Monthly Archives: May 2013

Drinks, Food

Down in SoDo, Promising Experiments with Shochu Cocktails

(Photo: Sophie Pattison)

KC Sheehan got one of the first craft distillery licenses in Washington, right after Dry Fly, who nabbed the first. But though his SoDo Spirits Distillery got its license in June of 2009, they didn’t get their first product out until October 2011, and they missed out on a small “craft-spirits” rush, as distributors shopped from among the new options.

Now, Sheehan says, he’s waiting for distributors to find room on their trucks.

But another problem is that hardly anyone knows what his signature spirit, EvenStar Shochu (sho-choo), is. There, Sheehan’s plan of attack is to educate people about shochu, which he thinks is an exceptionally special spirit.

That explains why I was walking through the heart of industrial SoDo the other day. To get to Sheehan’s distillery, I had crossed an extensive amount of railroad tracks via what may or may not have been a sidewalk approved for pedestrian use. As I turned onto Occidental Avenue, I was sure I was going the wrong way. On both sides of me were large warehouses, most of them unmarked. Large trucks narrowly squeezed past as I walked along the sidewalk-less road. I almost missed the (comparatively) small distillery.

I knocked on the large, thick door, not certain I’d be heard. In fact, I was pretty sure the whole building was empty—maybe even abandoned. The door did not open. A few minutes later, Sheehan stuck his head out the door. He hadn’t heard my knock, but was coming to put out his mobile doorbell.

I entered the warehouse to find a neat, well-lit and well-decorated room, with Jack Johnson playing in the background. There were bottles of shochu displayed on the beautiful second-hand hostess counter that Sheehan said he had bought from a restaurant that was going out of business. Though he says he buys almost everything second-hand, the showroom is polished and professional.

Sheehan’s SoDo Spirits Distillery is the only distillery outside of Japan to make authentic, or “honkaku,” shochu. This means that they make the shochu using local ingredients mixed with imports from Japan. Sheehan explained that shochu has been made in Japan since the 16th century and can be made from a variety of ingredients, including sweet potatoes, carrots, sweet chestnuts and rice. Sheehan makes his shochu from pearl barley, the result of which is called a mugi shochu.

The process of making shochu is very similar to that of sake. The barley is washed, the husk is removed, and then it is cooked. Once the cooked barley has cooled, it is layered with a fungus called koji (which is also used to make sake) in a temperature-controlled room. The flavor of the koji-seeded barley is earthy and nutty, with a slight sweetness to it. The process of preparing the barley allows a natural sugar to form. This natural sugar is the only sweetener in shochu, giving the final product a clear and subtle flavor that you won’t find in sweetened, flavored vodkas, and the like.

Nowadays, shochu is the most popular spirit in Japan (more popular than sake). It is favored for its light flavor and lack of a strong alcohol taste. It is also, Sheehan said, low in calories (only 30 per ounce), lower in alcohol content and good for the arterial system (or at least, as good as it gets). He told me that EvenStar Shochu is faithful to the traditional Japanese beverage, but also has a unique twist to appeal to an American customer base.

Shochu is distilled only once, which gives the flavor more character and a lower alcohol content. The one-time distilling also makes it a very pure alcohol, allowing it to pass through the body quite easily — you would have to drink a lot more shochu than vodka to get hung over.

Despite the ease of drinking shochu straight, Sheehan touts its success in cocktails. He described it as having “a vermouth-y feel” and suggested a martini with a shot of vodka or gin and two shots of shochu. The smooth, soft, non-ethanol taste of shochu takes the sharpness right out of the vodka and gin. Similarly, it tames too-tangy juices, as in a traditional screwdriver or a vodka cranberry.

EvenStar makes four different kinds of shochu: Original, Ginger, Mint and Chili. The original is the most versatile, according to Sheehan. It can be used in cocktails, martinis or it can be drunk straight. The original is made with an infusion of rosemary, and there is a definite herbal flavor to it. The rosemary itself is so subtle that it is hard to know definitively what kind of herb you are tasting, but there’s a clear medicinal, herbal hint.

