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Fresh ravioli, and more, with a
nouvelle twist
Wednesday, September 6, 2000
By GREGORY
ROBERTS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER RESTAURANT CRITIC
Upscaling in Kirkland
The folks who brought the high-end steakhouse 21 Central to downtown
Kirkland last year plan to open a tony seafood restaurant nearby this
month.
The new fish house, Marina Park Grill, will fill the lower level of the
building at 89 Kirkland Ave. formerly occupied by the casual Italian cafe
DaVinci's, which was operated by the same owner, Mike Brown. Brown also
owns the Shark Club pool hall, downstairs from his steakhouse at 21
Central Way.
The makeover of the DaVinci's space reflects the changing demographics
of Kirkland, where a younger crowd is giving way to the more affluent
residents of blue-chip condominiums and apartments downtown, Brown's
corporate operations manager, Kevin Healy, said. But Brown will keep a toe
in the lower end of the market at 89 Kirkland by opening Marina Cantina, a
Latin-themed restaurant, in the upper-level space this fall, Healy said.
For Marina Park Grill, the owners gutted the downstairs DaVinci's
space, painted it mustard and plum and installed carpeting, brushed nickel
lighting fixtures, an antique wooden bar shipped in from New York and
polished wood tables and booths purchased at the closeout of ObaChine, the
ill-fated downtown Seattle venture of California celebrity chef Wolfgang
Puck. The restaurant will seat 60 for dinner nightly with a view of Lake
Washington.
Chef Ricardo Jimenez from 21 Central will run the kitchen. Appetizers
include fried calamari with jalapeno aioli ($9), oysters Rockefeller
($10.50) and Dungeness crab in either cakes, with basil beurre blanc
($12.50), or spring rolls, with Thai dipping sauce ($9.50). Entrees
include a mix-and-match choice of grilled fish or prawns with a range of
sauces ($21.95-$23.95), seafood linguine in garlic cream sauce ($23.95)
and such non-seafood options as New York steak ($21.95) or lamb chops
($23.95).
P-I restaurant critic Gregory Roberts can be reached at 206-448-8356 or
gregoryroberts@seattle-pi.com
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Lifestyles : Wednesday, June 21, 2000
Kirkland makeover
by Nancy Leson
Seattle Times restaurant critic
It's been a far cry from restaurant Presto! Change-O! in Kirkland,
where DaVinci's Flying Pizza closed in March and is still in the throes of
a major makeover. As a pizza-joint-cum-nightclub, DaVinci's endured a
10-year run, appealing primarily to a post-college-age crowd. In recent
years, says owner Mike Brown, the place stayed busy in the summer but
struggled through the lengthy gray season as customers looked elsewhere
for pizza and entertainment. "The community outgrew it," he
says. "Kirkland is not the funky little town it used to be. Young
people can't afford to live here anymore."
Despite construction and interior-design delays, the restaurant is
expected to re-open in mid-July as Marina Park Grill (waterside, at 89
Kirkland Ave.). Diners can look forward to a casual, upscale-leaning,
seafood-centric menu, a vintage Art Deco back bar and a room full of
furniture that some of us will recognize from Wolfgang Puck's ObaChine.
DaVinci's former bar area, fronting Kirkland's main drag, will come back
to life later this summer as Marina Cantina.
Chef Ricardo Jimenez will run the kitchen at Marina Park Grill and
bring native inspiration to the cantina's Mexican menu. Presently top
toque at Brown's popular nearby steakhouse, 21 Central (21 Central Way,
Kirkland, 425-822-1515,) Jimenez will continue to oversee that kitchen as
well. Fortunately, he spent a decade cooking at Daniel's Broiler in
Bellevue and its seafood sibling, Chandler's Crabhouse before defecting to
21 Central. That experience should come in handy as he straddles the
disparate worlds of surf 'n turf here in Kirkland.
Nancy Leson's phone number is 206-464-8838.
