Brasa burns brightly
Providence Cicero - Special to The Seattle Times

Seven is often considered a lucky number, but in the life span of a restaurant it's a little like turning 50.

A seven-year-old restaurant hasn't been the new kid on the block for some time, yet it also hasn't been around long enough to achieve icon status. After the flurry of opening press, media attention dries up and a chef or restaurateur is left to do the hard work of running a business, year in and year out, winning and keeping customers by word of mouth.

Many restaurants don't make it to middle age, but Brasa has and it's flourishing, with owners Tamara Murphy and Bryan Hill at the top of their game.

Hill's smooth, seemingly effortless style of hospitality makes him master of his domain — the front of the house. Murphy, who won a James Beard Award while at Campagne, applies French restraint and a lusty Mediterranean abandon to her cooking at Brasa.

She cooks globally, but sources as much as she can locally. Relationships with local farmers allow her access not only to seasonal produce but also to pasture-fed animals that arrive as whole carcasses — butchered right in the restaurant's kitchen.

Murphy offers two equally ambitious bills of fare. The dinner menu, with nearly a dozen entrees priced at an average of $27, has a more casual, less-expensive counterpart in the bar, where prices vary from $8-$15 for more than two dozen items ranging from tapas, pizzas and sandwiches to small entree plates. (Note to those looking for a pre-event bargain bite downtown: Those bar menu prices are halved from 5 to 7 nightly.)

A meal might start with an aperitif — a sherry or a champagne cocktail or maybe one of the many martini variations: the ruby-red blend of Campari, vodka and grapefruit juice dubbed "Capri" is a tempting tipple.
Hill's notable wine list is a well-priced, fun assortment with just as many "great quaffers" at $50 and under as there are higher-priced "upstarts, mavericks and beauties from the wrong side of the tracks."

In the bar, snack on crispy threadlike onion rings sprinkled with scallion and preserved lemon zest, or dip skinny frites into perfect aioli. Share a pizza, its brittle, blistered crust sparingly topped with figs, Serrano ham, goat cheese and preserved lemon. Or fish for steamed clams and chickpeas in a sultry red chorizo-infused sea of broth.

You'll relish the hint of mint among the bevy of herbs and spices punctuating the Moroccan steak sandwich — tender morsels of beef wrapped with pillow-soft house-made pita. Ditto the lime-kissed red sauce that gilds terrific beef-stuffed tamales, steamed in a banana leaf, and the tomatillo salsa verde that straddles a succulent grilled hanger steak.
Grazing has its rewards at Brasa, but so does dining. The lush display of cheeses under glass in the dining room is a harbinger of the many elegant entree tableaux you'll encounter on the dinner menu.

Whole oven-roasted sea bass is a tidepool diorama with wild greens rimming a deep dish where clams nestle in a buttery, fennel-scented broth. The fish, propped up in an S-curve, looks ready to leap. It's magnificent, with faintly charred skin and moist, flaky flesh.

Fat lamb chops, lassoed together by ramps (a wild spring onion), aim their long handles skyward as if in a salute to spring, and no wonder, with seasonal sidekicks like slender roasted asparagus and fresh peas mashed with mint.

Roasted pig serves as a monument to pork. A banana leaf wraps ribbons of meat perched on a smashed potato base, around which clams, chorizo and shards of crackling chicharones (pig skin) are scattered. Though the meat tastes a bit dry, the flavors of salt and sea, of smoky hot paprika and savory bay, beckon your fork again and again.

A plate of seared sea scallops offers homage to the rising sun. A corona of buttery, orange-kissed sauce naps a circle of sweet, just barely opaque scallops crowned with bacon bits and a soft-cooked quail's egg. Squid ink risotto, on the other hand, is an ode to midnight. The rings and tentacles in this rich and complex study in black are a reminder of just how pliant squid can be when cooked just right.

With all due respect to the delectable cakes, cookies and doughnuts that provide a sweet finish to meals here, the cheese table makes the grandest finale.

More than a dozen choices are offered, each ripe and truly at room temperature. Generously sliced, they come to the table with a panoply of fruits and breads — the kind of pomp and circumstance you've by now come to expect.

Brasa creates its own world and welcomes the public to it through graceful iron gates. With its looming black, bronze and silver walls, its shimmering terrazzo pathway separating dining room and lounge, the interior recalls an era when restaurants were deliberately swanky, intentionally restorative and purposely calm — the opposite of today's trend toward casual, crowded and clamorous.

Servers minister with professional aplomb, booths embrace you, the soundtrack soothes and the dim lighting casts flattering shadows.
To be sure, the open kitchen injects drama and the bar and lounge can get lively, but both are distant enough from the dining room that they don't intrude on those who would happily sit eating and conversing for hours.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company