“Cardamom Like Orange Pits,” P-I 21 Oct 1959.

My research project has taken me to the microfilm at the central library, where I have unearthed many important facts. All of these are actual headlines from the Times or P-I:

* “Man should always order for woman,” P-I 21 Oct 1959. “In a group the men still give the orders, but if the party is large, sometimes the waiter goes to each person in turn to avoid confusion. This is the only time when a woman accompanied by a man should give her order directly to the waiter.” Damn straight the men give the orders. Where’s my martini, woman?

* “Provolone like cheddar,” P-I 21 Oct 1959. “Provolone is an Italian cheese, somewhat similar to cheddar, used after dinner and for snacks.”

* An ad from the same issue. “YOU LIKEE TERYAKI? Velee tastee! We marinate big soft steak with shoyu, flesh ginga, garlic, shuga, Chinee wine, broil on fire, make plentee good kau kau.” The fifties were awesome! You didn’t have to worry about offending dames or Chinamen–or cheese, which was all basically like cheddar. Hey, wait, isn’t teriyaki Japanese? I guess you didn’t have to worry about choosing the right ethnic stereotypes, either.

* “Handy hint for sandwich,” P-I 21 Oct 1959. “One gallon of most any sandwich filling will spread 100 sandwiches, if approximately 2-1/2 tablespoons is used per sandwich.” All of these citations are from a P-I dining special section, in which nearly all of the remaining articles are reprints of restaurant press releases.

* Finally, something from the Times. “Seattle Restaurant Scene Is Changing–for the Better,” Seattle Times 30 Apr 1967. “Even in our own Seattle Times’ neighborhood, The 13 Coins, a new and elegant dining room that opened recently in the Furniture Mart Building, is operating 24 hours a day[.]” In the same article, reporter John J. Reddin refers to Seattle as an “overgrown but lovable kite-factory town.” I have no idea what this means.

* From the same column: “To check on the action, I visited Sam and Mike Akrish, operators of Market House Meats, 1124 Howell St., long the major supplier of kosher-style corned beef in this area.” Awesomely enough, Market House Meats (which opened in 1948) is still in the same location, still run by the Akrish family, and their corned beef is still great. But what, no Jewish stereotypes? Clearly the 60s really did ruin America.

“Honestly, there is no restaurant in New York right now that gives me more pleasure than Momofuku,” wrote Alison Cook of the Houston Chronicle in April, when chef David Chang was named one of Food & Wine magazine’s best new chefs. Upon reading this, I realized that there is no restaurant in New York–and few restaurants in Seattle–that gives me more pleasure than Momofuku. This is despite the fact that I haven’t been to New York in five years and Momofuku opened in 2005.

Momofuku is a Japanese noodle shop in the East Village. It’s not expensive, and they don’t take reservations. David Chang is the man because:

* He seems to love pork even more than I do. His pork buns are legendary, and as he told Food & Wine, “There’s pork fat in just about everything at Momofuku.” He serves pork from several heirloom producers. Benton’s country ham with masa cakes, red-eye gravy, poached egg, and scallions. Braised Metzger Berkshire pork belly with daikon, pickled mustard seed, apple.

* Everything he serves, from brussels sprouts with kimchi puree to oxtail soup with rice cakes and roasted onions, sounds spectacularly delicious.

I can tell that if I ever eat at Momofuku, it’s going to become my favorite restaurant in the world. Do you have a restaurant that you love but have never been to?

Tonight I made my first Chang recipe: corn with bacon and miso butter. It’s from the October issue of Gourmet. I used some late-season Alvarez Farm corn and slab bacon from Bavarian Meats. Chang seems to share my feeling that the most delicious things you can eat are vegetables flavored with meat. Here’s the recipe, which was every bit as good as you’d expect.

**CORN WITH BACON AND MISO BUTTER**
Serves 4
Adapted from David Chang, Momofuku

1/4 pound bacon, cut into lardons
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tablespoon white miso
1 small onion, halved and thinly sliced
10 ears corn, kernels removed from cobs (see note)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions
salt and freshly ground pepper

1. In a large skillet, cook the lardons over medium heat until crisp. Remove the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate to drain, reserving the fat in the pan.

2. Add the onions to the pan and cook until wilted and golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add corn and raise heat to medium-high. Cook until the kernels begin to brown, stirring occasionally. When the bottom of the pan is dark-brown and sticky, you’ll know it’s time to proceed.

