Cheap Eats

Attempting to eat inexpensively at an expensive restaurant is pretty
much an oxymoronic Mission Impossible. A recent article in the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer labored to prove otherwise,
recommending thrifty measures including splitting entrées
(you’re hungry AND they hate you: win-win!), bringing your own wine
(which the corkage fee undermines unless it’s a pricey bottle, in which
case, what are you so damn worried about?), finding coupons (nothing
says “big night out” better), and/or having half your main dish boxed
up in the kitchen before it ever hits the table—voilà,
tomorrow’s lunch (an “old dieter’s trick”). To all this I say you might
as well stay home and kill yourself. Eating in a restaurant is supposed
to be fun and—forgive me—indulgent, not an exercise in
weird, covert parsimony. However, for this Cheap Eats package, I found
three cheap(er) deals at “better” restaurants that truly sounded
promising—with mixed results.

Downtown’s BOKA (1010 First Ave, 357-9000) currently offers a
“Before the Show” three-course set menu for $29 between 5:00 and 6:30
p.m. nightly (valet parking included). At two years old, BOKA still
stuns: The ceiling alone has more design than most entire interiors,
then there’s the mod glass bamboo, retro burl tables, butter-yellow
snakeskin chairs, ribbed black walls, shimmery scrims, complicated
geometric upholstery, and (insanely) more. A flat-screen cycles
endlessly through images of polar bears and waterfalls, while portions
of the walls themselves cycle endlessly through different lurid colors
(especially virulent toward the back; if you’re easily made queasy or
prone to flashbacks, do not sit here).

Last week, the entrée alone would’ve cost $27: a Thundering
Hooves Farm pork chop, purportedly medium but dry-ish, with buttermilk
mashed potatoes that crossed from rich into sour, spicy corn relish,
crisped onions, and a pleasant sweet-smoky pork jus. Like the
gazpacho starter—with crème fraîche and too-large
sprigs of cilantro and budding basil immersed within—it did not
attain superdeliciousness. The crème brûlée proved
to be caramel flavor: a massive disappointment for a
purist/fanatic.

The menu does change, and chef Angie Roberts’s “urban American
cuisine” is oft praised. But if you’re going for the scene—and
the people-watching is excellent; it’s clear most of the people would
love to be watching themselves—the twice-nightly happy hour will
get you in for far less (and out far tipsier, at half the price).

La Medusa (4857 Rainier Ave S, 723-2192) is Columbia City’s
beloved surrogate kitchen. Preferred footwear runs to Tevas,
Birkenstocks, and Crocs; the room is more upscale Berkeley cafe than
L.A. When it’s crowded, there’s a happy din, and it’s always crowded on
Wednesdays for the Market Menu: three courses devised from that week’s
farmers’ market for $25. From market to table is half a block, a
pleasing carbon footprint for those in sensible shoes.

Last Wednesday, service dragged, and the wallet-impaired should be
aware that bread—from Columbia City Bakery, mere steps
away—is $2.50. Decent house wine, however, is just $6 a glass, so
via relativity it might all even out. The salad (finally!) was
likeable: beets, arugula, a little creamy sheep’s milk feta, barely
detectable almonds, and “spiced coconut” (a major departure from the
local concept). The main dish, rigatoni with a runny tomato-basil cream
sauce, was tasty but nothing to jump up and down about, with Walla
Wallas and thin-sliced baby carrots making for a primavera on the sweet
side. A berry cobbler topped with a shortcake biscuit and whipped
cream: also just fine.

Like BOKA’s preshow deal, the Market Menu changes, and La Medusa’s
Sicilian-
inspired food is much beloved. Perhaps it was just luck
of the draw that neither BOKA’s
fancied-up simple food nor La
Medusa’s cuisine of simplicity impressed.

When can $50 a person for dinner be considered a deal? At Sunday
Supper at the
Corson Building (5609 Corson Ave S,
762-3330), the long-awaited new restaurant from Sitka & Spruce’s
Matt Dillon. Sunday Supper isn’t every Sunday—to get in, you’ll
have to watch the website and reserve pronto—but it closely
resembles the Thursday/Friday/Saturday dinner service, which will set
you back $80 a person plus $30 for wine pairings (available by the
glass at Sunday Suppers). Sunday evenings start at 6:00 p.m., and early
arrivals may stroll the grounds of the lovely little 1910 Spanish
Eclectic building. It’s an oasis of fruit trees and wisteria in
Georgetown’s grit, with cages of clucking chickens and cooing doves, a
marvelous product of an extraordinary vision.

The interior is plain, the plaster imperfect, the light always just
right. Seating is at three long communal tables and service is family
style. Dillon’s ambition is to make you a delicious dinner, and if you
require your own turf and obsequious waiting-on, he’d rather you go
elsewhere. In my limited experience—one regular dinner, one
Sunday—the Sunday-goers are less likely to be visibly well-off
and/or from Miami, more likely to appreciate the mismatched silver
and/or burst out laughing. Dinner is a course or two shy of regular
nights, but there’s no chance you’ll leave hungry. The menu last
Sunday: cockles drowning in butter, served in their shells; tuna
pâté; the world’s largest platter of slow-cooked local
albacore atop cool, crisp green beans, with hard-boiled egg and aioli;
grilled sardines with chickpeas, mint, eggplant puree, tomato jam, and
Armenian cucumber; salad of arugula from the bed outside the window
with cantaloupe and bacon; tenderest brisket with baby
potato/
corn/dill salad and yogurt; poached peaches, cream, fried
almonds.

More on the Corson later—for now, Sunday Supper is a very wise
way to spend your eating-out money. Another tip: Brunch is starting
soon. Your nonexistent accountant would approve.

bethany@thestranger.com