Still self-distributed, the EvenStar line is carried in most independent liquor stores, as well as at the Metropolitan Market, and some restaurants, but Sheehan looks forward to the day when he’s carried by a major distributor. Know any shochu fans? If you buy a bottle, you get a free t-shirt.

The Process
The koji is seeded on the barley for two days. Then the mixture is allowed to ferment for ten days, and finally it is distilled in a potstill for two and a half hours. It if it is being flavored, the flavoring is put in with the mash as it is being distilled.

Urocanase and Arteries
During the koji process, an enzyme called urocanase is produced. This enzyme is particularly good for the arterial system, making shochu (as Sheehan reports) two times better for the arterial system than wine. Sheehan says “I can’t say that it’s healthful, but as alcohol goes it’s the most healthful alcohol.”

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Curtains for You Members Take Solo Flight on Saturday

There’s something quintessentially Seattle about the new recording by Michael and Matthew Gervais, better known as two-fifths of Seattle pop band Curtains for You — especially the way it charms without ever seeming like it’s trying.

The Gervais brothers, wearing the rather ungainly moniker of Mikey and Matty, have just unveiled Harbor Island, their first effort outside the Curtains for You umbrella. Don’t expect the seamless pop craft of a typical Curtains for You record here: Harbor Island isn’t meant to be that. It’s a treasure chest of rough diamonds, delivered with such loose-limbed ease that the beauty of the songs almost takes you by surprise.

Mikey and Matty get a little bit of help on Harbor Island — The Head and the Heart’s Charity Rose Thielen contributes some lovely violin on “Greyscale,” and “Sheryl’s Bane” gets an assist from vocalists Melissa and Stephanie Reese and Curtains bassist Nick Holman on trumpet — but by and large, it’s hand-crafted solely by both Gervais brothers. The tunes play like looser, stripped-down offshoots of Curtains’ winning pop mini-symphonies: There are luminescent melodies galore, but most of the percussion is gently-brushed drums or tambourine, and songs often amble to a close like a daydreaming kid wandering into a forest. Spare acoustic guitars and piano anchor the lion’s share of the melodies alongside Matt and Mike’s harmonies.

Those harmonies are what infuse these unpretentiously great songs with real magic. Few singers this side of Jonathan Auer and Ken Stringfellow harmonize with the telepathic effortlessness of the Gervais brothers, and their voices intertwine magnificently throughout Harbor Island. One of the unexpected joys of the record is hearing Michael (usually a background vocalist on Curtains’ releases) take the lead on several tracks with a limber, rootsy tenor that contrasts and blends with his brother’s pure-pop croon sublimely.

Harbor Island flows so wonderfully it makes singling out individual tracks almost moot, but there are plenty of moments that’ll take your breath away. “Aurora Borealis” fuses the earthy loveliness of a Fleet Foxes song with back-masked Beatles instrumentation, and a rolling piano and snare drum offset the exquisite melancholy of Michael’s and Matthew’s duetting on “Of All The Limbs to Cling To.” The track that’ll likely occupy the most repeat time, though, is the album’s opener, “Floor Underneath Us.” With its autumnal lyrical imagery, stately piano melody, and harmonies so subtly beautiful they ache, it meets romance squarely at the intersection of sunny warmth and bittersweetness. And like any great pop song, it refuses to leave your head.

Mikey and Matty celebrate the release of Harbor Island with a show at the Fremont Abbey Arts Center (Saturday night at 8 p.m.; tickets: $10 advance/$13 at the door). The strong bill includes preceding sets by Big Sur, Ghosts I’ve Met, and Not Amy, and with the headliners joined by members of the Seattle Rock Orchestra, those rough-cut pop jewels should be just a little bit more polished onstage.

Food, Restaurant

Din Tai Fung, Please Leave Me Breathless Instead of Brothless

Today, social media is full of inevitable raves about Din Tai Fung now that there’s new confirmation that the restaurant is opening in Seattle proper, at University Village.

