Saturday afternoon MvB is going to talk to a pack of Emerging Critics at the Seattle Rep--and hopefully avoid being panned--before heading to the Moore for Compagnie Heddy Maalem's version of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. Sunday he's packing for Iceland. Warm socks, etc. Dropping into town between flights to and from Paris, Ronald is going to attend a seminar on blogging at the UW on Saturday. Lots of traveling, as always, for Jay. He'll......

Kim is relieved the debate is actually going to happen. She'll be watching with friends tonight before working all weekend. Saturday, she'll take a break for a quiet night out, and then she'll close the weekend off getting funky in the balcony of Jazz Alley with Maceo. You can take the boy off the farm, but...MvB will be spending Saturday in a barn, hauling away old equipment, so Sunday he'll be recovering at Top Pot,......

Last night, Seattlest and friends—up for a light dinner and a few glasses of wine—discovered that West Seattle’s cozy, just-down-the-street Blackbird Bistro is, as of this week, shuttered. (No more half-price-bottle Tuesdays!) A note on the door and papered windows cited a sale of the curvy space and promised the new owners will not disappoint. (As usual, West Seattle Blog knew this was coming and we didn’t.) Of some consolation: The Bohemian, new on the......

Golf, that great game! Wine, that great lifestyle! Combine the two and what do you get? A pastime for the rich and famous, an activity for the young and restless, better fitness for the old and feckless. And the combination is (supposed to be) coming to the Yakima Valley. Technically, there are already about 20 courses between Ellensburg and Kennewick, but nothing like The Vineyards Resort, a 500-acre luxury development 20 miles east of......

It's been no secret that the parent company of Chateau Ste. Michelle is UST, powerhouse of smokeless tobacco (Copenhagen, Skoal). Three decades ago those tobacco profits, looking for a safe haven, provided desperately-needed investment capital for the young Washington's wine industry. Seriously, Washington wine wouldn't exist if not for the enlightened owners of UST. But times change, and those enlightened owners have long since coughed their last. This week UST was sold to Altria, owners......

Ah yes, we say, full of ignorant bravado, our wines are the best there is. World class, to coin a phrase. Well, reality check, folks: not this year. Over 9,000 wines from around the world were entered in the most prestigious competition of them all, the Decanter World Wine Awards, and the judges (also from around the world) narrowed them down by region, by grape variety and by price. Of the top two dozen, not......

No, we're not using that headline to get your attention. This is really a post about free beer and wine in grocery stores. The state's Liquor Control Board is going to allow a pilot beer-and-wine-sampling program in Washington grocery stores come October 1. According to the Seattle Times and Progressive Grocer (we actually read that one), the Legislature asked for the program during its 2008 session and expects a report from the LCB in time......

You can love hamburgers, go out of your way to eat them, even buy books about them, but nobody "collects" hamburgers or pretends you need an advanced degree in culinary science to "appreciate" them. Restaurants don't need a "burger master" with a fancy apron to expound on the subtleties of smoked bacon and cheddar. Nobody makes much of a fuss about the soil where the cows were raised. So why is wine different? Except for......

There are times when we’re sick of Seattle. Sick of the bad and/or utter lack of fashion, sick of the terrible drivers and even worse pedestrians, and certainly sick of all the hipsters in Capitol Hill. And then we visit Kirkland, and it’s all put in perspective. We made a trip to the suburbs this weekend for the Kirkland Uncorked festival, where there were all kinds of wines to sample from two dozen Washington......

ART & TRAUMA: The Center on Contemporary Art in Ballard is kicking off its series of "After Dark" events with Slow Healing—a documentary/multi-media presentation about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have returned from the field with Traumatic Brian Injuri (TBI). There'll be a slideshow at 9 p.m., followed by Butoh dancing and SEA SHOW. 9 p.m. // CoCA Ballard // $10-15 suggested donation ROOTS NIGHT: When this Seattlest talks about "roots,"......

LIVE MUSIC: If you're looking to start your weekend a day early, why not head to the Showbox Downtown for Minus the Bear. Fresh off the hottness of Coachella, the band's back in town to rock you hard. 8 p.m. // Showbox Downtown // $17.50 adv, $20 dos // all ages ART & WINE: Personally, we can think of no better pairing than art and wine, when it comes to nights out. The Frye will......

We humans are delusional; we think we have free will and immaculate perception. We don't rob Peter to pay Paul, we borrow from our friends so we can buy oil from our enemies. We turn our food supplies into even more fuel, and we'd grow yet more if only we could afford to import still more fertilizer from our neighbor to the north, even as we build a fence to keep out our neighbors from......

St. Germain has come marching into Belltown. Not the café from Madison Park, which closed earlier this year, but a French artisanal liqueur subtitled "Délice de Sureau," distilled from freshly picked elderflower blossoms. (The website, stgermain.fr, tells the story, probably aprocryphal, of a cohort of old men on bicycles gathering the flowers.) Many drinks are based on the elder, a common name for shrubs that grow in northern Europe, most with fragrant blossoms. Steep them......

He's Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head brewery; she's Marnie Old, director of wine studies at the French Culinary Institute. They've teamed up to write a warm-hearted, delightful book that tweaks the boy-girl, beer-wine stereotypes without dumbing things down. The publishers are giving away free copies to the first 10 people who write and ask. Send requests to inyourglass [at] gmail.com. How did we get to this beer=populist, wine=elitist standoff, anyway? (Long post on Slate......