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Tuesday, May 9, 2000, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Shop Talk
A new course for downtown Kirkland
by Peyton Whitely
Seattle Times Eastside bureau
For years, it was called the Happy Clam. Then it was Lenny's for a while, named after former Sonic basketball coach Lenny Wilkens. But it was pizza that finally made a success of the restaurant space on Kirkland Avenue.
The pizza was offered by Davinci's, which opened in 1989 and soon became a staple of downtown Kirkland, with an outdoor patio filled to capacity all summer and an indoor bar filled all year.
Now it's over.
Davinci's is gone.
By mid-June, a new restaurant is expected to be operating there, with a whole new approach.
The Marina Park Grill will still be owned by Mike Brown, but instead of pizza and an interior decor based on swirly gobs of paint that could safely be called unusual, the restaurant will offer upscale seafood aimed at direct competition with nearby bistros such as the Crab Cooker and Anthony's Homeport.
By July or August, what had been the nightclub part of Davinci's also will be gone, replaced by a Mexican bar and restaurant known as the Marina Cantina.
For an operation that has been there 11 years - a lifetime in the restaurant business - the changes are substantial and maybe even a little sad, as once-glittering disco balls swing forlornly in the shut-down bar and the dining room that had served countless mushroom, pepperoni and mushroom pizzas instead is filled with sawdust.
Brown says it's all part of getting older and having the city change.
"Nightclubs are really fickle," said Brown.
The pizzas were good, but it was the nightclub that made it all work.
"We did great in the summer, but the nightclub was what carried us," Brown said.
He still has a plaque on the wall of his office given by a now-defunct Eastside weekly newspaper that named Davinci's its "favorite singles bar" in 1993. But along with the buzz of the good times came changes.
"Kirkland used to be a funky little town," reminisced Brown, where people 20 and 25 years old would live while they got started.
"Now they can't afford to live here," he said, and the restaurant site at 89 Kirkland Ave. has found itself surrounded by $1 million condominiums.
Besides that, Brown, 49, said, "I got old. I didn't need that club stuff anymore."
He also opened a steakhouse, 21 Central, a block away on Central Way, with lavish woodwork, ritzy table settings and valet parking.
As a result, Davinci's closed, the interior was gutted, exquisite furnishings were found at a Seattle restaurant that had closed, and a full-scale redo began.
One of the focal points of the redecoration arrived recently from New York: a 26-foot-long art-deco bar dating from the 1930s that will grace a wall of the Marina Park Grill.
Once the renovation is complete, the work will move to the old nightclub, where Ricardo Jimenez, 17 years in the business at such places as Daniel's Broiler, will be the chef.
The summer haven of the outdoor eating area on Kirkland Avenue will be kept, Brown said.
And if it all works out, fancy seafood will prove as successful as fancy pizza.
Peyton Whitely's phone message number is 206-464-2259.
Copyright © 2000 The Seattle Times Company
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Swanky Marina Park Grill opens on Kirkland waterfront
2000-11-24
by Sue Kidd
Journal Reporter
Although the Marina Park Grill has been open for a few months
now, those who knew the place as Davinci's may still be surprised when they
encounter the swanky new restaurant.
We saw it happen while dining there recently. T-shirt clad
patrons walked in looking for a place to watch the Sonics game. We saw them do a
double take of the well coifed customers, the candlelit ambiance, the antique
wood bar, dark wood tables topped with white linen napkins and swoopy booths
covered in muted fabric. Jazz was playing softly in the background. We chuckled
as we heard one guy ask the bartender, ``What happened to this place?''
What happened was that Kirkland has grown up. Gone is Davinci's,
a casual Italian eatery which catered to a much younger crowd and served
mediocre pizzas and pasta. The downtown core is becoming much more
sophisticated, which is noticeable with the addition of new restaurants such as
the more upscale 21 Central steakhouse and seafood-centric Marina Park Grill.
The trio responsible for both restaurants is the same: Mike Brown and partners
Dan Williams and Kelly Simonson.
But don't fear if you are young enough to enjoy the bar scene.
There's still the Shark Club downtown, which caters to a much younger crowd in
search of a nightlife (and surprise, surprise. The same trio owns that club
too).
