A Return to Sitka & Spruce
The last time I wrote about Sitka & Spruce in Seattle, I praised the place but called the food "challenging." That was in January. On this most recent trip to Seattle, we returned to Sitka and Spruce--this time for brunch--and the meal was so good, so beautiful, that "challenging" was suddenly the wrong word for it. I decided I needed to do a follow-up post and that's the post you're reading right now.
The room is still incredibly inviting, with the sun coming through enormous windows propped open with random pieces of wood. The kitchen flows seamlessly into the dining area so you can see everyone at work, prepping plates, fixing coffee, steaming salmon.
The menu, this time, had more familiar words on it---though we had to ask about one word (I forget it now) concerning the puree that the beets were sitting on. It was made of walnuts and cumin, if I remember correctly. Diana will remember it.
And speaking of Diana, here she is with Mark sampling some of the excellent bread and butter:
And what goes better with bread and butter than...another bread item made of butter. This, specifically, was a house-made croissant which is no small feat for any restaurant. It was made with cultured butter and served with ham:
The outside was flaky, the inside warm and almost bready. We gobbled it up in 0.45 seconds flat.
The dish you see at the top of the post was a chilled plate of sturgeon (or another fish like sturgeon) with a subtle, clean taste that had us raving. And the flowers, while probably there more for color than for flavor, made it visually stunning.
The chicken liver pâté...
...had a real richness of flavor that made me think it came from a well-fed chicken. It arrived with pickled mustard seeds, fava beans that'd been confited (and left unpeeled, which somehow worked) and toasted bread on which to slather everything.
The beets were fascinating in that they were roasted with their roots and tops still attached.
They came on the aforementioned walnut/cumin puree, along with big hunks of feta. This dish may have been our favorite.
Then there was this perfectly poached salmon which came with runner beans, cherry tomatoes and an egg:
Everything worked together here in total harmony; no flavor dominating any other flavor. And the salmon was like a beacon of everything wonderful about the Northwest.
Finally, we enjoyed this dish of an egg served on potatoes and sautéed chanterelle mushrooms:
Simple, clean, elegant... like all of the food that we ate at Sitka and Spruce.
If our first meal there was challenging, this meal was...invigorating. Inspiring. Insert another "I" word here. Which goes to prove, you can't judge a restaurant on only one visit. Especially a restaurant that constantly reinvents itself and its menu the way that Sitka & Spruce does. It's quickly becoming my favorite Seattle restaurant.
