It's Experimental -- But That's Why Julia's Works

It was probably the carrot cake that did it: The carrot cake, a dash of counterculture and a large measure of culinary idealism.

Julia Miller runs three restaurants (two of them overflowing; one just getting started) and one booming little bakery. There's Julia's 14 Carrot Cafe at 2305 Eastlake Ave. E., Julia's in Wallingford at 1714 N. 44th St., and Julia's Park Place at 5410 Ballard Ave. N.W. The bakery is The Store Next Door, 4405 Wallingford Ave. N. You can get the carrot cake at any of them.

It all started out more modestly. Meagerly. Indeed, beggarly.

To fully appreciate Julia Miller, her food and her restaurants, you have to remember the 1970s. And you have to remember that decade as seen from the far bank of the mainstream. The left bank.

Julia was working in Seattle as a drug counselor for the Department of Social and Health Services. "I was the drug-abuse counselor for the whole North King County, and that was in the post-Vietnam days with the veterans coming home with drug habits like walking wounded."

She teamed up with another DSHS worker, Verlie Watson, and opened a small restaurant called the Beggar's Banquet. They served only three items a night - one chicken dish, one meat, one vegetarian - "We charged $2 or $3 for dinner. It was standing-room only every night. Our customers were our friends. We were our customers. We didn't know a thing about business. Or about bookkeeping."

The Beggar's Banquet started out in a small spot at 4741 12th Ave. N.E. It eventually became Paul's Place. They lost their lease twice, moved to Ballard once and eventually closed.

If Julia knew little business and less bookkeeping, she did have a food heritage. Her immigrant Russian grandfather, Joe Vinokow, was a confectioner with a Seattle company called Parisian Candies. In the years before World War II, he made a French-style chocolate truffle that he sold to Frederick & Nelson. It was called a Frango.

During World War II, he sold the recipe for the truffle (and perhaps at the time more important, his sugar ration) to Frederick's. And as someone might have noted at the time - but didn't:

That was the last Frango in Parisian.

Julia went to college at San Francisco State. "I lived between Chinatown and North Beach. I was excited by all the ethnic foods around me."

When she opened the Beggar's Banquet, the excitement and the ethnic influences came into play: "We would look at a recipe and see the potentials. There were infinite opportunities to experiment. And none of it was a dress rehearsal. We just did it. And served it.

"We had two ovens and one electric hot plate. It was a large commercial hot plate with three settings: high, medium and low. No finesse."

She evolved a rotating menu - still only three items a night - in which entrees reappeared every 12 days.

"This was during the hippie days," she said, "and our customers were like us. We started the whole thing with alfalfa sprouts, sunflower seeds and little roasted soybeans on every plate. It's a dated concept now, a relic of those days. But it came out of down-to-earth concerns and real health consciousness."

She opened Julia's on Eastlake in 1978 by herself: "I could see in my mind's eye a wonderful neighborhood hangout."

The small, storefront restaurant soon became famous for its breakfasts, even though originally it did not open for breakfast. "I had never planned on doing a breakfast at breakfast time. It came by popular demand. The all-day breakfasts weren't early enough for most people. Although it was quite early enough for my tastes.

"We served an `all-day breakfast' beginning at 11 a.m. and soon our customers told us that we weren't serving it early enough for them. So we opened for breakfast. I would start each day with a slice of carrot cake and a cup of coffee. It got me going - and it kept me going."

That same year she met boat builder and carpenter David Miller. They married in '79. "The restaurant business sucked him right up," she said. "He came from a long line of do-it-yourselfers. And we had a lot to do."

The menu: "It's hard to put it into words. It came from a love of experimentation."

Like the Quesadillas a la Greque I ate yesterday? I asked her.

She laughed: " `This is weird,' the cooks said. They couldn't believe I would put feta cheese in a quesadilla. But we did and I think it works very well."

In a former thrift shop, she opened Julia's in Wallingford in 1983. She and David had been looking for another neighborhood that needed a hangout.

"We just started walking. We were looking for morning light. We wanted a cheerful place that would be flooded with morning light."

The menu expanded: more sautees and fresh pastas.

"We got criticized by our regular customers in the beginning. They said we had gotten pretentious. `Oooh,' they said. `I hear it's really gotten yuppified.' "

Not really. "Since then it's been lived in and worked in. It has 85 seats and it is very, very busy. We use them all the time."

The Ballard venture - Julia's Park Place - was the most ambitious and the most complicated. The Millers bought the old (1908), original Ballard Eagles Lodge - which in subsequent years became the home of the Ballard News. The Ballard City Hall next door had suffered earthquake damage and been torn down.

"What nobody knew was that our building had been damaged, too. The structural inspectors came in and said: `My God, this building could come down on your heads.' "

Steel-beam reinforcements, carefully masked to preserve the look of the original interiors, were installed along with a new roof. Bay windows were crafted to let in more light.

"We had to rebuild the building before we could build our restaurant."

This time, they had a complete, flexible, up-to-date professional kitchen. She could do everything from stir-fries to grilled steaks, broiled scallops in sun-dried tomato butter to Seafood Primavera, Thai satays and Chicken Dijon over homemade linguine.

The restaurant is in the process of being listed in the National Historical Register.

It is also in the process of being discovered by its neighborhood.

"The other restaurants took off like dynamite," she said. "This is a different decade. People aren't eating out as much as they used to. Looking on the bright side, I suppose you could say that here, at least, you don't have to stand in line."

Yet.

Julia's Park Place will do as well as the others over time. Possibly better. The prices are good; the menu is imaginatively varied and the food is inspired.

Oh, the carrot cake. A piece of it every morning with a cup of coffee will get you going - and keep you going.

JULIA'S CARROT CAKE 8 to 10 servings Cake: 2 cups flour

3/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 2 teaspoons baking soda 4 eggs 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 cup vegetable oil 2 1/4 cups finely grated carrots (2 1/2 large)

Frosting: 18 ounces cream cheese, softened 6 ounces butter, softened 2 teaspoons lemon juice 1 1/4 cup powdered sugar

1. To prepare the cake: Sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon, ginger and soda.

2. Beat the eggs and sugar together on high speed with an electric mixer for 10 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium and drizzle the oil into the mixture.

3. Add the carrots with the machine on low speed. Add the dry ingredients and mix just to incorporate. Pour the batter into three 9-inch cake pans that have been greased and floured. Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven about 25 minutes, or until the cakes test clean. Let sit in the pans a few minutes and unmold onto cake racks to cool.

4. To prepare the icing: Cream the butter until smooth, light and fluffy. Add the cream cheese a little at a time and continue beating until smooth. Mix in lemon juice and powdered sugar.

5. Ice the cake layers and serve.

John Hinterberger's food columns and restaurant reviews appear Sundays in Pacific and Fridays in Tempo. He also writes a Wednesday column for the Scene section of The Seattle Times. Benjamin Benschneider is a Times staff photographer. Cece Sullivan of The Times Food Department tested this recipe.