It's hard to say if Kirklandites have embraced Marina Park
Grill. I haven't seen a packed house there yet, but then again I haven't eaten
there on a weekend night either.
But I see no reason why Marina Park Grill shouldn't fly. It has
all the elements of a great restaurant: a surf-centric menu with just the right
amount of turf to round it out, a romantic and sophisticated atmosphere,
efficient and warm servers and a decent location (despite the lack of parking).
Although the kitchen is still
See GRILL, page 28
working out the kinks, the food mostly is solid. The service was
warm without being gushy or annoyingly attentive. The pace of a dinner at the
Marina Park Grill is just as it should be, not rushed nor painfully long.
Chef Ricardo Jiminez has created a grilled seafood-focused menu
with an eclectic range of touches: Asian, Italian, Mexican and even a few French
touches thrown in for good measure.
The grilled seafood selection probably was the most appealing
part of the menu, I thought. Diners can mix and match a variety of seafoods and
sauces. For fish, the daily selection might include wild King salmon, Alaskan
halibut, Mexican gulf prawns, sea scallops, Hawaiian mahi mahi or sashimi grade
ahi tuna.
See GRILL, page 28
Sauces may range from miso ginger glaze, wasabi butter,
champagne beurre blanc, sweet corn salsa, a grilled shiitake relish, a lobster
cream sauce or a fresh herb and basil pesto. The grilled seafood selection is
priced in the $22.95-$23.95 range, which isn't a bad deal for what you get.
The remainder of the menu is an assortment of seafood
specialties with a few poultry dishes and steaks thrown in for good measure.
The starter menu is fairly predictable with the usual suspects:
crab cakes, mussels and clams, calamari, yada, yada, yada.
I'm glad we ordered the Dungeness crab cakes as an appetizer
($12.50) instead of as a meal ($24.95). Had we eaten them as an entree, we would
surely have been sorely disappointed with the mediocre cakes that were dully
spiced and laden with barely cooked peppers. The basil buerre blanc sauce on the
side strangely tasted not at all of basil, but rather just a heavy cream sauce.
The crispy calamari ($9) was nicely cooked, but nothing out of
the ordinary. We noticed that the accompanying jalapeno aioli tasted nothing of
jalapeno.
The wild Alaskan salmon chowder ($4.75) was the hit of the
starters. The pastel pink creamy base was dotted with chunks of salmon and
potato bits. Share a bowl because it's more than enough to feed two.
Entrees proved more reliable. The grilled Mexican gulf prawns
with lobster cream sauce ($23.95) was a choice dish. Six huge prawns, with a
lightly smoky grilled flavor, were offset beautifully by a slightly sweet
lobster sauce. The accompanying mountain of garlic mashers was sinfully rich,
but impossible to finish. We found the mashers to be superior to the other
accompaniment choices: roasted red potatoes, rice or rosemary fries.
The kitchen proves it can handle both surf and turf with a deft
hand. A 10-ounce filet mignon was nicely marbled and grilled a perfect medium
rare as ordered and finished with a rich butter glaze. The accompanying mini
lobster tails, steamed to tender perfection, were doused with a rich champagne
butter sauce. The whole surf-turf shebang was well priced at $34.95.
For dessert, the selection wasn't as impressive as we expected.
We opted for a light finish to a decadent meal: creme brulee with a strawberry
sauce that didn't dazzle our tastebuds, but didn't underwhelm either. But who
has room for dessert when there's so much seafood to enjoy?
One thing to remember about the Marina Park Grill is that it's
located in a parking vortex of sorts. It seems that area never has enough
parking during the dinner peak hours and weekend nights, although one server
told us the restaurant was looking into valet parking service. My advice: get
there early to find decent parking, or expect to hoof it.
PHOTO BY STEVE SHELTON, JOURNAL PHOTOGRAPHER. Seattle skline can
be seen across Lake Washington from Marina Park Grill
89 Kirkland Ave
425-889-9000 Map
Copyright
� 2000 Marina Park Grill All rights reserved.
