Coastal Traveler - Summer 2007 - (Page 9)

coastalreview Seaweed Café serves salt with pine tree pollen By Sam Spiewak We raced up Highway One to our Slow Food meal in Bodega Bay. Once seated in the cozy, French-countryside dining room of the Seaweed Café, our fast forward buttons became unstuck. We lingered for three hours, relaxing into the handcrafted furniture. The next night, shoving Trader Joe’s frozen chicken into our mouths, I sighed to my dining companion, “Remember slow food?” Last year in the United States, about 20 percent of meals were eaten in cars. In more than 100 countries, with head offices in Piedmont, in Northern Italy, the Slow Food movement is all about reclaiming the pleasures of the table. Slowness Seaweed Café The oysters were sumptious is in the eating as well as in the making: hand-cranked coffee mills instead of electric grinders, local heirloom seeds instead of Frankenfruit, and real dinner conversation instead of McFood in parking lots. The Seaweed Café serves Slow Food without shoving its principles down throats. The casual diner might not know that organic ingredients come mostly from within a thirty-mile radius unless they visit the restaurant’s web site. Slow Food principles extend to the smallest of details. In the arugula, pea shoot, and flower petal salad, Jackie Martine – the A traditional terrine is Slow Food avant le lettre, involving at least three days of careful preparation Seaweed Café’s ebullient French chef – pounds local salt with fragrant pine tree pollen, an idea she found in a Japanese cookbook. The Seaweed Café’s food is to be relished first, then pondered. A case in point was a luxurious monkfish terrine appetizer. A traditional terrine is Slow Food avant le lettre, involving at least three to four days of careful preparation. In Martine’s version, crescents of orange monkfish liver were nestled in champagne aspic. On top of a slice of homemade brioche, the terrine had a mouthwatering, melting texture. Three tiny balls of cucumber were a refreshing counterpoint. The dish flaunted the chef’s French countryside skills. Japanese or Spanish flavors are also incorporated. Not on the menu, but offered by the chef to diners as a special treat, was a bite of trout rillette atop Japanese cucumber that was marinated in sake. Seaweed played into an Asian-inspired burdock root sashimi appetizer. Plates were composed with Zen simplicity, shunning unnecessary garnish. The names of dishes were unadorned too: pan-fried trout, chilled English pea soup, and salmon steamed in a cedar box. The Slow Food philosophy extended to the chef’s approach to meat. “Our menu is mostly grains, produce, and seafood,” said Martine, “but with meat, we like to use all parts of the animal.” That night an oxtail dish was on the chalkboard. Supplied by Point Reyes rancher David Evans of Marin Sun Farms, the tail was braised forever in a broth consisting of marrow, celery, beet stems, smoked peppers, and earthy mushrooms. The result was like tucking into the comfort food of my dreams. Textural chunks of melt-in-the-mouth pink meat fell from bone and cartilage, the latter converted to succulent gelatin after the braise. A main course of creamy baked butter beans mingled with smoky duck sausage and meaty clams in a tomato-spiked broth. It arrived bubbling in a casserole dish. The dessert completed our conversion to the Seaweed Café’s philosophy. We happily waited twenty minutes while the chef’s soufflé-like peach and fromage blanc dessert baked in a clay dish. Other languid diners sipped local wines or tea from the fantastic selection of whole-leaf varieties. The meal was over, but in the hands of our unruffled host and professional waiter we wanted to lean back and strike up another conversation. Whether you are interested in Slow Food philosophy or a fabulous meal, the Seaweed Café is highly recommended. The Seaweed Café is located in Bodega Bay just off Hwy One on 1580 East Shore Drive. Call 707.875.2700 for reservations. Or on the web at www.seaweedcafe.com summer coastaltraveler 9 http://www.seaweedcafe.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Coastal Traveler - Summer 2007

Coastal Contents Coastal Connoisseur Coastal Surfer Coastal Review Coastal Rider Coastal Map Coastal Maifesto Sausalito - Tiburon Mill Valley Muir Beach Stinson Beach Bolinas Olema San Geronimo - Nicasio Fairfax Inverness - Inverness Park Point Reyes Station Point Reyes Station and Dillon Beach Sebastopol Petaluma Sonoma Coast Healdsburg Mendocino - Redwood Coast Lake County Napa Santa Cruz Monterey Carmel-by-the-Sea Big Sur

Coastal Traveler - Summer 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.