When Supper's Super Secret

Dinner last night was a crime.  A deeply delicious crime.
Heading out for dinner, all I had was a vague address and a few hints. I was looking for a loft in a funky section of Seattle just below a busy overpass, searching for a door with a red circle painted on it.

Scattered beneath the overpass were stray pages of the Seattle Weekly and empty beer cans and bottles of booze in paper bags. The street was deserted. Overhead, cars zipped past on the elevated highway.

Location, location, location. Certainly you would not expect to find a thriving restaurant stuck here, and indeed this was not a restaurant at all. It was an underground operation, a secret supper joint.

I found the door with the red circle and entered hesitantly, unsure of what was behind it. (Maybe there are two red-circled doors in the neighborhood.)

The door opened up onto a small office space. It was just a sliver of a place, really. During the day, this is a cluttered three-person office. At night, a long table comes out, the professional cooking range fires up, and the place transforms into a makeshift restaurant.  The space was so small that the narrow galley kitchen (really a hallway) and long dining table practically shared the same space. Better to view the goings-on in the kitchen if you're actually in the kitchen.

Actually, the concept of the underground restaurant runs counter to the familiar restaurant, which arose as a place where you could come at the time of your choosing, sit at your own private table, select what you want from a menu, and more or less be left to yourself.

By comparison, underground restaurants are a gastronomic blast from the past in that you arrive at a set time, sit with strangers at a communal table, and eat and drink what you’re given.

You don't choose your wine.  Pours are determined by the host. Control freaks might not prosper at a place like this. But I kind of like the prospect of stumbling into something new and unexpected.

The first course was bacon wrapped bacon. A luscious piece of slow-cooked pork belly wrapped in delicious bacon done with a Chinese preparation. It was paired with a minerally Sardinian white.

I really liked this wine. And it reminds me that it's often a good idea to look off the beaten path, at the less well-known appellations, like Sardinia, to find delicious, good-value wines. This Sicilian white was a keeper. Its dry minerality was beautiful with the Chinese-inspired pork dish.

Delicious Bacon-wrapped Stuff:

The next item to the table: more pork.  The hostess served up miso-marinated pulled pork simmered in duck fat before being finished with a miso glaze. Yikes! This was served with sticky rice and large pieces of lettuce along with some piquant kimchi. (I drank more of the versatile Sicilian white.)

Pork, Pulled and Otherwise:

Finally, a slow-cooked lamb ragu was served with squid-ink pasta. With this, we drank an Italian red from Piedmont. And then, someone at the table plucked a bottle of Washington red from her bag and shared with everyone at the table. It was a Bordeaux blend, rich and deeply delicious, and a natural fit with the lamb.

Lamb and Ragu Recipes:

I was fit to explode by the time the red velvet cake arrived.  The hostess cut the cake at the table and set enormous pieces before us.  She served a sweet Italian white.  I believe it was a Moscato d'Asti, but by then I was approaching food coma conditions and was incapacitated beyond the ability to ask. I took 4/5 of the cake home with me.

Cakes, Cupcakes, and Cookies:

Really, it was a little too much in the portion department.  I would have been fine with one-third the food that was served that night. 

For a person who truly likes the "public privacy" idea of the restaurant, I was surprised by how fun it was to dine with complete strangers. After a little wine, we all opened up. And by the time the Washington red arrived on the scene, we were best buds. Part of the fun of this arrangement is that it's communal. And it's clandestine. And that always puts a little charge into things.