Note: Bistro Zazou has closed – Jessamyn

Trying to go to Calumet for my birthday one year, we discovered the restaurant had closed. Looking elsewhere, we discovered Flats instead, so we ended up happy that day, but we continued to walk sadly by the old location. The last time we did, though, we saw that a new place had arisen – Bistro Zazou - a French bistro! We’re very partial to casual French restaurants, since we hiked our way through the Vaucluse in 2004, so we try to check out any place that looks like it might have that certain vibe. We finally got there this weekend, and while it didn’t quite live up to my (admittedly high) expectations, I’m happy to have this little slice of France somewhat nearby.

The space is warm and inviting, with lots of mirrors and black and white photographs. The table we ended up at (after I asked to not be seated right next to a table full of young children) was next to a small gas-fire stove, so it was fairly cozy. We ordered cocktails and studied the menu hard.

We started off with a basket of gougères. I’ve made these at home twice, and we had them again at Pair, so I have a pretty good idea of what they should be like: hot little crispy puffs with a touch of custard in the center. When the waitress brought us our order at Zazou, she announced “hot gougères.” She was lying – they probably had been hot sometime during the day, but had pretty obviously been made ahead of time and then microwaved. They were lukewarm to cold, and squishily textured like a Costco frozen cream puff. We ate a couple and left the rest, but our server never asked us if we liked them.

Things got better after that – for our next course we ordered the French vegetable salad plate, and it was excellent: very simple, very French. There were three bowls on a tray with a piece of sour baguette, one with celery remoulade, one with herbed lentils, and one with roasted beets. The flavor of the vegetables was the focus, and I appreciated the clarity and restraint. We ate it all and felt better about things.

For the main course, I had lamb rib chops with pear-mint chutney, cinnamony couscous and a pile of carrots and leeks that didn’t really do anything for me. The lamb was slightly overcooked but pleasant, and I liked the combination of the chutney and the couscous. J ordered the steak-frites, just because someone had to. It was the definite winner of the night – the steak was nicely cooked, had a good big blob of melting herb butter on top of it, and came with a basket of really pretty spectacular frites, crispy and blazingly hot. It also came with the pile of bland vegetables. We drank a bottle of Clos Mimi syrah, which was nice enough.

We were uninspired by the dessert list, so we headed down to the Temple Bar for the remainder of the evening. We decided the outing had been a success overall, but weren’t sure that Bistro Zazou had put itself very high on our must-come-back list. I love what they’re trying to do, and I applaud their goal of someday becoming an all-hours French bistro with breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee, but I think I’ll give them a little more time to work the bugs out. And I won’t be ordering those gougères again until I know they’re making them fresh!

This little book is a powerhouse of Indian cooking. It’s small, it doesn’t lie flat, it has no pictures (except a few line drawings), and it’s far from comprehensive, but this one book revolutionized Indian food for us. Not right away, though.

It was a gift from a friend many years ago, after I had already given J a copy of Yamuna Devi’s Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, and we felt (rather smugly) that we had everything we needed for cooking Indian food. But if you’ve ever used the Devi book, you may have noticed that her ingredient lists are enormous, her instructions are tiresomely exact, and she puts a somewhat intimidating weight on the history and context of the food. We had the book, but I mostly used it to make flatbread and hot yogurt drinks to go with our Patak’s Curry Paste concoctions. Spice Kitchen sat on our shelf, unappreciated.

Then one day we opened it. I don’t remember what the first recipe we tried might have been: the Peshawari Kebabs, or the Delectable Pork? Or Prawns in a Creamy Aromatic Sauce, or possibly just the Aromatic Lentils? It doesn’t matter. Every recipe we’ve made out of that book has been a perfect representation about a particular flavor, spice or cooking method from Indian cuisine. We’ve adjusted a few things here and there – I don’t much like using thin-cut pork chops for the tamarind pork, as instructed. The grilled leg of lamb is wonderful, but I think it was even better done as kebabs. I love green peas instead of shrimp in the tomato-cream sauce for a fantastic side dish. And Ms. Jaffrey has a very funny idea of the difference between jalapeños and serranos (jalapeños are not hotter, at least not around here).

