THE SUN SHINES ON SEATTLE

“Have you been to Seattle?” That’s what restaurant people are whispering to one another these days, much the way they used to ask if you had been to Paris. Experts all over the country suddenly are waxing enthusiastic about the quality of food in that rainy corner of the world; one New York food consultant went so far as to call the city “an exciting presence.”

That Seattle has not been a culinary capital before seems almost incredible; what other American metropolis has a working farmer’s market as its heart? For decades, the Pike Place Market has provided farmers with stalls, and for decades they have brought their wild mushrooms and berries and apples and herbs here to sell. There always have been fish stands, too, filled with salmon and oysters and crab and geoduck. But there wasn’t much else, and it was not until the city made the market the focal point of urban renewal that it began to bustle. Today, Pike Place Market sprawls across the waterfront, its shops and bakeries and restaurants an open invitation to anybody who likes food.

And from what I’d heard, Seattle had begun to cook. I’ll admit I was skeptical; I spent a lot of time in Seattle in the ‘70s and my memories are mostly of frozen fish and dreary restaurants. I decided to see if Seattle has really become a gourmet’s paradise.

I step off the plane into a terrible snowstorm; there’s a foot of snow on the ground and it’s 15. Between the airport and the city we pass at least 100 cars that have been abandoned on the freeway. Seattle is not prepared for snow, and most of the restaurants are closed.

I walk (slide would be more accurate) from my hotel down to Cafe Sport, at the north end of Pike Place, and find that it is open--sort of. The place is hip and modern, done in dusty tones of rose and turquoise, and filled with people from the upscale health club next door. I have black-bean soup with salsa and sour cream (wonderful), spicy pan-fried oysters and a beautifully grilled slab of tuna brushed with soy, sake and sesame. Sesame oil has a tendency to overwhelm; here it is just a whisper on the fish, a perfect touch.

I finish with some persimmon pudding, and leave just as the management decides to close for the rest of the day; most of the staff has called to say that they can’t get to work. I decide to come back soon for some of the veal tortellini with caramelized onions and cider cream sauce, or red chili pasta with scallops, ginger, tomatoes and cilantro; unfortunately, the restaurant remains closed for most of my visit.

Cafe Sport, 2020 Western Ave., Seattle, (206) 443-6000.

The Alexis Restaurant is open, people stripping off their boots and coats as they come into the calm, peach room. Soft music plays as diners sit sipping wine out of cut-crystal glasses and gazing at the elegant artworks. The menu is interesting: chicken is roasted with peaches and basil, local mussels are steamed with Riesling, calf’s liver served with homemade pickled red peppers. I like almost everything I try, especially a filet of salmon grilled over local fruitwood; it comes quite charred on the outside, the sweet pungent flavor of the wood pronounced beneath a vinegary butter sauce. The potatoes au gratin on the side are rich, creamy, a fine foil.

The service here is very fine, and the wine list is quite nice. (Oddly, I found the same wines over and over in Seattle restaurants, and some of the California choices are, well, strange.) There are two prix-fixe menus; three courses at $17.50 or five courses at $26. When I ask if I might have a menu to take home, the waiter looks surreptitiously around the dining room, quickly sneaks me one and begs me to hide it. When I stick it into my purse, he looks horrified. “You folded an Alexis menu?”

The Alexis Restaurant, 1st and Madison, Seattle, (206) 624-3646.

The next morning I put on every single piece of clothing I’ve brought with me and venture out for breakfast. Schools are closed, many shops are shut and the whole city sparkles with a holiday air. At Raison d’Etre, a restaurant with faux marbre walls, real marble tables and walls filled with good art, people are wrapping their cold hands around cups of cappuccino and eating great puffy brioches and omelets filled with fancy ingredients like Icelandic shrimp and hollandaise.

This is a wonderful place for breakfast; the corned beef hash comes with homemade catsup, and omelets are garnished with tangerines cut in half and dotted with pomegranate seeds, the ruby seeds glowing against orange fruit. The food, like the clientele, is an odd mixture of self-conscious artiness and a certain sweetness. The food is delicate, but the portions are enormous. I can’t think of a better definition of Northwest chic.

Raison d’Etre, 113 Virginia Ave., Seattle, (206) 624-4622.

Everybody has told me that I must eat at the Green Lake Grill; I’d like to, but getting there proves to be a problem. The taxi companies aren’t answering their phones, nobody can tell me which bus to take and none of my friends’ cars have snow tires. I finally convince the manager of my hotel to drive me out in the limousine and share lunch with me. It is a nerve-wracking ride; we slither through the icy, empty streets and arrive to find the restaurant almost empty.

