Dandelion
5809 24th Ave NW, 706-8088
Sun and Tue 5:30-9 pm, Wed-Sat 5:30-10 pm.
I lived for a year in Berkeley, CA–a place justly famous for food, and not only because of Chez Panisse and the tireless organic proselytizing of Alice Waters. The high quality of everyday food life in Berkeley can be downright unnerving. Convenience stores offer a choice between Meyer and regular lemons (both organic of course), and in summertime the city’s trees hang low with cherries and plums, ripe for the picking. To top it all off, Berkeley has a gourmet ghetto, a conglomeration of shops and restaurants all devoted to the finest, freshest foods money can buy. Since moving north I’ve missed that ghetto–sure it possesses the creepy uniformity of a whole community thinking alike, but if you’re going to live in a slightly Stepford neighborhood, why not choose one devoted to deliciousness?
But it’s possible that we could develop our own gourmet ghetto. Things are looking up in Ballard, north of Market Street on 24th Avenue NW. For a while now, it’s supported a stellar bread bakery, Tall Grass, whose hominy bread and black-as-night pumpernickel delight me as no other bread can. And there’s the pinch-me-am-I-dreaming goodness of Cafe Besalu’s pastries (especially the ham and cheese croissants and a cookie shelf that should never be ignored). But until now, this tasty little strip has lacked the restaurant to tie it all together.
Enter Dandelion, a delicately scaled cafe, with glowing lighting, an open kitchen, and a relaxed ease (even on busy weekend nights) that strikes me as downright Californian. The menu is pointedly unfussy: just six or seven appetizers, a few cheese choices, and six or seven entrées, all of it bundled up with lots of farmy name-dropping (Full Circle greens, Oregon Country beef, Quillisascut cheese) to let you know that someone in the kitchen cares about how the ingredients are grown.
Simplicity is strength at Dandelion. A greens-only salad ($5.50) was dressed just right in a sherry vinaigrette; a hunk of chicken-liver terrine ($6) was a tad grainy, but so full of flavor we ate it straight after all the crostini were gone. Best of all was a chilled artichoke served in full blossom form ($5.50). Since I entered the restaurant world, I’ve rarely enjoyed an artichoke the way I learned to love it: not peeled down and pared to an entirely edible heart, but leaves ready to be tugged through teeth, accumulating a pile of fibrous remains as one goes. When I grew up, the dipping sauce was Wishbone dressing; now, it is homemade herby mayonnaise, a considerable improvement.
Dandelion’s entrées are simple, too, although in a formulaic way. Each is an old-fashioned square meal: a hunk of meat or fish (excepting veggie dishes), a scoop of something starchy, and a pile of something green and good for you. Roast chicken and steak go with mashers and chard, king salmon with wild rice and mustard greens, and pork chop with farro and spinach. The formula is old school, but the execution is excellent. Invariably the hunk of meat is skillfully cooked: Nothing is dry; the salmon, the pork, and the steak alike clung to a healthy pinkness at their centers. The chicken, with breasts as plump as Lindsay Lohan’s, had a golden shellac of skin, and meat of remarkable juiciness. My favorite dish, the blushing pork chop, was capped with a crown of sweet apples and onions. A tender wedge of halibut ($16) came with a nice, sweetly spiced tomato sauce and a puddle of soft polenta to dip into (and some sautéed spinach–no one leaves this restaurant without eating her vegetables).
But (and there is always a but, isn’t there?) Dandelion is rather too reserved on the seasoning. Just as each piece of meat was cooked exquisitely, so each–the pork chop excepted– was undersalted. Especially when simplicity is the aesthetic, seasoning is essential–such lovely hunks of free-range flesh need the right bit of salty razzle-dazzle to do them justice. But missing salt is a far more minor problem than overcooked food–and so I’m still pleased by Dandelion’s cheery addition to Ballard’s little gourmet ghetto.
Now who’s going to open a cheese shop next door?