Place Pigalle Is A Place With A Past

Mar 20, 1992

John Hinterberger

XX Place Pigalle, Pike Place Market. Northwest regional. Lunch ($7 to $12) 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday; until 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Dinner ($16 to $20) 5:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 6 to 11 p.m. Friday; 6 to 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday. View lounge, full bar. Major credit cards. Nonsmoking area. Reservations: 624-1756. --------------------------------------------------------------- Has it really been almost 10 years?

The Place Pigalle, named for what was once a rough red-light district in Paris, was transformed from one of the city's grimy watering holes into a tentative dinner house 9 1/2 years ago when Bill Frank, then the bartender, took over the old Place Pigalle Tavern (formerly the even more ominous Lotus Inn) and began to attract a serious food following.

Perched on the top level of the Pike Place Market - immediately behind and slightly south of the red neon sign - Place Pigalle looks out over the bay, adjacent rooftops and a precipitous drop out the rear windows to the bramble and gemlike bottle shards of Western Avenue below. (During the 1960s it was considered sporting to toss beer and wine bottles out the back windows and watch them sail 50 feet down to the sidewalk and ravine.)

Bill Frank has, frankly, done yeoman work in attempting to upgrade the gastronomy as well as the quarters. His first task was to install a real commercial kitchen (replacing a worn-out Sears electric range). The menu changes seasonally now, taking full advantage of seafood and produce from the market during the warmer months. Black and white service, black-and-white-tiled floors. White linens and flowers.

"But the kitchen is still smaller than almost anybody's home kitchen," he lamented, "including mine. But it enabled the menu to become more sophisticated - and more expensive."

Place Pigalle is not outrageously pricey, but it costs more than you might expect. Expect $75 for a couple of two-course dinners, with a few glasses of wine, excluding cocktails, dessert or tip.

Chef Colin Hill has worked the cramped kitchen for the last 18 months, after stops in the Bay Area and at Il Terrazzo in Seattle. His work is imaginative to the point of daring (sometimes discordant) innovation.

For example, the Gravlox and Building Blocks salad ($10.50) features three handsome slices of dill-cured king salmon with a couple of scoops of rice dotted through with toasted sesame seeds and ultra-thin zest of orange peel. The dark brownish-red accent was fried, julienned beets (which needs some rethinking) along with strips of cucumber, celeriac and - not listed on the menu - julienned, fresh horseradish.

I like horseradish. I like it grated, pureed, blended, softened and in an occasional Bloody Mary. I do not like biting into three or four sticks of it when I am expecting strips of celeriac or cucumber, which in a salad it unfortunately resembles. The cured salmon, made in-house, nevertheless was excellent.

Scallops and Mussels Nantua ($10.95 on the lunch menu) was an attractive, almost artful dish of poached seafood consisting of two large (and quite undercooked) scallops in a rich shellfish sauce, three poached mussels arrayed in a fan and served with couscous, roasted radiccio and a red bell pepper coulis. Considering that for almost $11 one can obtain a large order of steamed clams or mussels almost any place in Seattle, the dish's portion seemed underwhelming and overpriced.

Rare seafood is in fashion (except with internists and parasitologists), but rarely have I seen scallops so unabashedly rare this side of sashimi. Cooked seafood does not have to be completely opaque; but the interiors should at least approach warm. Nice sauce.

Sauteed Seasonal Greens ($5.95) this season included chopped kale, red chard and, I think, mustard greens in a heady garlic-lemon sauce topped with extra virgin olive oil. It's hardly delicate, but on a cold, foggy, drizzly evening it provided a potent charge of winter-greens flavors and enough vitamins to ward off a series of head colds.

The Calamari Dijonaise ($7.25) is a starter that has been with the restaurant since it started. "I'd get murdered if I tried to take it off the menu," Frank said. The sliced squidlets are sauteed (just barely enough; a few ringlets were mushy) with garlic, ginger, spinach and few mushrooms in a mustard cream sauce that was pleasingly subtle. It's a dish made for plate-mopping, and the Place Pigalle serves some decent sourdough rolls that go down well with sips of chilled white wine.

(I'd ordered a glass of the house Australian Chardonnay; changed the order to a California white at the waiter's suggestion, and was happy with it until at meal's end I discovered it was $6 a glass.)

A seafood pasta specialty ($17) combined lemon fettuccine with sauteed mussels, sliced Italian hot sausage (outstanding), a scattering of shrimp, carmelized onions, green pepper slices and a splash of Madeira and olive oil. All was fine except the pasta itself, which had a floury aftertaste and a gelatinous texture.

Northwest Seafood Bisque ($19.75) - crab, scallops (too rare again), oysters, and salmon (also quite rare) - is offered in a pleasant crab broth (not a bisque) and floating under a dollop of "horseradish lime chantilly," all poured over a heap of wild rice that clashes with everything else.

Overall impression: simplify.