Food

Bamboo Garden

David Newall

Café Campagne: Ceci n’est pas un parisien.

Details

Our Favorite Restaurants of 2009 Special Section
-- Dining for Less Than $10
-- $10-$20
-- $20-$30
-- $30-$50
-- $50+

The 2009 Seattle Weekly Food Awards 

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  March 30, 2009
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  March 11, 2009

More About

• Jonathan Kauffman
• Federal Way
• Scoville
• Eating Out
• Foods

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If Puget Sound seems to you like an odd place for a Sichuan restaurant boom, then you're not consciously engaged in the intricate dance of yang and yin: The burn and tingle of Sichuan food, say many, is the perfect antidote to our soggy, bone-aching winters. Some damp Tuesday night, warm the belly with fiery cucumber pieces, ma po tofu (better than any botched version you've ever tasted), stir-fried lamb with scallions, and swimming fire fish. I still wish the cooks wouldn't reduce the food's Scoville units to a third of their levels in China—O tender Northwesterner, you'll still find the food plenty spicy—but Bamboo Garden's "Walk on the Wild Side" menu remains Seattle's best source for Chengdu-style cooking. Also, if you're curious about offal but fear the funk, Bamboo Garden is a good place to venture out—the dry-cooked intestines are stir-fried so quickly they retain their mild flavor and smooth snap, and the bite of pickled chiles and bitter greens subdues the organ-ness of pork kidneys in a tangy broth. JONATHAN KAUFFMAN

Serves: lunch, dinner. 202 106th Pl., 425-688-7991. BELLEVUEbamboogardendining.com

Bistro Turkuaz

The neighborhood of Madrona can be just a little too precious. And the irrepressible charm of Bistro Turkuaz, which opened last year, is significantly increasing the hazard. Consider these risk factors: Wonderfully presented, easy-to-like Turkish food, a cuisine rarely found in this city. A delightful family running the place, with Ugur, the mom, greeting guests and running the kitchen while daughter Dila maintains a front-of-the-house personality that's equal parts elegant and eccentric. A cozy room, perfectly sized to feel like a "find," with plenty of buzz on busy nights and a ladies-who-lunch atmosphere when it's quiet. Prices that are modest enough to create a neighborhood feeling, but not so low as to seem like you're taking advantage of immigrant strivers. All of which adds up to a tipping point of adorableness that may push Madrona over the edge, and bring all of us along with it. MARK D. FEFER

Serves: dinner. 1114 34th Ave., 324-3039. MADRONAbistroturkuaz.com

Café Campagne

Café Campagne is devoted to French bistro cooking the way Amy Winehouse is devoted to eyeliner: visibly, avidly, with shades of the ridiculous. The entry door is labeled tirez (pull), and there are Beaux Arts–style posters on the walls. Yet the cafe is more than a studious recreation of a Parisian resto. It's a warm, echt-Seattle restaurant that holds its own in the romance department against nearby Il Bistro and Chez Shea—the Gary Cooper and Cary Grant of Seattle's restaurant scene. The rustic food that Campagne chef Daisley Gordon serves the downstairs clientele sometimes shows off his mastery of classic technique better than the more artful plates upstairs: in the crackle and burnish of the skin on a duck-leg confit, say, or the delicate balance of vinegar, shallot, and bitter chicories in his goat-cheese salad. And Café Campagne's hanger steak, which comes with a garlicky Roquefort butter, silky sautéed escarole, and one of Monet's haystacks recreated in fried potatoes, is still the city's best. JONATHAN KAUFFMAN

Serves: lunch, dinner, weekend brunch. 1600 Post Alley, 728-2233. PIKE PLACE MARKETcampagnerestaurant.com/cafe_home.html

Chang Ahn Jung

This Federal Way hole-in-the-wall, located in a Korean strip mall, is so unaccustomed to Western visitors that its name is transliterated differently on the sign out front ("Jang An Jung") than on its menu and business cards. The cinderblock-wall-and-dolphin-print decor would give even college students pause. But what's on the table is spectacle enough: a dozen banchan ranging from pickled vermicelli to soy-braised potatoes. A grilled mackerel with crackly, papery skin and buttery flesh. Galbi (grilled short ribs) that dissolve on the tongue. Mandoo (dumpling) soup or cold buckwheat noodles in a limpid beef broth so good it's hard to focus on the bowl's more toothsome contents. And thick sablefish steaks simmered with sweet chile paste, tofu, and brown slabs of caramelized turnip. The cardinal maxim of dining in Korean restaurants holds especially true here—no matter how many things you order, you will always eat too much. JONATHAN KAUFFMAN

Serves: lunch, dinner. 33100 Pacific Hwy. S., Suite 5, 253-838-8555. FEDERAL WAY

Crow 

As fine-dining menus push toward the convoluted and fetishistic, I can't help feel the pull and value of another trend: sitting down to a hot, steamy plate of food—easily identifiable, hearty, and transportive to a childhood that never was but could have been. Crow's Craig Serbousek and Jesse Thomas make their now–widely craved lasagna several times a week, with an attention to assembly that Mama herself never had time to give. If I said pan-roasted chicken and green beans, you might be excited, but if I mentioned said chicken comes wrapped in prosciutto? Crow makes the be-all-and-end-all version of a comfort dish, albeit without grand displays. Sit at the chef's counter for the most memorable experience. You'll get the full story on some of the menu items, like housemade duck prosciutto, and be targeted by regulars who will gladly share their opinions of your order. The wide-open space, wrapped in muted greens and blood red, transmits both the din of conversation and the seemingly ever-present smell of caramelized onions. MAGGIE SAVARINO DUTTON