Sea Breeze Farm

​Last weekend's menu at La Boucherie, the restaurant at Sea Breeze Farm, featured house-made anglotti filled with farmstead ricotta and sweet potato mousse; seared Brussels sprouts with farm bacon and a crispy duck breast served with apple-potato hash. Blood, placenta and colostrum weren't among the selections.

But viewers of the Bizarre Foods segment on Sea Breeze, which aired earlier this week, could be forgiven for wondering whether the Vashon Island operation doubled as a den of offal debauchery. Although host Andrew Zimmern sampled George Page's cheese and sausage, more coverage was devoted to a few instances of culinary courage.

"To be honest, I was nervous about the show," Page's wife and fellow farmer Kristin Thompson writes. "Andrew was amazing and appreciative of everything he saw and did last summer, but obviously there was a desire from the show's standpoint to have a Fear Factor kind of experience. From the beginning, it was clear that was why they chose us."

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​Bizarre Foods last night broadcast its Seattle episode, a travelogue that ricocheted between the city's slimiest and most scientific foods. Since the show ran for a full hour -- although it felt like eight when host Andrew Zimmern learned how to pull espresso - we're presenting here a condensed version for the many locals who likely didn't have a chance to watch from start to finish.

(Don't fret if you missed out: the Bizarre Foods team may not have watched the show either. "Gooey duck, moldy sausage, Seattle coffee and more," the production team promised via Twitter. To which Zimmern tweeted back: "It's geoduck, and the sausage isn't moldy.")

The show opens with Zimmern establishing the show's themes in a voiceover accompanied by a B-roll montage of mountains, parks and Pike Place. "No place in America beats this town's variety of flavors from the Pacific Rim," he explains, before pronouncing Seattle "an ultra-sophisticated city committed to living the simple life."

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​A longtime foe of childhood obesity, Tom Colicchio in 2010 addressed a Congressional committee on the subject of improving school lunches. "I find myself in the slightly surreal position of being able to comment on issues of importance to me to a public willing to listen," he told the legislators. But on this week's Top Chef, when a contestant succumbed to high blood pressure, nobody peeped about obesity.

It's pretty hip to urge tubby kids to exercise and eat better: Colicchio, Ming Tsai, Maria Hines and Sam Kass have joined First Lady Michelle Obama in calling for increased rope-jumping and hula-hooping during non-school hours. They want kids to eat more fruit and fewer french fries. As Obama explained in a November address to a Partnership for a Healthier America, an active lifestyle is "critical for maintaining healthy blood pressure and cholesterol." But chastising fellow adults for their diet choices is still considered very bad manners - even if the lecture could provide a public service.

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​Wired thinks our new "Best Of" app is one of the year's best travel apps. And while we're inclined to agree, we'd (modestly, of course) suggest it's a pretty good stay-at-home app, too.

If you haven't yet checked out the app, it compiles eating, drinking, listening and shopping recommendations from Village Voice Media contributors in 32 cities, providing users with more than 10,000 things worth doing. Wired uses the app to track down the "best cheese steak" in Philly; "best tea room" in Austin and "best smoothie" in Miami, but it works equally well for locating the best burgers, coffeehouse, gay bars and bakeries right here in Seattle.

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Washington winemakers will now have to impress this guy.

​While Jay Miller's seemingly sudden departure from the Wine Advocate has provoked suspicion among wine bloggers, who wonder whether the decision was connected to allegations that Miller's appearance coordinator solicited payment from winemakers on Miller's beat, the shake-up has special significance for the Pacific Northwest.

Miller - a former assistant to Robert Parker -- covered Oregon and Washington, bestowing near-perfect scores on wines from Quilceda Creek Vinters and Betz Family Winery. Industry observers wonder whether his replacement will seek out new favorites to celebrate.

"It's an opportunity for some of the new winemakers that aren't entrenched in Jay's world and those who haven't been looked at so favorably by Jay," says David LeClaire, founder and general manager of Wine World Warehouse.

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​A MasterChef casting call shouldn't be construed as an invitation to try out new recipes, a producer of the Gordon Ramsay reality show says.

Casting producer Vanessa Bond is urging wannabe contestants to bring their most-requested "signature dishes" to an audition at Le Cordon Bleu in Tukwila this Saturday. Each applicant will have three minutes to plate and present his or her dish to a panel of judges Bond describes as "friends of Gordon."

"We want to see their style," Bond says. "If they're big on Southern, bring a Southern dish."

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​The knife-sharpening video which prompted Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meatsmith to start slicing animal flesh was very informative. But it was "just horribly boring," recalls Andrew Plotsky, who produced Sheard's first instructional online video, a 24-minute overview of whole hog butchery released this month.

"That was the inspiration to make ours beautiful," says Plotsky.

The first episode in a planned series intersperses captioned images of Sheard breaking down a pig - "knife on flesh, saw on bone," he counsels - with images of him preparing the cuts he's isolated. A hock is braised in milk, then served at a warmly-lit family dinner. The cleaving and cooking is accompanied by a musical soundtrack featuring Louis Armstrong and Animal Collective, among other artists.

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​Seattle's remaining hopes for Top Chef representation evaporated tonight with the first-round elimination of cheftestant Ashley Villaluz.

Villaluz was sent home for a lackluster plate of oxtail, following the northbound path paved last week by Seattle's Simon Pantet, Nina Vicente and Colin Patterson.

"You just need to mature in cooking more, and for that, Ashley, I can't put you through," judge Hugh Acheson pronounced.

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​A city-full of Top Chef fans cringed last week when they watched Colin Patterson of Sutra become the first contestant eliminated by the show's judging panel, but Patterson wasn't among them. The chef still hasn't seen the show.

"I was busy working," Patterson says. "I didn't need to see it; I knew what happened."

Patterson doesn't own a television, but asked a friend to tape the premiere episode. He hasn't yet made plans to watch it.

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​Simon Pantet, one of three cheftestants eliminated during Top Chef's Seattle slaughter last night, believes the city's vibe may not be compatible with competitive cooking.

"Seattle people are more laid-back, that's for sure," Panet said in a phone interview this afternoon. "I'm sure that's reflected in the kitchen."

Still, he doesn't think Seattle chefs are congenitally primed to fail: "It just happened to be Seattleites," he said of the crop of chefs sent home. "It was unfortunate we were from Seattle. I kind of feel bad about it, but it was totally a coincidence. I know Nina (Vicente) and Colin (Patterson) are great cooks."

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