Next time you find yourself cruising South Genessee Street, stop into Flying Squirrel. If the Herb Alpert Pizza is on the menu that night, don’t hesitate to order it.  Follow it with a Molly Moon’s Salted Caramel Ice Cream Sandwich. You can thank me later!

You may have noticed that here at Salty Seattle, we have a wee obsession with- you guessed it- SALT.  I pretty much think it’s the salt of the earth, I want to be its Salty Dog, and I sometimes don’t know if I’m worth(y) of my salt.  I know there are other saltophiles out there, however unfashionable it may be to admit it in our Atkins-crazed flavorless society, and I say, let’s unite! We should join together as exemplars of the movement back to good taste and simpler times, and what could be simpler than salt-making?

It was one of those AHA! moments I had a few weeks back that I just couldn’t shake- “Linda- must make salt. Must make salt soon.” What started as a little tickle in the back of my cerebellum quickly grew into a full-blown mania- the chanting voices in my head would not be calmed until a cauldron of oceanwater was brewing on my Bertazzoni.   I did a fair amount of research on water quality of various points of the Pacific Ocean, and decided that my collection point should be at Ocean Shores- some three hours drive from my humble abode perched atop Mt. Baker in the heart of Seattle.  I thought long and hard about how to coerce Jonas into spending more than six hours in the car on a rare day off (with a teething baby Bentley and a mother-in-law who won’t admit to hearing loss, no less) and I decided that AMBUSH was the best tactic. 

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Sitka and Spruce has been at the top of my very short list of must-try Seattle establishments for countless moons.  While I can make excuses galore about why I haven’t managed to venture in for crudités until now, the real reason is the façade.  Every time I drive by, a little wave of excitement bubbles up inside until I see Subway slinging sandwiches next door and my pitter-pattering heart halts with a shudder.  I honestly cannot figure out why on earth Sitka and Spruce is quaintly nestled between a drycleaner and a franchise sub shop in a dinghy stripmall circa 1992, but I no longer care. 

The place reminds me of high school gym class.  In the beginning of a semester you were supposed to demonstrate your lack of prowess in any number of demeaning athletic activities, only to improve over the course of several months until at the end of the class you were doing back-flips off the high beam.  I would always deliberately underwhelm Mr. Tinker, the Green Beret dropout-cum Gym teacher on the first day.  That way, when I would progress 300% by the final coup de grâce I could ensure myself at least one A+ on my frequently questionable report card.  Sitka and Spruce is much the same in the sense that you are not blown away at first glance, but once inside things just keep getting better and better until you leave bursting at the seams of satisfaction and blissfully intent to return again soon. 

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I have had a serious love affair with DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market for quite some time now; it’s the only shop I enter in Seattle and feel a semblance of being back in the land of prosciutto and Gucci (though I do have to ignore many of the uber-American tourists who frequent the market wearing tennis shoes and fanny packs if I want to retain my reverie).  It started when I moved back to Seattle from Torino a few years ago and went on the hunt for bresaola- the most amazing air-cured beef.  In Italy I had eaten it by the etto, almost daily and with reckless abandon.  One of the many things I forgot to factor into my homecoming was the utter absence of bresaola available on stateside soil.  After searching high and low to no avail, DeLaurenti came gleaming onto my radar like a beacon of brilliance.  They handily solved the first of what would become many gustatory jonesings, and I fell in love. 

This summer I went on a big gelato-making jag, and DeLaurenti was the only place in town that carried the super-top-secret-amazing-melt-in-your-mouth-ingredient I needed to make my pistachio flavor pop. They have become my go-to for everything from Marcona almonds to Valrhona chocolate.  When I discovered a while ago that they occasionally make their own burrata should the demand arise, my love affair went to a whole new level and I instantly vowed for better or worse, til death do us part.  Burrata, a cheese that consists of a mozzarella shell that encases the most amazing creamy-ooziness in the core once you slice it open, is the stuff from which dreams are made.  It should literally become global currency, transcending the euro and the yen faster than you can slip in a mouthful and beg for more.  Read more

Mark Fuller of West Seattle’s newish and dramatically acclaimed Spring Hill Restaurant is going to cost me close to $200, never mind the bill from dinner the other night.  In fact it’s a damn good thing this place is not around the corner from me, because if I were eating there weekly, my kitchen could not handle the amount of sheer gadgetry this hot new chef would unwittingly inspire me to go out and buy.  I have been just fine for the last 30something years without a pasta sheet maker or ravioli former.  I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to my pasta; I prefer hand-rolled, stretched and cut, and until now saw no reason to change that.  I’ve never been a big fan of buying extraneous kitchen junk because all the “things” in the world do not a chef make.

 In college, when I had left behind my father’s Henckels and before I could afford decent knives of my own, I took my cue from Uncle Pauly of GoodFellas and sliced my garlic with plain old razor blades.  Fast, effective and no-frills has always served me well in the kitchen, but after one night at Spring Hill, that’s all gone out the window.  You see, I’ve acquired a new obsession with making the perfect raviolo, and I don’t think any amount of hand-rolling and finger-crimping is going to cut it this time. Read more

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