Mucho Burrito is a small chain of Mexican restaurants spread throughout the lower mainland, Washington state and one location in Calgary. They are a casual restaurant but not a fast food joint in the style of Taco Time or any of those. The food is made to order in the flip-book style way I suggested in my Belltown post – you pick your protein, then you pick the style of dish, pick any add-ons and then any sides and it’s built in front of you. I haven’t actually tried their burritos yet but right now they have a taqueria trio special on until May 3rd that I was invited to check out. Man I’ve been eating a lot of Mexican lately! Lucky me.

The Taqueria trio is made up of three soft tacos in three different flavours; fiery chicken chorizo fiesta, “guacogrilled” pineapple carnitas, and mango steak tango. The first is grilled chicken with crumbled chorizo, red cabbage slaw, habanero fig spread, guacamole and sour cream. The second is slow-roasted pork, mole sauce, roasted pineapples, red cabbage, guacamole and onion chips and the last one is grilled steak, green mango slaw and spicy aioli. These are meant to be inspired by authentic Mexican street tacos and even by reading the descriptions they have a few too many ingredients to be truly authentic, but when you unwrap the tinfoil on these bad boys you can see how piled high with sauce and stuff they are:

I could barely get them to stay closed while I ate them and there was sauce everywhere! This is a messy meal folks. Don’t wear your best shirt. Normally tacos are served two up and have significantly fewer ingredients in them (presumably so that you can eat them on the street and not have to do laundry immediately afterwards) but these are packed full of very nice flavours and for $9.25 it makes for a very filling meal. I added a tamarind Jarritos soda to my meal and wasn’t able to finish any of it, including the pop. Unfortunately it won’t travel well because of the sauce, so go hungry or bring a friend.

Mucho Burrito has several locations in the lower mainland, Washington and Alberta.

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

Ed: We are moving to Seattle so I am checking out neighbourhoods. See my previous posts on Ballard, Belltown, Capitol Hill and Fremont / Wallingford.

The last neighbourhood that I wanted to check out during our Seattle week was Queen Anne. Sitting so close to downtown, it seemed like the obvious choice but somehow it was the one that I had the most trouble finding. Perhaps it was because I’ve never been there before or because there are only a couple of streets that lead into the neighbourhood and I didn’t have a map. At any rate, I drove around it several times before I ended up on the high street.

I don’t like it. I saw lots of churches, lots of gift shops without a purpose (other than consumption, I guess),lots of strollers and lots of pretentious women. Is it fair to say that? Let me explain.

The first gift shop was Christian and no one made eye contact. The second gift shop the owner and her staff were addressing how a pie cutter was the cutest thing they had seen in their LIVES but it was far too sharp to be in a drawer in case a child got a hold of it. The bookshop was full of  motivational books  (although they did also have a copy of Lucky Peach) and I was about to buy a couple of items but the woman working behind the counter kept complaining about how she had to move her car every two hours and had already gotten two $100 parking tickets that month. This is because the free parking on the street is limited to 2 hours, for short-term visitors. There are parkades available for people who are willing to pay for them. In terms of the lay of the land, the hills are very steep (which means views) and the houses are quite nice.

The best cure for pretentiousness has got to be tacos and beer so I headed straight for the Mezcaleria Oaxaca for lunch. It’s painted in bright, uplifting yellow and as I was starting to feel better as soon as I was settled into a window seat with a book and a Tecate. I ordered a carne asada combo plate with enchiladas called Entomatadas Perdes which is either a typo for verdes (green) or a play on words meaning that you lose the rolls under all of those greens. Anyways, it is tasajo (grilled, thinly sliced beef) with homemade tortillas in tomatillo sauce, Oaxaqueño cheese, onions and crema Mexicana and it is incredibly delicious. I will come back to Queen Anne for this, as well as for their extensive mezcal list and don’t forget those tacos.

Mezcaleria Oaxaca is at 2123 Queen Anne Ave N , Queen Anne, Seattle. 

