Cuoco’s Chef Stuart Lane manages to fit in fighting the dark side while running the line on a busy Saturday night. Princess Leia managed to stop by, but only stayed for the lasagna. Related note: do you think they even serve pasta in the Death Star’s cafeteria?
PASTA HAS BEEN SAVED ONCE AGAIN. Thanks for the laughs Stuart!
Congrats to Lola team for winning two trophies at Lamb Jam!!!!!!
A couple of nice things have happened. For one thing, a small team of pastry bakers has moved back into the old pastry production bakery in the back of the Dahlia Lounge. When the new pastry and bread bakery was completed in South Lake Union (where Serious Pie Westlake is located), all the bakers moved over to those nifty new digs. Which was great… BUT it left any empty space in the Dahlia. Since my little test kitchen is tucked away behind the Dahlia’s pastry bakery, we missed them very much when we (Julie, Beth, and myself) were back there testing recipes every day for the Dahlia Bakery Cookbook. We missed their advice, to be honest we missed borrowing their tools and ingredients, but most of all we missed their high spirits and their delightful presence.
The good news is- a few pastry bakers have been moved back to the Dahlia to do the delicate finishing work for the Dahlia Bakery: icing and decorating layer cakes, decorating cupcakes and cookies. I’ve been back in the test kitchen most days the past couple weeks, doing a little testing and retesting for the book. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like the pastry bakers bring a vital energy back to the Dahlia. And I love watching them work.
The other fun thing is: it’s almost Halloween so the decorating work is wild, wacky, and fun! Look at these “Coffin Cakes,” (photo top.) I was entranced watching Kelsey put them together, step by step, with her paint brushes, tool box of paste food colors, parchment decorating bag, and all the other tricks of the trade. Stop by the Dahlia Bakery sometime soon to check out the spookalicious treats the whole Dahlia Bakery team has been hard at work on. If it’s still on the Dahlia Bakery lunch menu, pick up a cup of Chef Brock’s jambalaya- it’s delicious.
We’ll always have Paris. That famous line from the movie Casablanca, words that are now a cliché, yet strangely, even encouragingly, optimistic. Jackie and I are beginning our third week in the French capitol city during a surprisingly fantastic streak of fine weather surrounded by the requisite tourist mobs, literary melancholy types, sidewalk hogging femme fatales, and most ubiquitous of all, cigarette smoking university students wrapped in tangles on every park bench and café chair. The G20 summit is strangling traffic with motorcades of important folks “guessing” as how to solve the world’s financial crises, or inciting riots by those who believe they can better fix what the G20s have already screwed up. This gathering is happening in a country where the 35 hour work week is a sacred right, and the new retirement age of 62 from 60 is likely to bring an end to Sarkosy’s stay as president of France. While preaching the need for enforced thrift or “austerity,” our walks on the cobblestones of Paris suggest that only the finest hotels, absolute bastions of haute couture like the Crillion, Meurice, George V, or Ritz will do for the international money “managers” stay in the City of Light.
We’ll always have Paris. Streets, the Metro, and, of course, the Louvre- all are choked with tourists and locals alike. Cafés are jam packed, and this city is packed with cafés. Eating and drinking establishments are categorized by menu and hours into bistros, brasseries, restaurants, cafés, and let’s not forget those distinguished by their Michelin stars or lack there of. Some of the hottest cooks in town are either foreign born or have staged in other parts of the world including the States. Some of the worst cooks in town (yes, it is a cliché that it’s hard to get a bad meal in Paris) man the kitchens of many of the “cuisine traditional” restaurants dotting every corner of most every street. These restaurants rely on the sheer numbers of people who need to be fed three meals a day plus coffee breaks and afternoon respites from shopping or indoor smoke free environments.