Oh, how I wish I could take all my Seattle friends to Taipei. They’d see that the xiao long bao (soup dumplings) in Din Tai Fung’s Bellevue location pale in comparison to Din Tai Fung’s quality in Taipei. Even better are the xiao long bao at Taipei’s Jin Din Rou, my favorite place for these dumplings.

I don’t want to be a party pooper. Trust me: I crave good xiao long bao in Seattle. I’ve gone back to Bellevue, as recently as a few months ago, with hope the dumplings had improved. They were a bit better, but still the soup inside wasn’t hot enough, and there wasn’t enough of it. (Also, the skins could be more delicate, but that’s a more minor quibble.)

So, ahead of Seattle’s opening, I hereby renew my challenge to Din Tai Fung by re-running my 2010 article about the Bellevue restaurant. Please, Din Tai Fung, leave me breathless instead of brothless. I want my friends to rave once they know how really good xiao long bao can be.

***

Nearly seven months ago, on April 24 [2010], I broke the news that Din Tai Fung was coming to the Seattle area. My prediction came true:

“Knowing the food scene here, knowledge of Din Tai Fung’s arrival will be cause for every food lover in Seattle to have a simultaneous orgasm – first when the news hits Twitter, and next when groups gather upon the restaurant’s opening.”

Indeed, since opening just over a week ago, there have been waits of up to four hours for entry.

Upon departure, reviews of the xiao long bao have been mixed. While many are simply ecstatic to slurp down the soup dumplings, most people I know who’ve had them elsewhere have expressed disappointment.

Count me in as disappointed.

It’s not normally right to review a restaurant so soon after opening. And to be fair, the opening has been quite an accomplishment, and much of the food is very good. (You can read my fuller write-up in the upcoming issue of Northwest Palate.) But here my focus is specifically on the xiao long bao—the main reason most people go to Din Tai Fung. Its raison d’etre. And since the staff has had at least three months pre-opening to work on their dumpling technique (in an August 24 email, the public relations firm representing Din Tai Fung wrote, “Currently, there is a team hard at work, practicing the art of rolling dumplings, from dawn until dusk, 5 days a week.”), I don’t think it’s too early to critique the xiao long bao—and to make my challenge.

Actually, back in April, I offered the preliminary challenge: “How to make the xiao long bao as great in Seattle as they are in Taipei. Something seems to get lost in translation when food like this travels far.” As an example, I noted that Beard Papa’s cream puffs in Seattle are not nearly as compelling as the ones you find in Tokyo.

As someone who’s tried his hand at xiao long bao at home, I have great appreciation for the difficulty in making these dumplings. I’ve fiddled with the filling recipe (varying the amounts of ground pork and pork belly), struggled to get the gelatin right using pig skin instead of packaged gelatin, and watched in admiration as my partner put me to shame in pleating the dumplings properly. (Din Tai Fung takes pride that each dumpling has 18 pleats.) I even put a photo of my imperfect dumplings in the April blog post.

And that’s when David Wasielewski, owner of Bellevue’s Din Tai Fung, wrote and asked me to replace that photo with one from Din Tai Fung’s. His photo, at the top of this post, shows the trademark droop. The sag. The teardrop-like shape that shows how the unthinkably thin wrapper (I’ve eaten xiao long bao all over Taipei, as well as in Shanghai, Vancouver, and in places where they’re available in the States, and Din Tai Fung’s are the thinnest I’ve ever had) strains to effectively hold the broth. (I should say that in Taiwan, Din Tai Fung’s xiao long bao rate a 9.0 in my book, while the ones at Jin Din Rou are a 9.5, as I like the broth and meat—the two other components, besides the wrapper, by which I rate xiao long bao—a little better.)

Din Tai Fung’s photo is on the Bellevue menu, but when the dumplings come to the table, they do not resemble that photo. Actually, from watching the workers in the kitchen, I could tell that the wrappers were thicker. (Last time in Taiwan, I spent time in one of the restaurant’s kitchens watching the xiao long bao production.) Plus, I found it a bit disconcerting that instead of gently placing the uncooked dumplings in the steamer baskets, some of the workers were shot-putting them down.

