BlatherMunch21: the corson bulging

5609 Corson Ave. S.

(BlatherMunch is our weekly -- on Sundays -- foodish respite from political bias, snotty intenuendo, and liberal glee. For more essays on food and dining click here or 'BlatherMunch' in Categories).

After super new-beat (beet) chef Matt Dillon of nationally renowned Sitka & Spruce reneged at the last possible moment on a promise to let me watch and report on the production of a dinner for traveling food trickster Tony Bourdain, I was grumpy to say the least. 

Dillon's business partner is Wylie Bush (owner of Capitol Hill's Joe Bar) and they've renovated this funky/charming Spanish-style 1910 house and courtyard under a Georgetown freeway off-ramp.

The Corson Building was once a lawn statuary emporium owned by a Garlic Gulch family. The restaurant (or whatever it is) is eponymously called The Corson Building, and took them over a year to get up and running. It finally opened in June with the Bourdain event from which I was banished.

Dillon dreams of TCB becoming a foodie community center: educational, uplifting, socially responsible and of course, sustainable -- all the while serving expensive victuals to people who can pay the freight.

(Matt Dillon, photo: Courtney Blethen, The Seattle Times)

Meanwhile, this noble effort is open weekends for these lavish prix fixe dinners and as a venue for cater-ins.

Needles to say, after being chased off, I wasn't anxious to give Matt Dillon $80 and belly up to his table. But the World's Tiniest Architect helped me work through it, letting my immense belly trump my somewhat less formidable resentments, and boy was I glad she did!

We started vertical in the courtyard midst the crumbling seraphimic fountain, dove and chicken cages; raised beds of herbs, tomatoes, and radishes; deserted bee hives piled in a corner and the traffic swishing overhead on its way to the baseball game. 

The hummers had flown the coop, but we social bees were hiving away and making nice-nice in the garden with a sparkling rosé; fresh, sweet bings and Rainiers; we were told we could spit the cherry pits anywhere outside making us feel right at home.

Seated at long tables in the small dining room, the food was passed family-style on platters between us and nine amicable and hungry table mates. There were two other tables just like ours.

I'm not going to do a bite-by-chew of each of the nine or ten courses, and matching wines. But suffice it to say: Mr. Dillon loves his meat and fish.

~ The fresh sardines, fried crispy, plump and salty of the sea served on a salad of cukes and baby beets, with the fragrance of coriander flowers, the leaves of which are the herb cilantro, the seeds of which are the spice, coriander.
 
~ And oh yeah to the boned quail quarters with smoked paprika and orange and red sweet peppers, and 25 year old balsamic.
 
~ Fresh local tuna,the loin -- sweet and soft, as if boiled in baby oil (see photo) and served with a green beans, extra mild radishes, Spring onions, pistachios, and green goddess dressing which was green and light, and didn't taste like any I'd ever had before (and that's a good thing -- having endured one of its brief, mayonnaise-y, anchovial heydays in the 1950's, I was never impressed... it was one of those Ladies Home Journal what-to-serve-the parents-of the-girl-your-son-knocked-up recipes).

~Tri-tips (or Santa Maria steak as old-time chefs call them) of Kobe-style beef were roasted rare, sliced and served with huge heirloom tomato slices, and arugula, This great, underutilized cut from the bottom sirloin was for years ground for burger, but is as tender and tasty as cuts higher on the sirloin.
 
~ Grilled zucchinis spears with musky green coriander seeds, and an unforgettable sheep's feta from somewhere, made by somebody. (it's frustrating for foodies to not know, be told, but forget a precise food origin, correct appellation, specific genus, or hallowed name to drop in the foodly monologues in which we indulge regularly with fellow foodists).
 
~ There was braised rabbit, and head cheese.

(I forget the order of all these courses... with the breaks, it took a long, long time; the circle of life was broken and completed several times over. A couple split up, another reunited; babies were born (one named for me, another for George Clooney after whom Georgetown is named); Tony Snow died; doves hatched in the side yard, but were devoured almost immediately by overanxious guests sensing the prospect of a heretofore unhad food experience).

We got to know the intimate lives of our new friends on this long night, and we came out the other end to coffee, semi-soft cheese and Mexican Wedding cakes. 

Slight crotchit: it was too dark in the room: the candlelight inspired intense communications in the shadows, but it was hard to see what you were eating sometimes, or whether the little cries from the corners were gastronomic, carnal or caramel.

Comments

[sparky]

my goodness...
I take it the menu is set...Im not a picky eater but do not like cilantro/corriander. Friends went to the first Herb Garden and it sort of sounds similar. Interesting!

[Nancy-poo]

You got a way w/words, Mike. You make gluttony sound virtuous again. Thanks!

[Ray Pasquale]

Wikipedia: "The tri-tip is a cut of beef from the bottom sirloin primal cut.[1] It is a small triangular muscle, usually 1.5 to 2.5 lbs. (675 to 1,150g) per side of beef. In the United States, this cut was typically used for ground beef or sliced into steaks until the late 1950s, when it became a local specialty in Santa Maria, California, rubbed with salt, pepper, and spices and cooked whole on a rotisserie or grilled. (The tri-tip is still often labeled "Santa Maria steak".) Tri-tip is now available in most of the U.S., though it remains a relatively overlooked cut."

Tri-tips are truly a chefs secret. we love this cut for chili, London broil, schwarma, any where you need an inexpensive cut that eats tender at medium rare.

You can go back to your ranting about politics and shit, Michael. See you next Sunday.

[unbuckled]

Michael, you forgot the great little Soave that went with the dessert course... enjoyed your take, however.