Go Gluten-Free at The Pink Door

July 12, 2010

Good news for gluten-intolerant customers!

Due to a recent health crisis–discovering she suffers from Multiple Sclerosis (MS)–Jackie Roberts, owner and founder of the long-running Pink Door restaurant in the Pike Place Market, has re-examined her menu and wine list. She now offers gluten-free options along with a lengthy carte of biodynamic and organic wines.

The Pink Door Gluten-Free Pasta

Spaghetti (Quinoa) Primavera features green garlic, spring peas, fava beans, spring mushrooms, spinach, fresh herbs, and nubbins of goat cheese to make it creamy, all for $17

“I’ve been on a sabbatical of sorts (health crisis) and wanted to be sure you knew about the new gluten-free pasta on our menu,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Also, in my own personal quest for healthier eating/drinking,  I have printed a ‘key’ in the form of a sun to denote the massive collection of organic, biodynamic, and sustainably farmed wines that are on our 150-bottle list. I am quite proud of this. When I’m dining out, I notice there are no quality organics on most restaurants’ lists (or if there are, the staff is not knowledgeable about them).”

Jackie has spent hours testing every wheat-free pasta from Italy, San Francisco, and Seattle to serve at The Pink Door. What Roberts has unveiled (and is proving very popular at the restaurant) is not just a substitute, but a gluten-free dish made from quinoa that is truly delicious and bursting with the freshness of spring.

Spaghetti Primavera is a wonderful alternative for people who are gluten intolerant or simply want to enjoy a healthy option over traditional wheat-based pasta dishes.

Sooke Harbour Houses’s BIG Hono(u)r

July 8, 2010

Our friends and Sooke Harbour House Hotel owners, Sinclair and Frederique Philip, recently received a big hono(u)r–Lifetime Achievement Award at Vancouver Magazine’s 21st Annual Restaurant Awards, along with the award for Best Restaurant on Vancouver Island.

You may remember that the couple, along with Sooke Harbour House, were prominently featured in the Vancouver Island chapter of Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining: The People, Places, Food, and Drink of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia, along with their recipe for Coriander-Crusted Albacore Tuna with Spicy Buckwheat Noodle Salad.

“Long before the 100-Mile Diet, before Bishops and Ocean Wise and the word ‘locavore,’ there was Sooke Harbour House,” says Christina Burridge from Vancouver Magazine. “And while regional cuisine is now garnering much media attention, “every proponent of regional dining owes a debt to the locavore granddaddy Sooke Harbour House.

“Sooke Harbour House has been celebrated by everyone from Condé Nast Traveler to Wine Spectator, and has drawn discerning guests from around the world, but it’s the Philips’ three decades of infusing visitors, chefs, and staff with their knowledge of place that has helped define West Coast food and earned them this award,” Burridge said.

For the Philips, serving seasonal, regional foods at Sooke Harbour House was never about being in vogue.

“In 1979, when we started to serve local food, we had no idea that eating regionally and seasonally would become as popular as it is today,” says Sinclair Philip. “When we opened, we simply thought, with such an abundance of high-quality regional ingredients, why would we need to bring in foods from anywhere else? We weren’t trying to start a trend, it was just common sense, and also the way we used to eat when we lived in rural France.”

Over the past 31 years, almost all of the food served at the Sooke Harbour House has come from its own certified-organic gardens and farm, local-area farms in Sooke and Metchosin, and the ocean around their doorstep.

“We still have some of the same suppliers we have worked with for the past 31 years,” says Mr. Philip. “We have established a regular supply of free-range lamb from across Sooke Bay at Silver Spray Farm, local rabbits, Tamworth pigs, suckling kid, Vancouver-Island bison, pastured Cowichan Bay chicken, and we serve rare-breed animals from our area. On top of this, we were perhaps the first restaurant in Canada to make widespread use of edible flowers, grown outdoors, twelve months of the year.”

Over these 31 years, the Philips and their team at Sooke Harbour House have learned to work with roughly twenty different types of local seaweeds and large numbers of indigenous plants, berries, wild herbs, and mushrooms.

The Philips have always tried to showcase the best foods from Vancouver Island.

