Fine dining at Sutra

New England and red kuri pumpkin-leek soup with a garlic and marjoram gremolata served with a pickled treviso radicchio-roasted yellow beet and shaved fennel salad.

We celebrated our anniversary Sunday night because the restaurant where we wanted to dine is closed on Mondays, our real anniversary. The restaurant, Sutra, creates gorgeous vegan food from organic, in-season, and, whenever feasible, local ingredients. The service is low-key but elegant, and the food, memorable.

The last time we were there, every bite of food produced a small murmur of appreciative delight. This time, while the food was beautiful, delicious, and perfectly prepared and plated, I wasn't quite as overwhelmed, as the dishes seemed more like something I might be able to approximate. On our last visit I felt completely outclassed in the kitchen. The biggest standout (and potentially unattainable kitchen challenge) for me were the amazing gnocchi — perfectly light little pillows of heavenly half-potato half-celery-root deliciousness in an equally wonderful spicy sauce.


Lemon basil-cashew cheese stuffed pimento pepper served with a beluga lentil-white chanterelle and porcini ragu.

The real problem I had was my hunger. I was quite hungry when we went to the restaurant (yes, I'd had breakfast and lunch) and the portions were so tiny, I was still a little hungry when we left. This may or may not have had something to do with the size of my second course compared to my husband's. My cashew cheese-stuffed pimento was like the little cousin to the one my husband had (his was perhaps about 2-1/2 inches in diameter, and is the one I photographed). My husband snarkily commented that perhaps the peppers were distributed by guest's size, and I only warranted a tiny one. Also, I had requested no shaved fennel on my salad, so my salad was smaller, too. But, really, I could have done with a bit more of everything except dessert, which was so rich and satisfying, more would have been excess.


Celery root gnocchi with an ambrosia apple-heirloom tomato-peach and limon habenero caponata served with fresh arugula finished with a balsamic reduction and truffle oil.

I don't mean to sound greedy, or unappreciative of elegant dining, but I did think the portions last night were awfully small. You can't tell from the close-up photos how small each item actually was; for example, the tiny cup of pear cider in the dessert photo was like a teacup in a child's tea set. There might be more syllables in each description than bites in each serving.


Ginger Asian pear cider with a raw cacao dusted Madagascar chocolate cardamom truffle.

So how much does this amazing food cost, you may be wondering. (Unless you're too polite to ask about cost.) The set price for the four course meal is $35 per person with all alcoholic or other beverages costing extra. Everyone is served the same meal at the same time.

If you are vegan or vegetarian, and in the Seattle area, don't miss a very special night out at the incredible Sutra, where vegetables are the stars, and no attempt is made to reproduce meat-like facsimiles. You will enjoy beautiful, delicious gourmet cuisine.

When is no choice the perfect choice? Sutra

In what seems like another lifetime, my husband and I spent three weeks camping in Italy, Austria and the country formerly known as Yugoslavia. It was kind of our honeymoon. The reason we were in "Yugoslavia" was because we were sometimes traveling with another couple, the husband of which was a draft-card burning, rabble-rousing, SDS member who was researching the working conditions of factory workers in Eastern Europe, and was hoping to visit factories there. (Did he visit factories? I don't think so.) Whatever the reason we ended up there, it was beautiful and fascinating, and we loved our travels in that country. Anyway, we met up with our friends in Dubrovnik, and, taking a break from the tenting life, were eating out in a fairly fancy restaurant — cloth tablecloths and all. I was the first to order from the very extensive menu, and as I started naming my choices, each one was met with a statement from the waiter proclaiming, "sorry, we don't have that today." After three or four failed options, I finally said nicely, "Why don't you just tell us what you do have." Pointing to the menu he said, "we have this, this and this." It certainly made our selection process easier. (We weren't yet vegetarian on this trip or our choices would probably have been limited to bottled water.)

Now that we've been vegan for such a long time, I'm used to limited menu choices — grateful for ANY choices, sometimes. But we recently had dinner at a restaurant where we had NO choices (they will accommodate allergies, special diets), and it was heaven. It was perfection. We had dinner at Sutra in Seattle. Sutra is a tiny box of a restaurant with simple furnishings and bare-bones but cheerful atmosphere that serves a four-course, prix- fixe menu of exquisite, vegan food of the highest standards. Every presentation was gorgeous, and every bite blissful. The menu changes often, and reflects the seasonal availability of organic, local ingredients, with utmost respect paid to issues of sustainability and eco-responsibility. A prix-fixe menu is offered because it "respects food of the moment, [and] eliminates the need to stock, and most likely waste, food that may not be ordered." The food was prepared and served with love and grace, and we enjoyed every morsel.

Unfortunately, even with my fastest lens on the camera, it was too dark to photograph the food in the manner it deserved, and I was forced to use a flash, which isn't the most flattering way to photograph food. Next time I will sit at the bar where the light is much better.



We started the evening with roasted sunchoke kaffir lime and toasted pecan soup, with a pickled rhubarb, navel-blood orange and radish salad. I'm having trouble coming up with words to describe the mellow yet complex flavor of the perfectly creamy soup so let's just leave it to your imagination. I pine for all the sunchokes I didn't roast and make into soup instead of adding them to the compost.



The second course was miner's lettuce, Asian pear, tri-colored carrots and fried fiddlehead ferns served with wild-foraged blackberry habanero vinaigrette, and finished with toasted black sesame seeds. Oh my.



Course number three was cashew cheese, carnival squash and luna pumpkin stuffed into nettle mung bean crepes with smoked morel-sage demi-glaze served with wild-foraged wood sorrel, and finished with a balsamic reduction. I can only sigh at the memory.



For the fourth course, dessert, we enjoyed chocolate-(made with Theo's Madagascar chocolate), coconut-rose ice cream and raw cacao nib brittle. Rich and creamy — a perfect finale.

As they say on Lost, "we've got to go back."