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

Ed: We are moving to Seattle so I am checking out neighbourhoods. See my previous posts on Ballard, Belltown and Capitol Hill.

The last time we were in Fremont we ate at Revel and I made a point of not doing it on this trip but the reality is that if we lived in the area we would go there every week. I swear. It’s that good. Fremont is adorably quirky in a way that makes you want to hang out and meet people in every corner. They call themselves the Centre of the Universe and crossing the bridge there is a sign to indicate it, along with a 5 minute time change. Public art is everywhere, in the form of murals, a huge troll under the overpass, a group of aliens at the bus stop and a neon Rapunzel with pulsing hair as you leave the neighbourhood. You can’t help but smile.

At lunchtime, I decided to continue on the Japanese theme and checked out Chiso for happy hour. Unfortunately it was an actual disappointment, which is not something I say very often. I sat at the bar where I received a gift from the chef of some cold marinated salmon and onions and was bombarded with complaints about Canada because we wouldn’t let him in with his criminal record. He kept laughing at his own jokes and changing the conversation mid-sentence to other equally interesting bits and I probably have found it entertaining if the rest of the place wasn’t so off.

I ordered a roll and happy hour bite size pieces of sashimi and some gyoza. The fish was not bad but no one thought it was unreasonable that it took 20 minutes for the gyoza to arrive, long after I had finished my sushi and heard many more chef stories. The atmosphere was decent so I would give it another chance for dinner with a group but not before I’ve checked out the other Japanese options in Seattle first.

Fremont felt a lot like Commercial Drive to me, there’s a used bookstore but not too many stores and I got the feeling that there is a strong sense of community here.  So instead of shopping or sitting in a cafe, I went for a walk in Gas Works Park. I’ve never been before and I thought I would love the idea of defunct, brightly painted industrial pieces in a green space. I wrote on my personal blog that:

Seattle is so grey. Dishwater grey. Tom Robbins, local author and the envy of weathermen describes the sky as like “the color of Edgar Allen Poe’s pajamas” or “cottage cheese that had been dragged nine miles behind a cement truck,” or “passages from Les Miserables, threadbare and gray.” He’s so right - I’m from Vancouver and I’m telling you that this place is grey. Somehow I didn’t notice how persistent it was before.

And the grey was palpable from this park. Sky, city and water all kind of melded together in a grey mist against the green and the Tonka-toy coloured gas works. It was a nice walk although this doesn’t seem like a park that I would spend much time in unless there were events on in it or unless we lived quite close by to it. It’s really just a large green space and a bit muddy in all that rain.

For dinner I grabbed a sandwich from Paseo - a Caribbean roast pork that was called out on the menu as being the most popular. It has pork and huge slices of onions and jalapeños and special delicious mayo on a toasted bun but the bread barely holds it together with all of that awesomeness and sauce and I was pretty sure that as soon as I picked it up it was all going to slide out onto my lap. So I picked the pieces out of it and ripped off chunks of bread and dipped it in the sauce instead. I’m sure that’s not the full experience but I think I can only handle one giant, incredibly sloppy sandwich a week and I had already had a pulled pork sandwich and a cheesesteak by this point. But it has gotten a lot of accolades and the flavour is spot-on so maybe I will just need to practice… or bring a lot of napkins when we move.

Chiso is at 3520 Fremont Ave N. Paseo is at 4225 Fremont Ave N, Both in Fremont, Seattle. 

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

Ed: We are moving to Seattle so I am checking out neighbourhoods. See my previous posts on Ballard and Belltown.

Ah Capitol Hill, so grungy and gritty and full of tattoo shops, sex stores and art galleries. This is the neighbourhood that I’ve spent the most time in and is home to my favourite pub as well as my favourite cocktail bar and some others; Tango, Barrio, Cafe Presse, – even some long ago hang outs at The Rosebud – so I might be biased but I love it.

