Jelle Vandenbroucke, 30, has been the chef at ART in the Four Seasons Hotel for six months, taking some of the pressure off Exec Chef Kerry Sear, who also shoulders the job of the hotel's Food & Beverage Director. When a directive came down from the luxury chain's headquarters that 25 percent of all the restaurants' menus had to be "local," Jelle (pronounced "Yelleh") knew he was on safe ground. "We're already at 82 percent!" he said. A native of Bruges, he left after completing culinary school and has never worked in Belgium. Instead, he caught the travel bug with a year in New Orleans. He joined Four Seasons as a sous-chef in Provence, then moved to the chain's Westlake Village property outside Los Angeles before moving to Seattle "without any preconceived notions" of what he would find. ART is a training ground for Jelle, whose goal is to become an executive chef for Four Seasons. So he's finding his footing, with some hits, some misses, and not a few safety dishes.

Safe: cucumber & Dungeness crab canelloni. Safe: potato & ricotta gnocchi with rainbow cauliflower. Wildly off the mark: a salmon salad hidden under a thicket of "crisp" rice noodles with plums and quail egg; the noodles were soggy, the plums too sweet and the egg irrelevant. Nice idea, poor execution: diver scallops with mussels, garlic scapes and caper-flower tartar; the capers overpowered the delicate scallops. Solid: lamb three ways: a pistacchio-crusted lamb chop was fine, as were lamb riblets over ratatouille and a lamb merguez sausage from Uli's Famous Sausage in the Market. The duck breast was tasty, and the accompanying brioche and red-onion jam provided the most interesting seasoning of the night, a French curry spice called Vadouvan..

We drank wines by the glass from several local wineries, notably the Aix from Delille Cellars, a syrah-cabernet blend in the style of Eloi Durrbach's Domaine de Trévallon, not far from Aix, whose rich berry flavors jumped out of the glass.

ART Restaurant, Four Seasons Hotel, 99 Union St., Seattle, 206-749-7070  

A year ago, Cornichon ran a post about the ethereal pasta served at Jason Stratton's 30-seat Capitol Hill storefront, Cascina Spinasse. Since then he's doubled the size of the place and appended an entirely new venture, an Italian aperitivo bar called Artusi, where he continues to demonstrate levels of creativity and technical prowess unique in Seattle.

Artusi, on the quiet corner of 14th and Pine, has a high ceiling, a concrete floor, a neutral gray color scheme with bright yellow accent tiles and hand-rolled paper lampshades. There's seating for a total of 50 at two bars (one at the cooking station, one for cocktails) and a string of tables for two overlooking the sidewalk. The place is named for Pellegrino Artusi, a northern Italian silk merchant who wrote Italy's first post-unification cookbook ("The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well"), wildly popular in Italy at the end of the 19th century and only available in English since 1997.

The concept is for folks to come into Artusi for a drink at one of the counters, a cocktail or maybe a glass or two of wine, maybe a stuzzatino (snack) of fried capers ($3) or a crisp semolina wafer with fresh ricotta ($6), then meander over to Spinasse when their table was ready. They way you would in Italy. An aperitivo and a bite in a caffè or bar, then dinner somewhere else. And some folks, to be sure, do just that. But no sooner you think that Seattle gets it, gets the Italian lifestyle, you fine that many more folks don't want to leave for dinner at all.

Gulp! Seattle wants more: bigger portions, more full-meal options. Sheesh. But Stratton's not a dogmatic chef, he's the soul of attentiveness to what his customers want . (Helps that he's got a great staff of business professionals working with him.) So dinner-size portions it is.

Which brings us to Stratton's dilemma. Can't put handmade pasta on the menu at Artusi, that's cannibalizing his own specialty. So instead he's doing some remarkable dishes that can be prepped in the Spinasse kitchen and finished on the induction cooktop at Artusi: duck leg with prunes ($15), lamb braised with olives ($16), and the single best dish I've had in months: tripe with bone marrow and local black truffles ($16).

A lot of people, needless to say, have negative experiences (or negative expectations) about tripe.

"There's something deeply satisfying about taking such an overlooked and even off-putting ingredient and transforming it into something delicious and tender," Stratton tells me. "I've had many guests be surprised at how much they like it."

Beginning to end, the tripe dish is a three day process. First, Stratton's crew blanches honeycomb tripe (from Nicky USA, a specialty purveyor in Portland) in a vinegary poaching liquid with white wine onions, garlic and spices. The pot goes on a very low simmer for about an hour, with a cook standing by to skim off the scum as it rises to the surface.

Most of the "funk" contained in tripe lies in the fat, and poaching helps render some of it. Once it's chilled, the honeycombs are scraped with a spoon to remove the rest of the fat that resides in the folds and near the valves of the stomach. Then it's cut into thin strips.
Meanwhile the cooks prepare a brodo, a meat broth that begins with a soffrito of finely diced carrot, celery, onion, garlic, chopped rosemary and a little sage, pancetta and prosciutto rind. After it caramelizes and gets deglazed with white wine, the trips is added back and simmered for about three hours. When it's done, the brodo is thick and stew-like.

Stratton's line cooks (Bobby Palmquist on a recent weeknight) finish the dish with grilled bread, julienned black truffles from Oregon, sourced by Jeremy Faber of Foraged and Found, and discs of bone marrow (from Silvies Valley Ranch), seared in a hot pan and added at the last minute.

"This is sort of a Northwest ode to cooking tripe in the style of Piedmont, where bone marrow is often used to enrich tripe dishes," Stratton explains. In any event, the tripe is rich and flavorful, with the texture of sliced mushrooms. The best wine? Schiopettino from Friuli, Primitivo from Puglia, Negroamaro from Siciliy, Canonau from Sardinia, Barbera from Piedmont. This is a dish that transcends wine.

Artusi, 1535 14th Avenue, Seattle, 206-251-7673  

The Washington Wine Commission today pledged $7.4 million over the next decade toward the construction of a wine science center on the Richland campus of Washington State University.

It doesn't hurt that Ted Baseler, ceo of the state's largest wine company, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, is also chairman of WSU's board of regents. "All of the world's great wine regions have a benchmark institution to conduct research into grape growing and wine making, Baseler said. "The Wine Science Center will enable us to properly educate our industry's future leaders." (Baseler's on the left in this picture, standing with Bob Betz, founder of Betz Family Cellars, at the annual Auction of Washignton Wines picnic.)

The center is expected to be a gathering place that will spark innovation, fuel economic development, support local, regional, national and international collaboration, and provide a catalyst for research breakthroughs, according to the Campaign for Wine website.

The industry's contribution will be raised through assessments on grape and wine production, beginning with the 2011 harvest. Says Kent Waliser, general manager of Sagemoor Vineyards and chairman of the commission, "This critically important project....will be seen as a significant milestone in the evolution of our industry."

The research and teaching facility will house the WSU's rapidly expanding viticulture & enology program led by Dr. Thomas Henick-Kling. The new building will be situated on land donated by the Port of Benton, developed by a new public development authority to be created by the City of Richland), and will be turned over to Washington State University.

Marty Clubb, president of the Washington Wine Institute and owner of L'Ecole Nº 41 Winery, says that the research expected to take place at the Wine Science Center will help ensure the continued growth of the state's wine industry in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

With over 700 wineries and more than 40,000 acres planted statewide, the Washington State wine industry contributes more than $3 billion annually to the state economy and $4.7 billion annually to the national economy. Additional information from the Wine Commission in the PDF linked to this page.