Seattle Magazine’s April issue included a list of the most powerful people in Seattle’s food establishment. At the top of the heap was the creative and energetic Tom Douglas, undisputed king of an empire that spans a dozen downtown restaurants.
The list then shifts focus to Howard Schultz of Starbucks and the Costco guys — influential to be sure, but with a national focus.
They are followed by the Pike Place Market (not a person, but “powerful,” nonetheless) and food purveyor Charlie’s Produce.
Mike McConnell, the genius behind the Caffe Vita and Via Tribunali chains is next, though the Daily News reports he’s living in New York these days.
And then, in the No. 7 spot, we have a modest, 37-year-old, local chef, Ethan Stowell.
Stowell’s parents were local royalty: Pacific Northwest Ballet cofounders Kent Stowell and Felicia Russell, the drivers of Seattle’s cultural scene for decades. Stowell taught himself how to cook and began opening a series of restaurants: Union downtown, Tavolata in Belltown, How to Cook a Wolf on Queen Anne, Anchovies & Olives on Capitol Hill and Staple & Fancy Mercantile in Ballard.
Then a catering company known as Centerplate came calling. Its emphasis is on local food, since there’s nothing as local as rooting for the home team, and it’s challenge to Stowell: Improve the food at the Safe. So, two days before the home opener, Stowell invited the media to sample his upgraded ballpark creations.
There are more than 150 places to buy food and drink at the Safe. Because of its leisurely pace, baseball is particularly suited to grazing. So what’s Stowell going to do? Sliders, brats, burgers, po-boys.
“I feel comfortable ordering 1,500 pounds of pork [for the $9.75 BBQ brisket] because the biggest battle is high-quality ingredients,” he explained.
The beef will come from Painted Hills; the pork, from Carlton Farms.
And, best of all, the freshly shucked oysters for the $8.50 Oyster Po’Boy (right) will come from Taylor Shellfish Farms. Battered in panko and deep-fried, they’re topped with spicy remoulade, shredded iceberg lettuce, a slice of tomato and served on a Franz Pioneer bun. And only available at the complex behind center field formerly called the Bull Pen, now renamed The ‘Pen.
“I’m excited about the new food items, which are a continuation of what we began last year in the ‘Pen and hope to spread throughout the ballpark: local product and fresh ingredients,” Stowell said.
It’s a growing trend, even if ballpark fare is basically street food.
Good, classic fare
But that plays right into Stowell’s latest venture, called Grubb Brothers Productions. This is a partnership with his landlord at Staple & Fancy in Ballard, Chad Dale of the Kolstrand Building. Grubb Brothers intends to bring better quality to five classic American foods: sandwiches, fish and chips, fried chicken, burgers and hot dogs, and pizza.
The first to open, on Ballard Avenue’s restaurant row (where parking’s even more difficult to find than in Belltown) is Ballard Pizza Co., which offers “whole pies and fat slices.”
A second media preview, same cast. But it’s been a while since Seattle saw this: giant New York-style pizza pies, 20 inches across, baked on the hearth of a Baker’s Pride, double-stack “SuperDeck” oven. It’s a slap in the face to those Neapolitan fops and their thin-crust, 800-degree, wood-fired contraptions that blast the toppings and burn the crust.
Ballard’s crust is simultaneously crisp and chewy; toppings applied with restraint, full of flavor. And no one’s asking you to eat a whole damn pie when all you want is a $3 slice.
Two of Stowell’s longtime employees, Jim Seath and Michael Gifford, will head the pizzeria staff. Nothing fancy in the decor, but nothing cheap either, yet with what Stowell calls “approachable” prices. Beer, wine, cocktails, pasta (Stowell has a pasta-making operation in Belltown), freshly sliced prosciutto and mortadella, stromboli.
Delivery, too, starting in June.
Beer for dessert
Brave Horse Tavern, the Tom Douglas restaurant in South Lake Union, has 22 local beers on tap, everything from traditional Widmer IPA and Pike Brewing Co.’s XXXXX Stout, to slightly more distant brews like a Czech-style lager from Lagunitas in Petaluma, Calif. Its best-seller is Brave Horse Ale, custom-brewed by Schooner Exact in South Park.
Schooner Exact also brews a brown ale called King Street that made an appearance at Brave Horse’s anniversary dinner last month. As the brewmaster described it, “The brown ale’s malt profile has a mix of milk chocolate and hazelnut that blends seamlessly with a mild English hop presence.”
If you’re still with us, it went very well with the dessert course, a dish called Bar Snack Sundae made with “malted and salted” caramel ice cream, topped with an assortment of crunchy nuts. The brown ale provided a smooth-as-silk accompaniment, taking on a flavor that resembled brewed coffee.