As you can see from this photo, the xiao long bao do not droop as promised. I have not been able to see the meat or soup inside, as I have elsewhere. Oh, they’re juicy inside, but there’s no shot of broth. Instead, it almost feels like the skin is wrapped around a clump of meat.

So, much as the workers were throwing down the dumplings, I’m throwing down the gauntlet. I’m repeating my April challenge to Din Tai Fung: Make xiao long bao that leaves me breathless, not brothless.

Because, sad to say, right now, your xiao long bao are ma ma hu hu.

You get high points for enthusiasm, but deductions for execution.

You need to thin out those wrappers a bit, and get more gelatin in there. Make them like they make them in Taipei.

I’m hoping that Wasielewski will want to meet this challenge. I know he doesn’t have to do that. There will be thousands of customers (including the inevitable Yelpers, some eating xiao long bao for the first time) who will rave about the soup dumplings as they are, proud (rightfully so) that we have landed the second Din Tai Fung in America. (The first is in Arcadia, outside of Los Angeles.) People will say that these are the best xiao long bao in the Seattle area.

Which is a lot like saying the Mariners are the best baseball team in Seattle.

Unfortunately, that’s often pretty meaningless.

It’s the same with dim sum in Seattle. Some people say it’s great. I say those people probably haven’t ever had good dim sum. Hey, as I wrote in that April post, “For many, it’s not about the quality of the orgasm, but just having one.”

I remain one of those food snobs (I’ll label myself that so you don’t have to) who, when asked where to find the best dim sum, says to drive two hours north to Richmond to find your pick of quality places. I won’t eat dim sum here until I see marked improvement.

Come to think of it, with four hour waits at Din Tai Fung, I’d suggest that some people invest their time in driving to Richmond and back to see what soupy soup dumplings should be like.

I, in fact, am headed to Vancouver for the holiday weekend, and will be making up for my disappointing xiao long bao here by sampling a few places there, like Long’s and Shanghai River (my two favorites at the moment, approaching a rating of 8.5) and maybe a place called The Place.

But I’d certainly like to save time and gas, and get good dumplings here. Din Tai Fung, here’s hoping that can still happen…

I did enjoy these shrimp and pork shao mai more than I did the xiao long bao.
News, Transportation

Seattle Times: Cyclists need “more than paint” for safety

Jonathan Martin (Photo: Seattle Times)

In a significant change of tone, considering Seattle Times editorial board writers as a group, Jonathan Martin this week wrote an elegiac piece arguing that bike infrastructure “means more than paint on the road.” Elegiac, because it followed the death of 54-year-old Lance David, who was killed while biking into work Wednesday morning, and also, in a lesser sense, because Seattle seems finally to be turning its back on an era of painted-on bike “safety” measures. (A memorial ride for David takes place today at 3 p.m.)

Writes Martin: “The Downtown Seattle Association has joined with SDOT and King County Metro on Commute Seattle, which promotes better commute options into downtown, including a cycle track. Business support will be critical, because a cycle track will likely come at the cost of on-street parking.” To see what a cycle track looks like, visit this Seattle Bike Blog story about a newly opened NE 65th Street track that joins the Burke-Gilman Trail to Magnuson Park.

To fill in a missing Interurban Trail link, Seattle’s Department of Transportation is at work on another track on Linden Avenue N, which will use a small curb for separation from traffic, rather than the concrete barriers on NE 65th. On Capitol Hill, Broadway’s streetcar project will also include a cycle track. Not waiting for the city, Amazon is building its own track on 7th Avenue.

Not that long ago, in fall of 2011, you could count on the Seattle Times for both sober journalism about cycling deaths — like that of Mike Wang, while riding “in” a painted bike lane — and mockery of “Mayor McSchwinn” for his addlepated pro-bike stanc. Because cycling, that was for kids, hipsters, and Europeans, and it went without saying that for anyone of import, certainly a mayor, commuting by bicycle was infra dig.

Meanwhile Seattle was featured in The Economist as the “bike-friendly” city that was strangely content to regularly let cyclists be struck down. Painted “instructions” — whether bike lanes or sharrows — kept the heated conversations around bike safety that sprang up again and again after injuries and deaths focused on who was to blame for not following those instructions: the driver or the cyclist.

