I met Boka’s Executive Chef Angie Roberts this weekend in Oregon and after a taste of her amped up breakfast hash, I was very interested to find my way into her restaurant in Seattle soon afterwards. Last night on the back end of a Mariner’s game (we left BEFORE Ichiro’s game winning hit at the bottom of the 9th) we stopped by Boka’s sleek space in Hotel 1000 for appetizers and dessert.
But first the space…
Near the center of the room is a stand of glass bamboo. Equally striking are the walls in the back reaches of the dining room: they gradually change color throughout the evening. Our server said these transformations are programmed along certain themes such as “sunset colors” but confessed that she didn’t know what the current for the night might be. Whatever it was, it included a cool blue and a blood red along with white and purple. Maybe the theme for the night was Patriotic Eggplant.
I seriously doubt I would ever be inspired to decorate my home to look like a cocktail lounge lifted out of the Jetsons, but it Boka’s version is a great spot to spend a few hours. Good food certainly helps, and Boka throws in the food righteousness factor with a menu that is upwards of 75% organic and as local as possible. Expect individual farm names on most of the dishes on the menu.
We opted for an heirloom tomato salad with fruit grown on Billy Alsott’s farm and a small plate of of goat cheese gnocchi served with smoked tomatoes (excellent), porcini mushrooms (meaty), toasted pine nuts and shaved parmesan cheese. I was enjoying myself and quite full before Sous Chef Andrew Pritchard appeared with the most memorable dish of the night: a selection from the brand new dessert menu.
It is listed under a somewhat confusing name,”easy like sunday mornin’, but don’t let a little menu camouflage get in your way. Megan start to eat while I talked with Pritchard, and I should have known that something was amiss when she didn’t stop. Just seconds before Pritchard arrived at the table, she had said with conviction that she couldn’t eat another bite.
Easy like Sunday morning’ is technically a sundae, but unlike any I’ve encounter in recent memory. Put together a remarkable graham cracker ice cream with a huge pillow of house-made marshmallow skewered on a stick of sugar cane and suspended over the bowl with a tiny pitcher of hot fudge sauce on the side. I may not be able to eat another s’more again with thinking of Boka and beginning to weep silently. Okay… that might be a bit melodramatic, but it truly was a treat… so much so that I completely forgot to pull out the camera until we’d almost destroyed it entirely.
