Food for a Pandemic

The food critics at the Seattle Times recently shared their favorite takeout food experiences, which inspired me to share a few of my own recommendations! Food is a huge part of my life and the pandemic food experience has been bittersweet. For every sad story I’ve read about a restaurant struggling or going out of business, there have also been wonderful stories about chefs harnessing their ingenuity to create fun and delicious takeout experiences. Here are a few of my favorites:

Delivery

Fremont Bowl

I miss my meals inside Fremont Bowl

Located right next to one of my favorite places in the city (Book Larder), Fremont Bowl has a simple concept - “homestyle Japanese comfort food” - and executes it perfectly, every time. My favorite dish is the Sake Don, a deceptively simple preparation of raw salmon, rice, and soy sauce. When a dish is this simple, it has to be absolutely perfect - and at Fremont Bowl, it is. The salmon is exceptionally high quality, melting in your mouth like butter. The rice is even better, as if every grain of rice was individually cooked to the perfect amount of doneness. Happily, because this dish is served at room temperature, it travels well; it’s the perfect pandemic delivery meal. On nights when I am craving protein and Japanese food, this is my go-to order.

Takeout

Flora Bakehouse

Photographic evidence of how much I enjoyed my Flora Bakehouse croissant!

The weekends are when I visit my favorite bakeries and check out new ones. I think everyone who knows the wonderful vegetarian restaurants Cafe Flora and Floret was eagerly anticipating the opening of Flora Bakehouse. And it totally delivers! The Bakehouse is located in an up and coming section of Beacon Hill, so it’s fun to visit and explore a new neighborhood. When you enter, the interior is beautiful - I loved the huge windows to look into the kitchen! They have a huge selection of baked goods, including tons of vegan and alternative options. I sampled a plain croissant and an empanada filled with roasted corn, chard, and chilis. Both were top-notch. Highly recommend!

Take Home & Cook

Sea Star

My contribution was the beurre blanc!

The best deal out there for a meal to bring home and prep is from Seastar. For less than $100, my family of four was given enough food to last us multiple meals. None of my photos do justice to the quantity - but perhaps they can almost do justice to the quality. Everything was TASTY and the amount of home preparation was always the perfect amount - just enough to make me feel like I was making a contribution, but never so much as to feel even an ounce of stress. We ate several meals from Seastar and each was better than the last. I will be very curious to see if this new kind of meal - the “take home and prep yourself” will continue after the pandemic. With food this great from Seastar, I sure hope so.

Some of my favorite things in June

This has been a hard few months for everyone. I don’t need to reiterate everything that’s weighing on us - you already see it in the news, on tv, and in your social media feeds. Everything feels extremely important these days: the necessity to stay indoors to prevent the spread of COVID, the importance of protest against the murder of Black Americans by the police, the desire to support struggling local businesses and restaurants, and the deep craving for life to return to some kind of normalcy. We are pulled in every direction every day and how we choose to invest our energy is entirely dependant on our own calculus. My equation will look different than yours - and that’s ok. It’s important for me to note unequivocally that Black Lives Matter. But I’m not yet sure how I will bring this advocacy into my life. I have been reflecting on my values and I look forward to sharing more about how I intend to express them in my life and in the world.

But despite all this draining complexity, I find bright highlights in life . There are things on the internet that made me laugh, smile, cry, and think. I wanted to share a few of the things that I’ve found interesting this month. If I can get my act together, I would like to share some of these highlights monthly! Here it goes:

• Transit, Density, and COVID. When COVID exploded in New York, many online commentators were quick to blame the city’s density and the transit system. Although this line of thinking quickly took over the internet and produced a seemingly endless series of takes on the “death of the city,” the assumed correlation between density and COVID risk was frankly wrong. Just look at cities like Tokyo or Seoul. Both have transit networks larger than New York. Neither shut down their transit networks during the pandemic, and - combined - these cities had a tiny fraction of New York’s case counts. What really caused the explosion of cases in New York was the failure of the government. So as people reconsider their commutes and how they get around, they shouldn’t be scared of transit. To learn more, read “Fear of Public Transit Got Ahead of the Evidence” by Seth Solomonow and Janette Sadik-Khan (the visionary director of NYC DOT who pedestrianized Times Square and other major urban spaces in the city).