It is probably no accident that Martin’s Twitter bio mentions he’s a biker himself, or that the Times‘ transportation reporter Mike Lindblom, who also bikes, spotted back in 2008 the dangerousness of the area where Lance David was killed. This is shoe-leather journalism, even if technically it’s bike-tired. In contrast, perpetuators of the “McSchwinn” meme have often announced that they were on a bike “once,” and tend to insist, in the face of the thousands of cyclists actually doing it, that Seattle’s climate and geography prevent bike commuting, and so everyone must drive. In fact, more than 40 percent take the bus; only about one-third admit to driving alone.

Back in February, Mayor McGinn made a point of acknowledging the city’s shift in thinking: “We are updating our Bike Master Plan, with a focus on separated cycle tracks, and a network of safe neighborhood greenways,” he said. Clearly, every day counts.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks for May

As the weather gets warmer, things are starting to heat up in the local classical music scene. Catch world premiere performances from today’s hottest composers and choreographers. Explore great works of the 20th century with Shostakovich at Benaroya Hall and a Charles Ives festival at the University of Washington. Or travel further back in time with the Medieval Women’s Choir as they transport audiences to 12th century Germany.

May 3 — The Oregon Symphony rolls into town for a performance at Benaroya Hall. Our orchestral neighbors from the south bring along a diversity of musical treats. Hear Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony alongside music by Ravel and Kurt Weill (of “Mack the Knife” fame). A special performance of a work by Thai composer Narong Prangcharoen rounds off the evening.

Who’s there? Soprano Nuccia Focile in La Voix Humaine (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

May 4 – 18 — Seattle Opera brings two unusual tales of damsels in distress to the McCaw Hall stage. The operatic double bill begins with Francis Poulenc’s The Human Voice. Based on a 1930 play by Jean Cocteau, the one-woman opera captures one side of the conversation as a despairing Parisian woman is dumped via telephone. After intermission, Puccini’s Sister Angelica transports the audience to 17th century Italian convent, where a young nun struggles with hidden secrets from her past.

May 6 – 8 — The University of Washington School of Music explores the strange world of American composer Charles Ives with three days of lectures and performances. An insurance agent by day and composer by night, Ives was fond of quoting American patriotic songs and familiar classical works in his compositions. Hear Ives’ orchestral works on May 6, his devilishly difficult “Concord” Piano Sonata on May 7, and a collection of songs and chamber music on May 8.

May 8 — Pianist Jon Kimura Parker shows off his chops at the UW’s Meany Hall with his own solo piano arrangement of Stravinsky’s infamous ballet Rite of Spring. As if a full-length performance of Rite isn’t enough, Parker also throws in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and works by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.

May 11 — Soprano Marian Seibert joins the Medieval Women’s Choir for “Music of the Spheres,” a tribute to 12th-century abbess and religious mystic Hildegard of Bingen. A renowned healer, poet, and composer, Hildegard is most famous for her multi-sensory “visions” that affected her throughout her lifetime. Travel back in time to Hildegard’s Middle Ages with this choral performance, accompanied by period instruments.

May 14 — Learn about the astounding life of poet Krystyna Zywulska, member of the Polish Resistance and survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Music of Remembrance presents the world premiere performance of Jake Heggie’s Farewell, Auschwitz!, which brings Zywulska’s poetry to life through music and song.

May 16 – 17 — The Seattle Symphony celebrates Shostakovich with two concerts of the composer’s most beloved works. On May 16, the orchestra performs the dramatic Symphony No. 5 along with Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring guest soloist Ignat Solzhenitsyn. The next evening, May 17, hear Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 performed by 21-year-old Julian Schwarz, son of SSO Conductor Laureate Gerard Schwarz.

