Sustainable Tastes

A few nights ago we hit up TASTE Restaurant at the Seattle Art Museum. Now, normally I am not a fan of restaurants attached to things...museums, hotels, stadia, etc. But I'd read an article on TASTE and knew that they focused on locally raised meats, locally grown produce, and sustainably caught fish. They cultivate relationships with farmers and regularly change their menu to reflect the season. All of this led me to give the restaurant a try, despite its slightly intimidating feel. Now we are regulars. The menu is a bit pricey (although certainly comparable to many other downtown restaurants who do not focus on local products) but we have attended the urban suppers ($12!) and had the three course, $30 menu.
But overall we are regulars at happy hour. It's tough, coming from the Eastside, to make it before 6pm, so we take any chance. They have a superb head bartender in Duncan, who insists people taste the wines and liquors and beers. A better tap list would make TASTE hour of happy even better, since 18 oz of beer can be had for $3, but now that they have Flor de Cana, I shan't complain. Bar food is $6 and so we can make a decent meal at a reasonable price. And we always, always get at least one order of rosemary frites.
The rosemary frites are delicious--crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and nice and salty and fragrant. But (coming back to the beginning of the post)on Thursday there was something just a bit...off. They weren't bad, but they weren't mouthwatering. So we mentioned this to Duncan, and he brought us a new order. Although we wanted it to be just a bad batch, it wasn't--the second order still fell flat.
So Duncan sent out Craig Hetherington, Executive Chef. At first we felt bad because, c'mon, they're just fries. But then we realized we are experts on their frites. But what I was most impressed by was not the customer service--even though it goes above and beyond each time, and this was even further beyond--but the fact that Craig was able to explain to me exactly what he believed to be wrong with the potatoes, and the fact that TASTE is a restaurant that enables him to know this.
The potatoes, you see, had not come from Washington. TASTE gets many of their specialty potatoes from Olson Farms, but the russets typically come from a produce distributor. Still they try and source them from within the state, but the distributor had run short of Washington potatoes. These ones just didn't taste the same.
Silly traveling potatoes. Eat local. Support nearby business, particularly ones that know the names of the small farms from which they obtain their produce. Encourage the connections between the rural and urban economies. Be willing to pay a bit more to know exactly where your food originated. The less it travels, the better it tastes.
(Exceptions made for Belgian beer, sriracha, and coffee)

Oh, the Places I'll Go: Maximus/Minimus

People have asked me if my experiment--my focus on eating non-processed foods, sourced as locally as possible, while paying special attention to the way my meat was raised--has prevented me from eating outside the home.

I love going out to eat. I enjoy lingering over food, drink, and conversation. And I love being inspired by the menus at restaurants, their inspired pairings of ingredients, their creative cooking methods, their attention to the smallest details.

Give that up? I certainly don't want to lose all that. Luckily, more and more restaurants are willing to talk about the sources of their ingredients. In my "Oh, the Places I'll Go" series, I'll talk about those restaurants, from the established to the new, from the three course dinner to the quick bite on the street.

And that's where we're starting today: Maximus Minimus, the pig truck that sits at Second and Pine during the week, and makes its way to Occidental and Royal Brougham before Mariners games.

Max Min serves two sandwiches: pork and veggie.
With two sauces: maximus (spicy) and minimus (sweet)
And two coleslaws: max or min, same deal, spicy or sweet
And a choice of drink: ginger lemonade or hibiscus nectar.

Their pork is locally sourced and antibiotic free. The sammies come on a whole wheat roll. They look small, but with that whole wheat bun and the piling of the meat, one is certainly enough to suffice as dinner.

Gracefullypunk recommends the minimus pork, with "hurt", which, contrary to the naming of maximus, is how you truly make your sammie spicy. The maximus slaw, with chipotle, is quite tasty, and the ginger lemonade a perfect finisher.


GYM and I didn't even go to the game tonight--just walked my parents to Safeco for the excuse of stopping at the pig:

A Tasteful Celebration

After months of stress, of agony, of muttering nasty comments under my breath about jobs that require experience but never allow anyone the opportunity to gain that experience, it finally happened: the call saying a law firm would like to hire me, pending a reference check. Well, it's obvious that my references are going to check out; however, I'm once again playing a waiting game as busy people try to connect with one another.

In celebration of such a glorious day, GYM and I went to Taste, the restaurant connected to the Seattle Art Museum, which is also convienently located across the street from his building. Taste focuses on local and sustainable, and they promote themselves as the Seattle restaurant using the most of these ingredients. Obviously the menu changes seasonally, and with each printing they note the percentage of local and sustainable ingredients being used. I've been twice, and the percentage has been between 44 and 53.
Last time we went for dinner, but this time we went to the tasty happy hour. In a city of happy hour bargins, this one does not compare to $2 burgers or $2 sushi. But in terms of quality of ingredients and creativity of the bar menu, Taste wins. I must confess, however, that I went with the hamburgers--two plump organic patties topped with tomato relish and gouda, and served with a cone of pommes frites. To drink, I had a Hammering Man, which is basically a gin and tonic with bitters added, and GYM ordered an Aviation G&T. But the excellent bartender poured him a sample of one made with a high quality gin, and it was fabulous. In fact, the bartender made the rounds of the bar, convincing people to step out of their box and try something that might be just a little better than what they normally drink.

Delicious food, helpful bartender, focus on local and sustainable--Taste is on its way to becoming one of my favorite Seattle restaurants.