Nostalgic Cravings -- Transplants From Other Cities Love Seattle But Miss Some Of Their Favorite Foods

They're here, and they're hungry.

They search fruitlessly for a good Jewish deli. They stash sesame bagels in their carry-on luggage. They have chili verde shipped in from Santa Fe. They beg for care packages of Jay's potato chips from Chicago and haul in cans of chicory coffee from New Orleans.

They're Seattle's food exiles - transplants from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and other cities where ethnic food is diverse and plentiful.

"You order a corned beef sandwich in Seattle, and it comes on sourdough with mayonnaise, lettuce and sprouts," grumbles Bob Lowy, an electronics company executive who grew up in New York state. "Sprouts! Sprouts are something that cows eat!"

"It took me 15 years to find a good pizza in Seattle," says Alan Rosenthal, a certified public accountant who moved here from Los Angeles. "And I still haven't found a good Jewish deli."

"What I would give for a loaf of good rye bread," sighs actor Alan Goldwasser, who has worked in Chicago and New York. "And potato pancakes. Oh, boy! A nice, thick potato pancake!"

Now, don't get these folks wrong. They love Seattle. The mountains. The water. The people. Even some of the food.

"I wouldn't go back to California if they paid me," says Joe Monroe, an executive with Price Costco who came here eight years ago. "I've never had better seafood or Asian food than in Seattle.

"But," he adds wistfully, "I wish they knew how to make real

Mexican food up here. You know, chiles rellenos, carne asada, deep-fried pork . . ."

Food writer Melissa Trainer moved to Seattle from New York about a year and a half ago, and she loves it. "The fish is so much better here, the produce is so much better. "Still . . .

"I do miss a good sesame bagel," she admits. "And I miss good New York hot dogs, the skin a little bit crispy. And three-story-high corned beef sandwiches from Katz's Deli."

Deli tops wish list

In fact, "a good Jewish deli" is number one on the wish list of displaced urbanites from both coasts.

"Deli is awful here, really bad," said Eli Mayer, 42, a book distributor who lived 11 years in New York. "The closest thing to a New York deli in Seattle was Matzoh Mama's on Capitol Hill, but it's gone now."

OK, there are a couple places in town where you can buy a corned beef on rye with a decent kosher pickle. But a Jewish deli is more than the sum of its sandwiches.

"I need a deli where you can go in and schmooze with people and yell and be loud," said Goldwasser.

And bagels? Get oudda here. Don't even talk about bagels.

In spite of the proliferation of street-corner bagel bakeries, "Most of the bagels you buy here are just a representation of the real thing," said Lowy.

There is some snobbery in this, concedes Trainer, who says she sometimes brings bagels back on the plane when she visits New York.

"It's sort of like salmon outside of Seattle," she says. "Bagels outside of New York are just assumed to be not as good."

Search is on

Transplants from the Midwest, South and the Southwest have their own sets of unfulfilled cravings.

Karl Schwirian, executive chef at Pescatore, came to Seattle from New Mexico. "I get secret shipments of chili verde from `Vern the chili guy' in Albuquerque," he said.

Like many Southwesterners, he finds the local Mexican food too bland.

"A friend of mine calls it `Scandinavian-Mexican,' " he joked.

Like pioneers sending out foraging parties, Monroe and the other transferred California folks who came here with him fanned out in search of a traditional Mexican restaurant.

"We found two," said Monroe. "A place called Torero's in Redmond, and Mama's Mexican Kitchen."

Monroe shudders at the prevailing local product: prefab taco shells filled with ground beef and cheddar cheese. When he wants tacos, he says, "I make my own. I bake the beef and slow-steam it with oregano and various spices; I buy corn tortillas at Trader Joe's and deep-fry them."

Displaced Southerners in Seattle live in a special kind of food hell, deprived of grits, chitlins, hush puppies, chicory and breakfast fritters.

Elizabeth Hull, outreach director for the public-interest lobby WashPIRG, went to school at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

"I miss how spicy the food is there," she said. "The food of Louisiana is so spicy it makes you sweat. I miss coffee with chicory. I miss crawfish etoufee, which is crawfish steamed in a covered pot, good and spicy."

Most of all, she says, "I miss how the food is such a part of the fabric of life. Food is not just something you eat, it's something you celebrate."

Midwesterners' hankerings tend to be for heart-stopping red meats and cabbage-and-sausage dishes from Eastern Europe.

