Travel Destinations

CANLIA: 2576 Aurora Avenue, (206) 283-3313. Soon to be fifty five years old, a classic room in stone and redwood cantilevered over lake union, Canlis was revitalized by an astute chef, Greg Atkinson, he has moved on, but the menu still dances to seasonal and regional rhythms, with lime seasoned raw Alaskan scallops and frog hollow farm peaches not to mention steak tartare of Wagyu beef fit for king Bill Gates. Remarkably graceful service and the wine list runs to fifteen hundred selections.

DAHLIA LOUNGE: 2001 Fourth Avenue, (206) 682-4142. Tom Douglas is Seattle’s premier restaurateur, and this is his premier restaurant. Japanese lanterns, red walls, and music from the forties and fifties cast a casual glow over the delicious Asian accented food. Six fishy bites come nestled in ice; a slab of grilled Alaska king salmon rests on chowder of tart sorrel and sweet corn. Ethereal triple coconut cream pie to conclude with. No wonder they shot a scene for sleepless in Seattle here.

MISTRAL: 113 Blanchard Street, (206) 770-7799. Formed as a chef in the kitchen of David Bouley, William Belickis opened his bright white Belltown restaurant in 2000 and frog marched it to the head of the local dining class. His enthusiasm and perfectionism are written all over a repertoire of miraculously pure, intense flavors that includes the inventive and the conventional. Unhappily, the service is straight off a used car lot.

Le PICHET: 1933 First Avenue, Seattle, (206) 256-1499. Tiny room, zinc bar, slate top tables, interesting wines by the glass, and accomplished, unaffected cooking define this cozy café. Jim Drohman steers a steady course north of bistro banality, south of nouvelle nonsense and Seattle loves him for it.

It is hard to think of a city, other than urban behemoths like New York and Los Angeles, and maybe Washington that has shaped our everyday lives in the way that Seattle has. Nordstrom, Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon are all important innovators, born here in the pacific Northwest off in a corner of the nation, far from the main centers of population yet they play a central part in daily life across this continent and beyond. Seattle’s man of the millennium is William H. Gates who created the corporate principality named Microsoft, making powerful enemies in Washington, D.C., Silicon Valley, and Europe in the process. His company, housed in forty odd X-shaped building on a thirty acre campus in suburban Redmond, was for a time the most valuable in America, and the nerd in chief still commands one of the greatest fortunes in history.

Gates and his wife live in another suburb, medina, in a huge mansion with a wistful quotation from the great Gatsby inscribed on the library’s ceiling: “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.” although Seattle still has its funky side and revels in its mellow small town atmosphere, it became an unmistakably rich, high tech, high rise, high expectation metropolis in the dot-comera. However, at the turn of the century, just as the metropolitan area approached a population of 3.5 million, the nation’s thirteenth biggest, things started going very wrong. The World Trade Organization’s conference in 1999 disintegrated into violence when anti globalization protesters stormed Seattle’s streets, and Mardi gras 2001 produced another riot.

Don CeSar Beach Resort: 3400, Gulf Boulevard, St. petebeach, (727) 360-1881. Discerningly restored a few years ago, this peachy pink neo Moorish palace, built in 1928, offers a fine beach, a spa, tennis courts, two pools, superlative fishing, and 232 handsome guest rooms. If Scott and Zekda Fitzgerald stayed there, as everyone says, they knew the locale as St. Petersburg beach; local lawmakers, no poets, later clipped off two syllables in the interest of brevity.

Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay: 2900, Bay Port Drive, Tampa, (813) 874-1234. Facing Tampa Bay, surrounded by flora and fountains, this crisply up-to-date fourteen-story, four-hundred-room hotels stands a head taller than the average Hyatt. Oystercatchers, named after a bivalve loving local bird, serves tasty regional seafood.

Renaissance Vinoy Resort: 501, fifth Avenue NE, St. Petersburg, (727) 894-1000. On the bayfront downtown, the vinoy is another born 1920s relic flamingo pink on the outside, ornate inside, with stenciled pecky cypress beams in the lobby. Its 360 luxury room, plus pools, tennis courts, steam bath, and croquet lawn, attract the affluent.

