Cascadia's high ambitions come at earthbound prices

Cascadia debuted four years ago as an audacious act of elegance and experimentation built with big money and even bigger ideas. Betting Seattle was ready to embrace a high-concept answer to the quintessential Northwest restaurant question, chef Kerry Sear used his considerable talents to create a fine-dining phenomenon — this stately pleasure dome in the renovated husk of the Austin A. Bell Building in Belltown.

Using only ingredients indigenous to the region bound by the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, Sear crafted seven-course tasting menus based on such themes as "Decidedly Northwest" and "Wild & Gathered." He dressed his tables with Limoges, his hostesses in company-issue Issey Miyake, his salmon in cedar fronds and his partridges in wild grasses. A grand piano provided a tasteful score for meals that some deemed precious — even preposterous — though fans and critics nationwide (this one included) considered his work a welcome revolution in artistic expression and Northwest know-how.

But oh, how times have changed. And Cascadia, like other restaurants born in boom times and living through the bust, has changed with it. You owe it to yourself to indulge in Sear's three-course $25 seasonal menu, "30 wines or more for $30 or less," and happy-hour mini-burgers that will set your heart aflutter and set you back a mere buck.

Sear has struck the Northwest-only approach from his mission statement, introducing citrus fruits, imported spices and other once-verboten ingredients into his culinary canon while continuing to offer exquisite food, beautifully presented. Gone is the fussy Limoges, though the delicate Riedel stemware remains, along with a sommelier whose exuberance for his product is obvious in his demeanor — and his carefully crafted wine list. Banish the piano: Instead, there's an energetic soundtrack played at modest decibels.

Though servers still extol the virtues of seven-course tasting menus — "From the Garden" (a vegetarian's vision, $45), "Food From Here" (the Greater Northwest, $60) and "Coast to Coast" (hello Sonoma foie gras and Maine lobster! $75) — they do not dwell on these, and are quick to suggest the seasonal three-course prix-fixe ($25) whose choices borrow heavily from an intriguing à la carte menu.

While the clientele still leans toward the manicured and moneyed — here to indulge in such delicious extravagances as chilled foie gras with brandied cherries and black truffle jam ($14), lamb tenderloin rubbed with green curry and encrusted with fenugreek ($28), and three-figure French wines — the rest of us would be remiss letting the fancy folk have all the fun.

For us, Sear has lowered the (gorgeous) bar, instituting a $10-and-under cafe menu full of knock-out noshes. These include a delicate, ginger-stoked oyster-and-clam chowder seasoned with celery and its seed ($7) and "Fish & Chips" — a buttery slab of grilled-rare tuna sided with crisp batons of rosemary fries ($9). Here, with fine French linen in my lap, I took advantage of the very happy hours between 5 and 7 p.m., imbibing the sommelier's selection (fine wines offered at deep discount, $5), snacking on lightly fried calamari (served in a paper-lined silver cone, $2) and wondering why anyone would crave a Big Mac when, for the same price, they could have two of the best little burgers imaginable.

The $25 prix-fixe is a bodacious bargain and, for the past year and a half, it's been a menu standard, complete with appetizer, entree and dessert: perhaps a dreamy chocolate-orange ice cream or a seasonal take on peaches and cream starring mascarpone ice cream and fresh fruit.

Picture, if you will, a $50 dinner beginning with soup (for me) and salad (for a chef-friend visiting from Alaska). We took a moment to admire the garlicky gazpacho ($7 à la carte), a purée of sun-colored tomatoes and sweet yellow peppers served in the artist-chef's signature soup can. Andy Warhol has nothing on this soup-can-as-art, whose label bears a playful rendering of the Space Needle and is printed with directions: Pour into bowl (a stunning, off-kilter design), add wafer (transparent and encasing a single basil leaf), and eat (as if!).

No directions were needed for the salad ($7 à la carte), a tower of tender butter lettuce moistened with a syrupy balsamico, strewn with Oregon blue cheese and garnished with baby beets. Sautéed halibut with grilled white prawns ($25 à la carte) was the entree equivalent of the perfect summer: the halibut's crisp exterior exposing moist flesh two glorious steps past translucence. Layered over arugula salad, ringed with watermelon and corn relish, it's a memory I expect to relish throughout the long cold winter. My Alaskan pal's pork tenderloin with grilled peaches ($24 à la carte) was a match made in heaven, though she groused that the meat's sauce was in need of a sweet flavor booster and further reduction.

Had she tasted the cabernet jus — a silky rosemary-accented wonder that accompanied the 32-ounce "Cote de Boeuf" ordered on my next visit — she would have found her Holy Grail. That prime steak was sliced, sprinkled with lemon-infused sea salt and sided with horseradish mashed potatoes and truffled asparagus. At $55 for two, it was a prime example of Cascadia's new-era nod to splashy simplicity and we're-worth-it affordability.

Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com