Because I’m usually here in the evening, I wanted to have a daytime wander and headed up to Boom Noodle for lunch. The space is bright and clean and modern and felt Japanese, even though it’s clear from the menu that this is a modern American take on Japanese noodles a well. It was my first foray into Seattle Japanese cuisine and not bad – I had some pork gyoza and a kimchi ramen with pork belly and egg (and an Asahi of course). I chewed down on it and it as nice and flavourful and filling.

Afterwards, belly full, I went to Melrose Market, which is as close a thing to something I think every neighbourhood should have – butcher, cheese shop, sandwich shop, flower shop, full service bar and wine shop, cocktail bar and Sitka and Spruce, a small restaurant. Whooo! I could totally live in there. Or nearby, whatever. I wish I had had more free stomach space to sample all of the wares, especially to be able to go back to the resto but we’ll be back soon.

Boom Noodle is at 1121 East Pike Street, Melrose Market is at 1501-1535 Melrose Ave. Both in Capitol Hill, Seattle

Posted with Blogsy

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

Ed: We are moving to Seattle so I am checking out neighbourhoods. See my previous post on Ballard.

Belltown was not  a candidate for neighbourhoods we would live in (or even that are new to me, for that matter) and Seattle’s downtown is not residential, but these are areas that I have spent a lot of time in. Usually that’s because of where I’ve stayed when I was visiting and this time was no exception. I went running through downtown a couple of times (and realized just how steep those hills really are) and visited the library quickly before checking out Pike Place Market, a place that I try to make a point of going to regularly – to check out what’s in season or just to get a snack.

I love the mix of fresh shellfish, produce and food vendors, as well as the lower floors of “odd shops” – a musée mechanique, herbs and belly dance costumes. I wish that Granville Island had a bit more of this diversity, at least in terms of prepared food vendors. Last time we were down I posted a photo essay about it.

This time I also snuck in a visit to the Seattle Aquarium for the first time and was excited to see that they have a very prominent, large octopus tank with an octopus “crossing” and the most active Great Pacific Octopus I had ever seen, in captivity or out (since then I’ve seen a more active one in the wild! gosh I’m lucky).  The rest of the aquarium was less interesting to me, or it may be that I passed through it pretty quickly to get back to work / away from the tiny migraine-creator children but I’m interested in some of their programs so will definitely come back and check that out after we move.

We ate downtown one night, at RN74, a Michael Mina steakhouse. The cocktails were some of the best we had all week and I loved my barrel-aged special as well as the ones we had from the list. The food was good too but I think I’d rather just sit in the lounge and snack next time.

Another night we met friends in Belltown. We were supposed to go to the Rabbit Hole but when we got there it turned out that it was more of a late night beer, whiskey and skeeball joint (in fact that is their tagline – beer, whiskey, skeeball) – I asked Matt if I should change since I’ve never played skeeball before) so we went down the block to Mama’s Mexican Kitchen. I’ve been here before, a couple of times even, but so far away in memory as to be forgotten. It’s a cute space, easily described as quirky with a wall of Elvis memorabilia and little nooks like the one above and roaming mariachis that you can hear throughout the restaurant.

It has one of those menus that goes on forever. You can get 15 different items, with a variation of sides, sauces and so on. It should just be a flipbook – start with the protein, then the sauce, then the sides, flip, flip, flip until you have on your board something that you want on your plate – but instead the menu is enormous and I was already through my first margarita and most of the chips before I had read it all. I decided on the carne asada which was decent but not great and Matt had the Elvis burrito (below). I am unused to all of this cheese on Mexican food and need to do a serious Tex-Mex primer before we move – the only Tex-Mex we have in Van is Topanga and I haven’t been there in ages.

Afterwards we did end up back at the Rabbit Hole and had some drinks but we were a bit too bagged and food-drunk for that level of activity but it looked fun. We’ll have to go back on a weekend and see if we can fit in with the hipsters.

