Ron's View

[From the Parm website]

We didn’t eat much Ialian food at home when I grew up. Or maybe I should call it Italian-American food. No pizza. No pasta. And I didn’t mind, given that I wasn’t too interested in tomatoes. Or cheese. Or spaghetti, which was pretty much synonymous with pasta then. My brother would like to pick up meatball heroes from a place nearby. I didn’t understand that at all. The name alone was a puzzle. Plus, when he’d bring the paper bag into the car with the takeout hero, the smell was awful.

I know. My loss. And what a loss it was! Here we were, in a suburb of New York with a large Italian population, and I eschewed the local food.

The first four of my Cambridge-Boston years were no better. But finally, when I stayed in Cambridge to attend graduate school, I had to cook for myself and my interests broadened. No heroes in Boston. They had grinders. There was a Greek pizza and grinder shop on Mass Ave about halfway between Central Square and MIT that I’d walk past every day. One day I took a chance. Rather than heading on to campus to grab lunch at the student center cafeteria, I stopped in to look around. And ordered a meatball grinder.

Mind you, I didn’t have much room in my diet for onions either. Thanks to this shop, I learned. They made a meatball grinder the likes of which I’ve never had since. The meatballs were cut long and flat, like meatloaf. A small amount of sauce was put on top. And sliced onions. Then the grinder was grilled, the bread getting toasty, the onions crisp. It was so good. The best.

But not a traditional meatball hero. Or sub. Or grinder. I wouldn’t learn to eat them for a few years more. The year we spent in Princeton, when Joel was a baby, I began serious research. Whenever we went to a pizza place, I’d be sure to order a meatball hero too. Some were good; some weren’t. They were nothing like those Greek meatball grinders from Cambridge, but I didn’t use them as my standard. I treated this as a different food category, and I was content.

Here in Seattle, as Joel has gotten older, he has begun his own search for the perfect meatball hero. We don’t have the same vision. I am convinced, for now at least, that the best in Seattle are from Stellar, in Georgetown. Joel’s not impressed. He prefers Piecora’s, which he grew up eating. More to the point, he’s not convinced there are any good meatball subs in Seattle. He may be right.

Which brings me to Pete Wells’ weekly NYT restaurant review last Wednesday, in which he awards two stars to Parm and breaks my heart. Why must we be so far away?

I would like somebody to explain why my mind keeps drifting back to the meatball parmigiana hero at Parm. Like most things at Parm, which opened on Mulberry Street in November, it is prepared by cooks wearing white paper hats and is set before you in a red plastic basket. And, like most things at Parm, it is completely faithful to your memories while being much, much better than you remembered.

At first, the sandwich exhibits nothing out of the ordinary. The tomato sauce, simple and summery, just seems to have been made by a good cook. The mozzarella and torn leaves of basil are fresh, which isn’t unheard of. The seeded roll is completely normal. The meatballs are not normal. For starters, they are not balls, they are patties. Anyone who has ever taken a bite of a meatball hero and watched one of the meatballs launch into orbit will recognize at once the significance of this deviation. Patties stay put.

Most sub-shop meatballs are as hard as a 15-minute egg. The patties at Parm are not. Your teeth fall right through them.

And when they do, you find something else that isn’t normal: the meat is juicy and rosy pink on the inside, the color of a perfectly cooked pork chop. The meatballs, made from veal, beef and sweet Italian sausage, are pink because they were braised at 180 degrees in a CVap low-temperature cooker for 40 minutes. They were braised at 180 degrees because Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone, the chefs behind Parm, studied fancy-restaurant techniques under chefs like Andrew Carmellini, Mario Batali and Wylie Dufresne.

But the meatballs are sitting on a hero roll because Mr. Torrisi and Mr. Carbone are Italian-Americans who, once they had a restaurant of their own, decided to cook what is a kind of soul food for them and for millions of other Americans, even those with no Italian ancestors.

In the summary data at the end of the review, Wells describes Parm as “an Italian-American lunch counter with tables, where the short-order cooks in white paper hats happen to have trained in some of Manhattan’s best restaurants.” The service is “as smiling and professional as one could ask of a place where nearly everything is served in a plastic basket.” Parm receives two stars, a ringing endorsement of such a simple place. We will have to find our way down there next time we’re in Manhattan.

