Pacific Grill's happy hour menu includes grilled oysters with pancetta, left, meat candy, top, and cheeseburger sliders with garlic fries.
Photo by Janet Jensen/The News Tribune.








Sue Kidd the food writer for The Tacoma News Tribune recently wrote an article about Happy Hour in local restaurants. In case you missed the article, here it is:

Pacific Grill
Where: 1502 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma;
253-627-3535; www.pacificgrilltacoma.com
Happy hour: 2 p.m.-6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; 9 p.m.-10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 5 p.m-6 p.m. Saturdays; 9 p.m.-11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

Of all the restaurants sampled for this report, Pacific Grill was the one that made me want to return – repeatedly.

Four pages of menu choices – all but three of the 20-something menu items are half off – and a longer daily offering from 2 p.m.-6 p.m. makes this the tiara for every happy hour diva.

Classic grilled cheese, $6: Cave-aged gruyere sang sweet and nutty against the melody of mildly pungent vintage white cheddar. The cheese duo oozed from between two crusty pieces of grilled country sourdough. The apple (correction: tomato) chutney on the side nudged the sandwich to sublime with just the right amount of sweetness to coax alive the sharp, cheesy flavor. Crispy housemade potato chips were light and airy, leaving me wondering if they were not so much fried as they were air crisped.

How do they do that?

Barbecued oysters, $6.50: Six oysters, barbecued and served in their shells atop an attractive display of rock salt, were loaded with a smoky dose of chewy, delicious pancetta; so much so that the pancetta overpowered the brininess of the oysters. Oyster purists: Skip the pancetta.

Cheeseburger sliders, $5.50: Two juicy, sirloin burgers came perfectly grilled medium as requested. The burgers got cheesy-sweet treatment from tangy Russian dressing and pungent aged white cheddar. Nestled between two nosh-worthy fluffy dinner rolls, the diminutive sliders are small, but decadent. And they come paired with the best fries in town: thinly sliced shoestring potatoes fried crispy with whole garlic cloves and crispy-crunchy sprigs of fried rosemary and sage leaves.

Mussels and fries, $6.50: Sweet, rich and smoky comes with wide appeal. A big plate of sweet, meaty mussels swam nicely with huge chunks of applewood-smoked bacon in a garlic- and basil-scented wine bath. And it comes paired with those amazing garlic fries.
Meat candy, $3: By no means will the five pieces of meat candy fill you up, but it will leave you drooling Homer Simpson-style. I don’t know what I like better about meat candy – the chewy, sticky texture or the sweet-smoky flavor of the creamy roasted sweet dates wrapped up snug and happy inside a thick, chewy jacket of apple-smoked bacon.

Let's end our week a little more happy, shall we?

Papaya, Mango & Avocado Salad

Just in time for your 4th of July barbecue--this delicious melon salad is super refreshing and easy to make.

Find some ripe melons at your grocery store or local Farmer's Market. Papaya is particularly delicious in this tropical Thai-inspired salad.

The other day I chopped some crisp juicy watermelon into large cubes, added some cantaloupe and ripe orange-fleshed honeydew melon. Then I added some halved grape tomatoes, and avocado. The tomato is really delicious with the melons.


For a little spice I chopped a jalapeño --including seeds--and added some peeled and minced fresh gingerroot, chopped green onion, fresh spearmint and cilantro to the fruits. Next I carefully tossed the fruits with a good amount of a good quality fruity vinegar. Raspberry vinegar is good, or white balsamic. Add a little salt to taste and squeeze some fresh lime juice. If you want to play up the tropical inspiration find and add some chopped kaffir lime leaf to the salad.


You can turn the salad into more of a main course with the addition of some salad shrimp if you like.

Refrigerate for a little while to allow the flavors to blend, and serve well-chilled. Delicious and beautiful it will be the hit of your next summer barbecue.

Cherry Love

I get excited when Bing cherries come into season heralding the start of summer.