The Grill is a casual storefront, light-filled and attractive. Chef Karl Beckley has been one of the people responsible for the changes in food in Seattle, and his influence is seen on menus all over town. He likes to combine fruit with fish and fowl: A salad is made with pears, hazelnuts and Oregon blue cheese, and salmon comes grilled with pomegranate butter. Chicken arrives with peach sauce, breast of duck with currants. One of his signature dishes is fried Brie served with apples.

The food is hearty, straightforward and homier than I had anticipated. The Brie arrives in a giant wedge, and the salmon, which is beautifully undercooked (“mushy” says my guest, admitting that he likes his fish with “more texture”), is accompanied by sauteed vegetables in large chunks. Linguine with garlic and feta is rich with kalamata olives, the portion enormous. The service is friendly; our waiter, a Frenchman from Grenoble, keeps telling us how happy he is to be in such an exciting city.

Green Lake Grill, 7200 E. Green Lake Drive, Seattle, (206) 524-0365.

When I call Le Gourmand to ask what buses run by there, a voice says that we are the only party that hasn’t canceled because of the snow. “Shall I come and get you?” he asks; I can’t tell if he is kidding. In the end, we find an intrepid cab driver, and after the frigid ride the look of the warm, simply decorated room is extraordinarily welcoming. In fact, it turns out to be one of the most enchanting restaurant experiences I can remember.

Owner Bruce Naftaly is sometimes called “the father of Northwest cuisine.” It is hard to award this slight, shy man with any title so pretentious, but in his eight years in Seattle he has cut quite a path. He began at Rosellini’s Other Place, at one time the only restaurant seriously trying to use local products in interesting new ways. He and partner Robin Sanders then opened Les Copains and went on to pioneer the food at the Alexis Restaurant before opening their own small place. It is a very pared-down operation; on busy nights there is a dishwasher, but much of the time Naftaly is alone in the kitchen. He rarely serves more than 30 people--”It is a way to live a sensible life,” says this man who got a degree in music before falling in love with cooking. (When I asked him what his dream restaurant would be, he said that he would be happy if only he could live upstairs.) There is an $18, three-course, prix-fixe menu; since we are the only people in the place, the waiter offers to bring us everything in individual courses. A fine grainy terrine of rabbit livers is followed by unusual salmon rillettes, served in a little pot topped with creme fraiche and curly green Sweet Cicely. Then we each get a bowl of pumpkin soup; with each spoonful the soup tastes different. The dominant flavor is pumpkin, but always with a slightly different undertone. Now there is a burst of juniper flavor, now the green tone of sorrel, now a hint of the goose stock which is its base. The soup is much the way I imagine a forest in the fall would taste, if you could taste it when the leaves change color.

A bowl of deep purple mussels is set on the table, its steam giving off the faint aroma of fennel; Naftaly has thrown some matsutake mushrooms into the pot, and their faintly cinnamon-scent adds an intriguing note. Next there is a simple piece of sturgeon, splendid in its buttery sauce. The piece de resistance is rabbit in a deep-red sauce of pinot noir pressings; it has the slightly thick, sweet-sour taste of a great civet de lievre . The rabbit itself is chewy and gamy, not remotely like the chicken it is often said to resemble. With the crusty roast potatoes and a gratin of root vegetables, it is easy to imagine that we are in a farmhouse in a corner of France.

Then there is a salad of tiny greens in a nutty sherry vinaigrette, and local goat’s milk cheese on robust walnut toast. As you eat this food, you understand why the back of the menu has a list of the people who raised or made or fished the food; this is simple cooking, its strength in the quality of the ingredients, and Naftaly is clearly committed to local producers. There are no tricks here, no artifice, and if the food does not have the finesse that Los Angeles’ finest cooks provide, it has a certain soul that we rarely encounter.

For dessert, Naftaly brings out a big platter of cheese from the Okanagan Valley of nearby Canada; the hard sheep’s milk blue cheese is particularly impressive. (“I’m so glad you ordered that,” he says. “The cheeses are so good.”) He is standing at the table now, savoring our pleasure as we try a wonderful tart made of whole tiny marinated Seckel pears on a hazelnut crust. Then there is coffee--Seattle is a good coffee town--and then it is time to start figuring out a way back to the center of town.

Le Gourmand, 425 N.W. Market St., Seattle, (206) 784-DINE.

I left Seattle just ahead of the next big blizzard--before I could get to Dominique’s Place or the Union Bay Cafe or Chez Shea or Fuller’s or any of the other restaurants that people say make eating in Seattle so exciting. But I was there long enough to know that there is a lot going on in that city by the sea and that right now is probably the time to go and taste it. The restaurants there may not yet be entirely polished, but they are honest and alive and vital--and trendiness is still an unknown word.