Fine Food Nation

SEATTLE -- In cooking as in the other arts, high culture spreads from the center to the periphery. The kind of modern food we used to find only in our biggest cities -- food that blends the French nouvelle cuisine with luxury ingredients from the whole world -- is now showing up at better tables in almost every American urban center. The restaurants that serve this up-to-the minute cuisine are what I'd like to call national restaurants. Whether they're located in Houston or Kansas City, they match the standards and echo the cooking of rivals in the big four culinary centers -- New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
[Duck breast and seared foie gras]
Duck breast and seared foie gras at Rover's

The chefs at national restaurants typically have cooked in world-famous kitchens and keep their own kitchens at a big-league level, adding local ingredients, regional dishes and their own creations to the mix. The rise of such places, gradual and uncoordinated, signals a knitting together of well-traveled chefs and elite customers who now make up a viable market of feinschmeckers in what once were at best centers of regional cooking (New Orleans) or gastronomic podunks. While the "best" restaurants of cities like Denver and Kansas City got locally famous serving good raw materials plainly prepared -- grilled steaks and boiled lobsters -- national restaurants in those same towns now feature foie gras with housemade preserves or sushi-grade tuna, elaborately plated and garnished, instead.
ZAGAT SURVEY

[Go to chart] • See restaurants that are top-rated for food in five cities across the country.


I was particularly struck by this phenomenon recently in Seattle dining at Rover's, Lampreía and Canlis, which have national standards of cooking, service and wine.

Will this trend depress business at excellent old-line regional restaurants? Frankly, I think the idea of a golden age of great local food is largely bogus. I spent two years in the 1970s crisscrossing America looking for such places and barely found a one, which is why I called the book based on that research "Fading Feast." Fine dining back then in the interior U.S. was most often no picnic.

Back in 1973, I had to push aside a scrambled Bearnaise sauce at Nashville's most highly touted French restaurant. On my next trip there, I intend to try the ambitious fusion menu at the nationally recognized and honored Restaurant Zola.
[scrambled egges with lime creme fraiche]
Scrambled eggs with lime crème fraiche and white sturgeon caviar at Rover's

From time to time in coming months, I'll be searching out national restaurants wherever they may be. Seattle turned out to be an excellent place to begin the hunt.

In the not-so-long-ago old days, eating well in Seattle meant tucking into generous portions of fat and happy Dungeness crab or wild local salmon, preferably planked on alderwood boards, a technique derived from the campfire cuisine of indigenous Indians. Rover's pioneered in bringing French culinary technique to this not-so-brave New World city. Thierry Rautureau bought the old Rover's (named after a dog whose picture still hangs on a wall near the entrance) in 1987 and turned it into a steadily evolving laboratory for the glorification of local products, from white sturgeon caviar to locally farmed baby lettuce.
[stone crab claws]
Crab claws at Chandler's

Nowadays , the young, classically trained chef Adam Hoffman is celebrating Rover's 20th anniversary with "20 Years Later Menus." The adventuresome diner might start with a "martini" of Dungeness crab with mango and blood-orange-argan dressing. This is a witty turn on the Pacific Northwest's old faithful crab cocktail, served in a martini glass with a ketchup-tinted dressing mixed from reddish citrus juice and a prized Moroccan oil.

Moving right along, to a main course that might be Sonoma quail with foie gras, caramelized turnips and foie gras soup or a North African improvisation based on Alaskan salmon with couscous, Moroccan olive tapenade and a thick, creamy saffron sabayon. There's a hibiscus blossom sorbet for dessert, as well as a plate of Washington and European cheeses and a brown butter cherry tartlet.

The wine list featured a featured a fine cabernet from the small, special winery called Andrew Will.
[poached Maine lobster claw at Canlis]
Poached Maine lobster claw at Canlis

All this and a sense of humor, too. The founder Mr. Rautureau sets the breezy tone by wearing a fedora at all times , proud of being the "chef in the hat," not a toque. In the cozy dining room you feel as if you are in his house, with some amusing guests, for example a surgeon who's a regular at Friday lunch: His license plate reads, Dr. Tush.

At cutting-edge Lampreía in the hip Belltown district of rehabbed commercial buildings near downtown , however, no one cracked a joke or even a smile. They are making beautiful food here, seriously beautiful and seriously tasty food. Their version of Dungeness crab is a long chilled tube on a narrow plate with the letterbox proportions of a modern television. The pure-white crab is edged in red from an apple peel (a subtle nod to local agriculture; no Alice Waters boastful sermons about sustainable farming here). Albacore carpaccio -- very thin raw tuna also arrayed on a letterbox plate -- serves as a staging point for three decorative garnishes: Olympia oysters the size of a little-finger nail, citrus segments and a gelée.
[shaved asparagus]
Shaved asparagus with panna cotta and robiolina cheese at Lampreía

Hard acts to follow, but Lampreía offers a flavor bomb of New Zealand snapper cooked sous-vide at glacial speed with chorizo sausage. The topflight veal chop in a classic veal reduction was estupendo. As were the macerated oranges, cured in sugar until they turned entirely edible, peel and all.

By this point in our visit to Seattle, we began to yearn for an unreconstructed old-fashioned Seattle dinner. We thought we might find such a thing at glamorous Canlis on the city's internal Lake Union. Peter Canlis founded this large showplace with its stunning view, massive old-growth cedar beams, Northwest textiles and copper fixtures in 1950, but time has not stood still, viz., world-class Dungeness crabcakes with carrot-coriander butter, scallions and beet greens; wagyu steaks; wild king salmon in a cherry-red wine reduction; and English pea risotto with white truffle edamame purée, pea vines and endive-shallot salad.

This had to stop. We had a reservation at another lakeside place called Chandler's, right around kickoff time for the Super Bowl. Would they have nachos? No way. Chandler's has oysters from up and down the coast, an encyclopedia of crab dishes all set about with goodies like romescu sauce, fennel and orzo. For plain seafood in Seattle, you need your own kitchen.

By RAYMOND SOKOLOV
April 7, 2007

• Email me at eatingout@wsj.com