Brunch At Spring Hill - Best Brunch Seattle Restaurants 2008

On Saturday Cindy and I met Jeff, Amy, and Lyla to try out Spring Hill Restaurants new Brunch service. To say the least, it was AWESOME! Newly opening on Saturday and Sundays from 10 AM to 2 PM we were the first ones in the door. The menu features the same fresh, local, in-house made products, and incredibly delicate cooking techniques you experience at Dinner Service here.

We sampled a lot of the menu items. We started with a couple of orders of the apple beignets with cold creme anglaise - WOW! Everything was good but this was the best. Fresh squeezed juices, presse coffee, tea - and for Lyla a nice bottle of breast milk ( not normally on the menu). Lyla was a happy little angel by the way.

We then moved on to the wonderful array of small plates (not so small of course). Duck ’ s eggs benedict with artisanal ham, dahlia bakery english muffin, herbed hollandaise; baked eggs with chanterelles, grilled scallion, grilled bread, house made apple smoked bacon; wood grilled hangar steak ( s trawberry mtn., or. ) with scrambled eggs with teleme(best main menu item); house made spicy sausage; Beecher ’ s cheddar bread pudding; and finally, awesome hashed brown potatoes.
We, of course could not finish everything but we tried hard.

They also make a Proper Quiche (Thomas Keller Bouchon 2" thick 2-3 days prep time version) which you almost can't find in the USA (where we think a quiche is a soggy egg tart). they also offer their incredible Burger, a yummy looking Waffle, or Saiman.

If you are impressed with high end treatment of breakfast - this is the place. It instantly became my winner of Best Seattle Brunch for 2008.

CRUSH? No It's Love - A Sous Vide Masterpiece - Best of Seattle 2008

Restaurant Name: Crush
Location: Seattle, Washington






Sunday night Cindy and I took advantage of the November Dining Around Seattle promotion (3 courses for $30 at 30 Seattle area restaurants - at Crush this is a savings of at least $30-$40 each) and it was truly AMAZING. This restaurant is our blogs TOP Restaurant for 2008 for Northwest Cuisine and Crush also Tied Rover's and Lark for Top Food in the Seattle Area. The 3 course offering last night provided 3 choices for each course.


First Course Choices:
Leek and Celery Root Soup
or
Pork Belly over cabbage with bacon
or
Green salad with apple, hazelnut, and roquefort cheese


Second Course Choices
Short Ribs" over Trofiette pasta with Gruyere Cheese sauce
or
Seared Scallops in a sauce of "chowder with vegetables"
or
Fall Vegetarian Risotto


Third Course Choices
Cranberry Bread Pudding with cane sugar ice/pecan ice cream
or
Vahlrona chocolate dessert
or
Camembert Cheese with balsamic, nuts, pomegranate, and compressed pear.




I always like to spend the savings on these promotions back into the same restaurant so we started with a nice glass of Cremant D'Alsace ($12 ea) while we perused the menu. If you are stretching to go to Crush in the first place there is certainly no pressure to have wine or drinks before or during dinner. The wine list revealed you could spend anywhere from $7 to very high numbers by the glass with a nice similar range by the bottle.


I chose to start with the Pork Belly. It was a beautiful and tasty presentation. the pork belly was cooked sous vide (I know this because it was pink but melt in your mouth done), with crisp bacon both topping a nicely sauced cabbage saute.


My main course was also sous vide, Jason Wilsons' justly famous 24 hour cooked Short Ribs atop a Trofiette pasta in an great gruyere cheese sauce. Trofiette is a rustic looking pasta that looks like a twisted rolled up thin penne - the perfect mac and cheese with class!. the Short Ribs were melt in your mouth and beautifully seasoned. I added a nice Cote de Tablais red wine ($12)

I finished with the Camembert cheese service which was beautifully presented with nuts, pomegranate and compressed pear. The compressed pear is also a sous vide preparation that literally compresses the fruit in a vacuum and gently cooks it to intensify the flavor - wonderful.


I finished with a nice pot of presse coffee.
-------

Cindy is feeling lazy so she asked me to blog for her as well.


After her Cremant she started with the Soup - Beautiful and Fabulous - could not have been more so. I tasted and loved it.


Cindy's 2nd course was the scallops - See picture above for a pretty good idea. There were 3 nicely seared scallops in a great sauce. I tasted and loved it.


Third course for Cindy was the cranberry bread pudding. sounded like it could be not the worlds best - but wrong again - It was a wonderful individual round moist bread pudding with some sugared fresh cranberries that kind of popped in your mouth. the cane sugar ice cream was a nice companion flavor. I tasted and love this dessert.


Cindy finished with a very elaborate, exotic tea service - it tasted a little too strongly of anise as she was looking for straight peppermint. But it was worth it just to watch the waiter do the service.


Speaking of service it was flawless, attentive, and it all made for a great evening.