We’ll always have Paris. Our apartment for the month is situated in the 6th on Rue du Tournon just a half block from the Luxembourg Gardens, home of the French Senate and some very persnickety pruners. The kitchen is newly remodeled and suitable for cooking dinners for up to 10 people. Being able to invite newly made friends or old acquaintances over to share a meal out of the hustle and bustle not to mention crammed quarters (I am too big for this place) of the city’s restaurants is a treat. Shopping in pop up markets and our own Marche Saint Germain for food instead of trinkets feels very Parisian and indeed makes me feel sorry for those poor souls stuck in hotels no matter their pedigree. Our terrace (the envy or our local friends) looks towards the 7th and is flashed every minute or so by the revolving spotlight of the Eiffel Tower. Is now an appropriate time to give thanks to all of my coworkers for this time away? THANK YOU!
We’ll always have Paris. Jackie and I planned this trip back in February during construction on the Terry Avenue Building as a light at the end of our new restaurant tunnel. 6 restaurants, 2 bakeries, and a bunk house/barn at Prosser Farm were never meant to coincide over just 1 year, but that’s the way things happen sometimes. Our journey coincides with Jackie’s birthday, our 28th anniversary, and our last parents’ weekend at Colgate University where daughter Loretta is a senior this year. Is now a good time to thank you, our loyal customers, for affording us the opportunity to send our kid to college? THANK YOU!
I will be back in touch before we finish our travels with specific recommendations on places to eat around town and you are welcome to add a comment here with some of your own suggestions (we still have 11 and 1/2 days: that’s 35 meals, 23 snacks, 12 espresso breaks, and countless pastry treats.) And so, in the words of so many before us who have snuggled on the Tuileries park benches, lived under the eves of five story walk-ups, cruised the Place de Madelaine for Dior or just sat and watched the world go by at Deux Magots… We’ll always have Paris.
Finally! A fabulous little bookstore in Seattle that is totally focused on food and cooking!
Lara Hamilton is the proud owner of Kim Ricketts Book Events and the new Book Larder in Fremont. The shop has a great open kitchen space where cooking demos by famous and new chefs will be offered.
Congrats Lara!!
Buy your witches and goblins at the Dahlia Bakery!
Perhaps my favorite and definitely most fascinating part of my Indonesian vacation this summer was my adventure to the remote Banda Islands.
The Banda Islands are a volcanic group of ten small islands located in eastern Indonesia, part of the Maluku province, and also referred to as “The Spice Islands.”
In the 1600′s, this area was the epicenter of the Spice Wars, a struggle between European powers. The greater province (Maluku) had a reputation for cloves, but the Banda Islands were the only place in the world where nutmeg was grown. Eventually, the Dutch gifted the British with New Amsterdam (modern day Manhattan!) in exchange for a local monopoly on nutmeg exportation.
Getting to and from Banda Islands was part of the fun, no doubt. My sister and I stayed with some friends of friends in the city of Ambon for a couple nights, and bought a ticket once in Ambon to the Bandas, (a 14 seat plane flies there twice weekly, however often canceled due to weather and tough to get a ticket.)
We stayed at a nice guesthose for a week on Bandaneira. We ate nutmeg jam every morning on delicious brioche bread, served with fruit and terrible instant coffee. The nutmeg jam is tangy, gooey, and wonderful. The food was delicious: tasty fish, fried chicken, and nutmeg filled pastries were some of my favorites. We snorkled daily, visited a couple forts, hiked a volcano, and enjoyed life with no internet, no distractions. To leave the Bandas, we rode a 10 hour ferry back to Ambon, then flew back to Surabaya, Java, the next day.
Here are some pictures I took of the gourds we set out on the bar at Seatown. Of course, we got these crazy-beautiful gourds from Prosser Farm.
“Breaking down the menu, @specialdark launches tonight’s #thrillainmanila dinner. Pinoy love all around.” -Picture & Tweet via @SarahLawler
What an amazing night. I won’t add much to what Shelley and Amy wrote, other than it was an honor and a pleasure to bring the Filipino food that I grew up with in Chicago all the way to Seattle, my new home. It was a great experience cooking, DJ’ing and talking to everyone one on one about the food!
