The Georgian Room at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel
411 University St (downtown), 621-1700, ext. 3169.
Breakfast Mon-Fri 6:30-11 am, Sat-Sun 7 am-noon; lunch daily 11 am-2:30 pm; dinner Tues-Sat 5:30-10 pm.
Mom was in town last week, and I thought it would be fun to take her to a fancy-with-a-capital-F restaurant. And so we went to the Georgian Room at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, which was the Four Seasons until just a few weeks ago. The restaurant is an intimidating and formal space, with a two-story-high ceiling and spaceship-sized chandeliers. It's not the kind of restaurant where people tend to pop in after work--on our visit, the clientele was divided among the gray-haired set and 18-year-olds out on big dates. And yet there was a certain atmospheric dissonance in the room: Everything from the colorful art glass to the chatty service and the wacky menu prose seemed to add up to a half-apology for the grandeur. Most tellingly, the menu was topped with a promotional deal--a free appetizer or dessert with any main course, which made a relative bargain out of a scrumptious meal.
The Georgian may be willing to jolly up its menu, but it has not abandoned the hyperattentive service that makes it unlike other restaurants. During the course of the night, we were served by no fewer than eight people, including a PDA-toting managerial type, a genial sommelier with a radio announcer's voice, and a gently wisecracking waiter. Each one tended to needs we didn't know we had, like when a pair of bussers filled the table's two empty water glasses in the same synchronized instant.
"It tastes a lot like Aunt Esther's Jell-O mold," cooed my mother when she dabbled in her appetizer: a tower of cucumber apple granita, topped with a little crunchy salad and stack of Dungeness crab legs ($12). As it turned out, the dish was lovely--frivolous, but with crisp flavors that made sense together. The Georgian's chef, Gavin Stephenson, might blanch at my mother's comment, but she's right: There is some common ground between contemporary chefs who experiment texturally with foams, ices, and gelatins, and mid-century housewives who sought attention through creative Jell-O applications.
Other appetizers were also outstanding, if less fanciful. Two chunky duck dumplings came topped with a raft of seared foie gras ($11); their succulence was the polar opposite of the icy crab. I loved the caviar-topped egg relish that was served with mellow smoked steelhead (a kind of seafaring trout, $9). Made along the lines of the classic French sauce gribiche, it was like egg salad, only better.
I tried to badger my mom, who grew up in the South, into ordering the "cracklin' pork bellies" and "cracked corn dumplin's," but she refused. I think she was put off by the apostrophes. Instead she chose the "rabbit rings" ($24), trussed bunny tenderloins that were roasted--with some supplemental fat, I suspect--gently enough to preserve maximum juiciness. We also gobbled down a tender skate wing that was boned out and stuffed with basil leaves ($22), and served with "Antique Tomato Wallpaper"--thin slices of heirloom tomatoes lining the plate--and some very creamy new potatoes. In one instance, the arty presentation of a dish got in the way of maximum flavor: A sea bass in chowder ($26) was served on a colonnade of potatoes, which left it sadly stranded above the creamy broth.
In terms of service, nothing topped the arrival of the huckleberry soufflé ($6.75), accompanied by two servers. One stood by while the other pierced the crust and made a hole in it, then dropped a scoop of sorbet into the hole, and then topped it off with creamy white crème anglaise. The deflowering of the soufflé made me blush, but the dessert itself was a soft landing for a very tasty meal. It's a tough moment for old-fashioned luxury, but I hope the Georgian will continue to focus on beautiful ingredients and absurd, lovely gestures of service. If they lost a little art glass on the way, I wouldn't be too sad.
