My grandfather's elegant brother, Uncle Harvey, took me to my first real restaurant—a big deal for anyone, but especially a food writer. Harvey, who died when I was 10, may have started off his adulthood as a shoe salesman, but he lived his life at a distance from the off-track betting and early bird specials of his Bronx-bred siblings. He preferred opera and good food, and one evening saw fit to bring my siblings and me along to an elegant French inn near the house he and Aunt Zerlina owned in upstate New York.
This was big. In my childhood, barring the sporadic pizza and spaghetti joints, restaurant meals were count-on-your-fingers rare. I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5, but I can't shake the memory. I was struck by the grownup-ness of it all—the white linen, the attentive service, my brother Sam squeezed into a hand-me-down blazer.
My older siblings haven't forgotten it either. "I had beef Wellington and thought it was the best and most sophisticated thing I'd ever eaten," says my sister Leah, who as a PhD-toting curator is a rather sophisticated thing herself. Sam ordered the trout, and was pleased when the waiter complimented him on his choice. I recall that Sam made a big deal of eating the crispy trout tail, but for the life of me, I can't bring to mind what I ate. It's hard to imagine what might have suited my fancy—at the time, I hated key French ingredients like mushrooms, cheese, and ham.
My mother says that Uncle Harvey saw our evening out as both a lesson in good manners (he wouldn't let Sam switch his knife and fork to cut food) and an adventure; but in my admittedly rose-tinted memory his gesture translated more like this: "You might be little now, but soon you'll be an adult, and an interesting one at that. I might as well start treating you that way."
The only place in Seattle that is both thoroughly French and thoroughly polished enough to do Uncle Harvey justice is Rover's, run by my friendly acquaintance, Chef Thierry Rautureau. Granted, its multi-course tasting menus ($90 regular, $80 vegetarian, $125 to go heavy on the truffles and foie gras) are more nouveau than the cuisine bourgeoise we ate way back when, but Rover's has a bit of that old-fashioned courtliness that Uncle Harvey would have admired.
Rover's small plates of food are formal compositions, filled with more colors and flavors than we would have encountered in the '70s. There's no way that we would have eaten cool slices of cured cod with roasted eggplant back then. Or a compulsively neat beet and goat cheese tartlet. Forget about creamy chanterelle flan. Maybe we would have had succulent quail with braised cabbage, but a foie gras garnish would have been unlikely. And there wouldn't have been any of the rococo dots and curlicues of red and green purées that garnished many of our plates at Rover's. But there are some elements that I'm sure would have turned up at that long-ago meal, like meaty glacé sauces and the yummy cheesy gougères we got as hors d'oeuvres.
Oddly enough there is something democratic about a posh place like Rover's—all types of people need a place to splurge on a special occasion. I wish I could know more about the elderly woman with the Hermes bag, who ate her meal alone. But the rest of the restaurant was filled with couples: a pair of middle-aged women who looked like they were celebrating an anniversary; a man of late middle age nuzzling his young lover; and a boy and girl out on a very expensive high-school date.
My first instinct upon seeing the teenagers was to chuckle—he was trying awfully hard to be suave—but then I gave them the benefit of the doubt. After all, those teenagers are much closer to being interesting adults than I was at 5, and they deserve the same respect Uncle Harvey gave us. 
