Traveling Feast

I claim that Spokane’s Donut Parade has the best maple bars in the Western Hemisphere (possibly the planet since large swaths of the world have no access to this pinnacle of raised donut perfect).  Yet food gurus Jane and Michael Stern have a different opinion in their fun volume entitled 500 Things To Eat Before It’s Too Late.

They claim the best maple bar they’ve had is at Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland where the iconic bar comes topped with strips of bacon.  I’m looking forward to trying a Voodoo bar, but believe a truly classic maple bar needs to stand on its own without a pork assist.

This leads me to their second recommendation: Countryside Donut House in Mountlake Terrace in the Seattle metro area.

Chance would have it that I’m in Seattle today for a family emergency, but I have a break this morning in my duties long enough to head to Countryside.  Who knows?  Maybe a fine maple bar delivered at the right moment could help in the family emergency.  I’m willing to try.  And I’ll get a chance to see how the bars at Countryside compare to Donut Parade.

Full Disclosure: I’m not a coffee aficionado.  I know plenty: Lea Greene, Daryl Geffken, Jake Reidt come to mind immediately.

Maybe I’ve hung back a bit because I so mercilessly made fun of my mom for her coffee addiction when I was in high school.  Or I maybe the taste of coffee itself never thrilled me without so much sugar it made more sense to order something else.  As the risk of being expelled from the Northwest, I’ll admit we still don’t brew a pot at home except when guests (or mom) comes over.  But after hanging out with enough people who are borderline fanatical about their coffee, I’m working to develop an appreciation for different roasts and blends if only not to embarrass myself in public.

This said, I met two friends at Caffe Delicio on North Monroe yesterday, and I suggest you go out of your way to try not only their coffee, but enjoy the space they’ve created.  I’ve driven by their double lane commuter establishment for years and never turned in.  Yesterday I parked and walked in only to be surprised and delighted by the design work inside.  I also appreciated the collection of unique mugs they use to serve customers who plan to drink their coffee at a table rather than in traffic.

Geoff and Debbie White opened the Perry Street Cafe in the fall of 2006.  I’ve driven by often, but never stopped in.  This morning I did and the number one item on my hit list was to try Debbie’s signature cinnamon roll.  Our waitress also suggested the home fries over the hashbrowns with the omelete, and I was grateful for the recommendation.  I’ll be back for both.

Here is the visual rundown:

This summer we were about to go to press in July with a review of Cafe Neo – one of the only higher-end independent restaurants to survive on the north end of Spokane.  I even made a big deal of this fact in the review only to discover in trying to get professional photographs of the food that Cafe Neo wasn’t going to be the exception, but rather another example of the curious rule that keeps sinking restaurants that attempt to open up north without a pre-approved formula.  In retrospect my introduction was more prophetic than I intended.

The pictures included are mine snapped during the course of the meals I ate at Neo just before it closed its doors permanently at the end of June 2009.  Here is the posthumous review.

One Wonderful “Desperate Case” Of A North Spokane Bistro
Café Neo

An urban growth expert told me once that cities expand north first.  This makes real estate north of the current core a typically solid investment, but apparently there is no similar maxim for local restaurants.  If there is, Spokane would be a depressing exception since it remains almost impossible for upscale independent restaurants to survive on Spokane’s north side.

Café Neo opened last June, and I immediately assumed it would meet the fate of nearly all the bold bistro pioneers before it.  Situated in a half-vacant strip mall on Division by Whitworth University, I expected to see the “Space For Lease” sign back in the window within a month or two.  I didn’t even bother to put Neo on my list of restaurants because I didn’t want to fall in love with any dishes that I’d miss if Neo failed to survive like so many of its predecessors.

My pessimism was costly.  It kept me from both the delight of Neo’s Pecan Crusted Brie with a tart cherry and roasted garlic compote ($11.98) and their Schezuan Green Beans ($6.98).  Both beg to be ordered again, and only several bites in the green beans, I was calculating when I could return or recreate them at home.