We have since added quite a number of Indian cookbooks to our increasingly large collection, including books by Meena Pathak, Julie Sahni, Vikram Vij, and other Madhur Jaffrey works. We use them, too. But every couple of weeks out comes the little red book!

Tangy Green Beans with Ajwain and Ginger

This recipe is a favorite of ours, made either with green beans or fresh asparagus. Ajwain seed can be found at Indian groceries – it’s rather like thyme in flavor. Amchoor is green mango powder, and it’s awesome – it makes a yummy tart gravy when it’s added with water.

• 1 pound of green beans, trimmed
• 4 Tbsp oil
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/4 tsp ajwain seeds
• 1/2 onion, sliced (optional, in my opinion)
• A 3/4 inch piece of fresh ginger, finely diced
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp amchoor powder

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and drop in the beans. Boil just until cooked, then drain.

Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the cumin and ajwain seed and stir briefly, then add the onion (if using). Lower the heat and let the onion brown slightly, then add the ginger and stir. Add the green beans and toss everything together. Sprinkle in the ground cumin, coriander, cayenne and salt. Give it a toss, then add the amchoor and 2 Tbsp water. Stir everything together and serve with rice.

 I want to like Tilth, really I do. It’s not really the restaurant’s fault that it replaced one of my favorite places in Seattle, Mandalay Cafe. I try not to get upset about what they did with the decor. And I like the premise of all organic, all local food with a small plates/large plates option. But after two visits I just can’t see going back.

The first time was a while ago, shortly after the restaurant opened. It was a weekend in early summer, and J and I went for brunch. We weren’t really in the mood for breakfast food, so we both ordered the croque monsieur with a side salad, and glasses of red wine. We were seated at a nice table, the service was polite, and the sandwiches were tasty if not exceptional. But the room was freezing – I ended up wearing my wool coat, a wool hat and my scarf while I ate. The wine was cold, too, just from being in the room, and the salad was a rather dull pile of fresh greens with very little dressing. We felt depressed and uninspired.

I was willing, however, to give Tilth another chance, especially to try their dinner menu. So when my friend H and I were deciding where to have dinner before a garden lecture, we thought Tilth sounded promising and fun.

We arrived before 6, and the place was mostly empty. The waitress seemed to confer with someone in the back, and we were seated in the rear of the restaurant near the bathrooms. I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or not. The room was still freezing – it’s an old bungalow, with a tendency to be chilly in the corners, but Mandalay used to build a fire in the hearth, the colors of the room were warm and the food was fiery as well, so it felt cozy. Tilth has the walls and floor all painted very glossy with cool green tones, which seems to reflect the cold air back at you. This may be why they brought an amuse-bouche of ginger-papaya elixir, steaming hot in tequila shot glasses. It was certainly warming, but rather peculiar tasting. I used mine to warm my fingers.

Being in a little bit of a hurry and not sure of portion sizes, we questioned our waitress over a few things, and decided on our order. To begin we got the hors d’oeuvres plate, which consisted of six small crackers, each with a piping of soft goat cheese and a cute topping of onion jam. Unfortunately, after popping a whole cracker in the mouth, we could taste a flash of onion and then it was nothing but goat cheese. We like goat cheese, but still. Cute presentation, but unexciting flavor.

When our first course arrived, I didn’t even notice mine at first. H had ordered pumpkin soup with apple salad, but what she got was a soup plate with a small pile of what looked like cress huddled in the middle of it. Just as we were both about to say something, the waitress whipped out a small pitcher and, with a flourish, poured soup over the salad. Weird. H said the soup tasted fine, though. I ordered the smoked gnocchi (I just can’t turn down gnocchi, darn it). It was theoretically the “small” serving, but it was an enormous pile of very dense, chewy gnocchi topped with a heap of kale and fried capers. Given how heavy gnocchi are, it was enough for four of me. I ate the kale off the top (smoky and quite tasty) and had the rest boxed up to go.

