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belltown dining
RONALD HOLDEN drinks his protein Divine Guidance The winner of "Best Entree" at the Bite of Seattle was Divine, a "modern Greek" restaurant out on Roosevelt Way with a delicious bite-sized Spanakopita: that's phyllo puff pastry filled with spinach and feta, served on a base of fondue made from kasseri and ouzo, the whole thing drizzled with balsamic reduction. At $3.75, it was also one of the tastiest morsels at this year's Bite, which benefited from decent weather. Patient crowds put up with overstuffed dogs, strollers, Jesus-freaks, conspiracy theorists, sidewalk vendors, health-food pamphleteers, the aromas of outdoor cooking facilities for dozens of restaurants (not a single one from Belltown!) and the cacophony of half a dozen music stages. --- As we noted earlier this year (not by reading salmon entrails but by perusing the Wall Street Journal), Starbucks has unveiled a line of non-coffee drinks. In business-speak, it's a new "beverage platform," and its name is Vivanno Nourishing Blends. They come in orange-mango-banana or banana-chocolate. Viv--okay if we call you Viv? The baristas blend you to order, starting with a whole banana. So sexy, peeling a banana. Then comes milk (choice of whole, two-percent, skim). So far so good. Bittersweet cocoa for the chocolate flavor, juice from Naked Juice for the mango, and "Starbucks proprietary whey protein and fiber powder." Customizing's easy: a shot of Matcha Green Tea for the mango turns it green; a shot of espresso turns chocolate blend into a sort of tiramisu. Sure, you don't have any artificial sweeteners, no high-fructose corn syrup, and you're only hitting us up for 250 calories and 5 grams of fat while giving us 21 grams of protein. But it's that whey protein powder that really gets us. That virtually lactose-free isolate you somehow whip up from mozzarella. You're a piece of work, Viv, a real piece of work. Now cast a pitying glance at Howard Schultz, if you must. The oft-admired, much-maligned head of Starbucks faces ever-greater challenges, now that the Sonics are out of his hair for good. He's closing hundreds of stores, but the trade press is still complaining that there are too many Starbucks (except, of course, for the one on your block). The new blend, Pike Place Roast, that Schultz introduced to shush folks who complained that Starbucks was "over-roasted," is getting poor reviews from diehard coffee fans. Dunkin' Donuts is selling coffee drinks you can order "in English, not Fritalian." (Tell me again, what language is "latte"?) Even Mickey D is selling espresso. So what's next for Howard? Two things. First, a new dessert concoction, described in breathless prose by Condé Naste Portfolio: it's affogato. Idiots, I can hear millions of Italians muttering. Affogato ("drowned," in Italian) is no more than a shot of espresso poured over gelato. A local coffee outfit called Torrefazione used to serve it, until they were bought out and shut down by... um, Starbucks. Which brings us to the present day. The latest step down the garden path being Vivanno, a fruit smoothie. (Sounds Fritalian to me.) Not just any fruit but... banana! And not just banana, but banana with added protein powder for the health-conscious and added fiber for the geriatric set. Says Rob Grady, Starbucks beverage vice president. "It's a new platform for us." It's a slippery slope, no? Let's hope the banana platform is more stable than the banana hammock. And that the forgotten fog of affogato past doesn't spoil our sunny summer. --- 
AT CAMPAGNE, NIKKI SCHIEBEL is still cooking like a demon.
Out & About in Belltown: Txori celebrated the festival of St. Fermin with its own version of the running of the "bulls" down the alley between First and Second. For $20, you got to
run for three blocks in front of a papier-mâché bull mounted on a shopping cart. And a tee-shirt. Huge success, and safer than going to Pamplona.
Belltown's culinary emperor, Tom Douglas, had a promotion of his own: a five-day Culinary Summer Camp at Palace Ballroom. Cost: a mere $2,500. Sold out, though.
Boat Street Café, for its part, is doing a half-price oyster happy hour, with six bivalves for $7.50.
Kushibar is opening this month next to Tavolata on Second Avenue. Exec chef will be Billy Beach, who's also in charge at Umi.
A lovely place to sit outside on a summer night: the long, shaded sidewalk outside La Vita e Bella, especially when the (Russian) accordionist is playing (Neapolitan) love songs and you're
drinking a glass of bubbly prosecco.
Qube is no more. Fu-Shen Chang and his wife, Kerry Huang, pulled the plug in early July. They'd already stopped serving lunch, and the economic downturn took its toll on dinner.
Buckley's is moving into the space occupied by Marjorie at Second and Battery. Into the whole building, in fact, sometime in November. But it's not a "move," per se, by the original
Buckley's, which will remain on Lower Queen Anne. For owner Tim Buckley, it's a homecoming of sorts: He was one of the last managers at the old Belltown Pub.
