Seattle Magazine Includes Spur in Best Desserts Issue

Huge thanks go out to Rachel Hart, Seattle mag's editorial director, and to her tasters who made their way around town, critiquing the City's top desserts. "The Dessert Cart" crew included: Alison Austin Scheff, Sara Dickerman, Cynthia Nims*, Lorna Yee, Ginny Morey and Andrea Delimont. In their November issue they wrote:

A Piece of Cake
Nuttiest Cake: Pistachio Financiers at Spur Gastropub ($13/slice).

The intensely buttery, warm-from-the-oven financiere takes the cake on a dessert plate that also features a subtle foie gras ice cream, elderflower gelee, and Rainier cherries.

*Great piece talking turkey in Cooking Light's November issue too, Cynthia!

pistachio financier photo by kristin zwiers.

Classic Cocktails and "The It Bar" Discussed in Today's Seattle Times

Did you catch the piece on Jamie B in today's Food section? In the article, Spur was cited by the Time's Tan Vinh as a newcomer with "It Bar" status for classic cocktails.

...Another reason to try a drink by Spur bartender and cocktail mastermind, David Nelson.

photo of david nelson at spur by barbie hull.

“Mix Alcohol Alchemy” by Anna Roth in the October Seattle Metropolitan mag

Anna Roth writes about the drinks scene around town. What a great piece she did in this month's magazine on Spur:

"Where can’t you order a Corpse Reviver these days? In a town saturated with classic mixers, David Nelson, bar manager at new Spur Gastropub in Belltown, struggled to set his drinks apart. “All the good cocktails have been made,” says the 24-year-old. “The only way to make your mark it to be innovative.”

Nelson and Spur chef Brian McCracken—himself only 27— are fans of Ferran Adrià, the Catalonian chef and luminary in the “molecular-gastronomy” movement. Adrià wasn’t the first to bring the foamy and the freeze-dried to fine dining, but he’s the guy who made science-based cooking famous, and today food-infused foams pop up on menus the world over. Inspired after watching a documentary on Adrià, Nelson and McCracken began experimenting with adding fruit-and-alcohol-flavored bubbles to cocktails.

The resulting concoctions exist somewhere between the worlds of food and beverage. A bourbon orange crème (egg-whit e foam flavored with whiskey, orange and lemon juices, and mandarin orange liqueur) and La Rocio (an egg-white foam with red wine, lemon juice, and sugar combined with tequila, fruit, and more wine) possess an agreeable heft akin to a very light meal. (Maybe we can live on science alone.)

Molecular mixologists are shaking up foamy mixers in cities around the world—Seattle’s Jamie Boudreau was one of the first— but Spur’s are exceptionally delicious, and taste is never sacrificed for novelty. If it still sounds like just a gimmick in a glass, consider this: When you take away the hip factor and hype, Nelson is still serving an utterly original cocktail."

Bourbon Orange Creme Cocktail Photo Credit: Barbie Hull.