Neigoborhood Deals
--------------------------- Italian/American
$
RECOMMENDED
[MAP: CORNER OF LEARY WAY AND N.W. 47TH in Ballard]
Medin's Ravioli Station
4620 Leary Way N.W., Seattle
206-789-6680
Hours: 11:30 a.m.- 2 p.m. Monday; 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday; 5-10 p.m. Saturday
Cash or checks (credit cards pending) / No smoking / Beer and wine / No obstacles to access
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Who needs The Old Spaghetti Factory when there's Medin's Ravioli Station.
Bill Medin's cooking career includes 15 years in San Francisco and stints here at Salty's on Alki and The Edgewater, but when he and his sisters, Leann and Lennie, opened their own place in September they went for something simple and unpretentious.
Why ravioli? "Everyone does pizza. We wanted to be different," Medin says. Made from fresh pasta and filled with beef, cheese, vegetables, spinach or smoked salmon, the delicate dumplings are available at lunch or dinner sauced with your choice of marinara, Alfredo, roasted red pepper or tomato cream. Or order them to go, with or without sauce on the side, and cook them at home.
Besides ravioli, the lunch menu lists four sandwiches. Stuffed pork loin, peppered steak or filet of sole round out the dinner menu. Soup du jour or salad accompanies every entree; otherwise don't expect many frills: The napkins are paper, you'll need to hold onto your fork between courses, and if you want butter for the few morsels of whole-grain baguette allotted to you, you'll have to ask. The kitchen doesn't cut corners on ingredients, however, turning out tender, well-prepared meat, sauces with character and ravioli fillings that are fresh and flavorful, including salmon smoked on the premises. The best part - nothing costs more than a ten-spot.
As the basket of lollipops near the cash register suggests, kids are welcome at Medin's Ravioli Station, a drop-in-any-time sort of place with about 45 seats, including those attached to the counter fashioned from train pistons. Large windows rim the triangular space, which is much cozier after dark, when they dim the lights, and votive candles flicker on each black-topped table, warming the copper-trimmed pumpkin-colored walls. Lest things get too mellow, a sound system continuously belts out contemporary pop, rock and blues.
Three-cheese ravioli with Alfredo sauce and salad:
Five pasta pillows plumped with ricotta, mozzarella and romano are garnished with a crisp fried ravioli, the almost flaky dough filled with spinach, currants and pinenuts. The silky, cheesy white sauce is used with restraint and bolstered by decorative swirls of basil cream and roasted red-pepper sauce. The small salad of green-leaf lettuce sprinkled with tart house vinaigrette includes kalamata olives, carrot, tomato, red cabbage and bleu cheese crumbles.
Peppered steak with soup:
Ordered rare, this hunk of peppercorn-jacketed top sirloin arrives hot with its center blushing red and running with juices that mingle deliciously with the Dijon-laced, green peppercorn-spiked brandy cream sauce. The crowning glory: smoked onions fried to a crisp. Two vegetable ravioli drizzled with roasted red-pepper sauce share the plate. Thick, spicy black-bean soup is a satisfying opening act.
Cheesecake:
The classic New York version, creamy and good, and splashed with strawberry syrup.
Itemized bill, meal for two:
Three-cheese ravioli with Alfredo sauce and salad $6.50
Classic peppered steak with soup 9.95
Cheesecake 3.50
2 glasses Placido chianti 7.00
Tax (9.1%) 2.45
Total 29.40