3. Stir the miso and butter together and add to the pan with the water. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until water is mostly evaporated and corn is tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in bacon, scallions, and salt and pepper to taste, and serve immediately.

**NOTE:** I had three ears of corn, so I halved the rest of the ingredients. So if you don’t have ten whole ears, which is a lot of corn, go ahead and make it anyway.

And for once I’m not being sarcastic.

Next year, Pike Place Market will turn 100. I’ve already written more than enough about how important the Market is to our family in particular, and Seattle in general. In doing some research recently, however, I learned more about just how close the Market came to being killed off in its middle age. If this is old news to you, sorry to bring it up.

Living in Seattle, you often hear about how the Market was “saved” in the early 70s by a citizens group led by the late architect Victor Steinbrueck, who now has a small park named after him on Market property. But I’d never stopped to consider just what “saved” meant, until this week, when I read The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce, by Alice Shorett. Stephen King wishes he could write a book this scary.

Here’s what happened. In the 1960s, at the height of urban renewal fever, the city wanted to tear down the market and build a new shopping complex that would include a hockey rink, a hotel, and a 6000-car parking garage. The development was described by a city official as “a visitor and tourism attraction quite equal to the Los Angeles Farmers’ Market.”

A citizens group floated a ballot initiative in 1971 to declare the market a historical area and doom the proposed development. This initiative was *opposed* by:

* The Seattle Times. “The facts are simply that the Friends of the Market initiative measure on the ballot November 2 will not ‘save’ the Market and that its passage instead will doom not only the market, but the whole 20 acre renewal project.” It called the Market “far too valuable an asset to be consigned to urban blight and decay, and vast economic waste.”
* The Seattle P-I.
* The mayor and the city council.
* Seattle King County Convention & Visitors Bureau
* Seattle Chamber of Commerce

Here’s what would happen if voters approved the initiative, establishing a historical district:

* “Fire and sanitation problems threaten residents in areas surrounding the Market. Police protection is difficult. Renewal of this area will help those who live or work in the vicinity. make streets safe to walk.”

* “Blight is slowly infecting our market district. Urban Renewal can make this once again an important asset. A 6,000 car parking facility will make shopping at the Pike Place Market easy and convenient.”

Most of this information comes from the flier distributed by the misnomered Committee to Save the Market, as seen here.

Of course, voters passed the initiative by a wide margin. Though there have been renovations, the Market is still an ancient, dilapidated firetrap. And the twelve-member board that oversees the Market historical district essentially acts as a dictatorship. Sometimes their decisions are inexplicable and dumb, as when they forced out the Market’s last hardware store this month.

But the Market is one of a kind. I’ll bet you could ask a thousand longtime Seattleites and not find one who would admit to voting against the Market initiative. It would be like disclosing that you were a Klan member.

One of my favorite vegetables is fennel. I feel mildly embarrassed about this, the way I do when some radio-friendly chestnut comes around in shuffle mode on iTunes (think “Right Here Right Now”). The 90s are over, right, fennel?

Not around here. When fennel’s in the pan, there is no other place I wanna be. I cook it a few different ways, but the other night I made caramelized fennel to go with duck hash. Like most food writers, I cringe instinctively at the word “caramelized,” which is both overused and somewhat inaccurate, since caramelization is something that happens to sugar, and generally what people are talking about is browning, a reaction that involves sugar and protein. Anyway, in the case of fennel, it really does feel like you’re making caramel, since fennel alone will produce a gooey and slightly sweet glaze.

Fennel is best cooked a lot or not at all. A shaved fennel salad is delicious. But I usually cook it. In this case, I trimmed away the stalks and thinly sliced the fennel parallel to the thick side of the bulb. Probably I should have dug out my mandoline for this. Mandolines are also kind of 90s. Then I trimmed any large pieces of core in the slices. Then I tossed them in a pan with some olive oil, butter, and salt over medium-high. After they started to brown, I turned the heat down a little bit. Totally cooking time was probably 15 or 20 minutes, during which I flipped the fennel occasionally so every surface would have an opportunity to brown.

Fennel is pretty expensive, but one fat bulb is plenty for two people, or for three people if one of them doesn’t like fennel. (Hi, Iris!)

The fennel revolution: it’s already passed you by!