Report from the Field: Poppy

Before going to Poppy, I recommend getting clear in your head what kind of eatin’-out folk you are, or at least are for that evening.

Are you the kind of eatin’-out folk who can be excited by a novel taste, even if it turns out to not be one you like very much? Are you open to finding the gestalt of a dining experience utterly satisfying even if the thing at the heart of it – the food – sometimes might have been a little less than?

Once again, I realize I am breaking down the cooking and eating world in terms of having A.D.D. and not having A.D.D. In short, I think if you have actual clinical A.D.D. OR just a high level of need for stimulation, go to Poppy with the friends who do as well, and be prepared to have a little culinary adventure.

If you are not that kind of person, or just find yourself in the mood where you want one perfectly cooked piece of delicious steak or a big plate of really exquisite and hearty pasta, you might find the Poppy experience less than satisfying.

Luckily for me, I have a sky-high need for stimulation and new sensory input (good, bad and all shades in-between), and went to Poppy with four entertaining friends who are up for culinary adventures and overall good sports. So we all had a wonderful time and want to go back again.

Four of us at the table had eaten at The Herbfarm while Poppy’s chef and owner Jerry Traunfeld was there. All of us had a really special and memorable night there on our respective visit. We definitely came to Poppy with high expectations, but also a lot of goodwill towards the chef.

We started off with eggplant fries, little gorgonzola cherry-sage puffs (the puffs were a tiny dark bread with a familiar flavor I couldn’t quite place in the two bites it took to eat), and gravlax remoulade on coriander potato cakes. The fries were the biggest hit at the table, but that’s like saying the supermodel was the most popular with the boys. I mean, anything in fry form is going to be a winner. The little puffs were nice as well.

The gravlax dish was good, but I couldn’t help but compare it to the revelatory gravlax/latke dish I had at Art of the Table, which was one of those dishes that...did something to my head. If you like to cook, sometimes you can taste something that opens up this new world of flavor and flavor combination. It makes you realize there is this heretofore unrealized harmony of taste, and inspires you to try to cook something that is such a delight and surprise when you first taste it. So let’s just say the Poppy gravlax had a tough row to hoe in impressing me after that.

So everyone probably knows this, but for my parents who read this but don’t live in Seattle, I’ll let you know that Poppy’s thing is that rather than individual courses and entrees, the main part of the dining experience is organized into a thali, a collection of little dishes that all come together.

On our night, our thali included the following:

• Carrot coriander soup - simple, spicy and delicious
• Beet and yogurt salad – um, you know how I feel about beets, but actually the table, which included beet-likers (some might question why I would befriend such people, but I try to reach out to these poor souls on a regular basis, hoping my positive influence will put them on the right path eventually), uniformly did not care for this dish.
• Persimmon, huckleberry and fennel salad – I found this nice, some really like it a lot.
• Scallop with a cider sauce and a little I believe parsnip or other root veg puree (forgot) – this was for me the best dish of the night. I think I am falling in love with scallops in general, and these were cooked nicely, with a delicious flavor from the cider sauce.
• Cauliflower with apple and celery – also nice, I think a couple folks said this was their favorite.
• Squash with toasted coconut – this was great, sweet, spicy, and the toasted coconut was an unexpected addition; that flavor and texture made for a beautiful contrast.
• Duck – only Will got this (you can swap out the non-veg dishes) and it was apparently good, didn’t appear to be mind-blowing.
• Fennel-lemon chutney – okay.
• Chestnut, leek and porcini blintz – this was one of the veg swap-out dishes. Kind of underwhelmingly, but not unpleasant. I just sort of forgot about it as I was eating it.
• Chanterelle and borlotti bean gratin – I didn’t have this, but I think it too was decent but not mind-blowing.

So okay, you look at that rundown and it would appear there were only a few dishes got us excited, which could seem kind of negative. That’s why I wanted to position this quasi-review with the caveat that, to me, the dining experience can still be wonderful even if some of the individual pieces might be underwhelming.

For one thing, I recognized that my expectations might have been out of whack. Eating the food of chef with a career and reputation like Jerry Traunfeld, I think I half-expected each thing on the plate to open my mind up to some new world of flavors like that gravlax at Art of the Table. If you’re waiting for revelations, it certainly set you up for being underwhelmed.

That said, the whole thali concept – lots of little bites – means that even if an individual item or dish isn’t the best thing you’ve ever eaten, that’s okay. You still have the fun of bopping around the tray, trying the other items, comparing it to something else, mixing the flavors, etc.

So there were three savory dishes that I really liked a lot, only one of which really made me all swoony from the deliciousness (the scallops). But it was still extremely satisfying because when I wasn’t swooning from deliciousness, I was nevertheless having a positive experience, that of culinary adventure and novelty.

We also had some of their house cocktails. My Turkish Delight (orangey) and 622 (Manhattan-y) were nice, well-crafted, not quite as exciting as I hoped. Carolyn’s Elite on the other hand, made with St. Germain elderflower liqueur, was delicious and floral (my first reaction was it tasted like a sexy cough-drop, in a good way), and the level of inventiveness I was sort of hoping for in my drinks.

And now on to the desserts, which were probably the best part of the evening for me, and not just because of the sugar involved. As noted previously, Dana Cree, who taught at the cooking school when I was working there, is in charge of the sweets at Poppy. She just continues to impress me every time I eat something of hers. She, like Dustin Ronspies, the chef at Art of the Table, always seems to put flavors together in a way that is somehow both familiar and yet new, sophisticated in their restraint and yet wholly satisfying.

I asked my server what the most adventurous dessert was, and he recommended the butternut chiffon with bay cream and hazelnut. The dish is somewhat reminiscent of pumpkin pie, but taken to a level of sophistication and complexity that elevates it way past that comfort food. Carolyn went rhapsodic, saying it had everything you could want in a dessert, and she’s not even a pumpkin pie fan.

Doggie got a malted milk chocolate ice cream, which was delicious. Will and Carolyn got a dessert plate that included the chocolate terrine with ginger (nice), fudge (really nice), plum soup (simple and slightly addictive despite its simplicity), and a cinnamon caramel ice cream that depressed me.

Not because it wasn’t good, it was beyond good, but because since I am now obsessed with making ice cream, it was...it was like going to see Glenn Gould perform after learning to play Chopsticks on the piano. I know what I want to achieve in my ice cream; it’s what’s going on in that cinnamon caramel ice cream, so perfectly cinnamon-y and so perfectly caramel-y, sweet, but not too, simple yet somehow complex and interesting at the same time. What is depressing is I am about one million gallons of ice cream experimentation away from having anything approaching that skill and who knows if I have the natural palate anyway. (Choked sob.)

Our server was excellent, helpful and enthusiastic about answering our many questions. It’s always great to have a server who can see that the table is open to trying new things and wants some direction and who provides the right information to help you make a decision.

We wound up sitting there for over three hours. Okay, not quite the six hour experience of The Herbfarm, but the bill for five with all that food, wine and cocktails was about what it would be for two at The Herbfarm, so you could say it was a bargain.

So, to reiterate, if you are going to go to Poppy, go with an open mind, curious palate, and short attention span, and make sure to bring your most adventurous and good-sport friends. Leave room for dessert, order that sexy cough drop cocktail and while you might not find your favorite savory dish in the whole wide world, I am pretty sure you will still have a great time.