Even though transit is safe, we should continue to invest in advanced bike and pedestrian infrastructure. I’ve loved the photos from Paris showing the extraordinary expansion of bike lanes in the city. (From Emmanuel on Twitter)

• The CHOP. For a while, it seemed like Seattle would have it’s own counter culture neighborhood. Despite how it was shown on the national media, the CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) was a fascinating and mostly harmless experiment around collective action. As a firm believer that the streets are for people, I was excited to see citizens claiming the space that was theirs; But as a supporter and advocate for Black lives, I was a little confused how this occupation advanced the BLM cause. Regardless - judging by the number of “what’s going on with CHOP?” texts I got from out-of-towners, this protests generated tons of fascinating discussion among family and friends. Unfortunately, it seems like the CHOP is going to have a sad ending. There are shootings almost every night and even the protests most ardent activists seem to be losing steam. For the sake of the residents, and the larger BLM movement, I hope that the physical presence of the CHOP is cleaned up safely and its revolutionary ideas live on in other mediums. For their amazing coverage of the protests, I want to give a HUGE shout out to my favorite local news source - the Capitol Hill Blog.

• The BNet Newsletter. If you like weird stuff on the internet, you’ll love this twice-weekly newsletter. I have been a fan of Brian’s since he was writing at New York Magazine. Come for the meta-philosophical discussion of memes and internet culture, stay for the weird tik toks and technology updates. One of my favorite recent issues was about how the K-Pop Stans ruined the Trump rally. Besides the fact that this was a wonderful, fascinating story in itself - hooray for teens expressing themselves and flexing their strength using technology! - Brian’s write up provided a ton of context about how this group of young people distinguishes themselves on the internet. If you need a laugh, check out this twitter thread of some of the videos that tik tok users created to spread the devious plan. Sign up for BNet and enjoy!

The Shape of the City

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City (Image from CityLab)

Whether I’m day dreaming out the window at my office or walking around running errands, I think a lot about the shape of the city. I am fascinated by the intersection of humanity, capitalism, and nature. Before building a city, us humans see a landscape with lakes, rivers, forests, hills, and valleys. For better or worse, we bridge the rivers, we flatten hills, we shape the shoreline, and we carve streets into the hillside. While we try to follow a plan - usually a grid - we often end up with a smorgasbord of layouts. Throughout this network of streets, we build all sorts of buildings shaped by the funny confluence of economics, policy, and aesthetics. While the natural world that we bulldozed emerges here and there in our parks, the weeds cracking through a sidewalk, and the bunnies procreating in my neighborhood, the business of human life builds through decades of routine. People make simple choices: What’s the fastest route to my job? What’s the most convenient form of transportation available? How far am I willing to walk for a little errand? These little decisions have huge consequences into how the city is laid out, valued, and built. And none of this is a straight-line: it’s a messy, beautiful mixture of many forces working in all sorts of ways we don’t understand.

I recently read this fascinating article in CityLab called The Commuting Principle That Shaped Urban History by Jonathan English. English explores the idea of the Marchetti Constant - the principle that most people are willing to commute 30 minutes to their job each day. In practice, this means “that the physical size of cities is a function of the speed of the transportation technologies that are available.” From ancient Rome to medieval European cities, the dimensions of the city were determined by how far someone could walk in 30 min - about a 1 mile radius. Fast forward to the 18th century when trains and streetcars were introduced to cities like Chicago and Philadelphia - now the city could grow in scale to accommodate new commuting technologies. Then skip to the mid-1950s when cities grew by another order of magnitude… this time determined by the scope of their freeways and automobile infrastructure. The car reigned supreme for half a century and created cities of massive sprawl.

The growth of cities based on the technology most people used to commute. (Image from CityLab)

The fascinating Marchetti Constant renders one of the many complex factors that shape our cities into an incredibly simple rule - a 30-minute commute. Although this phenomenon is based on quantitative data about the sizes of cities over time, if you look at it the other way, it suggests that a 30-minute commute is one that is reasonable and satisfactory for most people. More urban planning principles should be grounded in beliefs about a satisfactory city life - What is a reasonable proximity to parks? To public transit? To shops and restaurants? And to our neighbors? - instead of around which technologies are the most efficient or groundbreaking.

But when we do pause to think about the technologies that shape our cities, it’s clear we have to take a step back from cars. Since cities with robust public transit and pedestrian and bike access are not only more sustainable but so much more pleasant to live in, it is time for a fundamental rethinking of the shape and size of our cities.

