Review: Veil Restaurant, Seattle, WA

I really shouldn't be writing a post tonight, I should be researching restaurants in Rome and Tuscany, or calling my old friend that I haven't talked to in 6 months. Dinner at Veil was so inspiring I feel the need to get it all down in bytes before I can forget any details.

Although Veil had been on my mental short-list for awhile, the additional motivation for this pilgrimage came when Dana from tastingmenu.com recently signed on as their pastry chef.  But you'll have to wait a few paragraphs for dessert.

We came in early, and the modern room seemed a bit stark in the bright daylight. As the sun mellowed, so did the space. Lindsay's service was equally warm. She took note right away of our special requests (vegetarian, nut allergy) and was ready to figure out how to customize the menu and alert the kitchen. And her attention to details like bringing more bread so that we could mop up the last bits of sauce made us feel right at home. If you are a vegetarian, by no means should you let the online menu discourage you. Veil will work with you to create a first-rate meal.

Veil likes to treat first-time guests to a glass of champagne to set the mood. I'm not a big bubbles drinker, but this was a nice glass, dry and crisp and appetizing. The amuse bouche was a peach soup with herb oil garnish, served in shot glasses. It was full of the perfume of the perfect end of summer peaches we are getting right now,  seasonal and delicious.

For appetizers we had the green salad with whipped Laura Chenel goat cheese (my personal favorite) and pickled grapes, and an heirloom tomato salad with basil oil. If I were to mention one minor flaw in a great dining experience, perhaps a few leaves in the green salad could have been picked over more carefully. The pickling of the grapes was subtle but interesting, and complemented the chevre. The tomatoes were spot-on ripe and needed no elaboration beyond the oil and a few grains of salt to be great.

For entrees we ordered larger portions of two dishes that were designed as second courses. We asked for the mascarpone enriched carnaroli risotto to be supplemented with artichokes, which turned out to be a great call. The artichokes were trimmed down just to the base of the hearts, cut into triangular wedges and sauteed. Risotto can be properly served either wet ("all'onda") or a bit firmer depending on the region of Italy, but in any case should be al dente. Veil's was delightfully creamy, full of the flavor of good wine and mascarpone, and relatively firm with a good bite,  topped with first-rate Parmigiano-Reggiano. I would say it is the best and most refined risotto I've had in Seattle.

Our second entree was house-made agnolotti filled with a silky-smooth turnip puree. Agnolotti means "priest-hat", and I don't think Veil's are quite in the traditional shape. Or possibly the chef attends a different church than I'm familiar with. These were more like ravioli with an additional fold that made them into little purses. In any case, the shape wasn't really relevant to the fact that they were wipe-out-your-bowl delicious. It takes a confident hand to fill pasta with turnips, which not everyone loves. This worked great, the marriage of the toothsome pasta with the creamy and slightly bitter filling dressed with top-notch olive oil and chives is still rattling around in my brain.

And then we come to dessert. Narrowing down to only two choices was a solemn duty. We settled on the Chocolate Fondant Cake (which I believe predates Dana's tenure) and the Kaffir Lime & Lemongrass Creme Brulee (which is her creation). I'm most familiar with fondant as the heinous handball-like coating found on wedding cakes. None of that here of course. This was a delicious affair of two layers of chocolate topped with an intense caramel.

The star of the show was undoubtedly the creme brulee. We both tend to be skeptical of messing with this classic, but this turned our heads. The flavor of the kaffir lime leaves was intense yet elusive. Sarina and I were literally dissecting the dish trying to figure out if it was infused in the custard or the sugar top, or possibly in some sort of thin layer between? In any event it was haunting and great.

Modern food can so easily lean on the shock value of extreme flavor combinations, or focus far too much on stunning presentation and forget flavor. And there is also an unfortunately high correlation between modern style and snobby, scenish atmosphere. Veil suffers from none of these faults. Every bite of food we ate had clear, clean, intense flavors that made sense together and looked great on the plate, and the service couldn't have been nicer or more considerate.

