Wild Ginger

By Ronald Holden

More than 25 years have passed since Rick and Ann Yoder opened the original Wild Ginger, an unusual little café with a pan-Asian menu on the Western slopes below the Market. In 2000, they moved uphill, taking over the spacious Mann building at 3rd & Union, remodeling the upstairs into a multi-sectioned 450-seat drinking and dining emporium, and converting the lower level (a one-time porn theater) into one of the city's leading music venues, the Triple Door. In 2013, they expanded again, to the Bravern in Bellevue, a ready-made village of ultra-shops, power offices, and millionaire condos. Now they're getting ready for another expansion, partnering with Whole Foods to open Wild Ginger Kitchens in four of their supermarkets.

Rick Yoder

On the east side, just like downtown, they crack their own coconuts, grind their own spices, blend their own sambal. Their extensive wine list is one of the best in town: Grüner Veltliner and off-dry Riesling by the glass. An Enomatic wine-machine with Yquem by the ounce. Riedel stemware. Industrial chic decor, which will define this decade as much as brick-&-fern did the 70s. Yoder himself is on hand, shyly offering guidance to cooks and servers. No impatient, uniformed ladies pushing steam carts of mysterious substances. (On the other hand, no garlic pea vines, either.) Four pieces of dim sum ("touch your heart") for 6 bucks max. If deep-fried prawn and sesame cracker seems a bit like diet food for your taste, there's an alternative: delicious hum bao, beef dumplings, shu mai, wrapped scallop and chives, and an array of dipping sauces.

Then the "hawker specialties" sold in Asia's open-air markets. Soups like pho (rice noodles), laksa (seafood), jook (rice again). Seven Element soup, a staple of the downtown Ginger, makes an appearance in Bellevue: egg noodles, turmeric, red curry, coconut milk and another dozen or so ingredients. You get a bib (so the turmeric won't stain your Armani). In Thailand, this dish is known as khao soi, also called Chiang Mai Curry Noodles, although we suspect it's considerably more pungent on its home turf. The biggest seller remains Seven-Flavor Beef, flank steak with lemongrass, chilies, hoisin, basil, garlic, peanuts, and, yes, ginger. ("We certainly like our cow in this country, don't we?" says Yoder. "It's pretty darn good.")

Wild Ginger's downtown Seattle flagship's main dining space is ringed by a balcony for overflow crowds. A lively bar with sturdy wicker furniture overlooks Union Street, popular with office workers waiting for traffic to subside. Triple Door includes a bar and tables for noshing. At lunch, long lines outside the Triple Door box office, now dubbed Tiffin (and shortly to become Wild Ginger Kitchen): the tiffin concept originated in India, as a packed lunch for office workers. In big cities, housewives would send lunches packed in metal boxes to their husbands by a network of "tiffin wallahs." The menu, short and sweet: rice bowls, noodles, stir-fries, spring rolls, and desserts. The menu changes every couple of weeks but remains "Asian" in outlook, ingredients, and spicing. The incumbent exec chef is David Yeo, with Ashley Santo Domingo in charge in downtown Seattle, but they are not prima donna celebrities; their job is to transmit a pan-Asian culture and spirit. Perhaps our palates have become more familiar with some of these flavors in the past two decades; that's a compliment, not a criticism.

The cuisine spans the entire eastern Pacific Rim (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam). You could start with laksa, a Malaysian version of Bouillabaisse, or with the popular Siam lettuce cup filled with chunks of seabass seasoned with Thai basil, lime juice, chili, and tamarind. Proceed to Vietnamese Hawker Beef or young mountain lamb, served on a skewer with a peanut dipping sauce. The house special is a fragrant dish of roast duck spiced with cinnamon and star anise, served with steamed buns and a sweet plum sauce. (I only wish the duck had been more succulent.) There are also some interesting seafood items: Thai spicy clams, black pepper scallops, Cambodian-style Mediterranean mussels, prawns, tuna, and seabass. Regardless of your choice, you should also get a side order of Sichuan green beans.

Roast duck and steamed buns, green beans in background

Wild Ginger has won the Wine Spectator's Grand Award and Award of Ultimate Distinction too often to count. For many years, the emphasis has been on wines that showcase the subtle flavors of many Asian cuisines, especially Rieslings from Germany and eastern Washington. The incumbent wine director, Martin Beally, started as a chef and moved to the front of the house, and was eager to share an unexpected and modestly priced treasure: an Oregon Muller-Thurgau from Anne Amie for $30 a bottle.

The Triple Door is where Wild Ginger provides a traditional happy hour, with $7 cocktails, $5 wells, and $5 bites. It's not the same kitchen as upstairs, but many similar dishes are featured, including a three-bun version of the duck. If all you want is a tallboy and some taro chips, this is your spot.

This is Seattle's version of Asian street food, not so much dumbed down as cleaned up. "Authentic"? If you mean aggressively spicy, no. The Ladies Who Lunch, who let the valet park their Lincolns, probably won't come in for the full-on Thai treatment, which you can find elsewhere (on the fringes of the ID, or along Bellevue's back streets, if that's your preference). But let's give Yoder and his crew (300 employees!) big points for going where main street Bellevue hasn't gone before, even if it's where the Eastside is already heading: there's a huge Asian community out past Crossroads, and the young fashionistas cruising the Bravern's shops look more like China Beach than Jersey Shore.

Wild Ginger is a culinary interpreter of that cultural shift, feet firmly in both camps, nowhere more obviously than inside the 365 Market that Whole Foods is opening this year in Bellevue on the site of the old JC Penney's. And Wild Ginger itself is moving out of the Bravern into Kemper Freeman's new Lincoln Center expansion early in 2017. "I always wanted greater exposure," Yoder says. "The food of Southeast Asia and China is so forward-looking, healthy and flavorful."

Thai noodles

Photos by Ronald Holden

Ronald Holden's new book, "Forking Seattle," with more tales about local food & drink, comes out this summer.

September 2016