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Recreating History

Seattle of 1908 (Image from the Seattle Times)

Seattle of 2019 (Image from the Seattle Times)

While on the topic of cities and change, I also wanted to give a shout out to a semi-regular feature in the Seattle Times that I love. It compares historical photographs with their modern day equivalent. I loved the image that was shared today. In a city changing as quickly as Seattle, it’s sometimes hard to imagine the city 20 years ago and it’s nearly impossible to recognize the Seattle of 1908, but it’s wonderful to imagine what it would have been like. So many things we take for granted - how did you even get to Mercer Island without the bridge!? - are not yet built. Comparing the historical photograph taken somewhere in Fremont with the modern recreation, not only are the forests gone and the shoreline changed, but an entire bridge is blocking the view! In fact, the Seattle Times photographer describes how it is impossible to perfectly recreate the photograph because of the buildings and physical changes! Wow - how fast the city changes! I can’t wait to imagine the next 20 years!

Goodbye Bed, Bath & Beyond!

Crazy news this week! The downtown Seattle Bed Bath & Beyond is closing! Many Seattleites have visited this store for something or other - I know I've ran over many times when short on cleaning products or clothes hangers! 

Every city needs a mixture of restaurants, shops, grocery stores, and services - like laundromats and cleaners. As rents increase and pressure from Amazon builds, it will be interesting to see what happens to some of these utilitarian shops.

P.S. I would be the first to say that this boring parking lot structure should be replaced by a highrise - let's see what happens!

Book Rec: Hunger by Knut Hamsun

Even though Seattle has been struggling with a homelessness crisis for the past decade, it feels worse than ever. In debates on this issue, when people argue about what we’re spending, where, and why, I rarely hear the perspective of someone actually living this experience. People tend to be harshly critical of the actions and lifestyles of those forced to live on the streets.

Knut Hamsun’s Hunger captures the true devastation of scarcity and the mindset of someone on the brink of starvation. This novel is the story of a young writer trying to survive on the streets of Oslo without a plan for his next bed or meal. In every passage, this novel makes you realize how much we take for granted and how much we judge others based on their circumstances in life, many of which our out of their control.

Hamsun captures these interpersonal dynamics vividly. In one scene, a young woman becomes enraptured with our protagonist after seeing him acting wild in the street. They meet at her apartment the following week. At first, she is flirty and silly - acting like any young person with a crush. Our narrator tries to tell her about his situation, telling her that he is very poor. She giggles and says "me too," perhaps taking it as a joke.

But the second our narrator divulges his true circumstances - that he was acting crazy out of deep hunger and not drunk or rowdy - she cringes in disgust and asks him to go. Later, our protagonist sees her on the street, walking hand in hand with a rich gentleman. How quickly our perceptions of people change when we know their true circumstances! Why is it more socially acceptable to be rowdy and drunk on the street than to be feverish with hunger?

I think his novel should be standard reading for high schoolers. I'd pair it with an excellent series from The Evergrey. When readers wrote in their questions about the homelessness crisis, they sourced answers from key figures AND people who have lived the experience. Their insights are essential if we are going to find a solution that treats these people with dignity. 

Starbucks leverages their app for good

In partnership with Pearl Jam, Starbucks is making a big pledge to defeat homelessness. For every $1 donated through the Starbucks app, the company will match $2!

Starbucks has made payments through their app so seamless. I love ordering online and picking up my drink across the street moments later. Knowing my donation will be effectively tripled makes it a no-brainer to add on a few dollars to my next order. Thank you to Starbucks - I know this will make a huge difference for the fundraiser and our community.

P.S. Starbucks is also launching their first standalone Princi bakery today! Go get some cornetti!

Smart companies invest in public transit

I was delighted to see two stories this week in which big local businesses made investments in public transit to benefit their employees and the region as a whole.

In the city of Seattle, Amazon invested $1.5M in a partnership with King County Metro to boost coverage of some of the lines that cover their HQ. Having ridden some of these lines (shout-out to the 70!), I know just how overwhelmed they are during rush hour. This investment will make our buses more pleasant for Amazon employees and the rest of us!

Microsoft is thinking longer term. With the state of Washington, the province of British Columbia, and other local companies they've helped fund a high-speed rail survey. The goal is to connect Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver - building a interconnected tech region to rival Silicon Valley and other prosperous tech regions.

As our region grows, and becomes increasingly congested, we need other ways of getting around. Making investments in transit infrastructure will lead to happy employees and happy cities!