At the corner of First and Vine, on the First Avenue side, painters and carpenters are putting the finishing touches on a vacant storefront adjacent to Black Bottle. Two years after
its opening Black Bottle is expanding again, this time adding a nifty, 32-seat private dining room with its own bar. "We've been getting a lot of requests for private space where people
can mingle," says co-owner Chris Linker. Look for a mid-August opening.
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At first, the word was discouraging. Salmon guru Jon Rowley reported: "There won't be any Yukon kings. Somber time in the Yukon Delta villages."
Says Jack Schultheiss of the native cooperative, Kwikpak Fisheries, "Life is not good here. The fish are not running. And things are going from bad to worse." Only half as many fish
as expected, not enough to replenish the run.
What happened? Blame the demand for fish sticks and "krab," both made from pollock, a billion-dollar fishery that indiscriminately traps migrating salmon as about 100 pollock trawlers
troll the shallow mouth of the Yukon River. Tens of thousands of Yukons have been lost, half the run, and a run that was unusually low to begin with.
Still, a few thousand Yukons eventually came in; they were just running a bit late. And some of them, briefly, made it to Seattle.
Branzino, meantime, finally made it to its namesake restaurant in Belltown. Sorry to say, it wasn't worth the wait. Had an order late one night, chef Ashley Merriman nowhere in sight,
must have gone home. The fish was way underdone, but it's doubtful even a proper cooking would have saved it from a misconceived presentation: something called "green gazpacho," with
almonds and champagne grapes. Simultaneously too bitter and unnecessarily sweet.
---
'Tis the season: fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, full flavors, full moon. If it gets any better, we'll explode.
Is it gilding the lily when the cooks at Palisade put a chopped cherry-tomato dressing atop a slice of heirloom tomato? Not the classic Caprese, but why quibble? Are we turning the
kitchen into a science lab when chef de cuisine Robin Uyeda uses liquid nitrogen to freeze basil oil and balsamic vinegar into pea-sized pellets? Nah, it actually works.
Even better, the moon rises on cue. Don't know what parent company RUI pays for this prime Magnolia real estate, but it's worth every penny.
---
A moonlit evening of liberte, égalité and, I guess, fraternité at Seattle's Pike Place Market. Campagne continues its traditional bi-level celebration of Bastille Day with high-priced
dinner upstairs for "royalists," street fare in Post Alley for "revolutionaries."
Nikki Schiebel is still cooking like a demon; Daisely Gordon is still watching like a hawk. Scallops with risotto and duck breast with cherries anchor a five-course, $80 menu. In the
dining room, wine director Cyril Fréchier offers two flights of five wines ($40 and $75).
The alley outside Café Campagne, for its part, is jammed, Le Pichet is jammed. Maximilien is jammed. Place Pigalle is jammed. Down by the Dumpsters on Pike Place, a couple of plump,
tattooed gals on a smoke break wonder what's going on. "Bastyr Day, I think," one says to the other. "The French Revolution."
"Oh, yeah? So tell me, what'd the French Revolution ever do for lesbians?"
---
Seattle startup UrbanSpoon (a nifty restaurant review site with Yelp-like feedback features, but for serious and knowledgeable foodies) has written a free app for the new iPhone.
Says Eastlake-based co-founder Ethan Lowry: "When Apple announced that they were going to allow third parties to write apps for the iPhone, we applied, and they accepted." How does
it work? Part Magic Eight Ball, part slot machine: You shake the phone, and it randomly displays the name of a nearby restaurant, using the iPhone's motion sensor and GPS.
---
The French call it Le Temps des Cerises, the Time of Cherries, the brief, shining moment when all's right with the world. For some, that's April, when the cherry trees are in their
pink-blossom splendor. For the rest of us, it's mid-June to mid-August, when the fruit is ripe.
It doesn't last long, so do yourself a favor and buy a cherry pitter. Then you can take advantage of the sales. Cherries were $7.99 a pound the first week at Safeway, $5.99 at the new
Kress IGA downtown, but only $2.99 at QFC.
Says Robb Myers of CMI, a major grower and shipper based in Wenatchee, "Cherries are one of the few remaining items that have a true seasonality, and that really helps with the consumer
demand since they don't get tired of having them all year."
The only fruit that exceeds the economic importance of cherries in Washington is apples, roughly double. (Wine grapes are worth a bit more but don't get sold directly to consumers.)
Still, "The 2007 crop was worth $580 million in terms of direct sales from the industry to retailers and the export market," reports Andrew Willis of the Washington State Fruit Commission.
Depending on the year, 10 to 15 million 40-pound "cartons" are sold locally and exported.
Cherry orchards cover 36,000 acres, but this ain't giant agribiz. Some 2,500 families grow cherries, some orchards as small as 5 acres.
---
Ronald Holden has been named Seattle's Wine & Fine Dining Examiner by the national blog Examiner.com.
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