I began 2011 with a post titled Food and Law, in which I referred to e-pal Leslie’s post on her dinner with Supreme Court justice Ruth Ginsburg. Leslie had a follow-up post yesterday regarding the “perfect baguette” recipe of Ruth’s late husband Marty.

It turns out that Marty Ginsburg was an excellent cook. Leslie was able to get Marty to reveal his baguette recipe over the phone, and she wrote it down for him to verify, which he did. That recipe, as then recorded by Leslie, was kept private at his request, but it has now appeared in Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg, a book of Marty’s recipes assembled by other Supreme Court spouses. The book is published by the Supreme Court Historical Society and available at the Supreme Court gift shop.

Leslie has more about the Ginsburg baguettes in a post from three summers ago, where she describes them as “crunchy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside … like the ones you get in France.” Indeed, she considers them “the best baguettes I have ever had outside of France.”

NPR featured the book in a piece a month ago with famed Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, from whom we learn that

The idea for the cookbook, Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg, came from Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Justice Samuel Alito. It hit her the day after Marty Ginsburg’s memorial service in 2010.

“One of my first conversations with Marty, in the fall of 2006, was about food and nourishment, and how satisfying an expression of love that it was for him,” she recalls. “And that, in part, led to the idea that we should put the cookbook together.”

The other Supreme spouses quickly agreed. They had often teamed up with Marty Ginsburg to provide the food for the monthly spouse lunches. But none of them had any idea what a large undertaking the cookbook would be.

First, a word about Marty Ginsburg’s love affair with cooking. It began, strangely enough, when he was in the army at Fort Sill, Okla., with his new bride, the young Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Neither of the Ginsburgs knew much about cooking then, but one of their wedding gifts was The Escoffier Cookbook, the bible of French cooking. And so Marty, a chemistry major, began at page one and worked his way through the entire volume. As he observed in a speech in 1996, there was method to his madness then and later.

“I learned very early on in our marriage that Ruth was a fairly terrible cook and, for lack of interest, unlikely to improve. This seemed to me comprehensible; my mother was a fairly terrible cook also. Out of self-preservation, I decided I had better learn to cook because Ruth, to quote her precisely, was expelled from the kitchen by her food-loving children nearly a quarter-century ago.”

I write often about the meals we have out, not often enough about the ones in. Here’s one.

After a great meal at Cafe Parco Sunday night and a not-so-great meal out last night, it was time tonight for the lamb chops that we bought Saturday. (Recall that we bought them at The Swinery during the West Seattle outing described here.)

We began with a carrot soup Gail made using a Moosewood recipe and a loaf of bread she bought today at Macrina Bakery. Then came the lamb chops, accompanied by fantastic rösti. There was a time when I ate the real thing, courtesy of a Swiss woman I knew. I can tell you, Gail makes the real thing. Next came the salad, a simple and tasty plate of greens. And then a little more rösti. Why let it sit?

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to photograph the meal when Gail served it. I assembled the scene above three hours later, taking the soup and the one extra chop out of the refrigerator. The rösti was gone. Sorry.

Thanks Gail.

Bakery Nouveau

We don’t get over to West Seattle* much. It’s not all that far; it just feels that way. But from SeaTac airport to the south, it’s pretty accessible, and therefore we have developed a little tradition, when we drop someone off at the airport on a weekend morning, of stopping in West Seattle on the way home. Joel’s return to North Carolina yesterday gave us our first such opportunity since August 2010, when we saw our friend Kenny off to his Glasgow home.

*West Seattle is the part of the city that lies west of the Duwamish River. It’s basically the whole southwest portion, taking in several distinct neighborhoods and commercial centers. Puget Sound borders it on the west, Elliott Bay to the north and east, with dramatic views across Elliott Bay to downtown.

We arrived in West Seattle as their huge Bank of America branch on Alaska opened, allowing us the opportunity to take care of some business. Then it was off to the intersection of Alaska and California, site of Easy Street Records and Easy Street Cafe. (History here.) Breakfast at the cafe is always the centerpiece of our West Seattle visits. They had a 20-minute wait for a table, which we spent in the adjacent record space. CD space actually. If there are records there, I haven’t seen them.

Easy Street occupies what appears to have once been a fire station. The cafe side has two large garage doors, the entire space has high ceilings and a partial upper floor. A coffee bar counter divides the space in two, with stool seating on the CD side. We wandered around as various parties ahead of us were called for their tables. At exactly the 20-minute mark, our turn came. We got to sit right in front, at a two-top by one of the old fire station doors with a view out to the street. And we had the same waitress as we did two Augusts ago, a pretty lively woman.

