges from Chinon's Baudry),
mirroring her husband's love for slightly arcane ingredients like hedgehog mushrooms, beef tongue, and crab apples, which he seeds
into simple, seasonal fare.
—Jonathan Kauffman
2208 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle;
206-838-8090; www.howtocookawolf.com
(reviewed W&S 6/08)
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Poppy
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As chef of The Herbfarm, Jerry Traunfeld once envisioned each nightly meal as a multi course, four-hour spectacle. At Poppy, his new bistro in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, he compresses the same fragrance and flavor into a single thali. Up to ten tiny bowls crowd together on the trays, inspired by the meals he ate while traveling in India. Each element is composed with the nose of a perfumer. The aromas of ginger and rosemary fuse together in a sweet-potato purée; wagyu brisket, fragrant with Seville orange zest, is served atop coriander-scented potatoes. Traunfeld keeps his wine list short, concentrating on the rich whites and zesty reds of the Northwest that can stand up to the spice. But the drinks that echo the food most evocatively are the chef's complex, aromatic cocktails, such as the Lookout, with gin, Aperol, yellow Chartreuse, and mandarin orange.
—Jonathan Kauffman
Poppy, 622 E. Broadway, Seattle;
206-324-1108,
poppyseattle.com
(reviewed W&S 6/09)
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Restaurant Zoë
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Quinn's pub is probably the most handsome restaurant to open in Seattle this year: Restaurant Zoë
owners Scott and Heather Staples revamped a run-down taqueria, using salvaged 4-by-4 timbers to
create a look that's half Swiss tavern and half loft. Befitting a gastropub, the wine list is brief,
with a bottle list that ranges from the prosaic to the cult plus 14 beers on tap, including the
Trappist ales Chimay and Koningshoeven Quadrupel. The hearty, rainy weather fare includes wild boar
sloppy joes, delicate potato gnocchi that stand up to a rich oxtail ragu and, because Seattle
vegetarians drink beer, too, curried Puy lentils with roasted cauliflower and spiced mango.
—Jonathan Kauffman
1001 East Pike; 206-325-7711; www.quinnspubseattle.com (reviewed W&S 2/08)
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Sambar
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"Sambar is just a bar with really good bar food," insists owner Sara Naftaly. That's true only in the way that her husband's elegant Le Gourmand next door is just a simple neighborhood restaurant. Everything bears the mark of patient, loving hands, from cheeses from master affineur Herve Mons, through pitch-perfect renditions of croque monsieur and frites, to mixed drinks that make inspired use of Northwest ingredients. The wines-by-the-glass list shows the same sort of care, favoring little-known pours for $10 or less.
—Robert Pincus
Sambar, 425 NW Market St., Seattle, WA; 206-781-4883.
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Spinasse
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Justin Neidermeyer's compact Capitol Hill restaurant is an ode to the Piedmont region of Italy, where he interned in his 20s. You can see his love for its traditions in the pasta-making apparatus hanging up by the bar and in the daily menu, scribbled on a blackboard above the communal tables. You can taste it in his creamy, delicate vitello tonnato and in miraculous pastas like the finely cut tajarin or maltagliati bathed in slow-braised goat. Neidermeyer stays true to Northern Italy with the wine list, too, offering wines such as Cascini degli Ulivi's golden, pear-drunk Gavi, as well as a deep selection of dolcettos, Barolos and Barberas d'Alba by the bottle.
—Jonathan Kauffman
Spinasse, 1531 14th Ave., Seattle; 206-251-7673,
spinasse.com
(reviewed W&S 4/09)
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Spring Hill
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Mark Fuller recently left the top post at the Dahlia Lounge to open Spring Hill, a casual restaurant in West Seattle with poured-concrete floors and walls the color of new growth. But like his former boss, Tom Douglas, Fuller is dedicated to figuring out what "Northwest cuisine" means. A razor-clam crepinette with pickled kusshi oysters, definitely, but also a sumptuous duck-egg raviolo and applewood-grilled prawns with grits and a shrimp-morel sauce–all delicately layered, playful and of the moment. As with the food, so the wine list: 95 percent Pacific Northwest, ranging from classics like Ken Wright's Oregon pinot noirs to newcomers such as Azorica, a red from Laurelhurst Cellars, a new Seattle winery.
—Jonathan Kauffman
Spring Hill, 4437 California Ave. SW, Seattle, 206-935-1075; springhillnorthwest.com
(reviewed W&S 10/08)
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Txori
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The walls at Txori (pronounced CHOR-ee), in Seattle's design-conscious Belltown neighborhood, are plain white. But no one
would call this tiny Basque bar-restaurant minimalist. Miniaturist, perhaps: Chef Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez, of Seattle's
famed Harvest Vine, prepares pintxos-101 ways to gussy up a slice of baguette. Instead of serving the snacks buffet style,
as many San Sebastian bars do, Jiménez's cooks prepare each thin oval to order, decorating it with the precision of a petit
four. Txori's pintxos range from a few slices of chorizo showered in dark chocolate to layers of salt cod, potato and salsa
verde. The bar stocks an abridged version of Harvest Vine's list, and the drinks-glasses of Arregi Txakoli, bottles of 2001
Remelluri Crianza, saffron-citron cocktails-are the main course, rather than the accompaniment to the exquisite bites.
—Jonathan Kauffman
2207 Second Ave.; 206-204-9771; www.txoribar.com (reviewed W&S 4/08)
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Union
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Union marks the union of 1st Avenue and Union (the street), a mere high note away from Symphony Hall and a few blocks from Pike Place Market. The market, with its devotion to Pacific Northwest offerings, inspires Ethan Stowell's dishes, which bend the flavors of these local staples in unexpected ways: the tang of Stellar Bay oysters brightened by a Meyer lemon gelée; roasted halibut anchored by an earthy bed of ginger-scented Bloomsdale spinach. Transplanted Dutchman Reinier Voorwinde oversees an unfussy list that balances European bottlings (with a clear fondness for Alsace) with local treasures, like Bob Betz's muscular Clos de Betz red blend.
—Patrick Comiskey
Union, 1400 1st Ave., Seattle, WA; 206-838-8000; www.unionseattle.com
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