Wendy asked:

> I think you should have a place where we can comment on your future menus. Unless, of course, you don’t want people commenting on your menus. But I often have comments I could make.

> Why spaghetti and meatballs? What kind of meatballs? What kind of sauce?

As you may remember, about a year ago, I posted about my idea for Meal Bandit. It would have been a web site where anyone could post their upcoming meals for all to see, and people could comment on each other’s meals, and in general it would be a happy nest of home cookery punctuated by occasional flamewars.

I recruited a small team of programmers and artists to help me put it together, by which I mean the team consisted of one programmer, one artist, and me. This was a great arrangement except for two things: I have no artistic skills, and my programming skills haven’t developed since 1999. (Anyone need a Perl CGI script?) Also, I have no management skills. I guess I figured that since I was pretty good at making dinner, making a dinner-related web site would be easy.

Anyway, everything fell apart as quickly as you might imagine, so a year later, I’m still posting my upcoming dinners in the sidebar via [30 Boxes](http://www.30boxes.com/). It’s extremely simple, and I encourage you to do the same, because I have a voyeuristic interest in your dinners and if you don’t post them on your blog, you may see my face outside your window around 6:30pm.

So there won’t be any Meal Bandit, although if anyone would like to take over the idea and build it, you can have it for nothing.

Now, to Wendy’s three questions and one comment.

**Why spaghetti and meatballs?**

We read three books in one day that involved spaghetti and meatballs: some Cookie Monster board book, This Is My Hair, and Eat!. So Iris asked me to make some, and why not?

**What kind of meatballs?**

Beef, pork, veal, breadcrumbs, milk, egg, garlic, onion, Parmigiano, salt, pepper.

**What kind of sauce?**

Chunky tomato sauce. Iris loves big tomato chunks in her sauce, so next time I will make it even chunkier.

**I think you should have a place where we can comment on your future menus.**

The best possibility I can think of is to have a separate page that would show the same list that’s in the sidebar, and you could leave comments on that page. You’d need to include in your comment the name of the dish you’re commenting on, because it would quickly rotate off the list. Would that work?

I try to stay away from the breaking news items, since by the time I get around to posting, the news is very, very broken. But this one is special.

A couple of years ago, [Sound Transit](http://www.soundtransit.org/) announced plans to demolish the building at the southwest corner of Broadway and Denny to construct the Capitol Hill station of North Link, a future extension to the light rail line currently under construction. (The new station would open, oh, some time around 2016.) I was at one of the community meetings, and the big question was, “What will happen to the businesses in that building?”

Those asking this question had one particular business in mind: [Espresso Vivace Roasteria](http://www.espressovivace.com). People will debate forever which Seattle coffeehouse serves the *best* espresso, but there’s no doubt that Vivace is the most important cafe in town. Howard Schultz of Starbucks made Seattle synonymous with coffee; David Schomer of Vivace made it synonymous with great coffee. People from around the world come to David to learn how to pull the best shots and make latte art. To give you an idea of how obsessive David is: on the menu at Vivace, there’s a pictorial border showing milestones in the history of the business. One of them shows the date when he achieved a brewing temperature of 203.5°F +/- 0.2°F.

To get to the point, Vivace Roasteria has found a new home. It will move five blocks north to the Brix condominiums, currently under construction. Expected completion is spring 2008. This is great news for many reasons. First, of course, is that it means the Roasteria will live on. (Vivace also has a walkup stand on Broadway and another sit-down location in South Lake Union, but the Roasteria is my Vivace of choice.) Second, it brings a very popular retail business to what is now an extremely dead block which has had defunct supermarkets on both sides for years. Third, it means one of the largest tenants in the new development will be a place with broad appeal and welcoming to people of all incomes.

Fourth, and most important, it means the Roasteria will be five blocks closer to my house.

Neil, avert your ears, because here comes a full-on cupcake shop podcast.

[Iris Out Loud #3: Trophy Cupcakes](https://www.rootsandgrubs.com/podcasts/IrisOutLoud-3.m4a) (1.6MB AAC)

We didn’t catch this on tape, but while we were there, Trophy Cupcakes owner Jennifer Shea was frosting a party cake consisting of a couple dozen cupcakes in the shape of an octopus. It caused Iris to seriously rethink her plans for her next birthday. Which is, after all, only nine months away.

How to make Iris love you forever: tell her, “I got you a special treat…and it’s cupcakes!”

We’d been planning to check out [Trophy Cupcakes](http://www.trophycupcakes.com/), the new upstart cupcake shop in Wallingford, but Trophy Cupcakes unexpectedly came to me. I was at Remedy Teas this morning and noticed cupcakes, and they were, indeed, Trophy’s. I brought home one chai and one chocolate, and Iris and I shared the chai. I’ve never had a cardamom-flavored cupcake before. It was great. On weekends (at Trophy itself) they have a PB&J cupcake, which I’m sure Iris will enjoy.

It’s several years old now, but I finally got around to reading The Brewmaster’s Table, by Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery. It’s an absolute delight, because Oliver is an unrepentant hedonist, exactly the sort of Virgil you want on a trip to the ninth circle of beer (where presumably you’ll find a chalice of Duvel). The part where Oliver talks about what he had for dinner the previous week and what beer he chose to go with each meal is priceless–the guy can eat.

This is not a cookbook; it’s a guide to the world’s beers with tips for matching beer and food. I’ve said this before, but the ubiquity of great beer is one of my favorite things about Seattle. Any time I want, I can walk five blocks to the supermarket and choose from literally hundreds of beers, and Oliver’s book inspired me to do so last night, and to select something that might otherwise have scared me away: Dogfish Head’s Raison d’Etre. It’s scary not because of its 8 percent alcohol, but because it’s brewed with raisins. Why you would trumpet this on the label I don’t know (nobody actually likes raisins, right?), but it’s an astonishing and complex beer that nevertheless went great with chili.

And the Dogfish Head bottle illustrates perfectly another reason I love beer, one that Oliver is also quick to point out. If Raison d’Etre were a wine, it would be something weird from Austria or British Columbia and it would cost $25. Thank god it’s not. It was $2.

My latest Culinate column is about homemade pizza.

[A piece of the pie](http://www.culinate.com/read/bacon/A+piece+of+the+pie)

Thanks to reader Stephanie for suggesting the Julia Child dough recipe, which was a real winner. It’s so good to have bacon-jalapeño back!