I ordered the Horton Heat Hash: “Our fresh cooked hash with corned beef, bacon, onions, peppers, hash browns and secret spices. Served with 3 eggs any style and toast. Can you handle the Heat!?” Gail had the Billy Breakfast Burrito: “2 eggs scrambled with black bean salsa and cheddar, wrapped in a Spinach tortilla. Served with hash browns and sour cream and salsa on the side.” Mine was great. I can’t believe I hadn’t ordered it before. We have many fine restaurants within a mile of our home, but no classic breakfast place. We sure could use one. Easy Street is so good I don’t know why we don’t make a point of driving over there.

We were all set to head home when I remembered that we were intending to try the French bakery our architect Todd had told us about last year. In the meantime, two French bakeries have opened in our neck of the woods — the wonderful Inès Pâtisserie and Belle Epicurean — making it less pressing to get over to West Seattle to try it. But we were there. It would be silly not to visit now.

We couldn’t think of the name, so I had to search for West Seattle French bakeries on my iPhone. Bakery Nouveau popped up instantly, and it was just a half-block south of Easy Street, except that we were now a block north at our car. We doubled back and found it to be much larger than we had imagined, with a long counter (pictured above) on the left and table seating running the length of the bakery on the right. A line of people ran from the far end of the counter right to the door. We got on and took turns inspecting the goods. The offerings were far more diversified than I imagined: croissants, sandwiches, little pizzas, chocolates, jellies, pies and tarts, cakes, cookies. (Menu here.)

Had we not just eaten a late breakfast, we could have had quite a charming early lunch. Instead, we ordered a selection to bring home: Two twice-baked almond croissants. (Our classic croissant soaked in simple syrup and filled with delicious almond cream. It is topped with sliced almonds and additional almond cream.) One cherry almond pear tart. (Cherry and pear fruit layered over frangipan over a thin layer of raspberry jam in a pate sucre crust. It is finished with an apricot glaze and toasted almond slivers.) One strawberry macaroon with caramel filling. And two mango pâtes de fruit.

The croissants were warm. When I got home, I ate mine. Gail found hers to be somewhat on the heavy side. She’s probably right, but when she ate, hers was at room temperature. I loved mine. I ate the tart today. Good, perhaps not great. The pâtes were excellent. I never tried the macaroon.

One more stop awaited. Just a couple of weeks ago, our friend Russ had asked Gail where to find local smoked ham. For an answer, Gail turned to one of her former instructors at Seattle Culinary Academy, who directed her to The Swinery in West Seattle. On leaving Bakery Nouveau, we looked it up and found that it was up California a ways. Not in the neighborhood. We would have to drive about a mile north. We drove that and more, not realizing that The Swinery has the smallest storefront imaginable. We were more careful on the way back south.

There’s a big workspace below and behind, but the retail area is small, with two display cases and a freezer with pre-prepared items. We were third in line for the one woman running the shop, giving us plenty of time to review the offerings. Some are marked as coming from Zoe’s Meats, a San Francisco purveyor that has a branch here.

When our time came, Gail ordered a four lamb chops (the woman threw in the fifth and last for free), two spicy Italian sausage links, Zoe’s sopressata, and some goat cheese. Gail had the cheese today, said it’s wonderful, but the meats are still awaiting trial.

That was enough. We headed home, pleased with all the good food and hoping our next West Seattle expedition comes soon.

[András Szántó]

My days with the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday arts/culture/food/wine/cars sections are numbered, as I have previously lamented. As far as I can tell, our WSJ subscription has already ended, but the paper keeps coming, just in case I change my mind and renew. Which isn’t going to happen, Rupert.

In the meantime, I still get to enjoy their wonderful articles, such as András Szántó’s piece two days ago on the best krémes in Budapest. I keep looking at the photos of krémes and wondering when we get to go. I told Gail last night that we should plan a trip to Budapest, maybe with Prague and Vienna thrown in. Today we got a postcard from her childhood friend Lois, in the midst of that very trip. Not fair.

What is krémes? (Or should I say what are krémes?) The author explains that it is

a quivering quadrangle of vanilla crème, sandwiched between layers of crisp mille-feuille and finished with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar.