The second course arrived a bit late and we had to eat quickly. H got tuna  with red quinoa, which was very good. I had, in a fit of insanity, ordered the pork belly with cabbage. The pork was tender and delicious, but a little hard to separate from the fat. The cabbage was rich and had an enormous amount of mustard in it. I did what I could, but even with the small plate size I bogged down. It would have been a meal for me all by itself.

The other interesting thing with all this was my drink order. I had started off with a cocktail, the Jasmine, which was a very pleasant combo of gin, campari and lemon, and it lasted me through the first course. I wanted red wine to go with the pork and cabbage, though, so I asked the waitress for a recommendation. She immediately announced that I should get a white. When I said I’d really prefer a red, she got really snarky, made a comment about it being my money and my night out, and vanished without enquiring further. She reappeared with a bottle of red, showed it to me with no explanation of what it was, and poured me some. It was called Albares, but I know nothing beyond that. I was thoroughly annoyed by her attitude, but I didn’t feel like pursuing the issue so I drank it. It was acceptable with the pork.

When we asked for our bill, it came along with a pair of tiny plates, each with a cube of (I think) panna cotta with a grapefruit drizzle. It was, frankly, nasty.

In the end, we felt that most of the food was fine, but perhaps served with more pretention than it really deserved. The ambience was not very welcoming and the service was unfortunately lacking (our food was brought to us by at least three different staff, and our waitress apologized carelessly to us as we left for “disappearing” on us). At this point I don’t feel like wasting money on return trips, hoping for a more favorable impression.

I wrote an account of our visit to Star Bar, a new restaurant in Anacortes, a few weeks ago. I will certainly admit that events were not optimal for enjoyment at the time, what with us and our friends being a bit stressed out and our waitress being a bit novice. I thought the food was good and had promise, but I was not blown away. Now I have been.

Last Friday after work we felt like going out. Mount Vernon doesn’t have a lot of good options for after-work drinks (besides the Porterhouse and the Brewery, of course, but they don’t do hard likker), and we remembered admiring the lounge area at Star Bar, so out to Anacortes we went.

The cute little curtained alcoves were all full, so we settled at the bar and ordered our booze: Woodford Reserve bourbon on the rocks for J, and a “James Bond” cocktail for me – as far as I could tell it’s the same thing as a Vesper, with gin, vodka and Lillet, very refreshing. We also got a crabcake off the happy hour menu, and it was pretty mindblowing for a crabcake – almost all meat, very sweet, with a lovely red pepper sauce and a bed of fresh watercress. Yum. Thus encouraged, we ordered dinner: for J, a beef tenderloin steak with sweet potato puree and broccolini, and I asked for a bowl of the roasted cauliflower soup and the fig and goat cheese salad. We got glasses of the house zinfandel, Writer’s Block (I think). Oh, my. The soup was creamy and perfectly flavored, the salad was large and fresh and well mixed, with bits of goat cheese evenly strewn throughout instead of in one big chunk on top. The figs were small and firm (I hate mushy figs). The beef was like steak-flavored butter – I think my eyes may have rolled up in my head when I tasted it. After we recovered from our main courses we got espressos and a crème brûlée, which had a satisfyingly thick crust (think Amélie – clink!). We finally forced ourselves to leave.

One of the best things about the whole experience was that we had no particular expectations – we were sitting at the bar, we were in no hurry and we weren’t trying to impress ourselves or anyone else. The bartender served us in a straightforward manner, occasionally making editorial comments about the food or the weather. We didn’t have the stress that I find often comes (to me, anyway) with a table in a formal restaurant – as if, because we’re sitting down with a candle on the table, we all have to behave a certain way and the food is no longer the focus. I think many of my favorite meals have been eaten at a bar  - because I can actually concentrate on the food. And hoo boy, this was good food.