My Great Grandmother Cassidy lived in a beautiful antebellum-style home near the state capitol in Olympia. The front yard was dominated by a gigantic Bing cherry tree. As children we used to go visit Grandma Cassidy and I couldn't wait to climb the stairs to the grand second level porch, and reach out and pick some juicy black-red cherries. My brothers and I would try and see who could spit the pits the farthest off the balcony towards the street below. Sadly, after Grandma sold the property to the state, her beautiful mansion was torn down--along with that huge Bing cherry tree, to make room for more state government buildings.

Several years ago when I was chef of this beautiful restaurant Rix in Santa Monica CA, we came up with a great summer-y salad using Bing cherries--and we named it "Cherry Love".

The salad is on our menu now, and is very popular with our guests. It consists of baby spinach leaves, feta cheese, sweet Walla Walla onions, roasted pistachio nuts, and a vinaigrette that we make from the cherries.

Circus

When the Circus Came to Town

I love the restaurant business. I hate the restaurant business.

Why am I putting the emphasis on the business part of that statement? During these perilous economic times, everyone is trying to manage their business as efficiently as possible. Did you know that in fine-dining or “white tablecloth” restaurants--average profit is just around 4%? Some restaurants sales are down 10-20% from a year ago. The Sea Grill restaurant located just across the street from my restaurant, Pacific Grill, closed for good 2 weeks ago. Even Quiznos and Starbucks in our downtown neighborhood closed recently.

[photo: food orders unspooling onto the floor from the Printer]

4 % is a pretty slim margin. You are trying to hold onto just 4 cents for every dollar that comes through your front door! The single biggest cost in a restaurant is labor.
You might wonder what it takes to run a restaurant like Pacific Grill where we employ over 70 full and part time employees. I am happy to say we haven’t (yet) had to lay-off a single person.

How can you help us restaurateurs survive?

The other night we started with just 27 reservations on the book. It felt like it was going to be a slow Thursday night. Our manager made some decisions to run with a leaner crew that night. He didn’t call in a second Host for the front door. He scheduled two fewer waiters for the dining room, and we went with just one bartender. The extra dishwasher was sent home, the extra line cook wasn’t scheduled and so on. ….

Then all hell broke loose.

We were mobbed with early diners headed to the Britney Spears “Circus” concert at the Tacoma Dome. We ended up doing 240 dinners that night.

I have talked about this before in an effort to get the word out, but it would sure be nice if a bigger proportion of those 240 diners would call ahead and make reservations.

How does that help me as a restaurant-owner?

I have no desire to give bad service. I want there to be an appropriate amount of staff to take care of our clients. If you have too many waiters on the floor, and it is a slow night—the waiters don’t make enough money in tips. When a crush of people arrive, a server can be inundated with 4 tables seated all at once. It takes time to talk about the menu, get cocktails ordered, explain what wine might be best with the entrées ordered. Then all those orders have to be entered into the computer so the kitchen can get started cooking. The computer was spitting out so many orders so fast I could barely keep up.

Meanwhile the 3 other neglected tables are glaring at the Server. The Bartender is slammed with so many cocktails to make at once that she cannot get drinks made fast enough. The kitchen gets buried. The tables say “we are on our way to the concert, and please rush our meal”. But they ordered the chicken (which is raw and hasn’t been cooked yet) and will take at least a half-hour to prepare. After the meals the dishwasher is buried with too many plates and silverware to wash, that we don’t have china to plate a salad or there aren’t enough cocktail forks ready…and the dominoes continue to fall.

Now don’t get me wrong-- I love it when people drop in for Happy Hour and dine with us spur-of-the-moment.

But think about it this way—do you ever drop in on your friends for dinner without calling first? Or what if you invite 8 friends for dinner, you shop and prepare, set a beautiful table, and then 10 times the number you invited—80 people—show up! Would that put a little stress on you the Host or Hostess? Would you have enough food to feed 72 extra people? Would you have enough china on which to serve the food? Would it take the same amount of time to clean up after? I would venture a guess that your party would be a disaster.

What if you were throwing a wedding at a hotel and 27 people RSVP’d—but 270 showed up? The hotel would not have scheduled enough banquet servers, the room would not be big enough to hold the guests, and there would not be enough food to feed your group.

I have learned in my time here as a restaurant owner to usually quadruple the amount of reservations to guesstimate the number of diners that will actually show up for dinner.

