Home Grown: A celebration of local culinary enterprise

Renee Erickson, SeaCreatures and more

Renée Erickson is having a great year. She was already riding a wave of critical acclaim following the release of her cookbook just a year ago ( A Boat, a Whale, and a Walrus), but this year, even more: three spots, no less, within the same building on East Union: an utterly charming restaurant called Bateau, a super-sweet bar called Melusine, and a coffee shop called (groan) General Porpoise. The overall concept is Erickson's longstanding fascination with all things aquatic, hence the name of her company (with Jeremy Price and Chad Dale), SeaCreatures. Then again, their 30-acre property on Whidbey Island is called La Ferme aux Anes ("Donkey Farm" in French). So we have the slight cognitive dissonance that Bateau (French for boat) will serve beef from the donkey farm. The Melusine of folklore is actually a water sprite; think of the Starbucks mermaid and you'll get the picture.

What is on the menu at Bateau? Well, octopus, sweetbreads, tartare, and the like. A pork chop, a butter-poached fish. Then five kinds of beef. Filet, onglet, bavette, New York, and the pièce de résistance (as the French would say): Côte de Boeuf, the double-thick, bone-in rib-eye. The Italians call this cut Fiorentina; it's also known as a tomahawk steak (though that just means the butcher doesn't saw off the long rib bone). Set you back $125, it will. The doughnuts are a far, far better deal. Less than four bucks, four or five flavors every day (lemon curd, cherry jam, plus the standby vanilla custard), all hand-filled, of course, and indescribably delicious.

By the way, no tipping needed, since there's an automatic service charge. Part of Erickson's move toward greater equity between front- and back-of-house employees as the economy moves toward a $15 minimum wage. The menu explains that there's a 20 percent service charge, 55 percent of which goes to the employees directly serving the customer.

Sheri LaVigne, Cheese Maven

Allow me to introduce Sheri LaVigne, whose sweet countenance now graces a second location on Capitol Hill. You may already know her from Calf & Kid, a wondrous cheese shop in the Melrose Market. Now she's using her expertise and connections to source the cheese (and other delectables) at Culture Club, in one of the Hill's new apartment blocks.

For a lot of people, cheese is replete with mystery. Fake cheese is kind of like bad wine: cheap and artificial. Real cheese is packed with flavor, full of the subtlety of its origins (like the terroir of a fine wine), with the additional complexity of the cheese-making process itself.

Artisanal trumps industrial every time: quirky, changing with the seasons, dependent on weather, on aging conditions, and so on. There are different styles of cheese (fresh, soft rind, hard rind, washed rind, and so on) produced from lactating animals as different as goats and buffalo. Portable protein; cheese is easier to carry than milk.

At Culture Club, there are a few prepared dishes, like mac & cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches, but the stars are the wine & cheese pairings. Three cheeses (goat, cow, sheep) paired with three wines (red, white, or sparkling), alongside crackers and jam. These aren't cheap, and why should they be? They're an extraordinary lesson, a graduate course in both geography and sensory appreciation.

How else would you even discover a cheese called Harbison, a soft-ripened cow's cheese with a "bloomy" rind wrapped in tree bark? Yes, Kurt Farm Shop, sells its magnificent Camembert-style Dinah's Cheese just down the street, and it's as good as you'll find in western Washington. But this creamy Harbison, from Jasper Hill Farm in rural Vermont, is transcendent. It's paired with a lively Côtes du Rhône from Domaine Janasse, and that's just the first of three "courses."

Her wine advisor is longtime collaborator Peter Moore, co-owner of Capitol Hill's intimate tapas bar Poco Wine & Spirits, at 14^th & Pine. LaVigne herself is optimistic, generous, and dedicated to spreading the gospel of cheese. "Every cheese tells a story," she says. And no two cheeses are alike.

December 2015

Ronald Holden is a Seattle-based journalist who specializes in food, wine and travel. He has worked for KING, Seattle Weekly, and Chateau Ste. Michelle. His blog is www.Cornichon.org, and he has published a book "Home Grown Seattle: 101 True Tales of Local Food & Drink."