Mama’s Mexican Kitchen is at 2234 2nd Avenue. The Rabbit Hole is at 2222 2nd Avenue. Both in Belltown, Seattle.

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

I have some news: we’re moving to Seattle. I’m not sure exactly when but Matt has a new job with Amazon and so we will be moving down there as soon as our visas get sorted which could be sooner or later. In the meantime, however, he is working part time out of the Seattle office and part time out of the Vancouver office. His first week he was in Seattle and I decided to come down for moral support and to do some neighbourhood scouting to see where we might like to live. While I’ve been to Seattle oh so many times,  it’s usually been for a concert or an art show or a business trip, so I haven’t spent much time in the suburbs. I’ve been to Ballard only once before, where I visited the locks and had lunch at Bastille, but I like the feel of it. It feels like Gastown to me, with its historic streets, but with the added bonuses of a park for jogging and dog-walking, public art and an actual residential component. So it was top of the list (and still is).

I spent the early morning walking along the water and visiting the locks before settling into a cafe on the high street. Ballard has a busy main street with a movie theatre, a Walgreens, lots of coffee shops and restaurants, etc. and then an historic area with boutique shops, restaurants and bars that reminds me a lot of Gastown. People were nice, although the wifi in the cafe was close to unusable and everywhere I wanted to eat was either closed for lunch or closed on Mondays (or both). I ended up having lunch at Bitterroot, a BBQ and smoker restaurant that was pretty decent (but nothing compared to Peckinpah).

They serve their water in old bourbon bottles, which is a nice touch, but there’s otherwise nothing to indicate that it’s a BBQ place. It looks like it could be a bistro or sandwich shop. Nevertheless, I ordered a black walnut swizzle (decent, but could have used some more lime and simple to balance the bitterness) and a pulled pork sandwich. The sandwich was really tasty – in particular the housemade pickled red onions really brought it together – but I had to laugh at the plating technique that used metal trays clearly intended for their combo platters and made it look like the pickled carrots were the star of the show!

The sandwich was too big and sloppy to eat with my hands (a characteristic I’m starting to notice in America) but there was good flavour and no complaints about it having been slow-cooked for long enough, it was sure tender.

After lunch I wandered around some of the shops and peered in the windows of cocktail bars that weren’t open yet. There was almost no one on the streets except for in the businesses. Our friends from Canada who now live in Seattle called Ballard “squeaky clean” in terms of crime but with its working shipyard and metalworking mixed in with both boutique and mainstream businesses, it felt more real to me than Gastown somehow*.

I figured that I would go back to the hotel instead of trying to find another wifi-enabled cafe and on the way I stopped in to see a new permanent Dale Chihuly exhibit called Gardens and Glass, at the Space Needle. Dale Chihuly is the reason that I love glass and glass-blowing so much, his installations are just incredible and I’ve often wondered why there wasn’t a permanent space for him to display his work in his hometown.  This one doesn’t have the same impact that seeing pieces floating in a Venetian canal has, because they’ve created the garden and buildings specifically to showcase his glass, but they do a good cross-section of his work and seeing the Space Needle through a canopy of orange and yellow flowers is impressive even on a grey Seattle day (like there are any other kinds).

For dinner I took Matt back to Ballard and we went to Ocho, a cute little Spanish tapas place that makes their own amaro and absinthe and has a tiki cocktail party on Monday nights. He was pretty bagged so we sat at the bar and had patatas bravas, jamón and chorizo, a gratinado with chestnuts and cheese and finished up with a chocolate, truffle oil and toasts dessert that was reminiscent of one we had in Spain but I would have preferred it with olive oil instead of truffle. To drink I had a Sergio Leone, with bourbon, lemon, Licor43 and fresh ginger. I was a bit sceptical about the tiki drinks but this one made me feel like they would have been excellent so we’ll have to go back!

