In keeping with my New Year’s resolution to try some new restaurants, Robert and I decided to venture out to a little place called Green Leaf. Green Leaf is a Vietnamese restaurant located in the International District. It opened for business just over a year ago and has been getting rave reviews ever since, many hailing it as the best Vietnamese food in Seattle. Mario Batali has already been there even. Needless to say, I was dying to try it. We went with our friend Jason who has been there several times and was able to provide firsthand confirmation of its yumminess.

The restaurant is tiny. It probably only has about 10 tables but, despite its small size, it doesn’t feel cramped at all. I’ve heard that it can get pretty busy, so we decided to go early to avoid the rush. Unlike many of its neighboring restaurants, Green Leaf has quite a bit of ambiance. Bamboo walls, attractive wooden chairs and dim lighting make for a very warm, comfortable atmosphere.

Upon arriving at our table, we were immediately served with menus and big mugs of hot tea. The menu at Green Leaf is a little daunting, especially if you are not familiar with Vietnamese food. There is a lot to choose from. It is somewhat heavy on the meat, but there were several delicious-sounding vegetarian options. They also have a really interesting selection of beverages including egg soda, pickle plum soda and kumquat soda. I stuck with a more mainstream tamarind soda. It was good but a little sweet for my taste.

I had heard wonderful things about the Banh Xeo so I ordered that to share. Banh Xeo is a crispy rice flour and coconut milk pancake filled with bean sprouts and your choice of tofu or pork and shrimp. Accompanying the Banh Xeo is a large plate of lettuce, cilantro and basil. You are meant to wrap pieces of the Banh Xeo with some of the fresh herbs in the lettuce leaves and then dip all of that into a nuoc cham dipping sauce. It was messy but delicious and fun.

Jason ordered a couple of his favorite appetizers: Grilled Beef with “Lop” Leaf and the very unusual Escargot and Pork, which looked essentially like an escargot and pork meatloaf skewered on a piece of lemongrass. Robert decided to play it safe by ordering the Rice Vermicelli with Grilled Pork. For my dinner, I chose the House Special Noodle Soup which was described as a rice noodle soup with shrimp, squid, fish balls, BBQ pork and wontons. I honestly had no idea what to expect so it was quite a thrill when I was served the biggest bowl of soup I had ever before seen. I’ve been out for pho many times and it is always served in oversized bowls but never like this. This was…a trough. But, it was a trough filled with delicious piping hot noodles, seafood and broth. I was also provided with a plate of bean sprouts, sliced jalapeños, herbs and lime wedges for seasoning my soup. It was really yummy but, not surprisingly, I was only able to get about halfway through before I was stuffed full.

One of my favorite things about Vietnamese food is the abundance of fresh herbs and Green Leaf doesn’t disappoint in this area. Plenty of greenery with no wilting in sight. I can see why they have built up such a good reputation. Not only is the food fresh and tasty, but the prices are reasonable and the staff is friendly and helpful. Sure enough, as we were leaving, there was crowd waiting at the door for a table. Green Leaf is located at 418 8th Ave S.

Chardonnay. Lots of people love it. Grocery store shelves are jam packed with it. It’s on virtually every restaurant wine list, even the most lacking. And yet, I have never managed to find a Chardonnay that I am crazy about. But, then again, I’m not a big fan of oak, a flavor predominant in most Chardonnays. A little bit of oak fine, even good in some cases, but I typically prefer less woody whites such as Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. If you’re like me, and don’t enjoy the flavor of oak, then you too probably find yourself staying away from Chardonnay. This doesn’t have to be the case, however. If you are interested in experimenting with Chardonnay, but fear the oak, you have several options. You can always opt for the classic low-oak Chardonnay: White Burgundy. Or, you can test your patience by sorting through all of the California Chardonnays looking for the few that advertise low-oak on their labels. My best recommendation, though, is to seek out Chardonnays from New Zealand and Australia where wine makers favor stainless steel fermentation over oak fermentation resulting in no-oak wines.