The krémes is dessert stripped to the essentials. It’s usually consumed on its own, not after a meal. Best to order before noon, when cream and crust are both fresh, their contrasting textures clearly discernible.

On a visit to Budapest with his son, he does research on the best krémes, coming up with a list of six. I sent the article to friend and colleague Sándor, a Budapest native, who found the article close to his heart, noting that although krémes “is not my first choice of pastry,” it is “a major thing a Hungarian misses in the US.” I also had my current TA, Pál, yet another Budapest native, weigh in. It turns out that the place Szántó ranks number one, Maródi Cukrászda, which opened just last spring, is around the corner from Pál’s home in Budapest. Pál will get to try it in December. Like Sándor, Pál commented that krémes is not his favorite Hungarian dessert. He prefers somlói galuska.

We will have a lot to explore. While we wait, we can look at more of Szántó’s photos, such as the one below.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how much I’ll miss the Wall Street Journal’s arts/culture/wine/food/sports coverage when we soon stop taking the paper. (I won’t miss the rest and won’t miss Murdoch, the reason for canceling it.) Another gem appeared as the daily front-page feature (the A-Hed) a couple of days ago, Lucette Lagnado’s piece with news that fabled Jewish food producer Manischewitz was branching out from gefilte fish to Moroccan fish meatballs. Yes, the acme of Ashkenazi food was heading over to the wild Sephardic side.

For years, gefilte fish—plump little patties of minced fish—has been the Jewish holiday treat that some Jews love to hate.

[snip]

Even Paul Bensabat wasn’t that impressed when he tried it. “Boring,” he says. “Pretty bland.” And he’s co-CEO of Manischewitz Co., one of the largest producers of gefilte fish. When Mr. Bensabat and partners took over the 123-year-old company, they decided to spice things up. One idea: Moroccan fish balls.

[snip]

Mr. Bensabat, a Moroccan Jew born in Casablanca, had never tasted gefilte fish when he and his partner joined an investor who had acquired the company. Some Manischewitz fare hadn’t been a part of his upbringing. “I never grew up eating matzoh-ball soup,” he says. His childhood memories were of couscous and other dishes of the Mediterranean.

He started sampling jars of gefilte fish. Manischewitz makes more than 50 different kinds—sweet and not sweet, in jelly and in broth, to name a few.

His partner and co-CEO Alain Bankier, also Moroccan-Jewish and also from Casablanca, is more diplomatic. “It is an acquired taste,” he says.

They agreed Manischewitz needed to go beyond gefilte fish—and quickly. Sales of traditional gefilte fish in a jar were still a pillar of the business, but were steadily going down. Younger consumers favored other foods or brands. The company hadn’t produced new products in years when Messrs. Bensabat and Bankier joined it in 2008.

[snip]

Mr. Bensabat’s prescription was to branch out to Mediterranean fare—starting with his mother’s Moroccan fish balls.

The company’s food technologists at its headquarters in Newark, N.J., were mystified: They hadn’t a clue how to make Moroccan fish balls.

The solution: a cross-cultural, trans-Atlantic cuisine transplant, in which Mr. Bensabat would get the family recipe from his 83-year-old maman and Manischewitz’s cooks would translate it for large-scale production.

There were a few obstacles, starting with the fact that his mother, Claire Bensabat, lives 4,000 miles away in Nice. She speaks French and doesn’t use recipes or follow a cookbook to prepare her delicacies.

Her recipe for fish balls: Take a fish, and “add a little bit of cumin.”

Read the full story.

Now I’m eager to try the fish balls, or fish meatballs, as Manischewitz decided to call them. Manischewitz has a recipe for the meatballs at their website, along with the photo at the top of this post.

Also, accompanying the WSJ article is Mrs. Claire Bensabat’s Festive Sweet Couscous Recipe, along with this explanation: “Sweet couscous is a specialty of Mrs. Claire Bensabat, Paul Bensabat’s mother, that she loves to make; since she cooks by instinct, it was hard for her to come up with exact measures, but through the efforts of working together with her son, she produced the following recipe for The Journal.”

Gail, should we give it a try?

What do I love most in the world? Well, yes, Gail. But forget about people. And sports. Let’s try again.

What do I love most in the world? Tough one, right? Is it pasta? Is it math? Let’s just say they’re tied. Guess what? There’s a book about them: Pasta by Design, by George L. Legendre.