*I had a friend in elementary school who we called “Thunder Bay” because of her constant references to it. She had moved from that area without having travelled much any where else, and so everything reminded her of it. I’m going to try really hard not to do that because it’s incredibly annoying and takes away from seeing a place for the first time, but cities of a certain size, on the same coast in the same climate have a lot of cultural similarities. I’m just sayin’.

Bitterroot is at 5239 Ballard Ave. NW.

Ocho is at 2325 NW Market Street.

Gardens and Glass are at 305 Harrison Street – effectively right underneath the Space Needle in Seattle.

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

I have never had a Cheesesteak sandwich because, not ever having travelled to that part of the world (Philadelphia), I didn’t want to do it wrong. But when we were in Seattle a couple of week ago, I was working from the hotel and didn’t want hotel food and Calozzi’s looked at least somewhat authentic. This site on American regional food has an excellent description of the Cheese steak sandwich and why it’s authenticity is so important;

A cheese steak sandwich is not really a steak at all – it is a sandwich made with chipped steak, steak that has been frozen and sliced really thin) and cooked on a grill top. The Philadelphia cheese steak is truly one of the most delightful and beloved foods available in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is said by most Philadelphians that if a restaurant offers something called a “Philly Cheese Steak” then it’s not authentic. Locals think in terms of steak sandwiches with or without cheese. Without cheese, the sandwich is referred to as a “steak.” With cheese, it is a “cheese steak” or “cheesesteak.” Cheeze Whiz is the topping of choice for serious steak connoisseurs. However, you can also use provolone cheese.

According to Philadelphians, you simply cannot make an authentic Philadelphia Cheese Steak sandwich without an authentic Philadelphia roll. The rolls must be long and thin, not fluffy or soft, but also not too hard. They also say that if you are more than one hour from South Philly, you cannot make an authentic sandwich.

There are a couple of things I feel like I should try, just to round out my edges as a food writer; Twinkies (too late) , the Double-Down (no), chicken-fried steak, SPAM sushi and some day I will have a cheesesteak sandwich in Philly but on this Seattle lunch hour I was going for next best thing. When I walked into the shop, there were two things I noticed right away. First, it smelled amaaaaaaaazing! (I guess fried meat and onions will do that), and secondly that I was the only woman in a pretty full house. OK, we’re going for messy, high-calorie food here, I got it.

Their menu does say “Philly steak” on it but you can get it “wit” or “witout” onions then one of American, Whiz, provolone or mozzarella cheese. There are a couple of variations; “the Donnie” with mushrooms, or a pepperoni or pepper steak. You can also get french fries if for some reason you need to use up your caloric intake for the week in one sitting. I ordered the pepper steak for some spice – with onions and provolone. I knew this was a faux pas but I had a chance to redeem myself when they were out of it and switch to Cheese Whiz, which I know is how the die-hards order it.

It was good. I’m not going to lie, I felt my heart beating faster before I was even through the first half and I did seriously consider that my first heart-attack might coincide with my first cheesesteak, but it’s hard to go wrong with soft bread, warm meat, cheese and onions, even if the cheese in question is actually a petroleum by-product. And now that I’ve had a pretty authentic one, I feel okay ordering all of the way off base sandwiches that call themselves a cheesesteak (I’ve already had one this week with chipotle mayo on ciabatta…sigh) but I probably won’t have another one of these bad boys until I get to Philly. I just don’t get the attraction. At some point I am going to write an entire post devoted to America’s love of sloppy, enormous sandwiches. We had po’boys in New Orleans that made me wonder why you would pour gravy on something you’re going to eat with your hands, and later on this same trip to Seattle I had a pulled pork sandwich that could not be put back together as well as a Caribbean sandwich as big as my arm that was at least 30% liquid. I’m not saying that it wasn’t tasty, I loved all of it, I just would like a fork.

Calozzi’s is at 1306 4th Avenue, Seattle.