One of the best parts of organizing an event like this is the sheer amount of minutes emailing, texting and calling my parents and friends back in Chicago about ingredients, their recipes and overall history of the cuisine. Many people asked why I chose which dishes to make. It’s rather simple, but I realized how much of my familiy and friends’ favorite Filipino dishes and also my favorites as well.
That’s why I chose the menu the way I did – I wanted to show the food my mom made for breakfast after a night shift at the hospital (eggplant, ketchup and fried anchovy), what my best friend’s dad made us every Sunday (Tito June’s Ordonez family rice), food I loved to eat even though I wasn’t hungry (Isabelita’s favorite lumpia), and things that gave my parents joy (ice cold Sunkist in a glass bottle and coconut rice pudding). It was food I was emotionally attached to, something that I hoped translated when people sat at communal tables and enjoyed the food. It’s what I love to do.
Here are some pictures from the kitchen in no particular order:
And now, some thank yous:
To the following people who sent me messages on my Twitter account, @SpecialDark, & “live-Tweeted” the event using the #ThrillaInManila hashtag: MY LOVELY GIRLFRIEND LIANA, @Mingry77, @Cafe_Nervosa, @ChuckSeattle, @Salanth, @CookLocal, @Mctello, @SarahLawer, @Sonjagroset, @FrancisFoodie, @Proncis, @Gtello, @LawlessWaller, @TDTessaro, @Jaydeflix – if you need good people in your timeline, give ‘em a follow! Don’t forget @TomDouglasCo, @CuocoRestaurant too!
Also, huge thanks to those who were able to wake up from their food hangover and actually write a blog post about the event: Francis’ take on FrancisFoodie.com & Lilian via Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs 
Much respect to Kyle from Seatown, Aaron from Bravehorse and Rhabbie from Lola for knocking out prep, being my comedic relief and tasting EVERYTHING – I am so proud that I could pick from such a talented pool of hungry talented cooks through out this awesome company.
Hopefully we can do this again soon!
xoxo,
~Herschell
Herschell Taghap’s Filipino- American dinner last night was a blast! Herschell is a multi- talented charmer: Cuoco line cook, hipster DJ, and social media expert extraordinaire. Staging this dinner- Herschell’s tribute to the food he grew up with in his Filipino-American family in Chicago- as a “pop up” concept in the Ting Momo space was a brilliant idea!
As you walked in, you were handed a glass of prosecco by Executive Chef, Eric Tanaka, and told to help yourself to the snacks, which included Calbee shrimp flavored chips and Herschell’s mom’s broiled eggplant omelets, sliced and served on toasts (delicious!). There was also plenty of room temperature Sunkist orange soda, a Taghap family treat, but I must admit I gave it a pass, grabbing some cold beer instead.
The food at this sold-out event was served “cotillion style” in foil wrapped pans and everyone lined up to help themselves. There was so much more food spread out on Ting Momo’s counter than we could possibly eat: from peanut butter stew to crispy bits of pig head in sugar cane vinegar, to splendid golden brown lumpia, to milkfish with garlic, ginger, and tomatoes, and at the end of the buffet, a huge bowl of Herschell’s father’s recipe for “day-old Jasmine rice with hard boiled egg, cherry tomatoes, green onion, and fish sauce.”
We ended the feast with a cold bowl of glutinous rice with coconut milk, caramel, and toasted coconut, then went home happy, cheered, and full of rice!
(Editor’s Note: all photos by Amy Richardson, Marketing)
RSS SubscribeWelcome to Family Meal, a blog that examines all things new and noteworthy in the world of food, wine, and dining.
At family meal, otherwise known as staff meal, there’s no hierarchy; you’re breaking bread with your friends. For those 30 minutes, everyone is equal- and hungry. Family meal is our version of the water cooler- but with better food.
I’ll be sharing my thoughts, tips, and observations, and, in the spirit of family meal, I’ve invited our creative, energetic staff- everyone from line cook to bartender to bookkeeper- to have a say. I hope you’ll add your own comments and join in the conversation.
-Tom Douglas
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