Best Job in the World: Writing About Food

An article in this morning's Wall Street Journal purports to rank the best and worst jobs in the United States "according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress." Best job, says the WSJ: mathematician. Worst: lumberjack. Conclusion: heavy lifting, never popular, remains out of fashion. The ideal jobs expect you to dress reasonably well, let you work close to home and take regular showers.

So why isn't food critic on the list? Okay, maybe it's not in the top ten, but it should be. Benefits include decent meals (much of the time), work-from-home environment while listening to preferred genre of music (usually classical), occasional travel to popular destinations. Acknowledged drawbacks: irregular hours, irregular digestion (when meals less-than-decent), irregular paychecks.

Seriously, though: greatest job benefit is the soapbox. Not just steering people to good restaurants and away from bad ones, but highlighting issues related to food, wine, travel. Case in point: today's New York Times Op-Ed by farmer and essayist Wendell Berry, who argues that the real energy crisis won't be running out of non-renewable petroleum but non-renewable soil. Much more serious, since we don't have alternatives (solar, wind) to food-producing soil. Berry writes, "If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy." The answer, perennialization, is a mouthful, as it were, but basically "crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals."

Berry calls for a 50-year farm bill to reduce our dependency on soil-destroying industrial agriculture, arguing that money alone cannot continue to feed us. And without food, what's going to become of my great job?

(Footnote: Guy named Ronald Holden is reporting $25K in contributions to McCain campaign. Is not me.)

"Iron Chef" Steels Sabrina

Only two other Seattle chefs, Tom Douglas and Tamara Murphy, have been invited to compete at Kitchen Stadium in the seven seasons that "Iron Chef America" has been on the Food Network. Tomorrow at 10, add a third name to the list: Sabrina Tinsley of Osteria La Spiga.

Douglas needs no introduction to Seattle diners; he's the owner of half a dozen successful eateries downtown (Dahlia Lounge, Palace Kitchen, Lola's, Cafeacute; Sport, Serious Pie, etc.); he bested Masahara Morimoto with a series of salmon dishes. Murphy cooks at Brasa in Belltown and the newly revamped café at the Elliott Bay Bookstore in Pioneer Square; she lost narrowly to Mario Batali.

Tinsley's not nearly as high profile, not yet; she's known mostly for her exquisite handmade gnocchi. An Alaska native who attended Michigan State, she was studying (and cooking) in Salzburg when she met her future husband, Pietro Borghesi. For the next five years the couple lived in Italy, where Tinsley absorbed the culinary culture and the two ran a piadina shop. They eventually moved to Seattle, where Tinsley's sister had settled and, ten years ago, opened the original Osteria La Spiga in a tiny space on Capitol Hill at Broadway and Union. Eight years later, it was time to expand. The new La Spiga has drawn its share of hostile reviews, but credit is always given to Tinsley for her sure sense of Italy's cultural and culinary traditions.

Mario Batali, no slouch himself when it comes to promoting Italian food, shot a segment of his TV show at the original La Spiga. He may have passed along Tinsley's name to the producers at Food Network. At any rate, the call from Iron Chef came out of the blue, inviting Tinsley to compete. So, this past June, off she and Pietro went to New York along with two of her sous-chefs to prepare for the smackdown in Kitchen Stadium. Her adversary: Bobby Flay. The show's "secret ingredient," revealed on-air, beans ("all fresh, still in the pod"). The judges: restaurateur Joe Bastianich (Mario's business partner), TV personality Jenna Wolfe, and food critic Jeffrey Steingarten.

Was it as hectic as it seems, being on the show? Tinsley admits that he two months leading up to the taping were stressful, "Once the real-time taping began, I was in my element, but poor Pietro, sitting in the audience, was tearing his hair out!"

Tinsley's not saying how it turned out; that would spoil the fun. But the restaurant is doing all it can to promote her appearance on the show. There's an Iron Chef viewing party Sunday, for starters. Then, the next four Tuesdays in January, there will be parties in the restaurant's private loft for four-course meals ($125 per person) based on Tinsley's Iron Chef creations.

Unlike reality shows like Bravo's "Next Top Chef" elimination, Iron Chef is a one-time battle, win or lose. Publicity is the reward, plus the fact that it's a unique opportunity. Tinsley sums it up: "An awesome experience."

Iron Chef, Food Network, 10 PM Sunday and repeats
Osteria La Spiga, 1425 12th Avenue, 206-323-8881

Hot Mama's Pizza: What the Fuss?

Start the New Year with strong dose of reality. Hot Mama's, supposedly the best pizza on Cap Hill, doesn't cut it for this eater. Crust soggy, toppings bland.

How'd this place become so popular, one wonders, when the far more authentic Via Tribunali is just up the street? Must have something to do with Seattle's pizza culture: a need for predictable and cheap to ingest when you've been drinking. Tribunali's a sit-down dinner place with wine and all; Hot Mama's a hole-in-the-wall with few pretensions. No serious website, either, just a MySpace page.

