What's in this Issue:
Welcome to our Tom Douglas Restaurants Fall Newsletter. If you prefer to receive this newsletter only by email in the future, please e mail
office@tomdouglas.com and let her know. Thanks.
From Tom –
The other night, when thinking about where to go for dinner, the new spots on my "must try next" list started scrolling through my head. On that particular evening, at that particular moment, nothing was hitting the mark. It occurred to me that what I was really craving was slow roasted pork with caraway sauerkraut, creamed spinach and sweet carrots dripping with a dark, silky gravy. It also occurred to me that Labuznik, the now-closed home of the aforementioned dish, was but one of the restaurants that are no longer with us, and that I truly miss. If the Dahlia were to close tomorrow, I have a pretty good idea that there would be particular dishes like coconut cream pie, or crab cakes, or potstickers that many of you would miss like I miss that pork.
At the old 1904 Restaurant, Jackie and I used to gaze into each other's eyes over the chicken liver and mushroom pate served with their homemade sesame baguette. I still miss that dish. Who out there remembers the roasted duck with Calvados sauce and floating island meringues at Le Tastevin? Or the thick slab of slow roasted prime rib at the opulent Golden Lion in the Olympic Hotel. Still to this day, when you order prime rib from certain meat purveyors in town, it's called the Golden Lion cut.
Bruce Naftly (now the chef/owner of Le Gourmand in Ballard) and Robert Rosellini blew me away at The Other Place with my first taste ever of sable fish, or black cod. I distinctly remember my 21st birthday dinner at Gerard's Relais de Lyon in Bothell, tasting Gerard's pastry crusted onion soup derived from his work with Paul Bocuse. A couple of menu items that we still serve today were inspired by my 25th birthday party at Mikado, where for the first time I tried kasu paste, and steaming cups filled with King crab, egg and mushrooms. The eighth course of that fourteen course dinner never made it on our menu; chilled salmon snout, julienned into matchsticks and tossed with mayonnaise and sesame seeds. Oooh, that was crunchy.
There are many places that were not food meccas, but were perfect places to hang out and have a cheap cup of coffee and a slice of pie, or a gut grinding plate of fried eggs, hashbrowns and Wonder Bread toast. Today's mid town is desperately missing those joints; places like the Green Onion, the Copper Kettle, the Red Carpet, and my favorite, Tommy's Hot Lunch which was located where the new Dahlia is today.
So where did I end up for dinner? Bavarian Meats, where I picked up an 8 lb. pork roast, a big pile of sauerkraut and went home to cook for my own damn self.
I would love to hear about what places you miss the most... drop me an email at tom@tomdouglas.com
Please join us in raising a glass of cheer to celebrate the release of our seven-years-in-the-making cookbook Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen (William Morrow/Harper Collins). I'll buy the glass of wine, you buy the book - Tuesday, November 28th from 5:00 PM to 6:30PM at the Dahlia Lounge One of the great pleasures in writing this book was remembering all of the people and places that inspired each recipe. To all of you, I am most grateful.
Here's to a beautiful fall - Tom and Jackie