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

It’s hard to call it a winter market when the sun is shining and happy shoppers are sitting on the grass, munching on things they’ve picked up from vendors or food carts but nevertheless, this is our winter farmers market. You’ll see many of the same vendors that you do in the summertime; Skipper Otto’s seafood, Klippers Organic produce and even more vendors to help you get a jump on early season products. This year there are on average 63 vendors each week, compared with 50 last year. And the food! I went to the market straight from scuba diving and you’d have thought I hadn’t eaten in a week if you saw me. There’s always such good eating and drinking at the market. There is also a place to donate food and a place to bring your scraps for compost.

It seems like it’s been a good winter. Weekly sales have nearly doubled since last season, despite all the rain. As we transition into summer, make sure to check out where and when your local market will be – this one is only open until the end of April.

Check out my photos below and hopefully we’ll see you there Saturday!

The Winter Market runs every Saturday from 10- 2p.m. until the end of April . It’s held at Nat Bailey Stadium, 30th and Ontario Street in Vancouver. 

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

If you think you may not have time to read this post in the next few days and are saving it for later, let me give you the executive summary: go to Diva at the Met and order the Persian New Year tasting menu created by Chef Hamid Salimian. As I write this and try to link to it, I realize that I haven’t posted about their regular tasting menu, which is excellent (and which I will now write about very soon) but this one is even better. It is the one of the most thoughtful, creative and interesting meals I’ve ever had and if it was on for longer than this week, I’d be going right back to have it again. Yes, that’s right – it’s a limited menu and the last day is March 29th.

Nowrūz is the first day of spring and I understand that it is celebrated with a lot of delicious food but Hakhamanesh is my only experience with Persian cuisine so I was grateful for Chef Hamid’s explanations of each dish and also to this Turmeric and Saffron blog for having such detailed descriptions of many of these dishes in their traditional format. Chef Hamid is one of the most creative and interesting chefs I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and I am delighted every time I sit down to something he’s made. But when he turns his attention to something that is special for him – a culinary exploration of the dishes of his homeland – the result is truly special and I’m so grateful that I had a chance to experience it. It will become an annual event in our household to be sure.

Persians don’t typically drink alcohol so I was interested to see how the wine would be paired with the dishes and after trying the bright, bold, often highly acidic or sour flavours, I was even more impressed with Sommelier Corey Bauldry picks. He said that it was one of the hardest menus he’s ever paired and for many of the dishes he had to focus on the flavours as they all came together rather than the main component. For the lamb course he brought out both a red and a white wine to pair with different parts of the dish and it turned out to be exactly what was needed.

The tasting menu is comprised of either 6 or 8 courses for the incredible deal of $55 food only / $100 with wine pairings for 6 courses or $75 food only / $135 with wine. You’d be hard pressed to find a tasting menu for that price in this city, never mind one of this calibre. Just go now and make a reservation if you can. I’ll wait here.

Snacks

Like the regular tasting menu at Diva, the Persian New Year menu starts with a series of playful, molecular gastronomic snacks. paired with a Penedès cava. First we had a Joojeh Kabab (Chicken kebab) but unlike any kebab you’ve ever had before. Instead of coming on a skewer this is chicken skin dehydrated and served on stone with some garlic yogurt and chives. It’s meant to be eaten in a couple of bites so they’re packed full of flavour – smoky and meaty with a bit of bright tang from the sauce. I could have eaten ten.

Next we were served Maghaz (Cerveau) which I figured would be on the menu somewhere as this is a very traditional Iranian dish. Cerveau of course is only half a translation – the english is brains – but a necessary courtesy for a tasting menu. Rather than stewed in soup, however, these were served on a rice cracker with fried shallots and tasted rich and creamy. It was so expertly executed and I thought it was one of the best dishes of the entire meal. It was also Matt’s first time eating brain so I told him he should probably just stop there as the next time was sure to be a let down.

