Nostalgic for Where You’ve Never Been

Having read dozens of blog posts about Justin Neidermeyer's pasta from diners who practically needed an inhaler to punctuate their breathless prose, I was startled by the tajarin with ragu he served at Cascina Spinasse, his new restaurant on 14th and Pike. I ordered the $19 pasta (pronounced tie-yah-REEN) and was presented with a bowl containing a small, twisted mound of spindly pasta filaments, their golden wheat color barely tinted by any sauce. Only a few tablespoons' worth of ground meat speckled the chignon of dough. Hunh, I thought, nonplussed. Is that all there is? Then I twirled up a hank of the strands, put them in my mouth, and discovered the mystery of the dish—each hair-thin noodle was distinct yet not chewy or tough, invisibly coated in whole-hog meatiness. It was a dish worthy of Edith Piaf: frail body, huge voice.

In its uncompromising austerity and quality, the pasta seemed a symbol for everything that the young chef wants to be. Neidermeyer is a man who traveled to Italy to intern at Antica Torre in Barbaresco, who erratically sold pasta at farmers markets under the name Pian Pianino ("nice and slow"), and who took a nice, slow time to open up his restaurant, whose rumored location migrated over the years before emerging at the former site of the Globe. All the while, he was whipping up frothy pre-opening excitement with his weekly Monday night dinners at Sitka & Spruce. I tried a handful of times to get him on the phone, but he'd never return my calls, and even colleagues who had met Neidermeyer described him as elusive and mercurial. By the time I walked into Spinasse, six weeks after it opened, I expected the guy to have a pearly white mane and a single horn emerging from his forehead.

Spinasse is not perfect. But the tajarin, the apex of my two meals there, proved the restaurant to be both fantastic and fantastical because of the lengths to which Neidermeyer goes to evoke the romance of place. And by place, I don't mean Seattle. I mean the Piedmont region of Italy.

The pasta is well-supported by the scenery. Any good restaurant designer treats the space he or she is working with like a stage set. When you sit down in places like the Palace Kitchen, the Corson Building, or Matt's in the Market, the subtle fantasy of these environments transforms you. Even as you're swapping car insurance stories and showing off your new iPhone widget, part of your brain has transported your conversation to a Woody Allen movie or a tiny bistro in the 16th Arrondissement. Give short shrift to atmosphere, as so many chefs opening their first place do, and you undercut your ability to ensorcel your guests, no matter how magical your food.

Neidermeyer didn't make that mistake. Spinasse, which hides itself from the street with a lacy scrim, casts the glamour of a period drama. It's not just the long wood-plank tables bordered by worn, high-backed chairs, and not just the bar, which doubles as a pasta-making station, built to age well and ornamented with a tussle of floury scraps that never gets cleared. The walls, lined with antique pasta-making tools near the kitchen and odd little prints and photos above the tables, evoke the scattered history of a family that may or may not exist. And every diner spends at least a few minutes staring dreamily into the half-opened kitchen, framed by wine bottles, to swoon at the quiet intensity of Neidermeyer and his cooks, dressed in open-throated shirts and dark brown pants instead of chef's whites, as they work in front of a backdrop of books and conserves. It's gorgeous, despite the fact that the center of the room gets so overcrowded with voices that you may walk out hoarse—the decibels drop markedly when you sit at the bar. You'll feel the chef's nostalgia for the Piedmont even if you have no idea where the Piedmont is. (It's in the northwest of Italy.)

Scrawled on the blackboard, and repeated in slim printed menus, are the night's list of six or seven appetizers, three or four pastas, two entrees, and a couple of desserts. Reflecting its simplicity and focus, the wine list only covers Piedmont producers, some of the most renowned in Italy. And Neidermeyer's dishes change in the tiniest of increments. For example, one week I had an appetizer of beets, shaved fennel, and farro (whole spelt grains), in which the chewy cooked grains had a nuttiness that anchored the sugar rush of the beet slices and the fragrant fennel. Ten days later, the dish had evolved into halved baby beets, as easy to slice through as a ripe peach, with chopped fennel and a little fresh chopped dill; the slight dissonance between the herb and the anise played the same role the farro had.

Sometimes the changes track the seasons: A simple bowl of cream-tufted huckleberries marinated in grappa—with just enough of the potent brandy to disperse the berries' aromas to every corner of the palate—morphed into grappa-soaked Italian plums weeks later, when the chef scored a supply of the tree fruit.