We order up four or five large-size, with assorted toppings, and head for a family reunion. (This falls into the non-believers holiday tradition of paying strangers to do the heavy lifting.) Not much aroma in the car (not a good sign) but exclamations of "Ooh, Hot Mama's!" upon arrival. The pineapple & Canadian bacon succumbs quickly to onslaughts from the teens. Pepperoni likewise. The vaunted pesto less so. Last to go under, surprisingly, is the Chef Choice (tomatoes, basil, mushroom, garlic). Remains boxed for the 13-year-old, often picky but pleased with his unexpected bounty.

On plus side, Hot Mama's isn't unduly greasy (relative lack of cheese), and family doggies appear genuinely grateful for bites of cold, dull crust.

Hot Mama's Pizza, 700 E. Pine (at Boylston), 206-322-6444  

New Year's Resolution

Here's a resolution I hope we can all get behind: let's go out more in 2009. More dinners at family-run restaurants, more happy hour cocktails at locally owned bars, more weekend getaways to nearby B&Bs.

It makes sense to spend money closer to home, and what's closer than your neighborhood diner, your local café? If you want to see them survive the downturn, if you appreciate their contribution to the city where you live, your patronage is vital to keeping them alive.

Remember Michael Pollan's injunction: if you enjoy your view, if you want to keep your view (of farms and fields), then eat your view. If you don't want to see that farmland turned into housing tracts, you have to buy and eat the food produced by local farmers. Same thing with local businesses.

Whether you live in Belltown, Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, Greenwood, West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Georgetown or South Park, you've got favorite places to shop and eat. Now more than ever, those local merchants and restaurateurs are depending on your patronage.

Thomas Friedman had a simple-minded column in the New York Times the other day suggesting people stay home and save money. Especially younger folks, who tend to live in densely populated neighborhoods. But eating out is part of the social fabric of city living. It simply isn't reasonable to expect younger singles to stay home.

The supermarkets? Well, they're doing great. Record quarter (up 11 percent) for locally owned Metropolitan Markets, I'm told. Those are food dollars people spent at the store instead of going out to eat. Hospitality at home is great (if you've got a home), but putting on a party with grocery-store takeout isn't going to save all that much money, if you look at all the costs.

Back to the restaurants, then. Every place I've visited over the past few weeks has a new menu with lower prices, so a night out won't cost as much as it used to, even if it's pizza or lasagna. And at a restaurant, you're getting a meal or a drink prepared by people whose interest is served by serving you; they even clean up afterwards.

It's worth remembering that the restaurant industry in this country is rougly the same size as the automobile industry. On the other hand, with tens of thousands of individual business owners, it doesn't have nearly the political clout as Detroit's Big Three. Except for McDonald's and Starbucks, there are few national players. But millions of people work in restaurants as waiters, cooks and dishwashers. Millions more depend on restaurants to buy their products and services. You may not see ads for an all-new, 500-horsepower Pasta Perfecta or its rivals, the sleek and stylish Sirloin Supra or the powerful Porkbelly Primo. Restaurants aren't asking for a multi-billion-dollar bailout; they just want you to come in for a test-drive.

Belltown Bravo Aw@rds

End of year, thus time for annual Belltown Bravo Aw@rds. Don't get too excited; I'm not. Hasn't been a particularly good year for restaurants in this nabe, in my view. We lost some good ones (Cascadia, Qube, Marjorie), got some interesting new ones (Branzino, Kushibar, Tilikum Place, Spur) and the very promising Taberna del Alabardero, but overall, it hasn't been mouthwatering. Best promotions are still coming from the shoebox-sized Txori (the Tamborada, the San Firmin festival, the monthly Txoco dinners). For consistency and value, previous winners Steelhead Diner and Black Bottle contiue to lead the pack. The real restaurant action these days is in Ballard, Capitol Hill, and (gulp) Bellevue.

That said, Tavolata has a new happy hour, 5-7 weeknights. For $2, you get a bowl of that wonderful beet salad, or garbanzo bean salad, or roasted chestnuts, or a plate of prosciutto. Txori, for its part, starts happy hour in January, 4-6 every night. A buck off wine or Basque drinks like Kalimotxo (red wine & coke), $4 wells. Food specials not set at press time. And at Taberna. an early-ending happy hour (3-6 at press time, though that barely brings a smile to Belltown these days) with half-price wines, $4 glasses of delicious red or white sangria, and half-price appetizers. Some great values here, especially the skewered prawns and octopus, the peppers and anchovies, and the jamon iberico, all under $2.

And value we're looking for, folks. That $65, 2-lb T-bone at Tavolata? Don't count on selling too many. Nor the $45 (up from “only” $42 two weeks ago) veal shank at Branzino. For two, you say? Funny, the menu doesn't.