I had heard on Chowhound that this place did a great brunch, and it was pretty darn good. The day was blustery, cold and wet, but the big windows looked out to False Creek and the Granville Island Market, the food was good and everyone seemed to be having a good time. I had the salmon hash, which was a sort of do-it-yourself affair with a pile of fried potatoes, a poached egg, a fillet of salmon and a drizzle of hollandaise all piled up together, with a side of sauteed fiddleheads and a roasted tomato. I mushed it all up together and it was tasty. J asked the waiter what was not to be missed, and was pointed emphatically towards the “slaughterhouse special,” which turned out to be a plate attractively piled with meat: bacon, pancetta, chorizo, a small steak, an egg and a roasted tomato.  We drank champagne cocktails and felt happy.

Our next destination was on the north side of downtown. As we walked from the parking garage we passed an intelligently placed sign advertising hot chocolate. Did I mention the day was cold and blustery? We went and had some. It was a place called Mink Chocolates, and they make the best cafè mocha I’ve ever tasted in my life. The hot chocolate was darned good as well.

We then spent a couple of hours happily indulging one of my other passions at The Perfume Shoppe (sorry, not a food link), and emerged, smelling of ridiculously expensive perfume, to find it pouring rain. We ducked into the Lion’s Pub for a drink before retrieving our car and heading to the West End. After some shopping and wandering around in the rain (and a pot of tea at Bojangles, served up with snotty attitude), it was eventually time for dinner.

Based on another Chowhound recommendation, we had made reservations at the Parkside restaurant on Haro Street. It looked really promising, with a changing seasonal menu and local ingredients. When we walked in it seemed like everyone except the staff was twenty years older than ourselves and the ambience was rather rigid. We were put at a table right by a window looking into the kitchen (it was frosted, but around the edges we could see the chefs’ rear ends right at eye level). The menu looked good, with a choice of either a 3- or 4-course prix fixe, and a very interesting wine list. We each decided on two starters and an entree, and asked the waitress for suggestions on wine. After hearing our preferences (earthy, full-bodied reds) she suggested a relatively expensive French wine (2003 Château Rollan de By) which did turn out to be excellent. We also got a bottle of Gerolsteiner mineral water and felt happily expectant.

The first course was great. I had a bowl of pumpkin soup, strongly flavored with a fennel broth and adorned with a dollop of mascarpone and some crispy bacon flakes. Want to make me happy? Add bacon. It was lovely. J got the heirloom tomato salad, which was a pleasant but not exciting mix of flavors, with greens and cheese.

For the second course I ordered pappardelle with wild boar ragu. I liked the presentation, with the ragu on the bottom of the dish and the noodles folded neatly on top. Unfortunately, although the meat and sauce were very good, the noodles had no taste at all. They were satin-smooth and nicely cooked, but there was no taste of egg or salt. If there had been any salt on the table I would have showered the dish in it (there wasn’t). J’s dish was a wild mushroom risotto, which had plenty of salt, and we ended up trading plates halfway through. It tasted great, earthy and rich, but I really don’t think they should have called it risotto. The rice looked like regular short-grain that was mixed up with the sauce and mushrooms, and the dish didn’t have the starchy, unctuous mouthfeel that real risotto should have. Strange. But it was all tasty, so we ate it.