Our ticket is a bit misleading tonight because we didn't order any drinks. The total including the complementary champagne and amuse, two salads, two customized entrees, two desserts and two coffees was $112 plus tip. So probably a realistic grand total would be around $80 per person, which for me puts Veil in the "event" category more than the "run out and grab a bite" realm. I have high expectations when we get to that level, and Veil exceeded them, providing us with a meal that I'm sure we'll be talking about for quite awhile.

Details:
Veil Restaurant
555 Aloha St.
Seattle, WA  98109
(Lower Queen Anne, at Taylor St., near Crow)
(206) 216-0600 or opentable.com for reservations
http://www.veilrestaurant.com/

Chocolate Cupcakes With Cream Cheese Filling And Chocolate Gelato

We have officially entered the Snacky Pants birthday celebration period, which extends approximately 30 days on either side of the actual anniversary of her entrance to this world. We've kicked in to high gear a bit earlier than usual owing to our rapidly approaching trip which will separate her from many of her usual admirers during this important holiday. Brother and CatWoman feted her with gifts, and I was directed to produce both chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese filling and a chocolate ice cream. Normally I would have wanted to go to vanilla or some sort of caramel ice cream, but one does not argue with the birthday girl.

Simply Desserts, in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood is famous for their chocolate cream cheese cupcakes, and in fact I'd just eaten some at a going away party that my office crue held before my leave of absence started. So the flavor was fresh in my mind when I started searching, and I settled on this recipe at recipezaar.com. The only change I made was to use chopped Guittard bittersweet chocolate instead of the chips. I was slightly skeptical of the vinegar, and could taste it faintly when they were warm, but no-one seemed to mind, though I'm not sure why the recipe wouldn't just call for baking powder instead of or in addition to baking soda. These cupcakes were super moist and tasted even better after a day in the refrigerator.

For the ice cream, I once again turned to Fanny over at Foodbeam.com and followed her recipe for Willy Wonka's Everlasting Chocolate Gelato. Wise call. This time I used Scharffen-Berger unsweetened bar chocolate and Lake Champlain cocoa powder, and pressed brother into service  separating eggs and whisking and manning ice water baths while I began removing the general sheen of chocolate from the whole kitchen. The result was astonishingly rich. If you have a chocolate itch that this doesn't scratch, you may need to be hospitalized for your own safety.  As my friend Stu says, "dzaing main"! The only problem we had was that it really needs some freezer time to harden up, and since we started cooking late in the evening, we ended up eating it in semi-souplike form, even after a brief attempt to quick freeze on a baking sheet. Anyhow this only made it quicker to deliver the chocolate punch straight to our arteries. The picture above was taken the next day, at the "proper" texture. Yes, I re-lit the candle for verisimilitude. Clearly I need one of those ice cream freezers like they have on Iron Chef that can go from custard to ready to serve in 20 minutes.

Snacky Pants and all of the other revelers reported full satisfaction and an inability to sleep due to chocolate overload. Mission accomplished.

Contest: Looks Sweet, Eats Savory

Yesterday's Caramelized Pear "Cupcakes" With Blue Cheese Frosting got me thinking that it would be fun to see what other playful stuff folks might make in this genre of food that looks like a sweet but eats like a savory. Let's have a contest! Here are the rules:

• Write up your entry and post it on your blog, or if you don't have a blog you can email it to me at the address below. A formal recipe isn't required, we'll settle for a picture and a description. Please link back to this entry in your post.
• Email me at herbivoracious@gmail.com with Savory in the subject line:
  - the url of your post
  - the name of your dish
  - your name
  - your geographic location
• Also, please put a comment on this post linking to your post so we can all see it sooner!
• Deadline is Sunday, September 16th and I hope to post the roundup within a few days after that (depending a bit on how much fun we are having in Rome.)

Also, special thanks to Veggie Chic for hosting the latest Carnival!