Tarsan i Jane
I visited Seattle for a short three-day weekend to visit with my sister-in-law and my sister. While we only had a few days, I couldn’t miss the chance to try a new restaurant and experience a tasting menu that was a little different from ones I could find back home. After a bit of searching I decided to check out the chef’s counter at Tarsan i Jane, a restaurant that fused Valencian cuisine with the flavors and ingredients of the Pacific Northwest.
Since I’m writing this belatedly, I unfortunately lost track of the menu I did have with the course descriptions. Nevertheless, here are the photos (and what I can recall from memory) of the menu we had during our visit on May 24, 2019:
Mushroom consommé, blood sausage
Hay smoked zabuton steak
Bread made with stout beer
Fried sous vide egg with porcini mushroom dashi
Can’t recall the dish exactly, but served atop a glutinous rice cake if I recall correctly…
Carabinero prawn
Multiple preparations of carrot with kale
Another dish I can’t recall off hand, I think the protein was skate
Flor D’Api - Celery root flower, buckwheat
Oysters, chive oil
Chawanmushi with caviar
Beet “explosion”
Hazelnut ice cream krumkake sandwich
Marcona almond ice cream bar with balsamic
The format at Tarsan i Jane is an interesting “reverse” tasting menu where the heavier courses at the start which then progress to lighter dishes before dessert. Traditionally you build up flavors as the menu goes on, but the chef at Tarsan i Jane feels that you get to be too full by the time the heavier entrees come along so it lessens your enjoyment of them. Overall the food was quite good. Standouts for me were the fried sous vide egg, hay smoked zabuton steak, and the carabinero prawn (which is a supplemental add-on to the tasting). I definitely got a sense of Valencia through each dish. I’d say that, save for Willow’s Inn at Lummi Island, this was the best dinner I’ve had so far in Washington state.