Add to these appetizers the Crab Cake Po’ Boy on a Kaiser roll at the heart of the lunch menu ($12.98).  While the soft Kaiser roll would be anathema to any Louisiana po’boy purist, the full effect of the two crab cakes tucked inside the roll with fresh shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, and stone-ground mustard aioli should not be dismissed so easily.  And if you can manage to set aside any fundamentalist dining tendencies for the duration of the meal, live a little and order one of your own.

The truth is that I may have underestimated both the determination and creativity of owners Kara and Scott Cook and executive chef Jeremiah Timmons.  The Cooks are anything but new to restaurant work; Scott started work in restaurant management when he was 16 and locally he managed Papagayo’s on Division, Cyrus O’leary’s and then worked on the management team that opened three Chili’s in the area.  Likewise, Timmons brings plenty of credibility to the kitchen:  he trained at the Western Culinary Institute Le Cordon Bleu in Portland and worked or managed kitchens in Maryland, Seattle, and Ellensburg before returning to Spokane.

Still, I’m convinced that all three are on a first name basis with St. Jude, patron saint of desperate cases, because they have also opened and maintained not only Café Neo but also Ambrosia Bistro and Wine Bar in the heart of the Spokane Valley, another supposed wasteland for upscale independent restaurants.  One restaurant in either place would be impressive; two just might qualify as a miracle.

At Neo this miracle includes half price bottle night every Tuesday, and a sit-up-and-take-note scallop dish that one top newspaper man in the city believes is the best entrée available anywhere… period.  This dish is Timmons’ pan-seared diver scallops dusted with porcini mushrooms and set on top of spinach and crisp cubes of Boursin cheese grits with a lobster sauce and fried leeks ($20.98).  A run-in with bad scallops several years ago makes me avoid most scallops on principle, but I had to see if the newspaper man had discovered the best entrée in town.  It certainly is a contender: even with my bad scallop bias, I don’t believe there was so much as a smear of sauce left on the plate, and the grits bordered on perfect.

Timmon’s Rack of Lamb ($24.98) served with a pomegranate-port reduction and mashed Yukon Gold potatoes is another standout on a dinner menu that boasts such creative comfort food a Crab Mac ‘n Cheese ($16.98), Butternut Squash Ravioli ($14.98), and a Walleye ($18.98).  I haven’t seen a walleye featured on a menu west of Minnesota for quite some time.

Timmons appears happy to channel entrée inspiration for his seasonally changing menu from all over the country.  His experience obviously helps here, but some of menu is simply the result of an active culinary imagination as well – imagination I love to see on the north side of town.  Like Ambrosia in the valley, Cooks wanted to create a neighborhood bistro when they opened Café Neo: a neighborhood bistro with a contemporary feel and a wine list worth exploring.  They have done just this, and I like the friendly and competent servers they have on the floor.

Bottom line?  Café Neo should have been on my restaurant list long before now, and I’d suggest you add it to yours.  Together we might be able to help Café Neo thrive on the north side.

Cafe Neo
10208 North Division
Spokane, WA 99218
(509) 467-5961

Slated to be published in Spokane Coeur d’Alene Living, July / August 2009 Issue

I had a great chicken salad sandwich today.

The spot?  Christ Kitchen on Monroe.  If you’ve been around a while, you might remember the site as the former home of Taco Time.  Now the building houses something unique – an organization dedicated to offering hope to women in poverty.  They started with dry soup mixes with kitschy catchy names, but now offer more… including a great chicken salad sandwich with crunch from pecans and celery and sweet from Crasins.  A layer of sprouts is another welcome addition.

If you have a favorite chicken salad sandwich, let me know about it.  And stop in at the Kitchen any weekday but Thursday from 11 am to 1 pm to see how theirs measures up.

Last Friday the urge for a maple bar from the Donut Parade overwhelmed any more measured reflection on how to start the day right with fruits and fiber.  It would be a morning for some of the best carbs and sugar on the continent.

I gathered up the three kids in the house at the moment (my daughter, one of my twin sons, and his friend that we affectionately refer to as ‘not my son’) and headed from Hamilton and Illinois just north of Gonzaga to order a dozen maple bars and donuts and four glasses of milk.  The milk is critical for true donut delight.