This brings us to my wine selection for the week: Kim Crawford 2005 Unoaked Chardonnay. Kim Crawford is one of New Zealand’s most well-known wine makers and this specific wine is a prime example of the unoaked Chardonnays that New Zealand wineries are famous for producing. It’s a very tasty wine. It is noticeably full-bodied, as a good Chardonnay should be. Most of the reviews online describe the wine as tasting of apples with some citrus and tropical fruit flavors. It has some other flavor in there that I, as usual, can’t pin down. It could be the “butterscotch of malolactic fermentation” as it says on the label. Or, it could just be the chardonnay grape itself which I’ve never tasted without oak.

For my winesday meal, I made crab cakes and served them with a butternut squash, potato and parsnip hash and a spinach salad with pear and roasted beets. The wine paired really well with the richness of the crab and the sweetness of the squash. As a side note, I used Trader Joe’s panko (Japanese style breadcrumbs) to coat the outside of my crab cakes. I’ve used other brands of panko before, and they work just fine, but the Trader Joe’s panko is amazing. It is super crisp; each crumb is like a little shard of glass. It makes an excellent crust. I pan-fried my crab cakes in only a couple of tablespoons of oil and they came out so crispy, you would have sworn they were deep-fried.

Finally, a beautiful, sunny day in Seattle! Robert and I decided to make the most of this great day by going on a little adventure. Our destination: Coupeville, WA. Coupeville is a tiny town on Whidbey Island. It is known for having one of the more famous glacial erratics around (for the less geologically-inclined, a glacial erratic is an enormous boulder plopped right in middle of nowhere by, you guessed it, a glacier, in this case, the Vashon glacier during the last ice age.) But, Coupeville is probably even more famous for it’s location. This tiny seaside town is situated right on the shores of Penn Cove, home of arguably the best mussels in the country, if not the world. And it is right there in Coupeville that you will find the reason for our day trip, a little restaurant called Toby’s Tavern.

Fancy chefs from all over the world may seek out Penn Cove mussels and turn them into fancy, expensive meals, but nobody does mussels better than Toby’s. Tobys’ mussels are the best. Period. Ironically, these were also the first mussels I ever ate. Eight years ago, Robert and I were passing through Coupeville on a weekend trip to the San Juan islands and decided to stop at Toby’s. I wasn’t too sure I would like mussels. After years of vegetarianism, I had only just begun to add seafood back into my diet and was still squeamish about the idea of shellfish. But, they were amazing and I was hooked from that point on. The only problem was, every time I went out for mussels after that, the mussels were never as good. Robert and I finally decided that we had to return to see if it was just our imagination or if Toby’s really did have the best mussels.

At first glance, Toby’s looks like your typical dive. Although the view of Penn Cove outside is great, inside you are faced with walls covered with giant stuffed animal heads, dozens of baseball hats and other random junk. But, don’t let that scare you off. The waitresses are friendly and the patrons are an easygoing mix of locals and tourists.

I am happy to report that the mussels were perfect, just as I remembered. Tobys’ mussels come in two sizes: one pound and two pounds. One pound is good for two people (although I’m pretty sure I could polish off an entire pound myself.) The cooking broth is extremely simple. It is garlicky but more so in aroma than flavor. A small amount of onion adds sweetness. Mostly, the broth has just a nice clean mussel flavor. The mussels themselves are meaty but very small, not like those gross gigantic ones they usually sell in stores. Most importantly, they are completely fresh tasting. There is something so great about eating seafood and being able to look out the window and see exactly where it came from.

We also had an order of fish and chips, but it was nothing special. Toby’s has other standards such as burgers and a variety of fried appetizers. Their special of the day was mussel chowder which sounded good. Also, in addition to a decent selection of microbrews, they have their own beer, Toby’s Red Parrot Ale.

If you ever find yourself on Whidbey Island, I highly recommend Toby’s. Make a day of it like we did. Head to Toby’s for lunch and then wander around Fort Casey State Park or take a hike through Ebey’s Landing.