I might have missed this book if not for yesterday’s WSJ, whose Saturday Review section devoted most of a page to illustrations from it. I didn’t have to look for long before deciding to order a copy.

The publisher’s website provides the following description of the book:

The pasta family tree reveals unexpected relationships between pasta shapes, their usage and common DNA. Architect George L. Legendre has profiled 92 different kinds of pasta, classifying them into types using ‘phylogeny’ (the study of relatedness among natural forms).

Each spread is devoted to a single pasta, and explains its geographical origin, its process of manufacture and its etymology – alongside suggestions for minute-perfect preparation.

Next the shape is rendered as an equation and as a diagram that shows every distinctive scrunch, ridge and crimp with loving precision. Superb photographs by Stefano Graziani show all the elegant contours.

Finally, a multi-page foldout features a ‘Pasta Family Reunion’ diagram, reassembling all the pasta types and grouping them by their mathematical and geometric properties!

I love the idea of a pasta taxonomy.

If you follow the WSJ link, you’ll see some of the photographs and diagrams. More can be found in this announcement of a book giveaway competition by Dezeen magazine, which explains that the book “includes photographs, 3D diagrams and parametric equations of 92 different pasta types, grouped and analysed according to their mathematical and geometric properties.”

Check out this example, included in the WSJ:

Or this, from Deneen:

I can’t wait to see them all.

Sunset from Shaw Island

Back in April, at the annual fundraising auction of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, we were high bidder for an overnight outing to two of the San Juan Islands. The premise of most of the auction items is that you get to spend time with one of the museum’s curators, either in the museum itself or out in the field. In this case, we were bidding for two curators and a generous host couple.

The San Juans, as you may know, lie to the north of Puget Sound and east of the Juan de Fuca Straits, in the waters between Vancouver Island (to the west) and the northern part of Washington State. The US-Canada border snakes through in a complicated pattern, separating the San Juans from Canada’s Gulf Islands to the north. (See the Pig War of 1859 and the ultimate determination of the border in 1872.) Four of the islands are served by Washington State Ferries: Lopez, Shaw, Orcas, and San Juan. But there are many others, such as Sucia, some privately owned and some public.

In outline, we were to arrive at Shaw Island in time for dinner at the host couple’s home along with the hosts and the curators, spend the evening there, then head out as a group on the hosts’ boat to Sucia Island, which lies on the other side of Orcas Island, about an hour away (depending on tides). There, we would explore the archaeology, geology, and paleontology of the island, with a break for lunch, and in mid afternoon we would return to Shaw to catch the ferry back.

Finding a mutually satisfactory time was not entirely straightforward, but we eventually settled on two weeks ago today and tomorrow. Gail and I headed off around 1:30 PM for Anacortes, on Fidalgo Island some 80 miles north of here, and its ferry terminal a few miles west of town. There we met up with Julie and Liz, our guides. Julie was once the museum’s archaeology curator, but has served for six years now as its executive director. Liz is the invertebrate paleontology curator. And both are friends, which was part of the appeal of the trip when we bid on it. (Julie is more than a friend. She’s my long lost twin, having been born on the very same day as me, just hours later. We have shared the fate of having only a limited number of birthdays. Next year is a big one.) The ferries were running late, so we had some time to kill at the ferry landing. The day was warm and lovely, and we were quite content to sit outside waiting and chatting. Once aboard the ferry, we did the same, as we snaked through the islands to Shaw.

I had never been on Shaw before, only looking at it from the ferry. It’s primarily residential. No town. No commercial area, except for the general store and post office just a hundred yards up from the ferry landing. For years, these were managed by nuns, but they left seven years ago, leaving the store in the hands of a Shaw couple. Our host met us, loaded our bags, and whisked us off to his home, where his wife welcomed us. We were shown to our guest quarters, took a few moments to unpack, then headed over to the main house to join everyone.

Soon, as we relaxed over drinks and hors d’ouevres in the most gorgeous of settings, the tour began. A large map of the islands was unfolded and Julie and Liz explained the islands’ geological history, along with that of western Washington as a whole. Birds flitted in and out among the nearby feeders and we looked out at the view across the water to other islands. Our host got the salmon going on the grill, and before long it was time to move inside for dinner.

