Back To Seattle: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  October 6, 2008]

I had to turn around and head out west again on business - another very brief trip.  But first.

A rare occasion: dinner at the Gonk.  Or the Oak Room at the Algonquin, I should say.  I had actually stayed at the hotel on one of my New York visits, before becoming a resident (comfortable, old-fashioned), and the Oak Room cabaret made its way onto my rotation.  Usually I attended a late weekend show after dinner elsewhere.  It was a good spot for a glass or two of champagne - dessert, if necessary - but the kitchen rightly had a middling reputation.

Anyway, I must have been hungry, because while Mary Cleere Haran and Richard Rodney Bennett worked their way through some Gershwin, I munched my way through a foie gras terrine, then a braised veal shank with a pesto sauced spiked with pumpkin seeds and roast winter squash.

Then back to Seattle with a copy of David Lehmann's book on Ashbery, O'Hara, Schuyler and Kock, The Last Avant Garde. 

Now, I really do put these time machine reports together by thumbing through the heavy pages of my journal, and the brief entries usually bring back memories.  On this occasion, no.  Apparently I ate dinner the night after I arrived at a Seattle restaurant called Leo Molino.   I have no recollection of it whatever (and it doesn't seem to exist any more).  Some version of gnocchi was followed by sturgeon in a spicy broth.  For some unexplained reason, a local merlot was drunk.  Was I with anyone?  Were they eating something which paired better with merlot than sturgeon?  We shall never know.  Put it down to jet lag.

The next meal I do remember: it was my first visit to Dahlia Lounge - still around, and at the time very much at the cutting edge of Pacific Northwest new American cooking.  It was a swish tavern room with comfortable booths and colorful lights.  I enjoyed lobster and shrimp potstickers, and then ate roast guinea-fowl, dressed with an imaginative  pear and stilton sauce.   Domaine Drouhin's '95 pinot noir; and a spot of goat cheese to finish.  A good dinner, followed by digestifs at the Georgian Bar in the Four Seasons.

Next day, home again, and into the month of October with a big 33 ounce rib-eye, black and blue, at Tupelo Grill, a steakhouse which flies comfortably under the radar near Madison Square Garden.  It had caught my eye because it had been opened by the chef at Tapika, the southwestern restaurant a couple of blocks from my apartment.  The steak was preceded by a cascade of shellfish from the raw bar - oysters, clams, crab, lobster, shrimp and squid.

And so to bed.