In our recommendations review of the Dining Around Seattle Promotion we touted Crush and the Fairmont"s Georgian Room as incredible quality at incredible value - and Crush proved out 100% - AND we are going to the Georgian TONIGHT!

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best Happy Hour Dining – Brasa

Brasa is a great restaurant and Tamara Murphy is involved in all kinds of fun food events such as Wine Dinners, Farmers Market Dinners, and Burning Beast – she is great. This review, however, is just of Brasa’s Bar Menu. The Brasa bar is not huge and during happy hours from 5 to 7pm it is like standing room only – so get there at 5 if you want a table or bar seat. The menu is pretty extensive and all is yummy. What wins it our 2008 Best Happy Hour Dining pick for 2008 is that it is all HALF PRICE from 5 to 7 pm every night!– and the prices are pretty good anytime. For good drinks and awesome cheap food be there for Happy Hours.

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best Sunday Night Dining – Restaurant Zoe

Restaurant Name: Restaurant Zoe
Location: Seattle, Wa.

Restaurant Zoe is perhaps the most consistent go to place for all the couples at Between Courses – especially if dining with friends who you are not sure are too adventurous. Zoe is loud, fun, has good drinks, is affordable – considering the quality involved, and is just about guaranteed to make everyone happy. The food is always very good and offers choices that will please the timid as well as the Foodie. It is a nice central downtown location too. One Sunday nights it has a really great feature in this day and age when wines prices on restaurant menus are all 3 times retail. On Sundays you can bring your own wine with no corkage fee – about the only place in Seattle you can do that. Be sure to spend the money you save on an extra course or some of their addictive drinks.

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best Small Plates - Lark

Restaurant name: Lark
Location: Seattle, Wa.


Lark is consistently doing the best cooking in Seattle. The idea here is a minimalist space, small plates, no set courses, and food that is meant to be shared – a few bites each – communally. These are not concepts that come naturally to everyone in the Foodie Family at Between Courses. Some of us need structure in the sequence of a meal, others are not that hot to share if they really like a dish, and all of us love ambiance. It is the one great restaurant we generally do not invite friends to because of the format. However we keep coming back time and time again – Especially Jeff and Steve – who love to try stuff and share – and drink lots of wines by the glass. If you love great food you will be happy here – if you love the dining concepts laid out above you will be in HEAVEN. If you want great small plates but are afraid of the above issues go to Spring Hill in West Seattle - our Top New Restaurant of 2008

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best Sandwich – Paseo

Restaurant Name: Paseo

Restaurant Location: Seattle

Paseo has a number of great Cuban sandwiches and plates in an incredible shack in Fremont with a branch in an even more incredible shack at Shilshole. Our favorite - in the whole world by the way - well except perhaps the crazy Afgan gyro/kebab stacked with frites we got in the middle of nowhere France - is the grilled pork tenderloin slices with lots of grilled Jalapenos and onions. It is served with the world worst but most authentic mush corn on the cob. Order at the counter, get change for a $10 and then inhale, with water on the side, the messiest, best sandwich ever. Note our runner's up for great sandwich's for 2008 are Matt's in the Market, and Salumi

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best French Brasserie

Café Presse is from a French viewpoint kind of a cross between what they call a Bar, a Bistrot, a Café and a Brasserie but we would put it in the latter category. The food is excellent but the atmosphere is a little too quickie/bar like for our tastes. We have eaten there several times and enjoyed the food and the atmosphere in the front room. The back dining room is not someplace I would want to eat – it lacks character and like most backrooms in Seattle restaurants just doesn’t feel good. An especially nice feature is that this restaurant is open early for breakfast in the French style!

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best Northern Italian – Café Juanita

Restaurant Name: Cafe Juanita
Location: Seattle Wa

Holly Smith, James Beard Best Chef in the NW for 2008, is an amazing chef. Café Juanita is a transporting experience in Northern Italian fine dining. When I got to choose where to hold my retirement dinner celebration Café Juanita was my first choice. Their treatment of Rabbit is the best I have ever had. Rabbit is a meat that really requires different cooking techniques for different parts of the animal – and Café Juanita does this perfectly – a 3 way treatment that brings out the best of each part. The pasta’s and risotto are wonderful – in fact having eaten here 6 times I can’t think of anything on the menu that isn’t awesome. The place and crowd are both kind of quiet so not as festive as I would prefer. One kind of odd thing – I think based on the restaurant name and outside looks - is that many times we have been there when it is obvious some party at another table is uncomfortably figuring out when they get the menu that this isn’t a mid priced neighborhood Café – it is a high end and high priced gourmet restaurant.