What a feast! With two weeks gone now, I can hardly remember all the details. Many of the vegetables had been bought the day before at the market in Friday Harbor, the main town of San Juan Island and a short trip by boat. Fresh corn salad, green salad, assorted other vegetables, perfectly cooked salmon. And the conversation was every bit as wonderful as the food.

After dinner, our host took us on a walk up a slight slope on the property to its high point, a wooded area with mysterious boulders that Julie said were not naturally occurring. They would have been placed there by natives, perhaps as a burial area. From there we walked down to an overlook above the water and back to the house. The sun was near to setting, so I headed out with my camera and took shot upon shot, one of which you can see at the top.

Soon dessert awaited us, the most gorgeous of almond tarts. I had been trying to limit my carb intake, but I couldn’t pass up the tart entirely, and our hostess was kind enough to cut off a piece of just the right size for me. It was so good that if allowed, I would surely have had three regular pieces rather than one tiny piece. We talked into the evening, partly about issues of higher education, then headed off to get some sleep before our big adventure.

The next morning, we arrived at the main house from our guest quarters to find yet another feast, a breakfast of eggs and bacon and fruits and berries and bread and more. After eating and loading up, we headed to our hosts’ boat, moored not far away, and within minutes we were off.

Leaving Shaw Island for Sucia Island

The tides were against us as we headed north around the west side of Orcas and then east, along the north side of Orcas to Sucia. We arrived in Fossil Bay, an inlet on the island’s southeast corner, found some dock space to tie up along, and disembarked. The morning was for archaeology.

Julie isn’t just any archaeologist. She’s Ms. San Juan Islands Archaeologist, the famed islands expert, having led digs, studied, and published about them for decades. And Sucia isn’t just any island. It’s the island on which the young archaeologist Robert Kidd did some groundbreaking (I know, this is must be a tiresome pun among archies) research starting in 1960. We walked over to the site of Kidd’s work, where Julie gave us a lesson on the history of archaeological research in the islands. She had brought along photos of the old dig, much of which is now covered over by wild roses and other growth, as well as the thistle pictured below.

Sucia Island thistle

We then walked along the beach in search of evidence of shell middens (the garbage dumps where native residents would have thrown their shells and other waste, and where tools are typically found as well). We didn’t have to look far. We reached one of the raised composting toilets, and there just below was a midden, disturbed of course by the construction years ago of the original toilet. Two parks employees came by and Julie gave us all a lesson on middens.

Time for lunch. We retraced our steps back to the boat, our hosts set pulled out all the food, unfolded a tablecloth on one of the picnic tables that sit on the dock, and laid out feast number three. There were some leftovers, new salads, smoked salmon, homemade chocolate chip cookies, fruit, drinks. Gosh we ate well.

Time for paleontology. We walked back past the shell middens to another stretch of beach, which you can see below. We walked down the beach not in the direction shown, but in the direction behind me.

Sucia Island beach, with Waldron (US) and Saturna (Canada) Islands beyond

This brought us to some cliffs filled with fossils. Let me assure you, in case you have any interest in heading over to Sucia, that fossil collecting is absolutely forbidden. So don’t do it. Unless you have a permit, which you don’t, but which Liz does. Out came two hammers, though Julie showed me that I could pick up any quartz rock along the beach and use it as well.

Sucia Island fossil

We all hammered away at the cliff, or at pieces of fallen rock at the cliff’s foot, turning up fossil after fossil, which Liz duly recorded and bagged. It was great fun. I forgot to mention that Liz had brought some fossils up from the museum collection, showing us back at the house after breakfast what they were and previewing what we might see. As we found new fossils, she was able to tell us what they were.

Well, one can only have so much fun, and there was a ferry to catch, so around 3:00 we started walking back to the boat. Those darn tides. They had gone and reversed themselves on us, setting us up for yet another tide-fighting ride. But a beautiful one, with great company, so we were happy as we bumped along, around Orcas again and on to Shaw.

After docking, we unloaded, carried and wheelbarrowed everything back to the vehicles, and it was time for goodbyes to Julie, Liz, and the hostess, who would be returning to the house. The host drove us on to the ferry landing with time to spare, so we were able to wander through the general store with him and check out the post office. Then one more farewell, leaving Gail and me to sit and look out across the water to Orcas as we waited for the ferry.