Ritz Carlton: 1111 Ritz Carlton Drive, Sarasota, (941) 309-2000. This downtown high rise caused a major stir in sedate Sarasota when it opened in 2001, and seasoned Ritz clients will not be disappointed by its wood paneled bar and its marble clad bathrooms. But it’s a ten minute drive to the hotel’s beach club on Lido Key across Sarasota Bay. Devotees of sugar sand might prefer the Resort at Longboat Key Club, 301 Gulf of Mexico Drive, Longboat Key, (941) 383-8821, right on the Gulf of Mexico. Across Sarasota Bay from Ringlingville, it emphasizes, sports, with forty five championship golf holes and thirty eight top flight tennis courts.

The western edge of Missouri was once thought to be the western edge of American civilization, beyond which lay the unknown. The Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trials all started in independence and Westport, two small frontier towns that have long since been melded into Greater Kansas City, and in the 1840s brave souls gathered there each spring to begin the arduous journey by Conestoga wagon toward the Golden West. Today Kansas City is the metropolis in the middle: 1,435 miles from Boston on the Atlantic, 1,577 from Los Angeles on the Pacific, 829 from New Orleans to the south, 768 from the Canadian border to the north. The exact geographic and population centers of the nation are both close at hand. More than geography makes Kansas City the capital of Middle America. There is no such thing as a typical American place but Kansas City comes close.

Old-time wire service reporters were told to write for a mythical “Kansas City milkman” and the novelist John Updike confessed he aimed his words “toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.” Before we go any further, Toto, I should emphasize that the Kansas City we’re talking about here is not the one in Kansas. The older, bigger, more vibrant of the two Kansas Cities is in Missouri east of State Line Road (although a Kansas suburb, Overland Park, captured the gargantuan $700 million world headquarters of the Sprint Corporation, composed of seventeen office buildings spread across a 200 acre campus with its own zip code). Kansas City, Missouri, is a plainspoken place, a big league town with a small town feel, whose favorite son was Harry S Truman, a president who embodied the sturdy virtues of the common man. He grew up in independence, rose through Boss Pendergast’s Kansas City political organization, an honest cog in a spectacularly crooked machine, and carried the accent and attitudes of the Midwest with him all his life.

Crossing: 7823, Forsyth Avenue, Clayton, (314) 721 7375. Trained at Daniel in New York, Jim Fiala continues to set St. Louis on its conservative ear at this urbane spot. A piece of poached skate that all but melted into a pile of mashed potatoes, giving the effect of a brandade of cod, formed the center piece of a compelling meal that began with roasted beets and goat cheese and ended with perfectly smile, simply perfect lemon semifreddo. Equally noteworthy: foie gras in a tart blackberry borth, and well chosen wines.

Gian Tony’s: 5356 Daggett Avenue, (314) 772-4893. You’ll find unreconstructed St. Louis food on the Hill, the close knit neighborhood where Italians have clustered for a century. At his modest little tavern, Tony Catarinicchia, Sicilian born, prepares memory stirring dishes like chicken cacciatore and osso buco and flawless eggplant parmigiana. Deft seasoning and a delicate touch lift his home style cooking out of the ordinary.

Harvest: 1059, South Big Bend Boulevard, (314) 645-3522. Stephen Gontram is a Wolfgang Puck alumnus, committed to the use of fresh, calendar honoring ingredients in “rustic American food” harvest charms with its home Midwestern touches: Ozark ham, for example, pork with apple butter, sweetbreads with pureed parsnips and a Maytag blue cheese risotto.

Tony’s: 410, Market Street, (314) 231-7007. There is a bold sign in the kitchen. “Pride,” it says, and that quality permeates Vince Bommarito’s operation. Subtly lit, a bit old fashioned, with waiters in dinner jackets transferring food from serving dishes to plates at tableside, this is the city’s most cosmopolitan dining room. From carpaccio t cannoli (filled with fresh whipped cream) by way of red sauced pasta and superlative veal, the menu covers italian classics plain and fancy. Well made small dishes at Anthony’s Bar.