Click here to see more photos from our trip»

This week’s winesday focused on a wine from the Rioja region of Spain: Marques de Caceres 2003 Rioja Red. I was inspired by Tim Elliot of Winecast’s prediction that the tempranillo grape will be the next big thing in 2007. Winecast is a really great blog+podcast if you, like me, are interested in wine but prefer not to dwell on the details of soil types, non-recent vintages, business practices, etc. Tim Elliot keeps his podcasts and blog entries brief but highly informative. Plus, he’s a little bit geeky so maybe that’s why I like him. My two favorite predictions of his for 2007 are that the alcohol content in wines would start to go back down to reasonable levels, thereby making the wines more food friendly, and, as I already mentioned, that wines made from the tempranillo grape (along with riesling) would emerge as the new hot sellers.

The wine I chose for this week isn’t actually 100% tempranillo; it contains a bit of garnacha and graciano in it as well. It was delicious! It had all of the good qualities of red wine (spicy, rich berry flavor) with none of the bad (sour, overly tannic.) It was very well balanced and smooth.

For my meal, I made a pizza topped with roasted red and yellow peppers, kalamata olives and fennel soysage. After watching Tony Bourdain visit Apizza Scholls last Monday on No Reservations, I just had to have pizza this week. Man, that looked good! Yet another reason to visit Portland, I guess.

Well, between this week’s great wine and the delicious wine we had on New Year’s Eve, Tim Elliot may be correct after all. Tempranillo wines may really be the next big thing. They certainly are in my household!

I had the holiday off today but, unfortunately, Robert did not. He had to brave the freezing temperatures and ice on his own this morning, poor thing. Usually, when I have the apartment to myself for the day, I like to make something extra special for dinner. The kind of meal that creates a huge mess and takes way more time to make than I would be willing to spend on a weeknight.

Today, I decided to make a second recipe from Cracking the Coconut: Keang Pet Daeng (Spicy Red Curry Paste.) For this recipe, you need a bunch of ingredients including, among other things, red chilies, shrimp paste, galangal, lemongrass and coriander seeds. According to the recipe, you are supposed to pound the ingredients one at a time in a large mortar and pestle. I only have a small mortar and pestle so I pounded some of the softer ingredients, such as garlic and shallots, in that and then used my mini food processor for the rest. I figured there was no way that I was going to be able to puree dried red chilies or lemongrass using my mortar and pestle. I don’t have that much strength or stamina. So, my curry may not have had the “complex” flavor of a paste that has been pounded forever but I’m OK with that.

Once the paste was done, the rest of the meal was pretty simple. I simmered baby eggplants, kabocha squash, fresh bamboo shoots and tofu in the curry paste and coconut milk until done. Then I added some kaffir lime leaves and a ton of thai basil at the end. I served it over steamed jasmine rice with stir-fried greens on the side. It was pretty darn good and rivals Robert’s green chili stew from last night as the spiciest dish of the month. However, I’m not sure I will make it again. It was a lot of work and, considering that there are good commercial chili pastes out there and that I live within arm’s reach of about 10 different Thai restaurants, it’s probably not really worth my time. It was a fun experiment, though.

Side note: The tofu that I used in this recipe was from Thanh Son Tofu right down the street from me on 12th! I picked it up at Uwajimaya. It was really good. Nice and firm and it didn’t have a trace of that sour flavor that some commercial tofu has. It pays to buy locally!

Hey everybody. This is just a heads up that this coming Monday’s episode of No Reservations, chef Tony Bourdain’s irreverent food and travel show, will cover the Pacific Northwest. I hear that, in this episode, he will be traveling around with Fight Club author and Northwest native, Chuck Palahniuk, who will explain to Tony why all the wierdos gravitate toward our corner of the country. I’ve always wondered why!  I’m excited to see Tony’s take on my city. No Reservations airs Monday at 10:00 on the Travel Channel.

This got Robert and me thinking, where would we take Tony Bourdain if we were in charge of his show? I heard that someone took him out for nachos a couple of years ago at my old stomping ground, the College Inn pub. I’m not sure that would have been my first choice but, hey, Tony’s not a snob so he probably enjoyed it. They do have great nachos. Robert says he’d like to take him to Jack’s in Pike Place Market for some cioppino and also to the fish vendors where people who are serious about their seafood shop (hint: places that do not partake in fish-throwing activities.) I would take him to someplace in the International District like Shanghai Garden where they are doing really interesting and different things with Asian food. Hand-shaved green barley noodles anyone? I would probably also hook him up with Tom Douglas who could show him where the city’s chefs like to dine. Oh, and he would have to visit Salumi if only to give Mario Batali’s dad a hard time. Where would you take chef Tony if he were to visit your city?