I always face the entree in a prix fixe dinner with some trepidation, because sadly, I am a small person with a limited capacity. Our trip to France a few years ago involved many dinners with far too much food, leaving me constantly full and a couple of pounds heavier by the end of the trip. Usually, though, the  portions are scaled back when the kitchen knows that you have ordered a several-course meal, and the entree is generally an artfully arranged modest portion. On this occasion, I had ordered a veal chop with chanterelles. It arrived looking like the kind of dinner you’d want after hiking in the mountains all day – an enormous chop covered in mushrooms in a sea of pan sauce, a pile of frisee and a strange disk that turned out to be celery root and onion held together with fried cheese. I tasted the chop and it was peculiar: apart from being enormous, it had the texture of a beefsteak and no taste at all except for the very peppery pan sauce. Too old? Needed pre-salting? In any case, it was pretty unappetizing. The waitress offered any number of substitutions but I really felt there was no hope for the dish as a whole, and I hated to think of them plating an entirely new entree that I wouldn’t be able to make a dent in. I ate the mushrooms and the frisee and drank wine, and had a bite of the rather nice lamb from J’s plate (a much more reasonable-looking dish with a rack chop, another small chop and some fresh peas).

Dessert did not seem called for, but we didn’t feel like heading home yet, so we ordered glasses of dessert wine (a ruby port and a dark, raisiny muscat), and were pleased that the restaurant comped them. We enjoyed sitting and watching the crowd, and eventually wended our way back up Haro Street to our car and the long drive home. My final impression? Parkside is trying to do something great, but they are taking themselves a bit too seriously and not quite living up to their own hype. We may go back someday, but not for a while. Too many other places to eat!

J and I have been religious subscribers to Cook’s Illustrated for years. We keep every issue, and occasionally drag the whole pile out and paw through it looking for that really great shrimp recipe we remember seeing – was it last month? Hmm, no, actually, it was two years ago…so we get to see all the old issues again and maybe find something new to try. And don’t get me wrong, Cook’s isn’t always perfect – they know nothing about Mexican food, and frequently their product reviews have not a single thing that’s available on the west coast. But many of their recipes have become gospel in our household, and sometimes you just want to be able to find it quickly.

Here’s where Baking Illustrated comes in. Every single baked item I’ve ever tried and loved out of the magazine is in here, along with further suggestions and explanations. The sweet potato pie has become an annual event for our family’s Christmas, and the pecan pie has taken first place in J’s affections over his own mother’s version. The tomato tart was lovely. The muffins are perfect. The spanakopita was excellent (well, how can you mess that up unless you forget the butter?) I have not made a single bad recipe out of this book.

This produces a problem for me. I have a lot of cookbooks. I mean, a lot. And I like to have favorite recipes from each one – I make the buttermilk biscuits from Kitchen Sense, the rhubarb pie from The Joy of Cooking, all cakes from The Cake Bible, pizza dough from Home Baking, Hum Bao dough from the recipe written on a piece of cardstock stuck into my copy of China Moon, and so on. But now I’m afraid, what if the version in Baking Illustrated is better than any of these? It might take all the fun out of having all those different baking books, which would be a shame.

 No matter how good it is, it can’t make me change my recipe for quiche.

 Update: Last week I tried the Devil’s Food Cake with Coffee Buttercream – fantastic cake, one of the better chocolate cakes I’ve made. The buttercream was tasty, but curdled after being brought back to room temperature (next time, use immediately!) I also tried their recipe for popovers, which was easy and fairly successful but not actually quite as superlative as the other recipes.

Our waitress showed us to a table by the window, giving us an excellent view of the water, the pigs on top of the market, and the Flying Fish stand. Tables with “reserved” signs were all around us, but I felt that we had the best table in the room – not bad for walking in cold on a Saturday evening. Drinks were very nice: I had a pear brandy sidecar, good but not as excellent as the same thing at Park Kitchen in Portland. H had a Bloody Mary which seemed to please her, and J got a very nice glass of Bordeaux.

We ordered mainly off the bistro menu, which had a very attractive prixe fixe selection as well as à la carte items, but H was able to order off of an à la carte menu from Chez Shea as well. Between the four of us, we tried a duck carpaccio (not raw, but still delicate and tasty), green salad with fresh pears and cheese, Provençal crêpe stuffed with squash and eggplant, crêpes with roasted garlic, leeks and chanterelles, yam soup, and beef tenderloin. Everything was fresh tasting, bright and summery. The sauce on the tenderloin, especially, was so good we raved about it to the waitress, and she went off to pass our compliments to the chef, with the promise that he would get such a swelled head that no-one would be able to live with him.