May 18 – 19 — With the long, sunny days of summer quickly approaching, it’s the perfect time to pay tribute to sunshine and light. Seattle Pro Musica‘s “Lucis” celebrates the season with a program of contemporary choral works devoted to the theme of light. The concert features several composers who herald from Scandinavia and the Baltics, including Finnish composer Jaakko Mantyjarvi, whose Canticum calamitatis maritimae honors those who perished in the tragic MS Estonia shipwreck of 1994.

May 31 – Jun. 9 — Who says Pacific Northwest Ballet doesn’t do modern? The company’s annual “Director’s Choice” production brings together short masterpieces by the great choreographers of the 20th century and today. This year’s show pairs Balanchine favorites with a world premiere by Christopher Wheeldon, one of contemporary ballet’s shining stars.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Mike Daisey Unmasks Our “American Utopias” at Seattle Rep

Mike Daisey (Photo: Ursa Waz)

I have just one complaint about Mike Daisey’s show American Utopias (at Seattle Rep through May 4), and, judging from its title — Fucking Fucking Fucking Ayn Rand (through May 11) — it may well apply to his next show, too. Unless you are a Marine, truck driver, or construction worker, you want to be careful how often you deploy the word “fuck” and its variations in the course of a two-and-a-half-hour show.

In Daisey’s case, if you removed half the instances, you’d still want to describe the evening as “profanity-laced.” At some point, it became a distracting tic, like any overused-for-emphasis adverb. If you know, as a Daisey fan, that he speaks extemporaneously from a sketched-out outline, then you hear him relying more and more on a crutch he uses to poke the audience with and assure himself we’re still there.

Otherwise, American Utopias finds Daisey — after his self-inflicted Agony — freed from the neoclassical monologue structure built from the bricks of strictly first-person, factual reportage. The program notes alert you to this, but so does the work itself, as Daisey takes liberties with his descriptions of children levitating as they approach the entrance to Disney World in Orlando. It may seem like nuance, but it opens up space for creative freedom that wasn’t always there when the Daisey-panopticon was seated at his rigorous table.

Minute-for-minute, the show contains a greater torrent of convulsive laughter and insight than anything I think I’ve seen from Daisey before. I don’t want to recount the show, and in this case my dark inertia is supported by Daisey’s thesis that the larger part of the experience is showing up for it. Suffice to say that the utopias encountered are Burning Man (one thing we all know with certainty, deep in our souls, says Daisey, is whether we need to go to Burning Man, or not), Disney World and his sister’s New Jersey annexation of its aesthetic, and the occupation of Zuccotti Park.

Daisey’s undergirding insight into utopia is that it’s a yearning for a kind of experience, not a location. More specifically, it’s sympathetic (he compares it to people grooving on a bass line) and time-based (time’s context keeps us present and engaged). One of Daisey’s gifts has always been a catholic perspective that seeks to understand if perhaps there’s something in common between the engaged theatre audience, Burning Man’s spectacle, and family-oriented Disney nirvana.

He’s storyteller enough not to play down his misgivings about a neo-hippie freakout in the desert (suddenly the theatre artist is the squarest person on the playa), or his inclination to put Occupy Wall Street on the back burner, since Zuccotti Park wasn’t likely to go anywhere soon. And a riff about Disney-blistered feet generated paroxysms of laughter. But there’s serious self-interrogation going on at the same time, about his (and our) tendency to sleepwalk along, seeking moments of unity as an end in themselves, rather than as fuel for action. In one sense, the difference between Burning Man and Seattle is that we think one city is permanent.

When I say I have just one complaint, that doesn’t mean I have no criticism to make, but on balance, my critique is appreciative. With Jean-Michele Gregory’s help, Daisey breaks the two-hour mark without intermission, the audience not merely rapt but responsive. There’s special-effects produce and a short video excerpt courtesy of Anonymous, and astonishingly delicate, suggestive lighting that delineates and joins Daisey’s verbal peregrinations and detours.

Daisey has, previously, strained to use theatre as a tool for inspiring action, refusing to let people sit there and nod knowingly, yes, the world tsk shameful well shall we get dessert? Here he makes a leap that I’m still marveling at, and wondering about, in that he puts the audience in action, and waits to see if theatre happens. I think something wonderful does.