The L Magazine: As you've surely heard by now (right?), Frank Bruni's five year tenure as lead food critic at the New York Times will end in October, when the position will be taken over by current Times Culture Editor Sam Sifton. In honor of Bruni's departure, Eater revisits some of his meanest moments, like this saucy criticism of both the food and the decor at Charles: The lamb kebabs should be called tartare...The salmon, supposedly pan-seared, was more like pan-spurned...Charles is as stingy with heat as it is with light. Maybe it’s saving on utilities. Anybody want to share their favorite Bruni bruiser?
Frank Bruni, former NY Times arbiter of dining:
To eat in and around Seattle, which I did recently and recommend heartily, isn’t merely to eat well. It is to experience something that even many larger, more gastronomically celebrated cities and regions can’t offer, not to this degree: a profound and exhilarating sense of place.
¶ I’m hard-pressed to think of another corner or patch of the United States where the locavore sensibilities of the moment are on such florid (and often sweetly funny) display, or where they pay richer dividends, at least if you’re a lover of fish. …..
¶ In greater Seattle and the San Juan Islands you get a lineup and caliber of local oysters that aren’t easily matched, in addition to superb spot prawns, salmon, black cod and halibut. ….. Did I mention Dungeness crab? The region is lousy with Dungeness crab.
¶ The region provides a natural theater for this feast that’s just as inimitable, a thrilling topography of steeply pitched hills and gently sloped mountains. Snowcaps shimmer on the horizon. Evergreens are everywhere — gargantuan and piney and so very, very pointy. The tree line has jags, edges. It looks as if it’s serrated.
¶ The region also has a spirit all its own, one that hews fetchingly to certain progressive, outdoorsy clichés; people show a fondness for bikes, beards, tattoos, flannel and all-weather pullovers that lies far outside the statistical norm. For humanitarian causes, too. Nowhere else have I received a hotel bill that included a $3 charitable donation.
¶ “Um, what exactly is it for?” I asked the clerk checking me out of my room.
¶ “It changes, but right now it’s for Japanese disaster relief,” she said. “You don’t have to pay it. You can opt out.” With three times that amount in minibar charges, I didn’t see how that was possible. Not if I wanted to slink off to my rental car — which, I suddenly realized, wasn’t a Prius or other such hybrid — with even the slenderest shred of dignity.
Accolades awarded to Madison Park Conservatory, Willows Inn, DeLille Cellars,Buty Winery, Project V distillery,the Herbfarm, Knee High Stocking Co. Tavern Law,Revel,the Golden Beetle, Seatown, The Walrus and the Carpenter, Staple & Fancy, willowslodge.com), the Barking Frog,
Ed. Hmmm … Frank seems facinated by local produce … he left out the oysters, geoduck, tuna, salmon and sea urchin Seattle’s Sushi culture, .. Shiro, Kisaku,and more. The same local wonders is Italian at the amazing Percheno,. Oh there is so mu ch more, the great (non Starbucks) coffee houses0, The Kingfish, Monsoon, Farestart, , Mutual Fish, Vios, The Jade Garden, local cows in local burgers, Rays’, Ivars’ Salmon House, Noble Court Dim Sum, and Dick’s.