Home Grown: A celebration of local culinary enterprise

Maria Hines, Organic Chef

Having weathered the storm of early success, Maria Hines has stepped confidently into the front ranks of Seattle chefs, with three thriving, certified organic restaurants (Tilth, Golden Beetle, Agrodolce). She's also the only culinary professional from Seattle to participate in this year's Expo Milano 2015.

The Expo theme this year is "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life," and it opened last month to what can best be described as "mixed" reviews. Still, the American pavilion includes a restaurant sponsored and managed by the James Beard Foundation, and Hines (who was named the James Beard "Best Chef Northwest" in 2009) will cook there on June 2^nd and 3^rd. After that, she heads to Brussels, as an official Culinary Ambassador under the aegis of the US Department of State, to talk about the farm-to-table movement.

Tilth's initial claim to fame was its certification as organic (first restaurant ever!), followed by its selection, in the New York Times as one of the ten best new restaurants of the year. Moving from Wallingford to Ballard, Hines opened Golden Beetle as a tribute to the foods of the eastern Mediterranean; she also surfed the crest of the craft cocktail wave with house-made bitters, tinctures, sodas, garnishes and infusions. That was in 2011. Restless, unwilling to settle, Hines needed a venue for a third venture.

She found it in Fremont, at the hippie hangout fondly remembered as Still Life, with an indoor tree. Renamed 35th Street Bistro, the space went through several owners, the most recent having upgraded the dining room decor as well as the kitchen. And what better dream than the western world's simplest yet most misunderstood cuisine, from the island in the heart of Mediterranean that Goethe called "the key to Italy"-Sicily.

Hines actually wrote the "Sicilian" menu for Agrodolce (literally "sour-sweet") before she had ever visited Sicily. When she finally got there, in the fall of 2012, she went straight to the Vucceria market in Palermo and bought pani con miusa: a spleen sandwich. "This is Italy's soul food," she told me.

Trouble is, many of Sicily's iconic dishes require the unique ingredients of place. This precise sort of wild mountain fennel, that precise sardine. Sheep's milk for ricotta? Unobtainable in Washington state; ovine herds here are milked for cheese that's meant to be aged, and there's no surplus.

Undeterred, Hines cast a wider net and eventually found a supplier in New York who imports sheep's milk. Hines brings in whole sardines packed in water for bucatini con le sarde, and makes the (hollow) pasta in-house. Other inspirations include house-madeee burrata, arancini (rice balls stuffed with meat and cheese), lamb meatballs and house-madedee limoncello sorbetto.

Ted Baseler, First Citizen

The Seattle-King County Board of Realtors recently named Ted Baseler, CEO of Chateau Ste. Michelle, as its "First Citizen" for his community leadership. He joins a roster of worthies (Norm Rice, Lenny Wilkens, Dan Evans) from the worlds of politics, sports, the arts, and business.

It's a good moment to recall that Ste. Michelle is by far the largest wine company in the Pacific Northwest, larger than all the others combined, yet it's only 40 years old. The company was created when Wally Opdycke, a portfolio manager for Safeco Insurance, discovered a virtually defunct outfit called North American Wine Company that still had a valid federal liquor permit as well as some vineyards and production facilities. When Safeco execs weren't convinced, Opdycke and a couple of friends bought NAWICO on their own. An agricultural extension agent named Walter Clore was telling growers across eastern Washington to grow wine grapes, not just Concords for purple grape juice; Opdycke paid attention, and the first efforts at making "local" wine proved promising.

Opdycke needed more vineyards and production capacity, and looking around for sources of capital realized that tobacco companies had tons of cash. He flew to Connecticut to meet with Louis Bantle, who controlled United States Tobacco (Skoal and Copenhagen brands) and made a deal that changed the face of Washington agriculture. Bantle essentially wrote a check for $100 million to finance NAWICO's development as a wine powerhouse (vineyards, wineries, and, above all, a national sales organization). In return, UST was able to shelter hundreds of millions of profits from its tobacco business.

Before Opdycke left the venture, his daughter asked a prescient question: "How about naming NAWICO for a girl?" So Ste. Michelle was born. Allen Shoup, a one-time brand manager for Gallo, came on board to run the new company, and he recruited an ad guy and WSU grad named Ted Baseler to run the marketing side of the business. When Shoup moved on to start his own wine company a decade ago, Baseler moved up.

It doesn't hurt that Baseler is also chairman of Washington State University's Board of Regents, and that a new Wine Science Center is being established on WSU's Richland campus.

"All of the world's great wine regions have a benchmark institution to conduct research into grape growing and wine making," Baseler said in acknowledging a gift of $7.5 million from the Washington Wine Institute.

The research and teaching facility will house the WSU's rapidly expanding viticulture and enology program. With over 700 wineries and more than 40,000 acres planted statewide, the Washington state wine industry contributes more than $3 billion annually to the state economy and $4.7 billion annually to the national economy. That's billion with a b, a pretty good return on investment.

May 2015

Ronald Holden is a Seattle-based journalist who specializes in food, wine and travel. He has worked for KING TV, Seattle Weekly, and Chateau Ste. Michelle. His blog is www.Cornichon.org, and he has recently published a book "Home Grown Seattle: 101 True Tales of Local Food and Drink."