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 Issue #2 - Winter 2008 --- --- |
This Bird Has Flown A Review of Shallots by Bob Oswald Of course, I support myself entirely by plying the noble trade of the written word. When I'm not smoking the rarest brands of caviar or sipping the rarest vintage wines directly from their boxes, though, I have a day job as a paper pusher at an admittedly flaky alternative school. Just for booze and bail money, you understand. As part of my training, I had to go to this pastels workshop where administrative types from all over the Pacific Northwest were learning to create crude representational images; one of the early hallmarks of human introspection, a vital skill for bureaucrats to learn. I went into the class one day and the teacher, an acid casualty who I think was actually hit by friendly fire, said "At the beginning of time, the wind and the sun danced with one another for what seemed like an eternity. Then one day the wind broke free and began to become a bird, and the sun was so gladdened by this that it became the bird's plumage. Now. Draw that bird." All of this stuff is vital background information that you must understand before I tell you what I thought about Shallots. But first. Another financial benefit of being a writer is that occasionally a publication will pitch you a few gift certificates for a local business, in the hopes that you will go there and write a review of their services for a mere pittance (or a paltry pittance, which is less). That's how I wound up at Shallot's the night after I drew my bird-at-the-beginning-of-the-universe. Thanks, Belltown Messenger!
Verdict on the eggplant: hearty and satisfying. "I think everything in this except for the tomatoes is deep fried," said Allie. But honestly, who cares? Let's move on to what Bob Oswald had to say about the food that Bob Oswald got! As for the beer, it's as Hemingway once put it: the beer was beer. It was cold and carbonated and it was beer. You drank it and you didn't get drunk, but then you drank some more of it and you did get drunk. It was cold and carbonated and you drank it. It was beer. But the capstone of the night was the Bird's Nest. Have you ever seen one of these things? Holy cow, it's like a plate of lo mein in peanut sauce, and on top of that is this fried potato-taro nest, like those potato sticks they used to give you at summer camp instead of lunch. And inside the nest - thankfully the bird wasn't around - is a WHOLE MESS of tofu and veggies, also well-sauced. This thing was an honest-to-god-work-of-freaking-art. And, much like Van Gogh's "View of the Sea at Scheveningen," I ate it, and ate it, and ate it. Shallots = win. Good food, wait-staff who were really friendly without being annoying (I wish I had left a better tip, so if you go, do it for me, OK?), the Mariners game on a big TV. I finished the entire Bird's Nest and all of the faux avian detritus around it, much to the shock and horror of my dining companion, who got a take-home box. Then we went for a walk down to the waterfront, and we decided to go to the Olympic sculpture park, but we couldn't remember where it was, and I followed Allie's directions and they were wrong, because she is a girl. The amount of food in my body must have changed the flow of blood to my brain, because I was having all these psychedelic thoughts about the water and the docks and the bird at the beginning of the universe. I kept thinking of "Norwegian Wood," not because I particularly like the song but because of the subtitle "This Bird Has Flown." In that instant, that phrase meant something to me; it meant everything, but something very specific as well. But that's not the kind of thing one can communicate in words: you've got to go to the beginning of the universe, and get into that bird's nest yourself. Shallots2525 4th Ave. Seattle, WA 98144 206-728-1888 shallotsseattle.com |
The bacon-wrapped scallops made our reviewer's veganism feel
profoundly wrong.