Traveling Feast

Chef Anna Vogel is offering $25 Prix Fixe Dinners on the Luna Daily Fresh Sheet inspired by the communal dinners she remembers from childhood that were served each night during the grape harvest.  “Grape Picker Dinners” they are called and come with a choice of two small plates, an entree, and two options for dessert.

I stopped by Tuesday night to try the dinner along with the Vin du Jour that is offered alongside the Prix Fixe for $5 a glass.  Both the dinner and the wine were a delight.  I started with the Organic Roasted Beet Salad featuring greens from the restaurant garden fifty feet from the side door, and finished with a simple vanilla bean ice cream served in a martini glass and topped with grappa macerated concord grapes.  Yet on the food front it will be Vogel’s “Pork Ragu” that I’ll be dreaming about for a while.  She braises the pork in tomatoes and fennel along with plenty of bacon and serves the pork and the rich sauce over creamy parmesan polenta.  Think high caliber comfort food.

But the other star of the evening arrived in a glass: an 2007 Cotes du Rhone from Le Pas Du Meunier.

The menu noted that this particular Cotes du Rhone was only available with the Prix Fixe dinner, and I’d say it is worth ordering the dinner just to get the wine.  Of course the huge bonus is the great food, but the wine itself was quite satisfying even before the food arrive.  Drinking it felt like sipping the best of autumn in a glass.

I’m not a rabid reality show fan.  In fact, most of the reality show phenomenon makes me groan and remember why I like books.  More thought.  No need to BLEEP every third word.  Characters I actually like.

That said, I have watched a fair amount of Top Chef.  For one we actual got Bravo with our minimum cable package until the world went HD.  Two, I am somewhat obsessed with food.  Hell’s Kitchen strikes me as idiotic… an excuse for the notoriously short-tempered Gordon Ramsey to scream and humiliate aspiring chefs.  But Top Chef takes a somewhat less brutal approach and can be entertaining to watch.

This season of Top Chef, which aired its first episode tonight, is filmed in Las Vegas and features two Seattle chefs, Ashley Merriman and Robin Leventhal.  Score two for the Northwest.  Yet the way I heard about the new season line-up was in a email from Kevin Gillespie, the executive chef at the Woodfire Grill in Atlanta.

I met Kevin during his brief stint here in Spokane.  He came to town to take the helm at Luna only to have that position not work out… quite definitively.  Then while deciding on his next big move (back to Atlanta) he logged some kitchen time at Bin 98 Twenty up on north Nevada.

We met at Quillisascut Farm in February of 2008 during a weekend when local chefs gathered to talk about developing a sustainable local food system.

He and his wife later helped out on a restaurant review locally before they moved back home to Atlanta.  I hadn’t heard from him until about a month ago when he sent me a note about his upcoming Top Chef appearance.

So tonight we headed over to friends who still get Bravo to watch episode one.  It will air again next Wednesday night so I’ll not give a blow by blow, but let me say this much: Gillespie gets some significant air time and puts it to good use.

The Wall Street rollercoaster and bleak job numbers have me worrying about how well my favorite restaurants will fare over the coming months.  In the best of times, even good restaurants can struggle for a number of reasons; and in a season when the economy in constricting, I’m starting to triage my dining budget.

Rather than spend increasingly precious dining dollars exploring new spots, I think I may need to focus on the places I am certain I want to see in business ten years from now.  I call this my ‘recession restaurant list’ and for the sake of simplicity I’m going to say that such a list can’t include more than ten places.

Here are the first four in my completely subjective list for Spokane (not in any specific order):

• China Garden on the South Hill across from Shopko on Regal.  Chef Raymond consistently serves up quality Chinese with a Hong Kong twist, house-made sauces with no MSG, and crisp vegetables. Cashew Chicken.  Braised Tofu.  Honey Walnut Prawns.  Chow Mein with Hong Kong Style Noodles.
• Moxie in the heart of downtown on the north side of the Davenport.  Ian Wingate is one of my favorite chefs in town and Moxie’s Asian/European menu is solid from top to bottom.  My favorite Hot Turkey Sandwich on the planet is on the lunch menu.  The Poké is wonderful and a full list of my favorite would basically be listing most of the menu.
• Luna on the back of the South Hill at the top of Hatch Road.  Chef Anna Vogel loves her ingredients and that delight has brought the spark back to this 15-year pioneer in the upscale bistro market.  The space is also a gift – warm and inviting.  Lunch.  Brunch.  Weekday coffee and savory pastries.  Dinner.  And a massive cellar that show William Bond’s passion for vino.
• Tacos Tumbras Taco Trucks.  The sit-down location on Sprague is just fine, but for a real taco that promised to transport your tastebuds south of the border, find one of the trucks around town.  Order several tacos or the wonderful Mexican answer to the hamburger: the torta.  Maybe I’ll suggest all my favorite restaurants buy mobile kitchens in the hopes that this will lower their overhead and make them recession-proof.

While I decide on my other six in Spokane and start a second list for Coeur d’Alene, I’d like you to weigh in with your recession restaurant list for the Inland Northwest or your neck of the woods.

A Taco Tumbras Chicken Torta straight from the truck

One simple and surprising addition to the many good reasons to eat at Luna on Spokane’s South Hill is a savory pastry that combines two traditions: a small pretzel-style bun with a European lineage and the stuffings of a classic New Orleans sandwich called a muffuletta.

Luna’s chef Anna Vogel is responsible for this savory combination that intentionally  steps away from your typical sweet breakfast pastries.  While I had my doubts about a savory pastry in the morning… particularly one related to a pretzel… Anna’s enthusiastic description of its merits made me return this moring to try it.

Bite One: Interesting.

Bite Two: More than interesting.

Bite Three: Dang!  This is great.

I’ve had the larger and traditional muffuletta in the French Quarter, and truthfully I think Vogel’s version with its unique pretzel bun is superior.  I also liked the smaller portion size.  Add a cup of coffee and a small table out on Luna’s wonderful patio and you have a brilliant beginning to your day.