We have to order fish the night before it is delivered. So after work Wednesday night, we call the fish purveyor and tell them how much fish to deliver for Thursday’s business.

It is a crap-shoot.

“Hmmmm we only have 27 reservations so maybe we will do around 120 people”. If you over-order too much wild King salmon, expensive Maine Lobster, Alaskan scallops, live oysters, clams & mussels—and they spoil, it is going to negatively affect your Food Cost and eat into that narrow 4% margin, and you are not going to be in business very long.

So we tend to order conservatively.

We want to efficiently schedule waiters so they can make a decent living. I cannot afford to over-staff a dining room just hoping customers will show-up. I cannot afford to have 2 dishwashers with nothing to do, or extra line cooks waiting to sauté that expensive first-of-the-season fresh halibut.

We depend on our reservations to forecast how busy we will be. But it is like gazing into a crystal ball.

That 27 turned into 240 when the circus came to town.

Crudo of Scallops

A really popular dish that you are seeing popping up all over the United States on menus right now is crudo.


Italian for raw—crudo is a fusion dish —similar to Japanese sashimi, but with Italian/Mediterranean flavors instead of Japanese.


Recently I showed you a crudo of raw ahi tuna with Summer black truffles.


Today we are featuring a crudo of thinly sliced raw scallops with extra-virgin olive oil, lime juice, cracked pepper, slivered mint & cilantro—and sprinkled with vanilla salt. [Sea salt that has been infused with a scraped Tahitian vanilla pod].

The unusual combination of flavors against the buttery richness of the raw scallops is delicious.


Like our flatbreads, the crudo changes frequently, so this particular version may not be on the menu the next time you visit Pacific Grill.

Flatbread with Lamb Meatballs

A particularly delicious flatbread we have been featuring this week at Pacific Grill is our house-made lamb meatballs, creamy goat cheese, blistered grape tomatoes, fresh herbs, and red onion.

It is a great starter, and the fluted tart pan in which they are served makes for a great presentation. And is easy to throw together—and a great attention getter—at your next party.


Our flatbread dough is similar to pizza dough, but we don't knead the dough--we just throw it together and stir it until it forms a sticky mass. We then retard it over night in the walk-in to develop the flavor, then assemble the tarts the next day, before baking them off to order.

HINT: You don't want to put too much flour in this dough or it will make the crust tough and not crispy.

Put whatever toppings you want onto the dough just like you would a pizza. And bake it in a blazing hot oven for around 10 minutes or until the top of the crust is brown around the edges and the cheese is bubbly and browning.

After you finish baking the flatbread push the removable bottom out of the pan and cut the pizza right on the pan into about 8 equal sized pieces. Then drop the pre-cut flatbread back into the tart pan, drizzle with a little extra-virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of chopped Italian parsley just before serving. If the flatbread needs it you can stick it back into the oven a minute or two or under the broiler to give the cheese more color—but watch it like a hawk cause it will burn fast!

Oh and by the way—our flatbreads sell-out quickly and change every few days—so don't expect this particular flatbread on your next visit to Pacific Grill.

Tomato Confit

A new dish we have been featuring is Chef Ian's Tomato "Confit".

As you may know confit is a French word meaning "preserved" and usually is used to describe a slow cooking technique whereby a tough cut of fowl such as a duck leg or goose was cooked slowly in its own fat, and then sealed in this fat to protect it from decomposing, and could be cellared before refrigeration was invented, for many months without spoiling.


Confit can also be seen in the word confiture which tranlates as a preserve in the sense of a jam or jelly is preserved with extra sugar added to protect it also from spoilage.

Ian takes Roma tomatoes and cuts them in half and tosses them in olive oil, herbs and chopped garlic. Then he puts them in the oven over-night with just the pilot light left on. This allows the tomato to be cooked for ten or more hours, slowly enhancing the tomatoes sugars and making the tomato even more tomatoey.

The he takes some fresh Dungeness crabmeat and stuffs the preserved tomato, serving it on a frilly bed of spring greens, and surrounding the plate with a spring vinagrette made from extra-virgin olive oil and cooked rhubarb with citrus, and a little shaved reggiano over the top.

...Delicious