New Year's Eve at Spur

Plan now. Chefs McCracken and Tough are working on their five-course menu for New Year’s Eve at Spur, with their early musings sounding truly delicious. Dinner seatings, with a five-course prix fixe menu, will begin at 5:00 that evening and continue until 10:00 pm, followed by a reception with champagnes by the glass and hors d’oeuvre.

The prix fixe dinner is $80, excluding tax and gratuity. Pair dinner with expertly matched wines (for an additional $40) or David Nelson’s famed cocktail creations (for an additional $50). Please, no special menu requests, later than 24 hours in advance.

Call 206/728-6706 to book your dinner for a New Year’s celebration at Spur on Wednesday, December 31st .

Spur Tasting Dinner with Stone Brewing Co Dec. 1st

As promised, here’s more detail on next Monday’s Spur Tasting Dinner with Stone Brewing Co. The brewers will be up from San Diego and the menu looks like a perfect match for a night to kick off December right.

Monday, December 1st at 7:00 pm
Price per person $75.00 excluding tax and gratuity
Call 206/728-6706 to reserve your space now.

To entice, here’s a sneak peek at menu pairings:

Pale Ale paired with a Warm Frisee Salad
IPA with Buttermilk Fried Frog Legs
Double Arrogant Bastard with Braised Pork Shoulder
Smoked Porter with Grilled Hanger Steak
Chocolate Oatmeal Stout with Chocolate Terrine

No special menu requests the day of the event please.

Our New Happy Hour at Spur

Spur Gastropub Happy Hour
5:00 – 7:00 pm, Sunday-Thursdays

Spur’s Happy Hour has started with featured bites and specialty cocktails, Sundays -Thursdays (excluding Friday and Saturday). It changes every day but examples in the last week have included Wild Boar Pot Pie, Braised Octopus Tartine and Fried Potato Casserole with drinks such as the Gentleman’s Lemonade and our Old Broadway.

-$5 glass pour wine (one red, one white)

-$5 specialty cocktail of the day

-$3 draft beer

-$3 bites of food

Seattle Times Restaurant Critic Cicero Says Spur's Cooking Has Integrity as Well as Verve

We were thrilled to read Providence Cicero's review of Spur. She calls out a number of our menu items like Beef Carpaccio and Tagliatelle and nods to David's cocktail alchemy. Take the time to read the entire review on the Times website (link above), but in the meantime, here's a teaser of what she said:

"... Spur, where fooling around with food is part of the fun. Co-chefs Brian McCracken and Dana Tough dabble in the shape-shifting world of molecular gastronomy, finding new ways to manipulate flavor and texture, but they do so judiciously, not just for effect.

Fried béarnaise sounds like a gimmick, but that rich sauce, transformed into springy, grape-size globules, released a flood of tarragon in the mouth, mightily enhancing tissue-thin raw beef.
Foam did indeed froth from the pasta. It faintly echoed the smoky oyster mushrooms and melting ribbons of nutty parmesan that clung to the fresh noodles. A duck egg, cooked sous vide to a quivering, semisolid state, nested among the tiny bubbles. A vigorous toss with fork and spoon distributed pale foam and orange yolk, and the result was akin to a divine carbonara sauce."

Photo of tagliatelle with oyster mushrooms by DEAN RUTZ for the SEATTLE TIMES

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.