Yet another part of the Donut Parade perfection is the place.  It is frozen in time (circa 1950) and every hard-to-reach corner is covered by a quarter century of fine fryer grease that should preserve it for all eternity.  Our turquiose vinyl booth has a tear in the seat mended with duct tape.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Friday’s visit also reminded me of how much I love the old diner counter and line of chrome stools facing the kitchen.  Invariably, the line is occupied by neighborhood regulars nursing a cup of coffee, reading the paper, and discussing the sad state of the world over a plate of the sacred maple bars.

I’m sure the faces at the counter change depending on when you come during the morning, but the stools are almost always filled and all their occupants appear to have been here before.

In between the massive winery operations and the hobby mom-and-pop bottle-by-hand operations is Tony and his truck: a mobile bottling operation that rolls up to your winery to fill, cork, foil, and label thousands of bottles an hour.

I spent today in inside the Wino Semi (officially the “Signature Mobile Bottlers” truck) working with a crew from Robert Karl Cellars locally to bottle hundreds of cases of Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Rose, Merlot, and Syrah. From 7 am until 1:30 pm I loaded empty bottles onto the snake of a conveyor belt that runs up to the front of the semi trailer and back out.  Along the way each bottle spins through a gauntlet and ends up shot full of nitrogen, pumped full of wine, corked, capped, spun, and labeled.  Picture a semi full of shining metal equipment, and then add in the hiss of pneumatic pumps, the roar of machinery, and the almost deafening clatter of a hundred or so bottles banging against each other as they are funneled into a single bottle chute at the beginning.

I suspect I won’t be able to lift my arms above my waist tomorrow.  I may have lost some hearing in my right ear (the one closest to the bottle chute).  My hands are covered with paper cuts from manhandling cardboard bottle cases as fast I could for six and a half hours straight.

That said, I had a blast and I’d do it again tomorrow.  Well, maybe not tomorrow.  I’ve got a date tomorrow with Icy-Hot.

But today was a wonderful day.

Joe and Rebecca Gunselman produce great wine and after drinking a number of their bottles over the years it was a treat to help out.  I wasn’t the only one.  They pull together a crew twice a year to bottle wine.  Fall is a massive operation focused on their Claret.  The spring bottling puts up smaller amounts of the other wines offered by Robert Karl.

My station for the day, just inside the back of the truck was both the beginning and the end of the line.  Empty bottles head in and the full bottles come back out to be packed into the cases so recently vacated by empty siblings.  I got to work today with Karl (Joe and Rebecca’s teenage son), Mia, Gordon, and Ken.  Karl, Mia, and myself kept the bottles headed into the mobile bottling beast while Gordon and Ken packed every single one of those bottles back up and sent the cases out of the semi and down another chute into a second truck to be carted off to storage.

Part of the fun of the day was simply understanding.  Now I have a picture in my head of one critical step in the work of a winery.  Hundreds of steps took place before bottling to make the wine worth the effort of the day, but that only made the process of getting the juice into glass that much more worthwhile.

If you haven’t yet tried a Robert Karl bottle, do so soon.

Part of the Karl Crew: Mia, Gordon and Ken

Alarmingly, we may have to try even more Reubens for our progressive lunch to be truly comprehensive.  By my count, we now have TEN contenders.  One friend travels up to Deerpark for the Shagnasty’s version with shredded corned beef, and I found out that the O’Doherty’s in the valley sports a different bread than its sibiling in downtown Spokane.

Lunch at the Davenport’s Palm Court revealed a Reuben on their menu, and a restaurant owner in town tells me that his Reuben of choice is to be found at Jack and Dan’s over by Gonzaga.

Objective criteria is another concern.  It seems we need to rank the meat, the bread, the sauce, and the kraut as well as the overall impression.  Anything else we should pull out for specific comment?

We still have a space or two in the van if you want to pile in.

Alexa Wilson and her team at the Wild Sage bistro on 2nd Avenue in Spokane skip the typical bread platter in favor of their signature popovers.  This in itself is a gift, but combine it with their current sweet fennel and citrus butter and there is good reason for you to drop what you are doing this moment and race down for a few bites of bliss.