"You know what I miss from Chicago? Hot dogs," said Schwirian, who went to school in Illinois. "They're always all-beef, kosher and really plump. And you never put ketchup on them. Never. You use good yellow mustard, tomatoes, onions, pickle relish, these little peppers called `sport peppers,' and a slice of cucumber dusted with celery salt. All in the same bun. And it's important that the bun be steamed."

Every region has its gourmet grail. Bob Lowy, who grew up in Pomona, N.Y., misses "diner" food. "There is really no such thing as a `diner' in Seattle," he says. "They're those railroad-car restaurants you find everywhere in the East. The most wonderful food and pastries."

"But," he adds with a laugh, "Nothing healthy. No sun-dried tomatoes, no angel-hair pasta."

He also longs for what are known on the East Coast as "appetizing stores," full of delicacies such as whitefish salad, herring salad, smoked sturgeon, pickled herring. When he needs a fix, Lowy brews his own herring salad at home, using an old family recipe.

For Lisa Greenbaum-Bagnioli, a Seattle software consultant who went to college in Boston, hot summer nights bring back "warm, fuzzy memories" of a certain all-night ice cream parlor on Boyleston Street.

"They had this wonderful thing called `mix-ins,' " she recalls. "They'd put a glob of ice cream on this cold marble slab, and mix in whatever you wanted. I remember standing in line for half an hour to get coffee-Oreo with Junior Mints."

St. Louis exiles go into similar transports over White Castle hamburgers and Ted Drewe's frozen custard and shakes so thick they're called called "concretes."

New Yorkers long for a tall, cool lime rickey, a fountain drink made with lime juice, cherry syrup and seltzer water.

"It's kind of like limeade, but with soda water in it," said Eli Mayer. "It's just a New York thingie, real simple, but on a hot day it's so-o-o great."

For Alan Rosenthal, who was literally born in Hollywood, the lodestar is Tommy's hamburgers, a legendary L.A. drive-in known for its big, greasy chili burgers.

"I don't think there's anything up here like Tommy's, and maybe that's a good thing," he laughed. "They never had napkins, they had this waxed paper; if you tried to wipe the chili off your face, you'd end up smearing it all over."

Satisfying the craving

So where do outlanders go in Seattle when they need a fix of hometown food?

"I found a little place in the Pike Place Market called Dave's Wonderfreeze that sells Coney Island hot dogs and egg creams," said Kevin Fong, a computer consultant who used to live on Manhattan's upper west side. "And Seattle Bagel Bakery comes very close to walking into a New York bagel shop."

Former New Yorkers give downtown's Catskill Deli a nod as "the closest thing we've got" to a real Jewish deli.

And Alan Rosenthal has never found a hot dog more authentic than those made by "those two guys who cook hot dogs outside the Kingdome." Outside, he stresses, not inside.

And there's a surprising runner-up: "Costco, believe it or not, makes a decent hot dog," he says.

Piecora's on Capitol Hill makes "the closest thing you're gonna find to a real New York thin-crust pizza," Rosenthal adds. "The guy's from Brooklyn."

Lisa Greenbaum-Bagnioli recommends Puerco Lloron on the Pike Place hillclimb for authentic Mexican food.

Cajun foods can be found several places in the Pike Place Market, including Incredible Link; but true believers make the long trek to the New Orleans Deli in Puyallup, which stocks crayfish, Cajun sausage, Community Coffee, and umpteen kinds of gumbo and alligator meat.

Like immigrants eager to prove their new allegiance, most Seattle transplants say there's no food they miss so much they'd move back to New York or Chicago to get it.

"I'll trade all the things we just talked about for two or three weeks worth of Rainier cherries," said Goldwasser.

------------------------------- OUTLANDERS' GUIDE TO HOME FOODS -------------------------------

Here is where newcomers say they have found foods like they have missed from home:

Bagels: Bagel Oasis, Brueggers, Noah's, Seattle Bagel Bakery.

Bialy: Bernie's bagels (special order).

Cajun sausages: Incredible Link in the Pike Place Market and New Orleans Deli in Puyallup.

Chicago-style German-Czech: Labuznik Restaurant, Pike Place Market.

Chinese, N.Y.-style: Shanghai Garden.

Chorizos, tortillas: Trader Joe's.

Deli: Catskill's Delicatessan.

Egg creams: Danny's Wonder Freeze, Pike Place Market.

German sausages: Bavarian meats, Pike Place Market.

Hot dogs: Fletcher's Dogs outside the Kingdome and Price Costco.

Mexican, border-style: Torero's in Redmond, Mama's Kitchen, and ElCamino, Fremont.