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best French Bistro – Cremant

Restaurant Name: Cremant
Restaurant Location: Seattle Wa

Cremant in Madison Park is by far the best French bistro in Seattle – and also compares well to the best in Paris as the Foodie Family can attest. What make it the best is that Scott Emerick and his staff LIVE French Bistro. Scott is a veteran of many of the best restaurants in both Paris and Seattle. Cremant is named for the real champagne method excellent sparkling wines NOT grown in the Champagne region and it is a bubbly, noisy, happy place so matches its name well. The menu at Cremant, unlike most of the “bistros” in Seattle offers the full range of classic French Bistro food – all made from scratch in house. Their Charcouterie offerings are amazing. Their French bistro salads perfect – if a little large. Their entrees and plats are the classics done perfectly. Their FRITES are CONSISTENTLY PERFECT – an almost impossible feat that no other restaurant in Seattle can accomplish. The reason for this is that they make them every time as if it was IMPORTANT – most places first fail in their fryers! Boredom and complacency will show and it never appears at Cremant. It’s a good bar, a great Chocolate Cognac dessert, and a fun evening. Even though the location is inconvenient, especially for us on Vashon Island, it is my “go to place” anytime I want to eat a dinner of Bistro food out. Runner up is Café Champagne check their listing for our blog reviews.

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Best Eclectic – Joule

Joule is a great little restaurant where you can sit at the counter, if you like, and watch two great young chefs do their thing. It is French/Korean beautiful, creative, and unique. These young folks were semi-finalists for 2 NATIONAL James Beard awards in 2008 – Best New Chefs, and Best New Restaurants. That they didn’t win says more about Michael Richard (Best New Restaurant Winner) than it does against them. Try this restaurant if you are a bit adventurous and especially if you like watching great chefs work up close.

Best of Seattle Restaurants – 2008 – Rover’s Tops in 5 categories

Restaurant: Rovers
Location: Seattle Wa.

We have selected Rover’s as top’s in 5 categories – Top New French, Top Vegetarian, and Top Tasting Menu, Top Gourmet Lunch. Tied for Top Food
Thierry Rautureau – Master Chef, James Beard Award Winner, Mobil Travel Guide 4 start winner, Zagat 28 Food Rating, Open Table best in several categories… I could go on. This is a mature chef with a mature restaurant that never fails to deliver. The foodie Family eats here several times a year for Friday Lunch, Specially priced periodic 3 and 4 course dinners (a nice one going on in November for $45), Christmas Season Family gatherings, and to celebrate special events with friends. It is close as you are going to get to being at those great gourmet restaurants in France without leaving Seattle.
Top New French: Rover’s is literally a National Treasure in Seattle – People from around the country and around the world eat at Rover’s when they are in town. It has a reputation in the culinary world that insures a constant supply of eager, talented externs, and staff of all types. The ambiance, food, presentation, service, wine, and hospitality at this Madison landmark are consistently on a par with any 2 Michelin star restaurants in France – and that is a big compliment.
Top Tasting Menu: Rover’s offers several versions of their tasting menu – the 8 course Grand Menu Degustation for $130, the 5 course Menu for $95, or the 5 course Vegetarian menu Degustation for $80. Each of these also includes 3 additional mini courses of an Amuse-Bouche, a sorbet and Mignardises. You can also order ala carte or substitute items on the evenings tasting menus. The serving sizes are proportioned to offer just the right amount of food to truly savor each taste and flavor while not leaving stuffed. Wine parings for each menu are available, or you can order from a wonderful wine list with many very affordable choices by the glass, half bottle, or bottle given the high end nature of the menu. Runners up are Chez Shea, and Crush.
Top Vegetarian: Our vegetarian friends are always asking the Foodie Family where to find the best gourmet Vegetarian Restaurant. Look no further, Rovers vegetarian Menu is so good all of the carnivorous Foodie Family members have a hard time resisting it. If it wasn’t for my love of Foie Gras I might be a convert. Runner up Preets
Top Gourmet Lunch: On Fridays Only Rovers is open for Lunch. They have a 3 course menu for $35 and portion sizes that make it a very nice, satisfying gourmet experience. Consider also a nice glass of wine and perhaps a cheese course. One of the true pleasures of life that we learned in France is the leisurely high end, tasting menu Lunch. At a restaurant of Rover’s caliber in France this lunch would cost lot’s more than the $35 rover’s charges. Also you can order off the menu most of the items available in the evening and keep the price for 4 courses under $40 pretty easily. Of course with drink, taxes and tip this is a $50 lunch each at least. Runner up (nice but not gourmet) is Dahlia Lounge.
Top Food: Rovers tied with 3 other outstanding restaurants for Top Food. Why? Well, each of these restaurants meets the following criteria: consistent excellence in food, Top in a Fine Dining Category, and run by Chef/Owners who are in the Kitchen. We recently had the opportunity to eat at Thomas Keller’s per se in NYC, one of the top restaurants in the world, and the food was exquisite. While Rover’s range of offerings is smaller the food quality and presentation are just as good – that is about the highest compliment we can give a restaurant. Our other 3 winners in this category are Crush, Café Juanita, and Lark – all James Beard winners or finalists by the way.