We were lucky enough to be there on the 20th, which is the date of Persian New Year but it’s also Macaron Day, so I was delighted when we were served individual Kashk e Bademjan (Eggplant caviar macarons) meant to be reminiscent of an eggplant dip that I have had several times before. I thought the texture of the biscuit here was a bit too firm for the eggplant so it gushed a bit but they’re two-biters so that’s not really an issue.

Finally we had a palate cleanser of Sekanjabin Kaho (Romaine granita) that Matt found too bitter but which I loved. It was romaine, mint and lime shredded on chipped ice with a sweet syrup, much like a savoury snow cone.

Dinner

And then it was on to the mains! The first dish was Zeytoon Parvarde (Cracked wheat, beef tartar, sorrel) which is a kind of salad. Traditionally it’s made with pomegranates, walnuts and olives so the only consistent piece here were the olives. Corey had chosen the Stag’s Hollow Sauvignon Blanc for this dish but warned us in advance about the disparity of flavours – in one bite you could get salty beef, in another, briny olives and in still another the herbaceous sorrel – so he suggested that we try the individual components but make sure we get one good scoop of everything before trying the wine. I tried it both ways just to see what he was talking about and sure enough, while the flavours were bold and interesting on their own, they didn’t lose anything by coming together but instead created a beautiful balance of acidic brightness, saltiness and sweetness. This seems to be a key characteristic of Persian cuisine, as I found out over the course of the meal.

The next dish was one of my favourites. Sure, who doesn’t love foie (especially paired with Sauternes!) but this treatment of it was brilliant and I would go back for it again and again if it were on the regular menu. Chef Hamid took the concept of a traditional Halva, a dessert-like pâté and brought in chilled foie gras, preserved figs, and pickled raisins. It’s amazing. The foie is very thin and chilled so that it arrives at the table as a sheet but breaks into buttery chunks as soon as it comes in contact with a fork to reveal the treasures underneath. Again I tried each component separately and was impressed but the combination of the raisins with foie and crunch of the nuts underneath is just simply incredible.

I thought I’d be flying for days on the halva (and in truth, I still am) but the next dish was nothing to shake a stick at either. Ash-Reshteh (Sour whey, mint, legumes, noodle) is a wintery bean soup and it doesn’t look like much, especially after foie! But it was exceptionally flavourful and beautiful and was another favourite. Ash means soup and we learned that this is so important to chefs in Iran that they are called Ashpaz when they achieve master chef status. This is the only Ash-Reshteh I’ve ever tasted but the way Chef Hamid has layered the many different beans and their flavours, topping it off with a drizzle of mint oil is truly masterful. I was already convinced that he was one of the best chefs around so it’s not shocking that his Ash-Reshteh is exceptional too. He has generously given Mijune the recipe to post on FollowMeFoodie.com so you can try your hand at it. I may do at some point…I don’t think I’ll make it until next spring without trying it again. The wine pairing for this was a Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling – a wine I like anyways – and I thought the bright flavours went particularly well with the dish.

Koofteh (Saffron broth, onion, pork jowl) is a dumpling with a piece of pork jowl resting in a bit of saffron broth for an effect a bit like Persian French onion soup. It was a bit sweet from the onions but intensely flavourful and in a way, felt more subdued than the other dishes, perhaps because of the pork fat although there was still an element of acid in there.

We giggled when Lainey brought four glasses to the table – two red and two white – to kick off the next dish. The sommelier couldn’t make up his mind! And it turned out that wasn’t quite the case – the next dish was a duo of lamb in the form of Gheymeh (Lamb belly, lamb loin, potato, stone dry lime). This is traditionally a stew made with yellow split peas but here Chef Hamid has separated it into it’s main parts – lamb, potato and stone dry lime. The limes are dried in the hot sun so I thought this would be a highly acidic, sour dish but it wasn’t. The stone dry lime mousse was soft and did indeed have some sourness to it but the potato cake and the fat from the lamb belly helped quite a bit with that. I had had a non-Persian duo of lamb here a few weeks prior and it was pretty amazing so I was looking forward to seeing what this variation would be like. It felt very authentic while still being elegant and interesting and like many of the other dishes on the menu, it left me really wanting to try this made in the traditional way.

