Yesterday I had to take my Murano down to Burlington for an oil change, and from where I live once one's gone that far it makes perfect sense to keep going and spend the day in Seattle.
First stop was Pike's Place Market. I decided to spend the whole two hours my parking place in front of Pike & Western Wine Shop would be good for, but then the credit card slot on the meter was jammed so all I could buy with the change I had on me was 42 minutes. I decided to settle for that and headed for the great Italian deli and nearby seafood shop that are there, diving into the heavenly smelling Piroshky shop where they sell every combination of meat and vegetable filling you can imagine, each in it's own uniquely shaped pocket of crust. I chose sauerkraut and carrot, but was disappointed when it turned out the carrot should have been listed first. The intense, sour character I was looking for just wasn't there. I ate the middle and threw the rest away.
At the next block, I spied a Sur La Table a few doors up, and decided to go there. Parchment was on my shopping list, and they'd have it. This didn't look like the only other Sur La Table I know, the one I used to go to in tony Newport Beach, California. This did not have that sterile, foo-foo, chain-store, cooking-stuff-for-trophy-wives feel I remember. Far from it, it had that been-there-forever, almost-imploding indie look--all kinds of esoteric, you've-never-seen-it-anywhere-else cooking stuff crammed floor to ceiling, spilling out of corners, no inch wasted. It wasn't planned, it just grew.
Like, there was a whole corner full of stuff for pastry. I'm not a baker, but the shelf of pastry bags was mesmerizing. I didn't know there were that many different tips.
I instantly bonded with a small springform bundt pan I could imagine making beautiful summer aspic salads in and several other molds, including this old French tall rectangular mold that you have to build: it has a bottom, two hinged side pieces that would press chevrons into your pate, and two key-pegs that secure the sides together. It was a springform pan of sorts, I guess, pre-clasp. They only had one and it was, horrors, $79, but everything else was at least $30 and it was an obvious replica of something centuries old and unlike anything I've ever seen before, and I just had to have it. And because I have it I'll think of things to make that wouldn't have been possible without such a piece in my armory. In the world of garde manger, sometimes you DO have to put the cart before the horse.
When I checked out, I asked if by any chance this was the original Sur La Table. Indeed it was! Well, at another location across the street it was, but yes, this store was the original. I had no previous knowledge of it being a Washington operation, but looking around me--it just had to be. What a great store.
And there went 40 of my 42 minutes, so I shot back over to Pike & Western wine shop to pick up the Woodward Canyon Dolcettos they'd set aside for me last week (for our neighborhood wine tasting Friday night), and then I headed south from downtown to Garagiste to pick up a few things I'd ordered over the last few months.
Those of you who have never been to this legendary wine retailer, but who know of it, would not believe the way this place looks from the street. It's in this old industrial area by the railroad tracks in an incomplete-looking warehouse building where Tyvek sheeting and 2 x 4's face the road--and have for the three years I've been familiar with it. There's no sign of an office. There's just, if you know where to look and if you don't you won't see it, a door that doesn't even look permanent. Once inside, if you know where to look there's another door, and inside that is the real Garagiste, the original unfinished warehouse space with one side room into which Jon and Niki are tucked when they're there, and boxes of wine ten feet high as far as you can see. The extent to which their operations have expanded is obvious because the outer area is now air conditioned and as chock-full of wine boxes as the inner area. I picked up my two boxes and was on my way in minutes.
From there, I was on my way north to the neighborhood of Shoreline, a neighborhood north of Seattle but south of Everett and east of Edmunds where a big rambling supermarket called Central Market is located amid the mist and the particularly tall and dense trees of this area. This is Washington state as most people picture it, the snow-falling-from-cedars look. Though now independent, this market (and two others like it in this state) was built by the HEB people who still own and operate stores by the same name in Texas where this forum's own Robert J. works. Notably, it has the most amazing produce, meat and seafood sections of any store around. They have EVERYTHING. None will be as pretty on average as the magazine-cover perfect food you will find for the hoitie toities over at Whole Foods Market in Bellevue, but they'll be ethnically further-ranging, cost far less and probably taste twice as good.
There I bought fresh wild gulf shrimp, fresh sea scallops, and fresh ahi out of which I made a cold dinner (with our last bottle of 99 St. Innocent bubbly, we had seared scallops with ponzu sauce, ahi sashimi w/sesame and green onion dressing, and boiled shrimp) when I got home. I also bought bunches of fresh mizuna and fresh chrysanthemum leaves, fresh turmeric root, several bundles of gailan, flowering bok choy buds, rainbow red kale, golden chives, 5 lbs of green tomatoes to ripen, and 20 lbs of heirloom tomatoes, all things I'm unlikely to find here at home.
From the deli counter I bought a three-foot long skinny whole handmade salami from one of California's artisan producers and a pound of Jamon Serano, a treat I can't get at home and can never pass up when I visit this store. The people working the deli counter were middle aged men in the kind of white lab coats butchers wear. I had two of them taking care of my order, since there were no other customers. "Say," said Salami Man to the other, "why don't we give her 10% off?" "I think that's a great idea," said the other, "after all, she bought the whole salami." They started deducting. "There, we support you," said one, handing me my meat with a proud look. I guess I had that wary, what's going on here, look on my face. "Your shirt," the other one offered.
I looked down and read my shirt for the first time. I bought it at a local fishing supply store last week because it was a good color of pale green, had one of those hand warmer pouches, and was on sale. I paid zero attention to the print. It had a fish on it, that was all I'd noticed. But reading it now, their comments--and some comments made earlier at the Pike & Western wine shop--made sense. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HOOKER.
And from the dry goods areas, whose ethnic aisles are almost stand-alone well-stocked Mexican and Asian stores unto themselves, I stocked up on panko, sushi rice, handmade corn tortillas and Vietnamese Sriricha red chile sauce, which up here in funky-but-white-bread Bellingham I have only found once, and that was inexplicably at a Walgreen's Pharmacy. Lightning like that doesn't strike twice.
Two more wine stops for the rest of the goods needed for Friday night's wine tasting, and ten hours, 250 miles, and $1152 later, I arrived back home.
I love days like that.
