Gastrolust

As I watch newspapers and magazines scale back and even go belly up, I feel lucky to continue having the opportunity to write my “Dish-Off” monthly reviews for Sound magazine. It’s certainly not a gig I do for the money. If you consider the time it takes to conceptualize the theme (recall that each month [...]

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Sound eggs on chefs with a white chocolate theme
One restaurant replicated the old “Space Eggs” video game. Another served a white chocolate Space Needle. And a third put white chocolate in everything, including cauliflower soup and a scallop dish.
And so it was when Sound challenged three restaurants to create a menu based on Liz Phair’s [...]

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Sound’s Search for a Fruitful Meal
Ready or not here I come
Gee that used to be such fun
Apples peaches pumpkin pie…
Following a “Rock ‘n’ Roll” theme to end last year’s Dish-Off competitions, here I come with more music themes in 2009. Each month, I’ll challenge restaurants to create a multi-course meal based on a food-related song [...]

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Sound’s Search for the Year’s Top Chef
The World Series, an amazing election, and now time to crown a “top chef.” The three best “Dish-Off” winners of the year were willing participants in a playoff, but what about a theme? I wanted something abstract, and with Sound a music magazine…how about “Rock ‘n’ Roll”? When the [...]

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Seattle chefs fulfill Sound’s burning desire for chili peppers
Pow. Zap. Bam. When it comes to heat, I’m a superhero. I love spice, from subtle to strong—even with recent reports of a man’s death from eating a plate of hot chili sauce. So for this month’s Dish-Off, I say bring it on. Sound invited three restaurants [...]

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The chefs show off their shellfish
As a kid, I’d comb the beach for the best shells. They were my treasures. Never did I imagine that years later I’d treasure what’s inside those shells: mussels, oysters, clams and scallops. The tastes and textures of these bivalves delight me. So for this month’s Dish-Off, three restaurants accepted [...]

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The weekly posting of my year’s Seattle Sound reviews continues with September’s “Berries and Cherries” challenge involving 35th Street Bistro, Canlis, and Matt’s in the Market. I published this one back in September, so please check it out here.

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Foraging for the Best Getaway for Fine Food and a Satisfying Stay
Seattle is a fantastic food city. Okay, so it’s hard to get good dim sum or a real bagel, but we’ve got some great chefs, decent diversity, and interesting markets selling lots of local produce, meats, and seafood. And while the city itself is [...]

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Sound enters the fusion food fight and emerges with Seattle’s best
Wanna have some foodie fun? Go to Chowhound’s Pacific Northwest message board, ask for opinions about Wild Ginger, and watch a virtual food fight break out. People will passionately toss out terms like “fake Asian” versus “the real thing,” debating whether fusion fare is a [...]

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Looking beyond French toast for the city’s best brunch
In his gritty Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain describes brunch as “punishment block for the ‘B’-Team cooks” who salvage “old, nasty odds and ends” to create dishes that sometimes include hollandaise, which he warns “is a veritable petri-dish of biohazards.”
For this month’s Dish-Off, I set off to four [...]

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