I had the opportunity to dine at Artisanal Brasserie in the newly-minted Bravern in downtown Bellevue last night.  During this first two weeks, which they’re considering a “soft-opening,” there are obviously some kinks to work out.  Because it is early days still, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to judge based on infinitesimal details, but rather, to evaluate whether the concept and its execution will become a ray of hope in Bellevue’s embarrassingly franchised dining scene.  While the Bravern itself is a source of hot contention among naysayers who feel this economic climate was not the appropriate time to introduce such opulence to Bellevue, projecting that negativity to Artisanal by association is thoroughly misguided.   Besides, West Bellevue is a freakish anomaly of the economic crisis in terms of its relative resilience to strife, so I would urge the Negative Nancy’s of the 425 (and the 206 as it were) to give the place a chance before stooping to blog-bashing and Yelp-yapping that just brings us all down in the long run.  Read more

Can you think of a better way to start an evening post-horseback wine tasting than with delicious slices of fresh, bursting peaches? Yeah, me neither, which is why it was the first thing I cooked (yes, cooked peaches) over the campfire the other night once we got back to the posh teepees to settle in for a night of “Glamping”— that is, glamorous camping.

If all this is a little nonsensical to you, let me just explain that we decided to get out of the city a few days ago for some much-needed midweek r&r and figured there was no better place to do it than in Central Washington’s up-and-coming wine country. Specifically, we stayed at the Cherry Wood Bed and Breakfast which offers luxurious accommodations in teepees as well as the opportunity to do your wine tasting on horseback. There is nothing like sidling up to a tasting room on a saddle, and riding amongst the vines was an experience unto itself indeed, but in this post I will focus on the peaches, as the recipe warrants it’s own entry. Read more

In recent years, there has been a frenzied scramble to convert once-lucrative but now too-costly-to-maintain fruit orchards into money-making vineyards in Washington State.  Because economics was the driving factor behind many of these conversions, we saw a lot of behemoth production facilities churning out “approachable” wines (read: sweet, white cheap stuff) from immature vines in order to cash in on the wine craze perpetuated by films such as Sideways.  Touring wine country has never been easier, with the Napa Valley adopting the Disneyland for Oenophiles approach charging upwards of $20 per tasting at movie star-owned estate vineyards reachable by stretch limo, train, and I’m sure eventually hovercraft.  I imagine plans for a wine-themed park complete with a floating river of red called the Merlot Meander.  States beyond California are quickly following suit, and Washington is no exception.  I see the fundamental difference between the vineyards in the U.S. and those of the great winemaking regions in France, Italy, and Spain as time.  There is simply no way to rival the old world in terms of established character, which is not to say we cannot produce world-caliber wines, which we certainly do.  We simply need to be mindful not to turn the experience into a soulless affair more about pumping out bottles of two buck chuck than great Brunello. Read more