One trend worth embracing is the movement toward small restaurants. Diminutive in their scale and the size of the staff, anyway. Their culinary ambition is writ large.
Take In Season. The seat count hovers around 40, and the staff consists of five servers, a cook, sous chef Pete Thillen and chef/owner Don Saunders. That's it. There isn't even a dishwasher on the payroll.
The beauty of this kind of modest setup is that there's almost no filter between Saunders and his diners. Drop in most nights, and chances are that Saunders is working the line -- the tiny kitchen is visible from the dining room, so it's impossible to miss him at work -- preparing dinner, being a literal hands-on owner. And for diners, that is a very good thing.
It's been almost two years since Saunders shuttered his formally minded Fugaise, and since then he's overseen a swank Wisconsin lake resort and a private St. Paul club. Those experiences come through in this latest venture. In Season isn't a Fugaise reboot, although of course it reflects Saunders' confident cooking style. But the differences are clear: This time around, Saunders is keeping it far more casual -- with prices to match -- demonstrating that he is more than able at putting a gloss on more middlebrow ingredients. Truffles, no; truffle salt, yes.
Despite having said that he's always dismissed the idea of signature dishes, Saunders has inadvertently landed himself one, and it's a doozy. It starts with plump Quilcene oysters, plucked from the cool waters of Washington state's Puget Sound. Saunders dusts them in semolina, gently deep-fries them and then pairs these delicate oceanic pillows with robust cuts of slow-braised pork belly glazed with honey. The combination couldn't be more delicious, particularly when a crunchy, sweet-sour cabbage slaw mingles between the two. It's a textbook Saunders moment, a mind-meld of textures, flavors and colors. Even better: It's just $12.
Here's a chef who has a knack for turning what reads on paper like the definition of "disparate" into juxtapositions that make perfect flavor sense. At first glance, sea scallops and grapefruit reads all wrong, but Saunders proved otherwise, searing the juicy scallops in butter until they are slightly caramelized, the golden color riffing beautifully off the deep ruby citrus, the acid of the fruit balancing out the bivalve's natural sweetness. It's downtown cooking -- if such a concept still even exists -- without leaving the neighborhood.
Seafood is definitely a strong suit. I loved the plush ocean trout, an exotic Thai-style opah and most especially a roasted monkfish, the flesh fall-apart succulent and served with fabulous gnocchi scented with cinnamon, allspice and clove. A scallop ceviche boasted clean, bright flavors, and mouth-melting slices of cured salmon were rolled around beets the exact color of the fish and served on tender buckwheat blini.
The soups are brilliantly conceived and executed. An earlier menu featured a puréed butternut squash soup that perfectly captured the winter gourd's essence, minus the usual overbearing cream base. Even better was a more recent ode to the root cellar, with the added bite of spicy house-made pork sausage popping with fennel and cumin; its hearty broth was brimming with lentils and dark green kale, and with every fortifying slurp I could feel my snow-addled immune system being fortified.
