Ted Furst, longtime fixture on Seattle's culinary scene, calls his two-year-old, 140-seat restaurant overlooking the marina at Carillon Point "Le Grand Bistro Américain," but it's really more of a grande brasserie. (Think of places like La Coupole, in Paris, where tourists and out-of-towners can go without fear of being humiliated by supercilious waiters or intimated by exotic menus.) Whatever you call it, though, there's nothing on the eastside like it, and nothing in Seattle other than, perhaps, Bastille and Toulouse Petit that compare in the scope and scale of their francophilia.

I was Furst's guest earlier this year as we tasted our way through GBA's menu, which was gratifying and comforting: a dozen oysters on the half shell; an assortment of charcuterie; that French cafe standby, "salade de chèvre chaud" with toasted goat cheese and hazelnuts; a cassoulet with duck confit (beans slightly undercooked); a beautiful boeuf bourguignon; and a Northwest take on a Mediterranean bouillabaisse with rockfish, steelhead, albacore, mussels, and a giant prawn, fragrant with saffron and a big dab of tangy rouille.

Sure, there are seafood places, steakhouses and 24-hour joints with elaborate menus, where it takes an hour just to read through the choices, and that's before the server comes by to push the daily specials. (You have to ask yourself, how many of the items are simply parked in the freezer until some chump orders one and "Chef Mike" sticks it in the nuker.) Everything at GBA is fresh, though, and prepared to order under the watchful eye of veteran exec chef (Bis on Main) Shawn Martin.

Furst himself began cooking professionally at the age of 19; he worked at Il Bistro, Saleh al Lago, Place Pigalle among others. He and Tom Douglas opened Cafe Sport together (in what's now called Etta's, still part of the T-Doug empire). Furst teamed up with Peter Lewis to open Campagne before moving into the world of corporate restaurants. For the Schwartz Brothers group, he developed Chandler's Crabhouse, Cucina! Cucina!, Spazzo, and Daniel's Broiler. He was a pioneer in Seattle's evolution from steak and frozen fish and could have gone quietly into the twilight of "respected elder statesmen."

But he had one more restaurant in him, and, by golly, he wanted to get it right. He already knew the space at Carillon Point; he'd originally opened it himself as Cucina! Cucina! (It later became a Bluewater Bistro.) What intrigued Furst was its flexibility; lakefront, outdoor seating for 90 guests in good weather, and a warm interior for Seattle's cool gray season. Says Furst: "In these chilly dark days, we crave comfort foods, and the French have been perfecting the art of comfort food for generations."

Indeed, pickling, smoking, curing, fermenting and culturing the bounties of the harvest provide us with the cheese, sausage, smoked fish, pickles, pâtés we think of as soul-satisfying. "With a plate of this stuff in front of you," says Furst, "you can't be unhappy, no matter what the weather is doing." And as the weather improves, you can enjoy that salad on the sunny patio.

Holding the bottle--an Oregon Pinot Noir from the 2002 vintage--is Howard Rossbach, who launched a brand called Firesteed some 20 years ago to take advantage of a world-class growing region hobbled by a fragmented, dysfunctional marketplace. Oregon's Pinot Noir producers were a fractious lot; there were famous names like David Lett, David Adelsheim, and Dick Erath, but no one had enough volume to become a category leader, and the small wineries were forced to charge high prices just to stay in business.

Firesteed was born as a "virtual winery" in 1992, and for ten years used a facility in Rickreall (in Oregon's Eola Hills) to produce its wine, a careful but unassuming Pinot Noir blended from grapes grown under contract at vineyards throughout Oregon. Eventually, Rossbach bought the winery outright, and began farming its 90 acres himself. He went on to purchase another 200 acres nearby, and continues to buy both grapes as well as outside wine (but only if it's better than what he's already got).

Firesteed has gone on to produce other varieties (notably Chardonnay and Barbera d'Asti), but Rossbach has a personal fondness for the Pinot. The best stuff goes into barrel for 16 to 18 months, then sees up to seven years of bottle-aging. The result is stunning: unlike the pubescent, fruit-forward Oregon Pinots we've become accustomed to, the 2002 Citation is a wine that's almost fully mature, the sort of wine you cannot imagine if you've never visited Burgundy and had the opportunity to taste form a private collection of Grand Cru wines There's tobacco and bramble in the nose, an earthiness on the palate, a voluptuous mouthfeel. The winery started with 6,000 bottles, 80 percent of which has already been sold.

Older wines like this, unfortunately, don't do particularly well in competitions because they're so far from the mainstream, years behind the showy bottles that win shiny medals and fuel the media frenzy over Oregon Pinot. But a wine like this might make you want to exclaim, like Scarpia, "Tosca, you make me forget God!"

Yet all you have to do is go to Metropolitan Market and pay $70, or travel to the tasting room along Highway 99, 15 minutes west of Salem, where you only need to plunk down $60. Either way, it's a lot less expensive than flying to France.

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.

May 2013