There were specific instructions about the wine – a white that I don’t remember at all and a deep Malbec. I’m kicking myself for not writing them down but trust me that they’re good. Good on their own and especially good with the piece of lamb they’re meant to be paired with – a high mineral white with the lean striploin and the meaty Malbec with the fatty, charred belly and potato. So good.

The palate cleanser was called “Ice From Heaven” and looked like nothing more than aerated ice served on a frozen slate but there was a softness and a creaminess there – the bubbles melted against your tongue and left hints of orange and rose water which felt very traditional. There was a bright dab of sour cherry syrup on top to break up the colour and delicate flavours and pique the tastebuds a bit. I thought the romaine granita did a better job of actually cleansing the palate but I liked the delicateness of this and it was a nice transition from the lamb to dessert.

And what a dessert! I had seen a photo of Pastry Chef Kate’s Meyer Lemon Mousse so I knew it was coming but this is a dessert that has to be seen to be believed! A custard in the form of an incredibly life-like lemon, complete with pores and a place where the stem would have attached. It sat on a bed of candied lemon peel and graham cracker crumbs with a bit of pistachio gel for leaves. It was so incredible that I didn’t want to cut it open but I had to see what was inside! Perhaps more importantly, this is the kind of dessert that I love. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth but I like creamy custards and tangy accents and this had both. It was fragrant and lovely without being very sweet at all and mixing in the marmelade and crumble underneath made for an almost lemon meringue pie taste. But I was sure getting full by this point. I wonder if she can do a realistic looking slice of lemon?

Just when we thought we were done and couldn’t fit any more food, Chef Hamid sent out some Sholeh Zard (Saffron rice, almond, persimmon sorbet) – the second rice pudding dessert from the larger tasting menu. I LOVE rice pudding so I was really excited and this one was mercifully light. Unlike the molecular fancifulness of the lemon, I imagine this pudding could fit in on many Persian dessert menus but it still had the characteristic traits of many of the other dishes – bright colours and flavours, with a balance of texture provided by the sorbet and the toasted almonds. It was just absolutely heavenly and it felt like the warm fragrance of it  stayed with me for quite a while after eating it.

Happy Nowrūz to Chef Hamid and the staff at Diva! Thank you for an  incredible experience. We’ll see you next year (and sooner too).

Diva at the Met is in the Metropolitan Hotel at 645 Howe Street in Vancouver.

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog

I wanted to take Matt for a celebration dinner in Seattle the night before he started his new job. For me that would mean cocktails and something loungey but that’s not really his thing. I’d already taken him to my favourite pub a couple of times, so I thought it was time for a visit to Serious Pie.  A tiny pizza place in behind the Dahlia Lounge, this is a Tom Douglas restaurant that takes its pizza very seriously. Tom Douglas is one of the culinary geniuses of Seattle and has several places around town – including nearby Dahlia Lounge and Lola’s if you need to kill some time before your table’s ready.

The concept is simple – get a pizza oven into the restaurant and have a small menu of simple but gourmet pies. There are a couple of starters and desserts, beers and wines to round it off but that’s about it. The room is small and warm (hard to avoid with that oven right there), the tables are communal and packed and the beer is cold and the pizza is hot. Nailed it.

Matt had a pizza with sweet fennel sausage, peppers and provolone, while I was pretty sure I was going to have the cotechino number until I heard the special – ricotta, basil and housemade salami. Yum! It comes to the table on cutting boards, smelling comfortingly of warm dough. The balance of flavours is both interesting and dependable and the crust is exactly the way you want a crust to be – a little bit chewy, a little bit soft. As it says on the man’s shirt, “Seriously.”

Serious Pie is at  316 Virginia Street, Seattle.

SmokySweet - a visually stimulating food and drink blog