Staple & Fancy exists way down in the guts of Ballard—by the water, crowded in among the sailmakers, mini-storage units, and coffee shops that pop up like benchmarks of rapid gentrification. The building in which Staple & Fancy is housed has been reclaimed in the best kind of way: just barely. Because of the method by which owner Ethan Stowell and his demo crew turned this former boat-gear warehouse—home, for 80 years, to the Kolstrand Marine Supply Company, and before that to a neighborhood mercantile called L. Strand (a purveyor of "Staple & Fancy" goods, hence the unusual name)—into a rough and rustic restaurant, the place already had a century of history the moment they opened the doors.
Joshua Huston
Hasselbeck wishes he had more rabbits to throw to instead of to eat.
Location Info
Details
Related Content
More About
It's the kind of thing you can feel—lots of raw wood, framing timbers, and crumbling, exposed brick still painted in places with the advertisements of past tenants. There is a weight that no generic, plasterboard box in a strip mall is ever going to have. The light comes mostly from candles; they burn everywhere. The vibe is gentle, quiet, relaxing, and just a bit odd because of the bank of windows along the back wall that look in on the bright, cream-colored dining room of The Walrus & the Carpenter, which operates back-to-back with Staple & Fancy. I've never seen an arrangement quite like it. The effect is kind of like looking into a mirror that refuses to reflect what's happening and just kind of does its own thing.
In the weeks after its opening, I heard some pretty bad things about Staple & Fancy's food from people whose taste I trusted. It wasn't that anything was terrible, necessarily, just that none of it was special. I heard dull. I heard bland. I heard totally not worth the time or money.
I thought about going and seeing for myself, but then didn't. A restaurant's first weeks of business are sometimes like rehearsal—a last chance to get the balance right, to test the menu against the blade of public perception. One can get a completely different meal in a place's second week as one can in its eighth or 12th. And while not every restaurant can get it together quickly (I've known places that struggled for a year before everything suddenly clicked), most simply have to. In a town like Seattle, there are just too many options. Fuck up once, and most folks won't come back.
I hit Staple & Fancy just before its three-month mark, at a point when most places have worked out the opening jitters, gotten rid of the dead weight, and come together into an approximation of the restaurants they will be for the remainder of their natural lives. I sat at the bar because, at least according to the hostess, Staple & Fancy was drawing enough reservations to be fully committed, on a weeknight, until 9 p.m. The paucity of trade on the floor seemed to tell a different story, but I was cool with it. The bar at Staple & Fancy is comfortable: nine seats, lots of liquor bottles for company, and a view right into the working line. I could ogle the mise of the cooks while they worked, on the grills and stacking pans for orders not yet materialized.
The bartender handed me a cocktail list, a wine list, and a menu, stapled to a wedge of wood. The ever-changing board (literally, in this case) at Staple & Fancy is small and simple: five appetizers, three or four pastas, five entrées, and a couple of sides. They adjust with the weather, the supply, and the mood of the cooks. There's also an option for family-style dining: four courses, $45 per person, all chef's choice. The menu says "We would also like to inform you that you really should do this." So do the servers. But I am recalcitrant. I want to order what I want to order, and do.
When the rabbit terrine arrives, it is pretty and rustic and smells of nothing at all. Just a pinkish slab of rabbit meat, a tangle of wild watercress hiding a small mound of caramelized shallots, and a spoonful of the agrodolce sauce that came of the sweet-and-sour prep of the shallots. I take a bite of the terrine and know immediately that it's good—made by someone who really knows his way around deconstructing bunnies.
Forcemeats like terrine are made infrequently, ordered even less often. They exercise culinary muscles that don't often get a workout in a kitchen's day-to-day ops, requiring cheesecloths and water baths and a trust in the finality of the process that is more the stuff of bakers than cooks. A cook making a forcemeat is like a mathematician doing equations in his spare time just to stay sharp, or a stage magician standing before a mirror practicing the passes and drops he has done a million times. The terrine, the rillette, and the pâté are connections to past and beautiful rusticity: training for a cook who already knows how good he is.
Beyond all that, the watercress tastes powerfully of pepper and nuttiness. It's stronger than the stuff you get in the store, delicious on its own. And the shallots are amazing—brown, sticky, and sweet like candy, with just the tiniest sting of vinegar. The shallots, all alone, are worth the price of admission.
