Washing Machine

Dead washing machine. Grr. A "reliable" Maytag. Bah. And the people who sold it to me (Schmidt's) are, um, washing their hands of it, won't even attempt to fix it. Humbug!

BI Food Blathering

Haven't blogged much. Lots has changed on Bainbridge Island...

A couple of cafés closed: Mud Puddle, much lamented by my daughter because it was walking distance from school, and Trios, across from the ferry terminal. Both were open later in the evening, so there's now kind of a late night café gap. Also a crepe place changed hands, then closed, and now the same spot (in the Safeway shopping center) does frozen yogurt. I used to like frozen yogurt, but then everyone changed from low-fat to non-fat about 20 years ago, and ruined the product as far as I'm concerned.

Winslow Way Café, which was more a bar/restaurant than café, closed. The space was renovated and reopened as 122 Winslow. Capsule summary: food is pretty good and has gotten better since it opened. I like the steak frites, the blue pizza is really pretty good, good burger. They used to close the kitchen kind of early, but they tell me it's now open and serving food until late, at least in the bar. Yay late-night food! Decor could use some softening--absolutely nothing on the wall but light fixtures. Staff are generally very nice and accomodating.

There's a new Italian place downtown, across the street from 122 Winslow. It's not bad, was open for lunch, now only open for dinner. It was called something or other and is now called Isabella's. Pizza, pasta, and a few salads--would these new Italian places consider serving something main-course-like? I can't eat a lot of pizza or pasta, and I'm not the only one...

Also there's a new Italian place, Penelope's, in the Pavilion. I tried it once. I had an antipasto plate that I thought was godawful--sort of like what you'd get for an antipasto plate if you only shopped in the "cheap cheese and luncheon meat" section at Safeway, and stayed away from the section near the deli that sold proscuitto and real cheese. Since I wasn't able to eat pizza or pasta at the time, I can't vouch for those. It is possible to get decent salumi around here...

Speaking of pizza, in my opinion the best pizza on Bainbridge Island is found at Real Foods in the Harbor Square complex. Perfect thin crust, good cheese, reasonably priced.

The Streamliner Diner has been open for dinner for a while. It's pretty good, vaguely Italian, and very friendly. Sometimes needs salt.

I've been to Four Swallows several times, and never blogged about it. Probably the best food on the island at this point (esp. since Madoka closed, and that was sometimes fab but kind of inconsistent). Sometimes you can get into a sonic blast zone, especially near the front, where it gets loud enough to be extremely unpleasant. So maybe don't take Grandma on the weekend.

Simon's, the Chinese restaurant in the pavilion that actually served worse food than you get at the Chinese takeaway counter at Safeway, closed. Allegedly a sushi place will be opening in that spot. Hope it's good!

Condé Nasty

I just got the new edition of the Gourmet cookbook. On the front cover there's a sticker that says "A subscription to Gourmet magazine is included with this book." Haha. If I wasn't so lazy I'd call and ask Condé Nast for my $12.

Pintxos in Donostia

 

This place was in the old quarter of Donostia aka San Sebastian. Pintxos restaurants in the U.S. tend to be run by culinary school graduates, and can be over-thought, precious and expensive. Here, they're just bars with a bunch of (good!) food on the counter. It doesn't take exquisite skill, just good ingredients and some tradition. This particular place had really good ingredients. I had one with smoked salmon and anchovy, and one with Iberian ham, roasted green pepper, and anchovy. Each item is generally betwee 1.50 euros and 2.50 euros. In some bars they hand you a plate and you take what you want, and in others, the bartender serves what you request. No table service, just take your food to a table if you don't want to eat standing up.

Duck: It's What's for Dinner

 

Cooked rare and served with baby vegetables and a garlic cream. I had this at Le Chalet in Ax-les-Thermes. The amuse-bouche was a "creme brulee" of mushrooms with a parmesan crumble. For a first course I had white asparagus with morels in a light cream sauce. Local cheese (this is in the Ariege valley) for dessert. If you're ever in the area, the restaurant was excellent.

Perhaps the ugliest modernization ever undertaken

 

In Ax-les-Thermes, France. The 19th century bath house gets an "upgrade."

Warm Goat Cheese Salad in the Pyrenees

 

Wrapped in bacon with lardons, butter lettuce, pine nuts, apple, and mustard dressing.

Lightning over Donostia

 

Taken from my hotel window.