My New Year’s resolution for 2007 was to make the effort to try some new restaurants. If I’m going to keep this blog interesting, I can’t exactly keep going to the same five restaurants over and over again. I haven’t been doing too well with my goal, though, so I have since amended it to include, not only restaurants that I have never been to, but also restaurants that I have only been to once or twice. Either way, the goal is to break out of the routine.

Since I nearly broke my back Thursday morning slipping on some black ice outside my apartment building, I didn’t feel like walking too far for dinner tonight. Robert and I decided to go up the street to Karam’s Lebanese Cuisine. If you live in Seattle, you may be already familiar with Karam’s from the food stalls at various street fairs. They are the ones with the big banner that reads “There is no such thing as too much sex or garlic.” Their famous garlic sauce is sold in many supermarkets here too. We have only been Karam’s once before even though it’s very close to us. The restaurant has very little atmosphere but I love that the owner, Anis Karam, greets you at the door, takes your order, fills up your drinks and then heads back into the kitchen to start making your meal.

For his dinner, Robert chose the lamb kabob and a Lebanese beer, Almaza. They were out of the bulgur and nut stuffed pumpkin, my first choice, so I ordered the char-grilled salmon and a Lebanese wine, La Dame Blanche du Chateaux Kefraya. The wine was very exotic. I’m pretty terrible at discerning flavors in wine so I’m not sure what made this wine so interesting. Almond? Honey? Even mint, perhaps? Maybe I just think that because those are common Lebanese ingredients. I don’t know. The salmon was tender and had a perfect amount of char as did Robert’s lamb. Both entrees were served over rice and smothered in super-garlic sauce. Also, they both came with pita, hummus and a salad. There was an unfamiliar red spice on everything. I told Robert that, if I had to guess, I thought it was sumac. I’ve never had sumac before but I’ve heard of it. Then, we asked the owner what it was and he said “It’s sumac, a Lebanese spice.” Yes!

It has just been one storm after another here in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Cold. Wind. Torrential rain. My upcoming trip to sunny Costa Rica can’t come soon enough. As the wind rattles the windows and the rain pours down, my thoughts keep drifting to my last sunny vacation: Greece. In that vein, I decided to choose a Greek wine for this week’s winesday. I chose 2005 Kouros White. This wine comes from the Patras region of the Pelopponnese peninsula and is made from the indigenous rhoditis grape. There are actually over 300 native varietals in Greece. Bottom line: never buy a merlot or chardonnay from Greece. This wine was pretty good. It had flavors of pear and was very crisp. A good food wine, for sure.

For my dinner, I made Lingcod in Grape Leaves with Pine Nut-Fig Butter from Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen cookbook. The fish market hadn’t had lingcod in for about month so they gave me some actual cod instead (even though I think lingcod is more similar to halibut but, since they didn’t have halibut either, it doesn’t really matter much.) Also, there weren’t any good dried figs at my store so I used dates instead. For this recipe, you mix pine nuts, figs (or dates), thyme, and lemon zest with butter and then spread this over the pieces of fish. Then, the fish are wrapped in grape leaves and cooked in the oven in a white wine and shallot broth. I served it over couscous with lemon, mint and parsley. It was a delicious meal and went very well with the wine. It was almost good enough to transport me, briefly, past the snow on the ground to a warmer place.

Last week, when I was exploring my new favorite wine store, European Vine Selections, I picked up a bottle of 2004 Pelerin Roero Arneis. Roero Arneis is a white wine that hails from the Piedmont region of Italy. It also has the distinction of being the first white wine that Robert ever enjoyed. A few years ago, Robert was in New York for the Macworld conference and, while he was there, he happened upon a tiny, speakeasy-style bar called Single Room Occupancy. The ladies behind the bar were really excited about this new wine they had gotten in, Cascina Chicco Roero Arneis, and they convinced him to try it even though he didn’t like white wine. Well, he ended up liking it a lot so we started looking for Roero Arneis whenever we were shopping for wine. Robert has since gone on to try and like many other whites but, whenever we see a bottle of Roero Arneis, we usually pick it up for sentimental reasons.

