Seattle Wine and Food Experience Supports Big Table

Great news! The Seattle Wine and Food Experience selected Big Table this year for their 2012 featured charity.  The Giving Grapes Foundation that works with the Wine and Food Experience has a mission remarkably close to ours.  They asist local charities who provide financial assistance to service industry professionals who have to take time off work due to injury or illness.

We are delighted to partner with Giving Grapes and the Seattle Wine and Food Experience.  Kevin will be on site at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall from the moment the doors open (noon) until the time they close (5pm) on Sunday, February 26.

Your purchase of a ticket helps support Big Table and gets you in the door for great wine and food.

Twenty local chefs will be serving up gourmet tapas plates.  Audi is hosting a oyster bar and bubbly lounge. There will be wines from around the world and a special focus on Oregon wines as well as a local and national beer and cider exhibit.  Northwest distillers will be offering sips of their wares.

Stella Artois and Viking will host a chef demo stage with Chef Thierry Rautureau.  Fonté Coffee Lounge will be open for small batch crafted coffee shots, and local venders will be sampling and selling artisan food.  Add in live music and you have a SEATTLE WINE AND FOOD EXPERIENCE.

Ticket are $49.

Make sure to stop by the Big Table "table" to say hi.

Great Seattle Mechanic Needed

Do you know a mechanic in the Seattle area that you trust?  Big Table is looking for one with skill, integrity and a willingness to have a little fun to help us on The Case of the Sputtering Beater.  Who do you know who might be willing to help?

Mee Sum Pastry @ Pike Place Market

Seattle has been something of a dining mecca for me for years.  Almost a decade now in Spokane on the eastern side of Washington state hasn't changed this, and trips to the west side, at least for me, are planned around food.  Mee Sum Pastry in Pike Place Market isn't just on the list, it has evolved into the symbolic first stop up arrival.

I tend to drive straight to the Market, find a place to park (usually a challenge) and make a bee line for this small vendor stall across the street from the main line of vegetable stalls.  And I always order the same thing: a steamed pork hombow for $2.06.

I love the pillowy sweet dough and the BBQ pork tucked inside.

There are other things on the menu and someday I might try a few, but for now a pork hombow is the culinary marker that I'm back in Seattle, a city I love.

If you know of places other than the Mee Sum market stall for great hombow, please weigh in and let me know.

Eating at Eva in Seattle

Anne Nisbet suggested we go to Eva tonight for dinner while I'm here in Seattle.  After working for Anne at the International Pinot Noir Celebration in Oregon last year, I trust her taste.  When she mentioned that Eva is one of her personal favorites in Seattle I'm sure I must have grinned greedily.

Amy McCray is the chef/owner at Eva and brings some high-end experience to this dinner-only spot in Greenlake just doors from the Tangletown Brewery.  I remember Tangletown as the Honey Bear Bakery from my college days in Seattle.

Dinner at Eva was a gift.  The menu is varied and the menu tonight offered some globetrotting spicing with Indian and Moroccan riffs next to Grilled Chicken with a Lebanese Nut Rice and Roasted Quail.  Yet my favorite dish of those sampled tonight was an appetizer tucked into the FIRSTS section of the menu: Cabrales Flan with Pear Relish and a Walnut Crisp.

I'm used to seeing Flan listed predictably in the dessert offerings.  This savory number rich with cheese and paired with a sweet fruit relish was a revelation.  Add in a crumbly walnut crisp cracker and some peppery greens dressed in a light lemon vinagrette and you have something worthy of a very wide grin.