Try Top Of The Inn For Fine Food, Song

Restaurant review

Top of the Inn, SeaTac Holiday Inn, 17338 Pacific Hwy. S.; 248-1000. Breakfast Monday-Friday, 6-11:30 a.m.; from 7 on weekends. Lunch: 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. daily. Dinner: Sunday-Thursday, 5:30-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 10:30 p.m. All major credit cards, checks accepted. Full bar. -----------------------------------------------------------------

One of the best-kept secrets in the area, the Top of the Inn restaurant in the SeaTac Holiday Inn has an affordable new Northwest gourmet menu, truly unique service and much better quality food than its more expensive cousin, the Space Needle.

As Puget Sound region's other revolving view restaurant, the Top of the Inn has been a perennial special-occasion destination for prom-goers and other celebrants since its 1969 opening. The jiggly central revolving platform makes a complete rotation in 57 minutes, revealing an urban vista of parking lots, funeral processions and airplane activity at the nearby cemetery and airport, and views of Mount Rainier and the Olympics.

But what really makes Top of the Inn distinctive is its special brand of entertainment. Every busperson, waiter, bartender and manager periodically appears at the grand piano in the center of the room to sing.

As one server said, "They take singers and train them as waiters." Some are students, others have worked in Las Vegas, community theater, karaoke, and on cruises. At least one has a music degree and two are teachers.

About the only staff member who doesn't sing is Chef John Fisher, who has installed a fantastic new menu of regional cuisine showcasing Northwest seafood, chicken, berries and herbs. This is definitely not the typical hotel restaurant fare.

Portions are small to medium, but every dish is jam-packed with food in a jumble of contrasting flavors. You might find piles of black beans and shredded red cabbage, tender asparagus spears, a roasted potato, a rosemary sprig, sauteed mushrooms, berries, and bland steamed zucchinis, carrots and squash. (If that seems like a long list, try imagining it all on a plate with an entree.) The florid presentations include edible flower blooms; the marigolds and orchids look much better than they taste.

Appetizers such as Dungeness crab cakes, and deep-fried Parmesan artichoke hearts with a flavorful garlic hollandaise, are outstanding. A large house salad features a nice array of local greens with chow-mein noodles. Also good are a velvety clam chowder and a thick bowl of vegetable-beef barley soup.

Weekly specials (all $15.95) recently included mesquite broiled teriyaki steak; fresh halibut broiled with herbs and glazed with raspberry vinegar and peppercorn sauce; and oven-poached Alaska salmon with herb butter, bay shrimp, tomato and tarragon cream.

A crowded seafood sampler ($17.95) featured superb, moist, alderwood-grilled halibut and salmon, succulent sauteed oysters and bland, lemon scallops that were slightly undercooked. The Pacific Northwest sampler includes grilled lamb chops, fresh herbed chicken, salmon filet and seafood sausage, with herbed linguini ($18.95).

A very good, alder-grilled rack of lean Ellensburg lamb is roasted in a port sauce with garlic, shallots and herbs and served over red mashed potatoes ($18.75). Also available are steaks, prime rib and a seared pork tenderloin, roasted with fresh herbs and port, in a black-bean sauce with orange segments and raspberries.

Chicken dishes (most ($14.95) are tender, moist and thick, such as an alder-grilled breast broiled and basted with fresh herbs and garnished with local berries, a raspberry wine sauce and braised pinto beans. Also delicious is a honey-basted breast marinated in ginger and lime, broiled over mesquite and served with a papaya cilantro salsa and basmati rice.

The sights on the dessert tray - many of them homemade - are enough to tempt any iron-willed diner. You'll find wonderful berry and fruit cobblers, hot apple pie with sharp cheddar, baked apple dumpling with cinnamon sauce, and a rich, luscious chocolate decadence-like treat, all for $3,50.