The return trip was longer, since the ferry makes a triangle, going on from Shaw to Orcas before returning to Anacortes. We were back at our car around 7:00, in need of dinner. I had seen two possibilities the day before on our way through downtown Anacortes to the ferry, a Chinese place and a Mexican taqueria across the street from it. We drove into town, checked both out, and chose Chinese. A bit of a comedown from the three amazing meals of the previous 24 hours, but perfectly fine. Just what we needed. We got back in the car and an hour and a half later we were home.

We can’t wait for next year’s auction, and perhaps another curator trip, though nothing can top this one.

Prime porterhouse steak with creamed spinach and hash browns at Palm

[Evan Sung for The New York Times]

Sam Sifton’s restaurant review in today’s NYT features classic New York steakhouses Palm and Palm Too. I never ate at them, or at their brethren that have sprung up across the country (not Seattle). Since childhood, my model for the New York steakhouse has been Peter Luger. But I have to say, when I reached the photo above from the review’s accompanying slide show, I was ready to head straight to Palm, leaving let Peter Luger for another day.

Sifton suggests that this would yield a happy outcome:

It is better to do as was always customary at Palm in the past, and ignore the menu entirely. Most want steak — the prime porterhouse if it’s available is generally the most crusty without and tender within … . So do not read about anything. Just ask for the steak after some Gigis and a crab. You may certainly ask for mashed potatoes or broccoli or fries. These will come with a shrug and perhaps some sucked teeth. The waiter knows you want creamed spinach and hash browns.

And then have a drink while you wait for the food to arrive, and catch up with your tablemates about work or family gossip or the affairs of the day. Do not order wine — the selection is not very good. Cut into your buttery meat, your buttery potatoes, your creamy greens. These are prepared with real skill and care, and taste it. Meanwhile, look at that sawdust on the floor and the twinkle in everyone’s eyes.

The Mariners have been playing baseball at Safeco Field since July 15, 1999. On June 27 of that year, we went to their final game at the Kingdome, a place I spent my first 18 years in Seattle detesting, but one I miss a little bit these days. I’m not sure why. Maybe because their greatest moments took place there and I got to see some of those moments. But anyway, I wasn’t too sad on June 27. Looking at the boxscore, I see that 56,529 others were in the stands with me as we beat the Rangers 5-2. Freddy Garcia got the win. And check out the lineup, with A-Rod, Griffey, and Edgar Martinez batting in the 2, 3, and 4 slots. No wonder I miss those days.

The Mariners then took a 12-game road trip, returning for a few gameless days before Safeco opened for business. We didn’t make it to that game. But we did show up some days earlier for the free open house, designed in part to put the staff and the food operations to a test. The best part of the open house was that visitors were free to walk everywhere, exploring the different seating options and views. We tried out seats at field level, in the third deck, the bleachers, and, of course, the luxury suites.

It took 12 years for us to get back to the suite level. We did Saturday night, courtesy of Gail’s sister, Tamara, and her husband, Jim. That was fun.

Jim worked part-time at Safeco last year, and therefore was eligible to participate in a contest that had as one of its prizes a suite for one of this season’s games. He won, and they chose Saturday to go, as a way to celebrate their 20th anniversary. The anniversary was actually on Monday, the 4th, but the Mariners were down in Oakland by then and the idea was to have the suite for a home game, so Saturday was it.

The suite has a limit of 20 people, and we were among the lucky 18 whom Tamara and Jim chose to celebrate with. So it was that we watched the Mariners play the Padres from a suite down the first-base line. Tamara and Jim also chose one of the catered food options, providing us with a full dinner as well as the game.

Guests could come at 5:00, two hours before game time, and start the festivities with hors d’ouevres. We were among the last to arrive, just before 6:00. There’s a special entrance to the suite level from the south parking garage, but we parked in our usual garage way north, so we walked down to Safeco, entered at the public entrance in left field, worked our way up the escalators, and entered the suite level somewhere down past third base. We had a long walk to get to our suite, allowing us the opportunity to see the large number of suites that are not rented for the season. As we neared home plate, we saw the largest concentration of rented suites — Microsoft, Boeing, Key Bank, and their ilk. But mostly the suites had blank nameplates.

