Michael Hood's BlatherMunch Review

Thanks to Michael Hood for his review of Spur. Read it here:

http://blatherwatch.blogs.com/talk_radio/2008/08/blathermunch-23.html

Spur's Six-Course Bulleit Bourbon Tasting Dinner

We’re excited to introduce Spur’s first tasting dinner August 21 with Bulleit Bourbon. The details: We’re working on a 6-course tasting menu paired with hand-crafted Bulleit Bourbon spirit and cocktails. Distiller Tom Bulleit, the great-great-grandson of Augustus Bulleit who created the 175 year-old recipe for the award-winning Bulleit Bourbon, will be on hand to guide the spirit tastings. We’ll pair Spur’s New American cuisine with Tom’s oaky, smoky and smooth Kentucky bourbon.

Spur’s menu will accent some of the notes in Bulleit such as vanilla, honey and oak. In a subtle homage to Southern cooking, we’re choosing local ingredients to complement the bourbon. Corn, orange, cinnamon, vanilla and peaches all work great. Our bartender David Nelson is crafting a series of cocktails showcasing the bourbon.

Bulleit Bourbon is russet in color with a rich, oaky aroma. The dry, clean flavor is mellow and smooth. It delivers a wonderfully complex taste with hints of vanilla and honey and a long smoky finish. Bulleit Bourbon consistently wins medals and accolades at the most prestigious sprits competition in America: the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. In 2007, Bulleit Bourbon earned its second Gold Medal and fourth consecutive medal, beating other well known premium bourbons including Knob Creek. http://www.bulleitbourbon.com/

Spur Bulleit Bourbon Tasting Dinner: Six Courses of Bourbon-Focused Food and Drink
Thursday, August 21 at 6:30 p.m.
Price: $150.00 per person, including tax and gratuity
Call 206/728-6706 to purchase your place at the dinner, space is limited

Looking forward to seeing you,

Chefs Brian McCracken and Dana Tough

Julien Perry's Seattle Weekly Post on Spur.

Julien Blogs as "Voracious" on the Seattle Weekly site. Here's her post today called "Steak and Frites: The Spur Way".

Spur gastropub, which softly opened three weeks ago (today, in fact) in the former Mistral space, is going to be my new favorite hangout. Not only because the food is fantastic, but the atmosphere and vibe of the place is so laid back in an upscale-saloon sort of way.

Plus, the chefs did something to me that has never been done to me at any restaurant: They enticed me into ordering the flat iron steak with fried mashed potato, which I never order ANYWHERE. I'm just not a big red meat eater. The boys couldn't have been nicer or more cordial (or cuter).

I say boys, because owner/chef Brian McCracken, formerly of Flyte, and chef Dana Tough, formerly of Tilth, are only 27 years old. Twenty. Seven.

The two started talking about the idea of opening a gastropub in Seattle years ago when they both worked together at Earth & Ocean.

But I wasn't in the mood for steak and potatoes this night. I wanted something sweet. I ordered the Pistachio Financier, a pistachio brown butter cake topped with Rainier cherries accompanied by foie gras ice cream and elderflower gelee set atop an elderflower gastrique. Yum!

What came next can only be described as an upscale version of Dippin' Dots. A strawberry sorbet with vanilla cocoa butter crumble. A COCOA BUTTER CRUMBLE (!!) topped with slow-poached strawberries.

I also had one of the best cocktails I've ever had. It's called the Empress, and it's made with rum, St. Germain, grapefruit juice and topped with heaven (officially: fresh grapefruit and lemon juice foam). The picture I took didn't turn out so well, so I took a photo of my friend's cocktail, the La Rocio.

This drink starts out as a foam of red wine, lemon juice, sugar and egg white before the bartender topps it off with a mixture of tequila, stone fruit and red wine.
Spur is open until 2 a.m. every night. Right now, they're enjoying an extra spill of folks being turned away at Tavolata, which recently stopped serving at midnight.

Photo credit: Kristin Zwiers

Cody Ellerd's Review for the Seattle Times' NWSource

Spur rides into Belltown, serving grub and drinks with a pioneer spirit: The gastropub features a trailblazing menu of New American cuisine

With the arrival of Belltown's latest nosh spot, Spur, it's high time for the term "gastropub" to secure its place in Seattle's lexicon. It comes to us via London, where the Eagle, the world's first gastropub, distinguished itself nearly 20 years ago as a public house that served high-quality food a step above the basic pub grub. New York got its first gastropub in 2004 with the Spotted Pig, which now boasts a Michelin star and a chef, April Bloomfield, who was last year named a Best New Chef by Food & Wine magazine.

Belltown's Black Bottle was Seattle's first "gastro-tavern," followed last October by Quinn's on Capitol Hill. And now there's Spur, a partnership between Tilth's former chef de cuisine, Dana Tough, and longtime friend Brian McCracken, who previously ran a catering company called Flyte.

Spur, however, should not be considered a follower. In the Western spirit its name evokes, the Belltown newcomer is indeed blazing its own trails. Rather than slathering pub grub with aioli and truffle oil, or gentrifying the old British classics, Tough and McCracken are pulling out the stops with New American cuisine and making the liquor a gastronomical experience of its own.
The dishes start out small, such as chilled asparagus with truffle, egg and tempura ($9, see photo), and a must-try salmon crostini ($9) with house-made mascarpone and chunks of cold smoked sockeye so delicate, it truly boggles the mind.

Most items fall into the mid-size (not quite an appetizer, not quite an entrée), mid-price range, like pork belly sliders with mustard and marmalade ($12), free-range chicken confit with bleu cheese, crème fraiche and bourbon glaze ($12), or pan-seared trout with a mizuna farro salad and almond foam ($12).

About half the menu will change every month to take advantage of seasonal ingredients, but even after just two weeks of business, Tough and McCracken know that to take away the charred bison burger ($14) -- the kind of meal that fills your heart with pity for the world's vegetarians -- would be a deadly sin.

As for those other devilish matters, the focus at Spur is on spirits, rather than the pints you'd typically expect from a pub, gastro or otherwise. Only four beers are offered on tap.
Instead, a bourbon-heavy cocktail menu draws from nearly 50 American whiskeys, and includes the Foreigner, with rye, ramazotti amaro, strega, blood orange bitters and peach bitters ($10); and the Corsican, a combination of bourbon, citrus and champagne ($9).

For the weekend crowd, long communal tables cut from salvaged wood are the place to mingle. For the quiet weeknight cocktail, there is a small section of table seating bathed in the glow of the space's only wall art -- a film projection of rustic black and white photos by a rotating cast of local artists.

Wagon wheel light fixtures fashioned from iron cast a dim light over the dark space. The décor is inspired by the Wild West, and in a further departure from the British model, the ambience is just plain sexy. This gastro apple has fallen quite far from the tree, and it's a delicious one to bite into.

Photo Credit: Kristin Zwiers