Dinner

 

 

 

Turns out the tapas place at which I stopped for dinner is a small chain. The other two include the one I stopped at for lunch and another one just a block from the first one, so a very local chain. This time I had a salad of goat cheese, brown heirloom tomatoes, and sunflower seeds with a honey vinagrette. Then I had some Iberian pork with green pepper sauce, which was brown and flavorful, and grilled oyster mushrooms with Catalan sausages. The last dish was not bad, but the mushrooms could have used a bit of seasoning. The photos are taken with the iPhone, they look more appealing in real life.

There are several places in Europe where you can walk into what looks like a good restaurant and be almost assured of a good meal. Most of France is like that, and much of Italy (Venice excepted). But Madrid isn't like that--there seems to be a lot of indifferent tapas, taken out of a tin and put in a microwave. Next time I go I'd want to research things more. On the other hand, I haven't had anything disappointing in Barcelona. Of course my sample size is small, so it could just be luck. Last night I went to a little place where I had some white asparagus with mayonnaise followed by grilled rabbit. All very simple and reasonably priced, but the rabbit was seasoned and cooked just right--cooked but not dry, which is easy to do with rabbit.

Lunch in Barcelona

 

At a place in El Born near the Picasso museum: grilled scallops with Iberico ham, trout eggs, and asparagus, along with bacalao croquettes.

Olive Tree

 

Olive tree in Retiro Park, Madrid. This was on a path that spiraled up a smallish mound, planted with olive and cypress trees.

At the Museo de Jamon

 

A starter of Iberian Ham and Melon at the Museo de Jamon on the Plaza Mayor, Madrid.

Pica on the Plaza Real

 

On the Plaza Real in Barcelona: Almonds and Boquerones (anchovies in vinegar)

 

Entrance to the Prado Museum, Madrid

txori

txori on 2nd ave. in Belltown is a "San Sebastian-style" pintxos bar, where "pintxos" is the Basque more-or-less equivalent of "tapas," i.e. small plates, usually served at a casual bar.

The space is quite long and narrow and looks like it used to be a small retail space. There's a bar on the left as you walk in, with a refrigerator case containing some of the pintxos so you can look at them. The bar has a bunch of coat hooks below, and looks like it was designed so that one could stand at it, though nobody was going to the bar except the waitstaff. (We went kind of early--the curse of being a parent on a school night...) There are also some barstool-height tables and some regular-height tables. The design is quite modern--light wood floors, white walls, modernist furniture. In the back there are some french doors which right now lead to a dropoff of a few feet; I assume there's going to be a deck or patio there eventually.

The menu has pintxos, which are meant to be eaten individually, and raciones, which are meant to be shared. Some of the pintxos are indeed hard to eat except in one bite. There are two classes of pintxos, pintxos frios (cold) and pintxos calientes (hot). So now we've got the taxonomy of the menu down. The pintxos range in price from $2 to $6.

This is some of the best tapas/pintxos I've had. My gold standard for neighborhood tapas bars has been César in Berkeley, but I have to say I'd be quite happy if César had as much variety of flavor as txori offers.

Although in San Sebastian I gather one would eat a couple of pintxos with a glass of wine or sherry and then wander off to another bar, rinse, and repeat, then have "real dinner" later, we had our entire meal here. For cold pintxos, we had tortilla española, a nice little omelet slice on a slice of baguette, boquerones olivada, which consists of a couple of vinegared white anchovies (boquerones) on a toasted baguette slice with some olive paste, and ensalada de pato confitado, which was a duck confit salad with orange and romain lettuce, served in a spoon like you'd get for soup in a chinese restaurant. Hot pintxos we had included piquillo con morcilla, which was a piquillo pepper stuffed with blood sausage, which was amazingly good. We also had the pulpo da feira, which was a small bite of octopus on top of a slice of potato, with paprika and olive oil ("lagrima oil"). The octopus was perfectly tender. I think I also had the pintxo moruno, which is braised pork.

I had my favorite light dry sherry (La Gitana Manzanilla) to drink. Debbie had some Lillet on the rocks. They need to figure out that Lillet is an apéritif and should be poured in a portion of larger than 1-2oz. (An entire bottle is only about $12 retail.)

txori is open 11am-1am, 7 days a week. Seattle has always struck me as kind of an "early" town, so good to see more places serving good food until late.

Afterward we wandered into the McLeod Residence upstairs, and looked at some groovy art.

Rise of the Machines

You can now get espresso drinks, aka McCafé, at the McDonalds on High School Road. That means that there is now drive-through espresso available on Bainbridge Island. It has that "custom brewed by an automatic espresso machine" flavor, i.e. no worse than Starbucks, and somewhat less expensive.