Our suite was the basic model. One enters what you might think of as the living room. There’s a big island in the middle, which was covered with appetizers: salad, pita with hummus and other spreads, regular and sweetened popcorn. Let’s see. I must be leaving something out. Maybe shrimp. On the interior wall, next to the doorway, is a counter that had water pitchers and glasses on it as well as a sink. Below is a small refrigerator that was stocked with sodas and bottled water. Opposite the entrance wall is a high counter with bar stools looking out on the field and a doorway leading outside to a small stairway down and three tiered rows of seats. The interior bar counter functions as a fourth row, with an indoor-outdoor feel. Alternatively, windows that were folded out of the way can be closed so that one can sit at the counter and watch the game through the windows. The three rows of outdoor seating have counters as well, with desk-style rolling chairs, 5 or 6 per row.

On the right wall of the living room is a sitting area with comfortable chairs. The left wall has another counter, which had warming trays awaiting the main dishes. They arrived around 6:10. One held steaks and mashed potatoes. Another had salmon and rice. A third had asparagus. And there was a hot lamp that kept a tray of little brie-strawberry pastries warm. We were all able to enjoy the food well before the game started. And the food was quite good.

It turns out to be a bit of a distraction to watch a game with 20 people, almost of all of whom are related to each other, spanning three generations, with people moving around a lot for one reason or another. Plus, I was on photography duty. I got shots of pretty much everyone before game time, and of the food too. Then I took a seat, kept score, and got absorbed in the game. I played around with trying to get good shots of Doug Fister, the Mariner pitcher, taking multiple shots with each pitch for a while. Then I did the same with the batters. I hadn’t done this when Ichiro led off for the Mariners in the first inning, so I was making a point to be ready for his next at bat. But just as he got to home plate, Gail asked me a question, and before I knew it, he had swung at the first pitch. I took three shots of him approaching and rounding first base on a fly out to right field that ended the third ending. See below.

Soon thereafter, the Mariner Moose arrived. I ran up to the living room to get my telephoto lens off the camera and put on a wider aperture prime lens so I could snap the official anniversary photo of Tamara and Jim with the moose. I also got photos of Gail and moose; Gail, Tamara, and moose; and Gail, Tamara, Tamara’s daughter Leigh Anne, and moose.

After that, it took a while to refocus on the game, which is my excuse for missing the key moment in the game. In the top of the 5th, with Fister still pitching well, the Padres got a strikeout, a walk by Maybin, a grounder to third that was thrown to first, with Maybin going to second, a grounder to Ryan at short that just went off his glove for a single, allowing Maybin to score, and another grounder to end the inning. The Padres thereby took the lead, 1-0, and that was all the scoring. Fister pitched all nine innings for a painful loss.

The thing is, though, that walk by Maybin wasn’t a real walk. The count was 2-2 when Fister through a third ball. But the scoreboard said 3-2, the umpire got confused, anyone who knew better kept his mouth shut, and Maybin trotted off to first. The Mariners were apparently not among the group who knew better. Nor were the umpires. The walk stood, and that was that. I wish I could say that I knew better. I wish I could say that I even remember seeing the walk. I did see the subsequent fielder’s choice on which Maybin went to second and the single on which he scored. But the walk? I have no memory of it. I headed off to the men’s room before the top of the ninth, and in the men’s room was a speaker with the play-by-play of the game. That’s when I heard them talking about the sequence of pitches that led to what they referred to as the “controversial” walk. What a way to lose!

Then again, the way the Mariners were(n’t) hitting, it may not have mattered. The Padres would have won sooner or later. But Fister deserved better.

One thing I didn’t mention — the TVs. In the outer seating area, a couple of TVs are hung above the seats for each suite. And indoors, in the living room, is another TV. That’s another distraction. You look up at the monitor to see a replay of a hit or a call at first, and an at-bat later you’re still watching TV when you hear crowd noise as the batter is thrown out at first and realize that noise is for real, not from the TV, and you’re actually at the game, with that guy on TV running for real below you. Very disconcerting.

The game was quick, 2 hours and 9 minutes, a throwback to the old days. The sun had barely set when it ended. We stood around for a while in the living room, a few of us watching the post-game coverage on TV as they showed Fister’s full pitching sequence to Maybin in the walk. It takes a while for 20 people (21 counting the babe in arms) to say goodbye. Eventually, we left the suite, walked down past all the other suites to the left field exit, rejoined what was left of the crowd, and headed back to our car.

I don’t know when we’ll be in a suite again. They’re available for the taking. What with all the empty ones, I believe you can buy one for any game. Perhaps not such a good deal if you don’t have 20 takers. But it made for a great evening. Happy Anniversary, Tamara and Jim.