Poppy Restaurant Review & Thoughts on Time

I love fine dining.  That's all there is to it.  Last night I was able to experience one of the nicest of fine dining.  Poppy Restaurant in Seattle is in the Capitol Hill District.  I hadn't been to Capitol Hill yet. I'd arrived early, it was still daylight, so I drove around for a good look see.  The homes and gardens are delicious (oh wait, that was the restaurant).  Okay, okay...food.  I'm still savouring.  

Poppy's is run by Chef Jerry Traunfield.  He has a great track record, named James Beard's Best American Chef: Northwest & Hawaii in 2000 for his work as Executive Chef at the time at The Herbfarm in the Seattle area.  I knew walking in I could expect good things.  I was not disappointed.  Poppy serves food as thali, a presentation inspired by Indian food.  That means lots of little dishes.  It's not a series of appetizers.  It's an entire meal of 9 dishes plus naan, an Indian bread.  It wasn't Indian food with curry in everything either.  It had pea greens and saffron and spring herbs in season.  I ate things I'd only heard of before, like fiddle head ferns.  The fiddle heads were so interesting to look at for god's sake, and delightful on my tongue.  Earthy and rough and light (okay, so I'm not real good at descriptors - I'm working on it - but that's what it tasted like).  The egg-lemon soup complimented everything that came off my fork; the salmon in wine herb reduction, the croquette of I don't remember what (but damned good).  The place setting included silver chopsticks; I used the fork, I didn't want the meal in my lap.  My partner in crime was adept at chopsticks though, two points there.  The tandoor roasted pork had the most interesting, tasty olives with it...almost peppery.  Oh man, the smells coming from this platter (grinning - think cheshire cat).  Oh, oh the rubarb pickles.  I never would have thought, rubarb pickles.  I haven't eaten this slow in eons. Every bite was a mindful, melting explosion of newness.  This platter was heaven on the table.  I was a good girl and kept it down to one glass of wine that I nursed all evening.  Of course, I needed to drive home; mostly though, I didn't want the meal in my lap. Two points for me.

Tonight I'm back to pb&j and a diet Pepsi.  This must be to make me enjoy these great moments even more.

One topic of discussion over dinner was Daylight Savings Time and it's insidous part in ruining the economy.  Here government decides to change when our Daylight Savings Time goes into (and out of) effect by a whole two weeks - a year and a half later we are experiencing an economic meltdown.  It must be the clocks.  After looking into this theory I'm even more concerned to learn that some New Zealander is responsible for this melt-down by offering up the Daylight Savings Time ploy back in 1895.  This can only mean that the melt-down has been in the making for 114 years.