Opal, 2 Boston St. 
Seattle; 206-282-0142, www.opalseattle.com
We're too snide, hip and urbane to dine out on Valentine's Day night, a restaurant event akin to Rape of Nanking if a quiet, romantic tête á tête is what you're after.
Cool people like us (that would be me and The World's Tiniest Architect) avoid those nights -- and also New Year's, St. Paddy's, Mother's Day; Easter, and Cinqo de Mayo -- holidays promoted to near frenzy by the restaurant-industrial complex.
(Notice these days are all in the darkest days of the dining business cycle: the first and second quarters when depression is rife, nothing's in season, taxes are due; and everyone's on a diet. January and February are the killing fields of restaurants).
The St. Valentine's exception to the brooding nights of winter is a love-crazed juggerthon of overbooking; cheap champagne splits; lovers straining for restaurants' low inventories of tables for two; and an air of sexual urgency that can overpower the stink of lobster lolly-pops and the stench of Chocolate Martinis (which deserve to be overpowered if not banned outright).
Often, if the The Day is on a weeknight near the weekend as it was this year, many wait until Friday or Saturday, which extends the clogging of restaurants by the once or twice-a-year diners, or "amateurs," as we haughty Foodists know them.
Because we're snide, hip and urbane, and we have other things to celebrate that week in February, the Diminutive Designer and I decided to go out the Wednesday night before the Thursday Big Night.
After another run at the mysterious, seemingly impenetrable Eastlake joint, Sitka & Spruce we ended up on the top of Queen Anne Hill at Opal, a newish restaurant (Queen Anne Ave. & Boston) on our to-eat list that we really didn't know much about.
Opal is one of those pricey, neighborhood places (entrees, $18-$29) that doesn't take itself too seriously with its simple post-modern anti-decor with exposed ducts, uncomplicated lines; deep, dark colors like purple and carmine; a tile wall). The tableware is post-modern, and cool in a space-age way little boys would appreciate if one ever chance be dragged into such a place, which is doubtful.
Conferring with the eager, quick-study of a waiter, we lined-up a succession of plates: first a salad with crisp apples and threaded fennel with some kind of nuts; a sweet apple vinaigrette, and the radical punch of some good bleu cheese. It was a crisp (not tough) and a winter salad sans lettuce that delivered the raw freshness that one wants out of a salad...
Especially when the next plate is Winter Squash French Toast, a dish which followed the trend of chefs to name their most elegant items after diner menu standards or dishes in permanent rotation in your mom's homecooking. It's cutely downscale and a little deliberate thing to do, but in joints like these, you'll find all manner of hash, over-easys, short stacks, mac & cheese, tuna noodle casseroles all stuffed with luxury ingredients like truffles, duck, toro, and in this case, foie gras.
'Cute' has never started a war, I always say; and the composées themselves were innovative and downright delicious.
Following the upscale indunstry standard of "elegant little heaps," this so-called French toast was a little slab of winter squash, a two-bite piece of Hudson Valley foie; a heap of sweet onion "marmalade" and some stewed huckleberries. It was everything I was wanting; sweet, sour and savory, and of course, buttery of foie gras, that endangered liver snack from happy, politically incorrect, force-fed ducks.
The Li'l Architect ordered the Wild Boar Tenderloin which was medium rare with a peppercorn sauce (actually a piquant, glistening reduction/glace with huckleberries) stewed and mooshed celeriac and sauteed Brussels sprouts leaves. (Taking them apart and sautéeing the leaves in a pan with a little browned garlic and good olive oil is the best way we know these days to cook brussels sprouts -- they're not tough, they're not strong, they're just good, keep their color, and are really easy to mess with).
I ordered the "Seasonal Pot Pie' which contained not a soupçon of marijuana; and was no Swanson's pot pie encased in pie dough, either. It was a sautéed, melange of bright winter root vegetables; the lean inner meat (no skin, dang!) of the fresh hock (the pig's ankle) bound loosely with a tasty velouté, the barely-thickened light mothersauce of a blonde chicken stock. (We salute the sauce work at Opal -- so rare these days since the strictures of classical cooking has been universally discarded for knock-out-the-props, pants-seat innovatin'; cookbook readery; and ingredients of which Escoffier could only dream).
Meantime, the service was exuberant and attentive by a scrubbed-up kid who spoke like he was as excited about the food as he hoped we'd be. He'd obviously been allowed to eat the food on the menu, and his spiel was better and more than the memorized litany you so often hear.
Sated, we kicked back with a couple of cigars, and ordered a dessert to split; the so-called Dark Chocolate Satin, a huge, halved slab of candybar-like pecan-orange torte, with a hazel-nut graham crusting; a spoon of huckleberry cream, a spatter of red wine carmel and Guiness ice cream (which didn't taste like stout, at least surrounded by all those other rich, full flavors).
All in all we liked the hell out of Opal. It was started by the Thai owner of the next door Orrapin Thai Cuisine, but the food is "new American" and the chefs are the talented round-eyes, Andy Leonard and Tyler Hefford-Anderson.
If I gave stars to restaurants I'd give Opal three. Since I don't, let me say we'd go back anytime we had the underwherewithal and the cash.
Sadly, Opal is no more. Same owners are planning a new restaurant in the same space.
Posted by: wta | 01/07/2009 at 09:04 PM