02/18 - San Francisco Update - Clearing Our Plate

We have finally gotten around to posting our San Francisco restaurant reviews. We were in San Francisco back in December and January, and we have just been too busy to post anything about it, until now. And about time.

We hadn't been in San Francisco in six years. That's a long time, and things have changed. The great food adventure of the 80s and 90s seems to have vanished, and, to be honest, we were a bit disappointed with the food in one of our favorite food cities. Seattle is a much more interesting food town these days. In San Francisco, too many restaurants seem to be just going through the motions.

This isn't to say that one can't get a good meal in San Francisco. We had plenty, but something has changed. Read our San Francisco page for more, or check out the individual reviews: Boulevard, Dosa, New Asia, Nopa, Terzo, Ton Kiang, Tres Agaves, Yank Sing, Zuni Cafe, and Marinus in Carmel Valley.

02/10 - Nash Huber In Seeds Of Change Catalog

This is the time of year that those "colorless green ideas dream furiously", and we are scanning our seed and plant catalogs. We were browsing through the excellent organic Seeds of Change catalog, and we couldn't help noticing a familiar face. That's Nash Huber on page 25. For cabbage and kale seeds, he's their man.

02/07 - Douglas Fir Based Eau d'Vie from Clear Creek

We first heard about this product at Coupage, a Korean fusion restaurant noted in the item below. One of their dishes was arctic char marinated in a Douglas fir based liqueur. We had expected it to be overwhelmingly pine flavored, perhaps even resinous. It was not. The flavor was clear, but unusual, and rather hard to place.

The very next day we saw the bottle on the right at a Washington State Liquor Store. Clear Creek, based in Oregon, makes the unusual alcoholic beverage shown to the right. According to the little tag, they use grape based brandy and young, hand picked douglas fir buds. They soak the buds in the brandy, then redistill the batch.

As for the flavor, it tastes a bit like rose water with that rich tang. It's a very clear, clean flavor. Think woodsy, not pine-y. We can't find it at the state web site, so it is probably a one shot item, or perhaps being sold illegally. We don't care. We like it.

02/07 - Three and a Half New Seattle Restaurant Reviews

We've been rather remiss on our reporting, but we've been visiting new restaurants including three in Seattle. We've reviewed three of them on our website:

• Coupage - a wonderful Korean fusion place; surely a cuisine that has come of age
• Nishino - Japanese classics with a modern touch by a student of Nobu Matsuhisa
• Tilth - an organic country kitchen in the big city

The one half a restaurant is Tom Douglas's Serious Pie, his new pizzeria. We had to admit that the pies were very, very good, but we just had a slice or two and have to go back for more testing.