I’ve heard Roero Arneis described as “light, delicate and perfumy” and, conversely, as “robust; a red wine disguised as a white wine.” I think the Pelerin Roero Arneis probably falls more toward the robust side but, sadly, it was a bit oxidized. It tasted a bit more like sherry than wine which usually indicates oxidation. Oh well. It’s bound to happen every once in a while.

Although Roero Arneis is not a very well-known wine, the Piedmont region is home to some of Italy’s most famous wines including Barolo and Barbaresco. The Piedmont is also known for having some of the best cuisine in Italy. This is, after all, where the slow food movement started. Influenced more by neighboring France than Southern Italy, the Piedmontese prefer butter and cream over olive oil. Rice and polenta are favored instead pasta dishes here. Piedmont is also home to the famous white truffle.

For my winesday meal, I decided to focus on the foods of Piedmont. In keeping with the Piedmontese preference for rice dishes, I made Risotto con Finocchio (Fennel Risotto.) I also made a vegetable dish inspired by a very famous recipe from this region, Bagna Cauda. Bagna Cauda is a mixture of olive oil, butter, anchovy, and garlic that, as with fondue, is kept warm over a low flame. Italians dip bread cubes and raw vegetables into it. I, instead, drizzed it over lightly steamed vegetables. I also made Grissini which are very long, thin breadsticks. Grissini originated in Torino, Italy but are found virtually everywhere in Northern Italy. They were very fun to make. My baking stone wasn’t quite large enough, though, so I had to twist some of my Grissini into wild, curvy shapes in order to get them to fit!

I hope you all had a happy and safe New Year’s Eve. Robert and I don’t like to venture out too far on New Year’s Eve; there are way too many crazies out and about for that. We do usually like to go out for a nice meal, though. This year we decided to go to Tango, down on Pike and Boren, for some tapas. It’s close to home and we have been there several times before so it’s nice and familiar.

We started with a bottle of 2001 Finca Valpiedra Reserva. I tend to get overwhelmed by wine lists so I decided to prepare myself with a little bit of advance research. I read up about Rioja wines in my wine book and learned that 2001 was a really good year for this region. That helped narrow things down considerably.  I settled on the Valpiedra wine because of the year and also because the description on the menu sounded intriguing: “rich, voluptuous, intense and spicy with complex silky stone fruit and a sherried finish.” It was so good! I could tell that it was a much better wine than I am used to drinking. The flavors were much more balanced and long-lasting. It felt like it was coating the inside of my mouth, but not with strong tannins, just with really good flavor. It may have been a little heavy for the food we were having, but I figured, with tapas, there are too many flavors happening to worry too much about matching wine.

For our dinner we ordered the following: a couple of “Cheap Dates” (bacon wrapped dates with grilled eggplant), Pan-roasted Green Beans with Harissa, Tequila and Vanilla Cured Salmon, Queso Azul (Valdeon blue cheese souffles with seasonal fruit compote), Croquetas de Papas (fried potato-horseradish balls with smoked tomato jam), and Gambas Picantes (chipotle tiger prawns with a corn and coconut galleta and pumpkin seed pipian sauce.) No one dish in particular stood out as spectacular but they were all really good and, together, added up to an excellent dinner. OK, so maybe the deep-fried potato balls were spectacular but, come on, deep-fried potatoes? That’s like cheating. Of course that’s going to be good. We finished with coffee and Tango’s famous El Diablo. People rave about this dessert online so we had to try it. The El Diablo is a very striking cube of bittersweet chocolate mousse dusted with cocoa and cayenne and served with a tequila caramel sauce and spicy almonds. It was very spicy.  Yum!

The walk home was pleasant.  We only passed a few crazies and they were the mild, entertaining kind not the true freaks (they come out later.) I was way too full of food and wine to bother with the prosecco that I had bought so I just poured a big glass of water and watched the space needle fireworks on TV. I know that sounds really lame, especially since we could have walked a couple of blocks down the street to watch the fireworks in person. But, it was freezing outside! Happy 2007!