Eat Like a Local: On the Ground With Tyler the Intern

​There comes a point in every transplant's life when he stops being a total tourist in his own new town and, for better or worse, is turned to as a local, a source, an expert.

It could be the first time they are asked for directions rather than asking themselves. It could be the moment that they are no longer the newest neighbors in their particular development/condo complex/Hooverville--the minute that some other poor soul from some other far-away place shows up with a moving truck, a bunch of boxes, three cats and a disassembled futon. It could be the day they finally realize that they now know where to get a pizza, score some weed, hide a body or find a bail bondsman at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday without having to consult maps, phone books, the internets or locals for advice.

For me, though, in consideration of the strange position I hold and job that I do, the moment when I first begin feeling like slightly less of a rube just off the turnip truck is always the first time some friend, relation or (as in this case) colleague comes to town and wakes me up with a phone call at the crack of noon saying that they are standing under the Space Needle (or some other appropriate local landmark) and need to find an interesting place to eat lunch. Do I know a place?

Actually, that's not completely true. The moment when I start feeling cemented in my new place is not always the first time this happens, but the first time I have an actual answer to their question--one that's not completely made up, or pulled down off Google in some kind of hungover haze, but rather honest and complete and instantaneous.

A couple days ago, my friend Tyler (one of my former food writing interns from Westword who, even when he someday finds himself running the New York Times food section, will still be known affectionately to those who first employed him as just Tyler the Intern) called me at the crack of noon, waking me up from an unsound sleep on my couch. He was standing (literally, in this case) at the foot of the Space Needle and, being a food-obsessed little weirdo just like me, was concerned only with where he needed to go to get some grub in him.

​"Do you know how to get anywhere?" I asked him.

"I know how to get to the Space Needle," he said.

"Anything else?"

"No. Not really."

"Do you have a car?"

"No."

"That's okay, man. I've got a plan..."

I told Tyler to aim himself down the hill and then walk until his feet got wet. Then to turn left. This would take him, more or less, to the vicinity of Pike Place Market where I would meet him just as soon as I'd gotten up, brushed my teeth, smoked a half-dozen cigarettes, found my keys and made my way down into the city myself.

When my brother-in-law had come to town a few months earlier on a long layover during some business travel, I'd had no idea where to send him for lunch in the vicinity of the airport and ended up making him come all the way into the city to go to Steelhead Diner because Steelhead Diner was where I'd eaten just the previous week and was one of the very few restaurants in the city that I knew anything about at the time. A couple weeks after that, it was another writer from back east who had two days and wanted something more interesting than cheeseburgers and beer. Though I found this request highly suspect (I honestly just don't know that many writers who ever want much more than cheeseburgers and beer), I sent him to Paseo and Mistral Kitchen and Etta's and Delancey just because I loved Paseo, was currently obsessed with William Belickis and Mistral Kitchen, had planned on someday going to Etta's (though hadn't yet) and was kind of hungry for Delancey's pizza myself and was hoping that my friend was traveling with an expense account.

But with Tyler, I knew just where to send him. For the first time since arriving in the Emerald City, I had places which, right off the top of my head, I knew I wanted to show off--a Seattle icons that I knew would do me proud.

​The first, of course, was the market itself which is one of those all-too-rare tourist attractions that doesn't disappoint in real life. A real, live, vital, crowded marketplace full of food and the people selling it, I am firmly of the opinion that ALL public markets should be like Pike Place. Granted, I might lose all the T-shirt hawkers and jewelry stalls, but I can forgive that in the face of the cornucopia and weird, bustling food nirvana that Pike Place Market is on almost any given day.

Inside the market, Tyler the Intern and I went to the Athenian because it was one of the first places some other local took me when I first came to town and now it was my turn to return the favor--trying hard to make this kind of thing a tradition. In the back bar, in a two-top booth overlooking the water, we pushed aside the menus when they were handed to us and went with the best of all possible breakfasts: two iced mugs of Rainier and a half-hour of bitching about the sorry state of professional journalism. After that, we wandered down to Beecher's, to Mee Sum Pastry where the line for hum bow stretched halfway down the block, and trudged up the hill to Le Pichet.

"French," I said. "Best there is," hoping like hell that I wasn't promising something that the house couldn't deliver.

​I shouldn't have worried. Le Pichet was busy in the middle of the afternoon, but riding a break in the crowds, Tyler and I slid straight into one of the tables in the front of the space and stared up in something like awe at the chalkboard offerings of the day's charcuterie.

Rillette de porc. Saucisse Lyonnais with slivers of bright green pistachio. A saucisse au jambon--huge and sliced thin with big chunks of smoked ham in a field of pork forcemeat. Salami from Zoe's Meats, a slab of pâté albigeois capped with fat so smooth it almost melted on the plate, and thin-sliced wisps of herbed and pressed beef tongue that was probably the best I'd ever tasted.

I know how everything was because Tyler and I ate it. All of it. One after another, and chased all that sausage with the grand tasting of cheeses and little glasses of Belgian beer.

And after that, Tyler the Intern and I had to part ways. He was doing a stage later for Ethan Stowell, had a couple places of his own that he had to try before bailing out of Seattle and heading up to Vancouver, B.C., where I could be of no help to him at all. But I felt good that I'd been able to help--that, for the first time in more than six months, I'd been able to show someone the city I call home now through the eyes of someone who actually knows a thing or two.

The next time he comes in, though? We're totally going down into the I.D. for pho and duck's blood and shrimp balls and weird little candies made out of rice and prawn; for geoduck and fried little fishies with their eyes still in their heads. I'll send him out to Paseo and maybe finally get my pizza at Delancey. And when we're all done with that, we'll head to Steelhead for poutine and caviar pie because, not for nothing, I still like that place a lot and consider it one of the Seattle-y-est restaurants around.

Though that might just be because I'm still remembering the days when it was one of the only restaurants I knew.