Yesterday we sailed across the choppy waters of Elliott Bay on the water taxi. We alighted in West Seattle by a rocky beach where divers were practicing. I thought this was totally cool. Iris was not so interested. She was busy “skipping rocks”–that is, throwing them into the water. We found a cool rock with four barnacles on it. Iris wanted to throw it in. I wanted to take it home. I prevailed, but only after promising that next time we came to this beach, we could bring the rock back with us and throw it in.

Incidentally, this beach is a gold mine of skipping rocks.

Laurie, who had read a review in the Seattle Times, suggested we have lunch at the restaurant just off the pier where you disembark the water taxi. It’s called Alki Crab and Fish, and it looks like a terrible place. See, here it is:

It’s that flat building that you can see through the bars of the boat. Here’s what it doesn’t have going for it:

* It has a gift shop.
* It has a great view.
* They advertise on the water taxi.
* It specializes in fried seafood combos, the kind where they fry up a cross-section of sea life.

If I owned a place like this, I’d put up a combo of fried things that aren’t actually edible, just to see who would order it. The #4: Fried nudibranch, sea squirt, anemone, and coral. With french fries.

You can see the punchline coming here: Alki Crab and Fish is not bad at all. We did get a fried combo, with shrimp, clams, calamari, halibut, and fries. The halibut is fresh. The rest isn’t, but with the exception of the overly processed calamari, everything was tasty and well fried. Iris actually liked the clam strips better than the french fries. We also had a cup of clam chowder (good, but I like homestyle chowder better than thick restaurant chowder) and an insanely meaty crab cocktail.

They also have ice cream, including “new and improved” Dreyer’s Butterfinger flavor, which really was good–not as good as Baskin-Robbins Peanut Butter and Chocolate, but close.

I did have some ill effects from our outing, but it had nothing to do with the seafood. My arm is sore from skipping rocks. Iris said, “You could put that arm in my bath and it’ll feel better in ONE MINUTE.”

**Alki Crab and Fish**
1660 Harbor Ave SW
Seattle, WA 98146
(206) 953-0237

The review of Paseo in today’s Seattle Times is my last.

I’ve been reviewing for the Times since 2001. It’s been a treat, and I would say that even if it weren’t required by the restaurant critic code of conduct, which says that you can never complain about being a restaurant critic. If your friend was dating a supermodel, would you have time to listen to them complain about the supermodel’s bad habits? You see my point.

I’m quitting to spend more time writing about home cooking and related topics, and because ever since Iris came along, being home for dinner has taken on greater importance. My byline won’t be disappearing from the Times, by any means. For several years I’ve been writing for the paper’s Sunday magazine, Pacific Northwest, but now I’ll be appearing there close to once a month.

Because I am a geek, I made a spreadsheet of all my reviews and calculated a few statistics. The majority of my reviews were “Dining Deals,” where I assigned a rating of Recommended or Not Recommended. But for the purposes of geeking out more fully, I went back through and reclassified a few as Raves.

**MAMSTER’S INDEX**

Total number of reviews: **95**

Raves: **13** (14%)
Recommended: **71** (75%)
Not Recommended: **11** (12%)

Places that I know to be out of business: **26** (27%)
Number of times I reviewed a restaurant that replaced another restaurant I reviewed: **4**

Raves given to Asian restaurants: **10**
Raves given to non-Asian restaurants: **3** (two American, one Cuban)

Those rave reviews went to:

* Ezo (closed)
* China Village
* Dahlia Bakery
* Mandalay Cafe (closed)
* Blue Willow Tea Room (closed)
* Akasaka
* May
* Maekawa Bar
* Dinette
* Green Leaf
* Salima
* Jack’s Tapas
* Paseo

Number one favorite: **Dinette**
Runners-up: **Green Leaf, Ezo, May**

Finally, now that I’m no longer a restaurant critic, I’m allowed to have my likeness appear in the media.

(photo by [Lara Ferroni](http://www.cookbook411.com))

You know, when you think about it, the word “nectarine” probably sounded pretty stupid when the fruit was first introduced.

A couple of years ago I gave up on fava beans. Don’t get me wrong, I love the things, even without the usual accompaniments (cue _Silence of the Lambs_ joke), and I will eagerly order them from a restaurant menu.

But the shelling, my god, the shelling. First you take the beans out of the pods. (Once, while doing this, I opened a pod and found no beans but a huge green caterpillar. This probably contributed to my inclination to leave fava beans to the experts.) Then you blanch the beans and peel each individual bean. Then you cook them again and hope that you got good ones, rather than bland, overgrown ones. It’s not a bean, it’s a psych experiment. I failed.

After my breakup with favas, I took up with a new bean. It’s called the cranberry bean, or sometimes just a shelling or shell bean. It’s extremely easy to shell–just zip the shell off and there’s nothing else to peel. The beans inside are lovely and speckled, although the color fades to gray when you cook them.

The taste is nothing like favas–it’s like pinto beans, but more so. And they’re done in twenty or thirty minutes instead of two hours. You can boil them up and dress them with olive oil, salt, and pepper and you’re set, or use them however you’d use cooked dried beans.

And they’re only available at farmers markets. Sorry if I sound like an ad for the farmers market junta lately; it’s a seasonal ailment that wears off around November, at which point I start pining for the return of the farmers market.

I gave Iris the leftover crispy duck leg (which I recrisped in a pan before serving), and Laurie and I went out to dinner at Eva, a neighborhood restaurant in the Tangletown neighborhood. I was after the Market Menu, a three-course prix fixe featuring many ingredients from the U District Farmers Market.

For me, It’s always a special treat not to have to choose from the menu, which is why I pushed the regular menu aside without even looking at it. This is part of the appeal of the underground restaurant, I think–aside from the illegal aspect, which is an undeniably delicious sauce, there’s no opportunity to think wistfully about what you could have ordered. I understand waiters at Lutèce used to take advantage of this as well: they’d say, “Tonight, the chef would like to make you…” as if André Soltner had personally psychoanalyzed you and found you to be a turbot kind of person.

With Sunday’s market menu I hit the jackpot. Corn chowder with Nueske’s bacon. Roast duck with fresh shelling beans, broccolini and carrots. Poached peaches with buttermilk panna cotta. I really *am* that sort of person.

Yes, Iris was pleased to hear that I also had crispy duck leg for dinner. The market menu is served on weekends for at least a few more weeks. Check it out.

**Eva Restaurant & Wine Bar**
2227 N 56th St
Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 633-3538