Friday Food Porn: The Best of 2010, Part 1

photo courtesy www.flickr.com/photos/suomynona/

With the end of the year fast approaching and this week's review of Chipotle already lighting up the internets with no help required, we've decided to take a step back this Friday and start collecting the best of the best Food Porn of the past 52 weeks. In the following pages you will find beautiful and hunger-inducing snaps from a variety of photographers, all showcasing the bounty that Seattle area has to offer.

So sit back, relax, check that credit card balance, and start clicking...

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford

"The room itself--all hard angles, brushed steel, chrome, and polished black lacquer--ought to be as cold and intimidating as a horror-show surgical theatre. But it's not, due to the perfectly placed touches of natural wood and soft, brown leather; because of an artful curve in an unexpected place, a delicate play of light across wineglasses on an unclothed table. The food should be precise and constrained in a room like this, twisted and tortured to fit the severe whims of a man who would serve dinner across welded steel. But it's not; modernist gadgetry and border-hopping fusions aside, it comes off all the more rustic and plain for the juxtaposition of eating cauliflower soup or simple bowls of Manila clams and chorizo in a white-wine beurre blanc on the bridge of Captain Nemo's Nautilus. Service in a place like this ought to be formal and stiff. But instead it's rather casual and amusing.

Like later in the evening, when my waitress, instead of asking me how I liked my dessert, simply shot me a look from the other end of the bar, raised a questioning eyebrow, and, when I smiled, barked out 'I know, right!' and clapped her hands delightedly--a conversation had with the air."

From "A Mighty Wind," the review of Mistral Kitchen