A peaceful little niche filled with intense flavors
It was a busy summer for Vuong and Tricia Loc: Their first baby, a daughter, arrived on June 20, and their second, a restaurant, opened on Aug. 8.
The restaurant, Portage, is named for Loc's Michigan hometown, but the refined comfort food served here seems channeled from a French brasserie.
Like his kitchen, equipped with an oven and two burners, Loc's menu is small but ambitious. The dozen or so offerings divide about equally between entrees and smaller plates, a limited repertoire that nevertheless reveals a skilled chef who, at 28, cooks with confidence, making a virtue of restraint.
Starters arrive quickly, giving the kitchen time to construct more elaborate entrees. Before they're gone, enjoy the minimalist arrangement of heirloom tomatoes sliced paper-thin, with shavings of pungent aged goat cheese, sweet cherry tomatoes, peppery micro-greens and a splash of 25-year-old sherry vinegar. These are intense flavors, sparingly applied, and the result is arresting.
Dungeness crab, watermelon and basil fashioned into a colorful timbale pleases in a quieter way, the subtle interplay of savory and sweet reinforced by a poppy-seed dressing.
The dark-green, souplike nage napping a potato-wrapped diver scallop has lots of moxie. The sauce plays gentle herbal notes against a sultry background of fennel, while the pudgy mollusk perches on a mashed-potato tuffet, peeking out from under a jaunty straw hat woven of fried shredded potatoes.
Unlike that scallop, the two poached prawns buried in a salad of purslane are extras in a crowd scene. In this production, crisp honey-glazed lardons (like bacon, only better) and bite-size yellowfin potato chips steal the show. The truffle vinaigrette enhances those tender greens (like watercress without the bite), but it lacks a well-defined acid edge.
Entrees are uniformly delicious whether built around meat, fish or poultry. Sauces tend to be light — often just pan juices bolstered with wine or aromatics; sides are never perfunctory.
Loc's upscale version of steak and eggs is a good example. Bits of truffle speckle the ruby sauce moistening Wagyu beef hanger steak, as tender as a filet but with a meatier taste. Pierce the butter-basted egg and you won't wonder where the yellow went — it's seeping into a potato terrine streaked with a duck-fat-enriched duxelles of mushroom and escargot.
Pan-roasted chicken is more humble but hardly humdrum. A boneless breast is pillowed on mashed potatoes under a cozy of golden raisins, almonds and olives, its sauce delicately poised between salty and sweet, the presence of sherry almost imperceptible.
Lake Superior whitefish is not often encountered in Seattle. Under its crackling skin, this oily fish tastes a little like mackerel, and Loc's provocatively tart sauce — brown butter sharpened with verjuice — gives it just the right finish. Cherry tomatoes and petite cipollini onions complete the tableaux.
The roasted lamb "rack" is really a thick chop. Elegantly presented on the bone in its own flavorful jus, the ruddy flesh really tastes like lamb. Nearly hidden among miniature pattypan squash, green and yellow beans and stewed tomatoes are tender nubbins of braised neck meat along with a sharp, grainy house-made mustard.
Tricia Loc, who, like her husband, graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, does desserts.
Flourless chocolate cake is as dense and rich as a truffle. Honey pot de crème, though looser than it should be, has a startling intensity of flavor that approaches caramel. But an almond frangipane tart was so hard, it rebuffed the fork.
Queen Anne Hill boasts plenty of restaurants, but nothing quite fills the gracious dining niche that Portage does — and I do mean niche. While an imposing gilt-framed mirror fosters the illusion of a grander space, the restaurant's narrow honey-hued dining room (formerly Barbacoa) seats just 30, including three at the bar.
Bucking the trend toward edgy, noisy, crowded places, Portage is downright peaceful. Guests sink into black-and-gold-striped banquettes. A just perceptible jazz soundtrack weaves through the soft buzz of conversation. The place has the polish of a cosmopolitan pied-à-terre peopled with a smartly dressed clientele that looks right at home amid the butter-yellow walls hung with striking contemporary art.
Chef Loc strolls the room, when he can, flashing a shy smile and making sure all is well.
The staff is deferential, growing more assured with the menu and the wine list, a well-edited selection of French and Northwest bottles. When you order by the glass, the server brings the bottle and pours a taste first, making sure it's to your liking — a sensible practice all too seldom seen.
For now, Portage is open only for dinner. But the neighborhood is already clamoring for lunch and brunch. Looks like things aren't going to slow down for the Locs any time soon.
Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com
Sample menu
Dungeness crab timbale $9
Purslane salad with prawns $11
Pan-roasted chicken $15
Lake Superior whitefish $18
Roasted lamb rack $25
Portage
2209 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle;
206-352-6213
French/American
$$$
Reservations: Recommended.
Hours: Dinner 5-10 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays.
Prices: Appetizers $6-$11, entrees $15-$25.
Drinks: Full bar; France intersects with the Northwest on the well-edited wine list.
Parking: On street.
Sound: Comfortable for conversation.
Who should go: Not for grazers, but ideal for those wishing to dine.
Credit cards: Major ones accepted.
Accessibility: No obstacles to access.
Other amenities: Limited sidewalk seating.