Some nights out, you feel bothered by choices, as if you’re still at work, working. Some nights things just fall into place. The first time I visited Renee Erickson’s recently reborn Boat Street Cafe, I was at home in bed before I realized how relaxed and taken care of I’d felt there. The satisfaction that came from eating and drinking, however, was instantaneous, and it began with the incidentals.
Water is poured warm, no ice. A small thing? Yes, except that room-temperature water is much better for digestion and if, like me, you prefer it this way, it’ll feel like a big thing. Bread, also a small thing, is presented in such a way that it qualifies as an important part of the meal. Doughy mini-baguettes from Ballard’s Tall Grass Bakery are served warm with both olive oil and pats of butter, and dried herbs and spices decorate the plate. While you’re surveying the relatively short menu, smear sweet butter and sweet fennel seeds on one bite, dab the next in oil and hot pepper flakes.
Boat Street offers more appetizers than entrées—there are eight starters and seven main dishes. All the southern French–styled selections are followed by thoughtful descriptions. I felt like the kitchen staff wanted me to know just what I was eating, but that they also trusted me to be able to translate and surmise here and there. (The one place this didn’t quite work: the poussin [$18.50]. Our memories faltered: chicken or fish? Upon arriving at our table, our server’s first order of business was to say that several tables had expressed confusion. She clarified: Served with Washington apples, fresh thyme, hard cider, and cream was . . . roasted chicken.)
We started with the pear salad ($8), which is aptly named. The ratio of organic greens to pear slices is about one to three, a pleasing and unusual proportion. With mild, nutty walnut oil as a dressing and a generous slab of salty Bleu d’Auvergne cheese and plenty of roasted walnuts as accents, it was a rich, refreshing start. A bowl of fantastic cream of onion soup ($8), in which a warm goat-cheese toast floated, complemented the salad very nicely.
The menu includes several dishes from the Boat Street’s former incarnation on Portage Bay, which closed two and a half years ago (the restaurant reopened at the beginning of November in the bottom of the Northwest Work Lofts building near Denny). Crab cakes ($19.50) are coated in corn meal and disarmingly sweet until you spread them with banana–hot pepper confit. (There’s that implicit agreement: Erickson trusts you to know that the slow heat of the peppers will be cooked down to create a dense, buttery, jamlike spread.)
Oregon Country brand range-fed beef tenderloin ($22.50) is cooked medium rare and served in a black-olive tapenade. The menu explains that the meat is served at room temperature, but it doesn’t tell you that the tapenade is warm, and it doesn’t mention the exquisite dynamic that creates. It’s a wonderful surprise. On the side: fingerling potatoes, which I believe were salt baked; I have no other explanation for their fantastically crisp exterior. At our server’s suggestion, we both had a glass of Chateau le Roc Cotes de Frontonnais rouge ($6).
We didn’t have room for dessert, but we ordered it anyway. The blackberry cobbler ($6.50) luxuriates in a bath of cream, and it’s wonderful. On another visit, we had the Boat Street Amaretto bread pudding ($6.50), which is decadent and magnificent, rich with caramely sugar, eggs, and sweet liquor.
BOTH THE MICRO and the macro satisfy at Boat Street. The interior is incredibly well designed; doors recycled from old buildings, exposed beams, and whitewashed brick walls lend character and grace to the recently refurbished 100-year-old space. Clip-on lamps, as seen in your mechanic’s garage, give it exquisite light. Erickson, not formally trained as a chef, studied printmaking and painting at the University of Washington, and her dining room positively glows. So does the room she shares with Susan Kaplan. Adjacent to the cafe’s dining room is the Boat Street Kitchen, a Kaplan/Erickson venture that serves as a lunch cafe, a catering facility, and a rentable events space.
Lunch is characterized by a similarly sublime yet homey menu. We had eggs baked with spinach, thin-sliced ham, and sweet onions ($9.75), and the lightly crunchy breadcrumb topping was so delicious that we decided, yes, the dish is better than Le Pichet’s oeufs plat (broiled eggs with ham and Gruyère). The smoked rainbow trout salad plate ($9.50) comes with horseradish crème fraîche, beet greens, spinach, and wonderfully tart red potato salad—and two sunny halves of a perfect orange. As a sworn eggplant freak, I can wholeheartedly recommend their sandwich with eggplant, hot pepper rouille (mayo, more or less), goat cheese, and arugula ($6.50), but next time I’m going to try the curried tuna salad sandwich. Can’t wait.
Boat Street Cafe and Kitchen, 3131 Western Ave., 206-632-4602, www.boatstreetcafe.com. LOWER QUEEN ANNE. Lunch 10 a.m.– 2:30 p.m. Mon.–Sat.; dinner 5:30–10 p.m. Tues.–Sat.