“From the very beginning, we realized that it is important to support the production of small-scale, artisan cheeses from Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. I even have a cheese named after me; that is St. Clair, from Hilary’s Cheese. We can now serve sheep, cow, goat, and water buffalo cheeses most months of the year so why would we bring in cheese from the outside?

“We have also worked to sustain local wines, spirits, ciders and vinegars, as well as meads from Tugwell Creek Meadery and Honey Farm in Sooke.”

This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award also marks the 21st consecutive year that the Sooke Harbour House Hotel has received the award from Vancouver Magazine as Best Vancouver Island Restaurant. The Philips credit much of this to their staff at the Sooke Harbour House.

Frederique Philip says, “I am very proud that our kitchen team has once again been honoured with this distinction for their hard and consistent work. It is very hard to maintain this level of quality day in and day out and I really admire them for their ongoing creativity and consistency. It is a pleasure to work with artisans who come up with new dishes that reflect the rhythms of the seasons, and who respect the intrinsic nature of the ingredients from our certified organic gardens and the sea nearby. We have been very fortunate over the last thirty years to have been able to work with such outstanding people.”

WSET Classes Offered in Seattle Beginning July 12

July 5, 2010

White Grapes

For the first time ever, our friends Mimi and Adam, owners of Portland, Oregon-based The Wine & Spirit Archive, will offer the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Intermediate Certificate in Wine & Spirits course in Seattle.

“This is the first time we’ve attempted to offer the course in its ‘extended’ format (this is how we offer the course in Portland),” Mimi wrote in an e-mail. “If you know anyone who might be interested, please feel free to pass along.”

So here you go, Mimi. And here you go readers.

By the way, a quick word of endorsement. . .several years back, Spencer and I took the WSET Intermediate course here in Seattle in a two-day (whirlwind!) format and can recommend it highly.

Details:

WSET Intermediate Certificate in Wine & Spirits – Summer 2010

The WSET offers comprehensive wine training for wine industry professionals, those seeking to enter the trade, as well as enthusiasts seeking to expand their knowledge of wine and spirits. Join us for this rigorous eight-week course and take your knowledge of wine to the next level.

WSET Certification Programs are widely recognized as the world’s most respected wine certification courses and are increasingly seen as essential credentials for those working in the global wine industry.

What This Course Covers

Lectures and discussions cover grape varieties, key wine regions and the styles of wines they produce. Wine tasting is part of every session and students will learn to professionally evaluate wines using the WSET Systematic Approach to tasting. Weekly reading assignments and review questions complement this in-class work and aid in preparation for the exam.

When and Where

This course is held on Monday nights, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., beginning July 12 and ending August 30. A certification exam is administered in the course’s final session. The course will be held at Northwest Wine Academy at South Seattle Community College, 6000 16th Ave SW.

Tuition Costs

The cost of the course is $675, which includes all study materials, exam fees, and course certificate. Payment plans are available.

For More Information / To Register

Contact The Wine & Spirit Archive
www.wineandspiritarchive.com
cheers@wineandspiritarchive.com
503-764-7698

The Pink Door’s Intriguing New Wine List

July 1, 2010

The Pink Door Organic Wines

As many of us are trying to eat more consciously, choosing local, seasonal, and sustainable foods to add to our healthy diets, wine drinkers are also beginning to ask where the grapes in the bottle are sourced and how they are grown.

Enter the long-running (28 years!) Pink Door restaurant in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, which is highlighting a whopping half of its 129-bottle wine list with a coded sun asterisk to denote sustainably farmed, organic, or biodynamic wine producers!

This collection has been developed over several years and is proving to be the central theme of The Pink Door’s wine program.

Here are just a few of the sustainably farmed or biodynamically grown wines to note:

· Semillon/Sauvignon/Muscadel 2008 Buty; Columbia Valley
· Grenache 2006 Quivira; Wine Creek Ranch; Sonoma
· Pinot Gris Reserve 2008 Cooper Mountain; Willamette Valley, Oregon
· La Segreta Bianco 2007 Grecanico/Chardonnay/Viognier; Planeta; Sicilia
· Barolo 2005 Vietti; Castiglione; Piemonte
· Teroldego Rotaliano 2007 Foradori; Trentino

Thanks to Pink Door founder/owner Jackie Roberts (a.k.a., “La Padrona”) for her forward-thinking commitment to sustainable wine drinking and making it easier for all of us to make sensible choices.

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