JAZZ: Dr. John kicks off a 6-night run at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, giving audiences the benefit of a life studded with "troubles at home." Singing about New Orleans before, during, and after it was cool, he created a musical love letter to the city of New Orleans in 2004, "N’awlinz Dis Dat or D’udda," and won an award from the Académie Charles Cros at their 57th awards ceremony. He may be most famous as......

If you have not made it into Beveridge Place Pub in West Seattle for their Barleywine Bacchanal yet, it's not too late. Tonight, they will be tapping three different vintages of the Lagunitas Olde Gnarly Wine ('04, '06 & '07), which enables you to see exactly how this beer changes over time. At 9.7% alcohol, it shines after a few years. The contrast between the '04 and '07 should be very interesting. Stay away......

Do not be surprised to see a $1 suggested donation for tap water on your restaurant bill if you dine out from March 16 to March 22. During this week in March, restaurants around the nation will ask patrons to donate the price of their tap water to support UNICEF’s Tap Project, which provides clean drinking water for children in need. One dollar affords 40 days of clean drinking water for a child –......

To many beer lovers in the Northwest, this time of year means one thing: It's barley wine season. This style of beer can be very flexible, but it usually signifies high alcohol and a big flavor profile. The Alaskan Barley Wine has been a local favorite since 2003, but this was the first year that it was released in bottles (about $8.50 for a 22-ounce bottle). This barley wine is ready to enjoy now......

Photo by Phillyist's Matt Johnson, SkyscraperSunset.com, December 19, 2007. Phillyist explored an impending implosion and lived to tell the tale.Gothamist marveled at the city's new NYC-branded condom campaign - especially the use of a Toronto landmark in the advertising. (Also, fun fact: Gothamist turned five years old yesterday.)Tired of the worldwide Scientology protests? Torontoist totally isn't: they covered the big downtown protest the day it happened, and followed up with an examination of all......

So this gent orders the lasagna at the Capitol Hill Via Tribunali last week and LOVES it. Oh, says the waitress, we buy that from Sorrentino. Dude promptly finds out where Sorrentino is located (top of Queen Anne) and gets over there yesterday afternoon, is amazed to discover it's run by Mamma Enza, whom he met years ago when she was cooking at La Vita è Bella in Belltown. Big hugs all around. That amazing......

What with the Internetz, the Google and the digital camera, a new generation of wine touring guides is long overdue. Last April, there was a post over at Cornichon.org about a book called Touring the Wine Country of Washington, written by The Oldest Seattlest some 25 years ago. Everything you wanted to know about all 37 of the state's wineries, back in 1983. Now, with over 500 bonded premises in the state, with formal......

This Seattlest had some family visiting this weekend and felt it was his duty to show them some of his favorite beer spots in town, even if they could probably care less. There were quite a few beers of note that were on tap and should still be around. We also found a few bottles of Lost Abbey Judgement Day at Esquin Wine this weekend. We didn't realize the Seattle market was getting this......

The dispiriting weather forecast--below, via Google. Friggin' cold and friggin' rainy. On days like these, there is but one sure pick-me-up: soup. In a typically magnificent essay her classic How to Cook a Wolf, the food writer M.F.K. Fisher made an inarguable case that, if you can make tea, it's silly not to try and make soup.The natural progression from boiling water to boiling water with something in it can hardly be avoided, and in......

Five night Hip-Hop Extravaganza "The Program" began last night at 8:45pm, and we were in our pajamas eating stale Cheeto Puffs and drinking cheap red wine from the grocery store. What's that? Did you just call us a slacker journalist? Hardly -- we were watching the show on SyncLive, which streamed the entire show (plus soundcheck!) in surprisingly good video/audio quality. Once we figured out how to re-buffer the feed without refreshing the entire page,......

While there is plenty of good beer in Seattle to keep us busy, it is always nice to head out of town to visit some of the brewpubs spread around the Pacific Northwest. We try and do a trip as often as we can, which usually turns out to be one trip every three months or so. Port Townsend is situated in a beautiful spot out on the Olympic peninsula and is about a 2-hour......

"They should take off their left socks." "Let's dance to Jesus." "Let's talk about Jesus." "It's a time to be jolly after all." "It's like a wine disco." "It's like hanging out covered in blood." "We need some leap frog!" "We need some Percosets." Seattlest actually heard all of the above during Clockwork Reduction Live Friday night at Northwest Film Forum. Some of the words came from the mouth's of performers, others came from the......

1997: in January, Bill Clinton was sworn in for a second term; in August, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash; and a film about a shipwreck, Titanic, was the top-grossing movie. In the vineyards of the Old World, springtime came early, summer was hot, and the harvest was wet. The wine gurus and the voodoo sages swirled and tasted, ruminated and spat. Bah, they said, don't bother. Bah, said Parker. Bah, said Tanzer.......

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs One of our best friends from college spurned her native Portland to live in a......

With all of the people that live/work on the Eastside, it is really surprising to not find more beer spots to explore. Granted, we probably haven't found everything worth visiting, but it just seems there is plenty of room for more good beer on the Eastside. Below is a summary of what you can enjoy on the other side of the lake. Breweries: Rock Bottom Bellevue is about the only place if you want......

The historic Moore Theatre turns 100 this year. December 28th is their big centennial celebration. We got to thinking about this major milestone the last time we were there. It was last Monday night, the Iron and Wine show. We were sitting in our seats, waiting for razor-shy Sam Beam to take the stage and we got to looking around. As always we were impressed by the high ceiling, grand arches, intricate moldings... Then we......