A side note here about the service: I have seen some great service recently, most notably at Dahlia Lounge and every time we’ve eaten at Eva, but the waitress at Shea’s was one of the best I’ve seen. She was friendly but not unprofessional, she had a sense of humor but didn’t linger at the table longer than she should, she made us feel that we were getting special treatment, and I never once had to wait for her to show up when I needed something – she just appeared. Magic.

On to dessert! P got the crème brûlée, which was very impressively heaped with fresh berries and a gingersnap cookie. H got mango sorbet, and J had a lemon-white chocolate tartlet with fresh berries. I managed to get a small wedge of cheese with a few light crackers and a small tub of olives – not on the menu except as a full-size cheese plate, so I was very grateful to be able to mini-size it. The cheese was a Fleurs des Alpes, which I don’t think I’d had before. I’ll be having it again. We finished off with coffee and headed out to stagger around the block before the long drive home, full but extremely happy.

Shea’s Lounge
at Chez Shea
Top Floor, Corner Market building
94 Pike Street, Suite 34
Seattle, WA 98101

So we finally made it to Star Bar. Not that long ago this was a rather granola-looking smoothie place, but the last time we walked down Commercial Avenue in Anacortes we saw this slick looking restaurant and thought, “Why haven’t we eaten here?” We decided to visit as soon as we had an excuse, and decided that surviving the first week of school (for J) and surviving a week of getting their house painted (for our friends) would do.

Three of us arrived on time for our reservation and waited for the fourth. The waitress appeared promptly and took our drink order, although she was thrown by an inquiry as to which single malts the bar carried (“Gosh, I bet we have lots”). The drinks took at least twenty minutes to arrive, which was slightly aggravating. However, we passed the time complaining about our week to each other and admiring the very cool decor. We studied the menu and decided to order an appetizer, but apparently the waitress didn’t want us to, since when she finally brought our drinks she promptly vanished again. Hmph.

Eventually our fourth showed up after cruising much of downtown looking for a parking space. We ordered, all was well. We got the bread basket and it was very nice, thin slices of sourdough. Not warm, but tasty, with a dish of balsamic vinegar. J and I finished our cocktails and ordered glasses of wine (from the woefully short list), and the waitress helpfully asked if we’d like the wine to be brought immediately or with our food – we said thanks, with our food. After a while, we got our soup – really lovely gazpacho for J and mushroom for me. No wine. OK, we’ll drink water with it. We finished our soup and our friends ate their salad (realizing more than halfway through that their orders had been switched). Then we waited. Some time later, our glasses of wine arrived with a promise that our dinners would be up shortly. Perhaps twenty minutes later the entrees came. Sigh.

Fortunately, any antsiness generated by the slow service was obliterated by the food. Conversation ceased and we tucked in. I had ordered the daily risotto special, which was prepared with fresh sweet corn and topped with beautifully cooked broccolini and a tender, moist duck breast. J got the short ribs with gnocchi, very warming and the gnocchi were toothsome without being rubbery. The other side of the table got halibut and roast chicken, but I admit I wasn’t paying attention, being distracted by my duck. The corn was slightly odd in the context of the risotto but the taste was pleasant, and the broccolini was excellent.

We finished up as the restaurant was emptying out, and decided we were too full for dessert. The chef leaned out of the kitchen as we prepared to leave and apologized for the slow service -apparently the kitchen was just swamped. Hopefully they’ll iron out the kinks in time. We left by way of the bar and looked wistfully at the cozy sitting areas and curtained off alcoves – we will definitely be back.

Star Bar
416 1/2 Commercial Ave
Anacortes, WA 98221
(360) 299-2120