Over the Thanksgiving holiday you can't just have serious public policy thoughts. You have to leave room after turkey for some serious food thoughts. One of mine is inspired by discovery of "Peaks", a new shop on 65th Street in the Ravenna District of Seattle, where, as of yesterday, you can buy real frozen custard, the old fashioned taste that takes you back in time, but does it in a crisp modern setting.
(1026 N.E. 65th Street. Telephone: (206) 588-2701.)
Frozen custard is not for the person who takes dessert lightly in any sense. You have to know, for example, that the egg-yolk enriched frozen custard should be left standing for ten minutes after you take it hard-frozen from the fridge. You have to know, in other words, that it behaves more like gelato than ice cream.
You can hardly find the treat any more. Most people under 50 don't even know what it is.
"Custard's Last Stand" is how I described it in a school paper when I was a boy in downstate Monmouth, Illinois. It was the late '50s and a fancy new Dairy Queen came to town and drove out the Real Thing. The same thing happened nation-wide and represented a loss. True frozen custard is to a serving of Dairy Queen what a Starbucks latte is to a cup of instant Folger's.
But Seattle, the town that brought sophisticated coffee styles to America, then European bread-baking, then fine micro-beers, then wine bars, then gourmet chocolates, and then old recipe donuts, now is getting a reputation for gourmet ice creams. Snoqualmie and Cascadia are two notable brands. Italian-style Gelato from Gelatiamo (Third and Union) has broken out of the store trade and into many finer restaurant menus. I expect that the same may happen to Peaks. Some such gustatory innovations and re-discoveries may become the basis of new chains, but others will simply supply models for local imitators elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the vanilla frozen custard at Peak's evokes poignant palate memories, but the butter pecan actually exceeds them: spectacularly tasty bites of pecan speak freshness as well as savory spice. You can also buy Oreo-cookie and chocolate, but no lemon custard, at least yet. On a cool Sunday afternoon, Peaks was packed.
It is hard to see the recession lasting long in the Puget Sound region when such sound entrepreneurial enterprises keep enlivening life's hedonistic possibilities. Sybaritic Seattle will not suffer boredom long.