BASTILLE DAY AT THE MARKET: Seattle's French restaurants are in Francophile overdrive tonight in celebration of French independence. Le Pichet (1933 First Ave.) starts its annual party at 6 p.m. and features Gypsy jazz until 11 p.m., when the d.j. takes over. Maximilien (81A Pike St.) has a special three-course dinner tonight for $35 and an accordion player. And Cafe Campagne (86 Pine St.) tops them all: a street fair is happening in Post Alley......

Stairwell Sisters have joined the slowly growing community of all-girl old-timey bands, and recently released their third album, Get Off Your Money. They do much better when they tackle the traditional fiddle tunes, but their originals do the genre plenty of justice. They’ll be joined at the Tractor tonight by local old-timey heroes the Tallboys. The Seattle branch of the famed Paul Green School of Rock opened in January. Now, the inaugural class of talented......

Sidewalk table for lunch at Le Pichet: Salade verte, the café's signature green salad with hazelnuts, goat-cheese tartine (on country bread from Tall Grass Bakery) with cornichons on the side, a glass or two of Muscadet. Feels like France, even more so because I've brought along the new memoir by Patricia and Walter Wells, We've Always Had Paris...and Provence. Walter, former New York Times staffer, was editor of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune for 25......

One hour. A flicker to some, forever to others. For us, a fantastic opportunity to get our juices flowing at Café Presse. The front room is fun, but we like the elbow room and more relaxed atmosphere of the tables in the back. We also appreciate the helpful and unrushed service. One hour is what you’ll wait upon placing your order for the famed roasted chicken. Time for us to kick back with our demi-pichet......

They buzz, they flit, they fly. They dart, they dash, they zip. Ethan Stowell putt-putts from Union (downtown) to Tavolata (Belltown) to Wolf (Queen Anne). Corino Bonjrada bounces from La Vita e Bella (Belltown) to Mondello (Magnolia). Jim Drohman shuttles between Le Pichet (Belltown/Market) to Café Presse (First Hill/Madison). Scott Staples hops from Zoë (Belltown) to Quinn's (Capitol Hill). Josef Jimenez doesn't ride himself but sends his cooks on a scooter--a Honda, not a......

We would like to point out that it is our firm desire that there be less militancy in the driver/biker debate. Obviously there are a few asshole drivers, and there are a few asshole bikers. The vast majority of both groups, however, are cool, and the few bad apples shouldn't make us want to nuke the whole barrel. That said... Friday night, we saw a biker get hit by a car making a left turn.......

Jesus, this is embarrassing. Bastille Day celebrates the liberation of a particularly pungent batch of cheese from the dungeons of the old prison in 1789 (along with seven prisoners) on the 14th of July (le Quatorze). Except here -- where as usual we're a day late and a euro short -- the Seattle Bastille Day festivities are being held on Sunday the 15th at the Seattle Center. What fun is that? The ideal would be......

We'd just polished off the Poulet rôti à votre commande, potage aux légumes de printemps (“Chicken roasted to order, on a celery-scallion-sultana ragout and salt-roasted fingerling potatoes”) at Le Pichet ($34, serves two, allow an hour for the roasting) and life seemed particularly pleasant, generous, abundant. There was plenty of daylight still and we realized we hadn't been to Zig Zag to see Ben in forever, so we set off, past Victor Steinbrueck Park and......

It's SIFF's last bleary-eyed, numb-assed, popcorn-butter-fingered weekend, so if you haven't stopped in for some film-festy fun, you gotta act fast. We held Audrey upside-down and shook her until she gave us some selections -- no, no, you deserve the best. There's no telling how far we'd go to make you happy. Before we get to that, here's some film-related goings-on that you might like: Friday night there's Kinski performs Berlin: Symphony of a......

Air France 046 touched down right on schedule Monday--the first-ever nonstop flight from CDG to SEA, water cannons spraying the Airbus A330 in a festive salute, the pilot waving French and American flags from his cockpit window. Champagne toasts and official speeches followed, blessing this long-overdue rapprochement of the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle. Francophile Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur said we'd finally been kissed on both cheeks by the standoffish French. But the......

Bird's Eye Brunch lurking deliciously in the Seattlest Flickr Pool. Damn The Culprit, he's making us jealous. We're demolishing our basement when we'd much rather be digging into Le Pichet's Oeufs Plat.......

People make a lot of excuses when it comes to deep frying. “I don’t have a deep fryer.” “It’s bad for you.” “I’m still missing a patch of hair on my arm where I burned myself with hot oil in 1985.” Whatever. Contrary to popular belief (we blame the Fry-Daddy), a designated deep-fryer is by no means necessary for deep-frying. A fantastic fryer can easily be fashioned out of a heavy pot, lots of oil,......

Our treasure known as Pike Place Market serves as the setting for an ideal progressive eating party by day. Work from one end to the other, and you can enjoy salmon, fruits, vegetables, nuts, candies, cheese, tea and more – and that’s without even opening your wallet! Spend some money and your feast continues. So we applied a similar concept and started at the Market for a progressive dinner at some of the area......

We're serving Bastille Day cold, apparently, this Sunday at Seattle Center. In Paris, a brigade of activist clowns is parading after the usual militaristic tomtommery. No word on whether there will headbutting. Anyway, our Bastille celebrations are loin de Paris, at Fisher Pavilion from 11am to 6pm on July 16. (We shake our heads sadly just typing that.) There will be music, non-profit booths, and a Citroen exhibition. For the foodies, there are two......

Seattle, specifically Belltown, is now the country's official epicenter of restaurant wine service. As if we needed another reminder. Campagne's wine steward, Jake Kosseff, took first place in the Chaine des Rotisseurs "Jeune Sommelier" competition, held over the weekend at the Sonoma Mission Inn. (The day before he left town, he was running a delightful tasting of French rosés in the cozy courtyard of the Inn at the Market.) A 16-year veteran of the restaurant......

In which Seattlest contributors divulge their weekend plans and disclose their favorite things to BBQ. Friday afternoon means it's time for the MADCAP Hill Farmer's Market at Madison and 20th, 3pm - 7pm, so MvB is off to find ingredients for his mad scientist smoothies. Saturday at 4pm The Real Dirt On Farmer John plays at the NW Film Forum (free if you RSVP). MvB grew up on a farm, and you'd think he'd be......

To be fair, you didn't expect the Ray Harryhausen talk at the Science Fiction Museum last night to sell out either, did you? But it did, and even though we hinted that we were from a globe-spanning blog empire, they refused to let us in. "You know, Mr. Seattlest golfs with Mr. Allen frequently," we lied pathetically. But no soap. Who's Ray Harryhausen? Just one of the greatest stop-motion animators in film history (and SFM......

Bernard-Henri Levy occupies a position in France roughly comparable to...well, we don't have anyone like him. Rock star Bono comes close. Jon Stewart, maybe, except that BHL writes his own material. Sporting an unruly haircut, clad in the requisite uniform (black shirt, black blazer), he's a familiar figure on French TV, the embodiment of the Public Intellectual. Atlantic Monthly sent him on a year-long assignment to retrace the intellectual journey taken by de Tocqueville; the......