There’s no smoking at BHT, but they found enough retro ashtrays at any rate.
For Brian Walczyk, voted Seattle hottest chef on Eater.com, the dessert topped off a four-course dinner (scallops, ham salad, braised rabbit) that was remarkable for its strong, clean flavors and lack of frou-frou pretentions.
Rethinking hotel dining rooms
TRACE, the W Seattle’’s new street-level “living room” and restaurant (formerly Earth & Ocean) opened last month after a three-month, $2.5 million remodel. It’s the third TRACE restaurant, following similar “re-wondering” of W hotels in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco.
True to its brand as the edgy alternative to the staid Westin, W Seattle combines the elegant with the plebian, both arty and utilitarian.
The dining room, bright and airy, features functional, lunchroom-style tables and chairs, but the chairs are covered with a faux-leather gold lamé. It’s part of each W Hotel’s identity as a “design-led lifestyle brand.”
The chef de cuisine for the W Seattle’s 100-seat restaurant (as well as room service and banquets) is Steven Ariel, a native of Honolulu, who has worked his way around Seattle since 2006: Canlis (executive sous-chef), Cafe Juanita (sous chef) and Luc (chef de cuisine). His hotel experience in Hawaii is standing him in good stead in his new position.
“It’s not traditional fine dining,” said W Seattle general manager Tom Limberg. “We want to see locals come in every day, not just for special occasions.”
There’s a sushi bar along the back wall of the dining room (Seattle roll, $10; along with the usual suspects: salmon, amberjack, octopus, albacore). The bar menu also offers oysters, a pork chop and short-rib sliders.
All this comes as the lodging industry re-examines almost every aspect of its business. As a recent article in The New York Times pointed out, the changes are being driven by the expectations of travelers in their 20s and 30s who don’t respond to their parents’ and grandparents’ notion of a hotel lobby as a mahogany-paneled retreat and an overstuffed hotel room as a refuge.
Hotel lobbies are getting updated so that younger travelers (in shorts and T-shirts) feel at ease doing e-mail, having a drink and socializing in the common areas rather than in private rooms, a phenomenon industry executives call “isolated togetherness.”
At the Hotel Max (another in the same worldwide chain of Westin Hotels and Starwood Properties), for example, the restaurant is called Red Fin, and it has a stand-alone sibling, Wasabi Bistro, in Belltown; it serves innovative Asian-fusion fare in an ultra-modern atmosphere. The bar features a variety of Japanese sakes.
At BoKA in the Hotel 1000, there’s flexible seating in the lobby bar for impromptu groups of two to 20; there’s a glass bamboo sculpture by Seattle artist J.P. Canlis.
By contrast, old-line hotels like the Four Seasons specify a “smart-casual” dress code and request a reservation. The Georgian Room at the Fairmont Olympic drips with elegance and ornate grandeur: Palladian windows and spectacular chandeliers. But these are staid palaces that appeal to older, more seasoned travelers.
The pioneer of premium hotel dining, decades ago, was Fuller’s, in what is now Seattle’s largest hotel, the Sheraton (adjacent to the Washington State Convention & Trade Center). Fuller’s is long gone; nowadays, the Sheraton lobby has only a coffee shop (In Short Order) and, except for banquets, shuffles its guest meals off to a mid-market steakhouse, The Daily Grill.
Around town
Congrats to Seattle’s Kristin Ackerman and SIP Northwest magazine, winner of the Maggie Award for Best New Quarterly magazine in the country.
Two local chefs are on the list of the top-10 best newcomers: Blaine Wetzel of Willows Lodge (Lummi Island) is one; Cormac McCarthy of Madison Park Conservatory is the other.
Closing shortly or already closed: Elemental and END (in Wallingford), Le Gourmand and Sambar (Ballard), Sip (downtown), Chez Shea and Pan Africa (Market).
But Afrikando Banadir is reopening in Columbia City with chef Jacques Saar at the helm.
Red Papaya replaces Signature in lower Queen Anne.
EVO Tapas is coming shortly to the Capitol Hill spot occupied by Rosebud.
Bea has opened in Madrona where June once busted out all over.
Vessel (downtown) promises to reopen in May.
At Pike Place Market, Cutters Bayhouse closed for remodeling and reopens as Cutters Crabhouse.
Renee Erickson of Walrus & Carpenter plans a food truck, the Narwhal, for oysters-on-the-go.
RONALD HOLDEN is a restaurant writer who blogs at Cornichon.org.