Description
The Tasting Kitchen feels more like a project art collective than a proper restaurant, a place at once both strange and familiar, where servers drift in and out like characters in a dream. The dining room is a study in social interaction that just happens to involve food, and the restaurant seems to center around Casey Lane, a veteran of Portland's clarklewis. Lane's style is simple, and over the course of a few meals you will notice an emphasis on toasted bread, strong cheese, braised meats, unaltered seasonal vegetables, a Northwest leaning toward nuts and the distinct, bitter taste of char. If you've arranged things correctly, food starts to appear in the middle of the table in no particular order: La Brea Bakery bread with house-made pickles or strawberry jam, tempura-fried green beans served like French fries, or a clump of blackened escarole scented with garlic and anchovies. Somebody glides by to describe a bitter, slightly fizzy red wine from Piemonte, and you end up with a glass of it; a few minutes later, somebody else lets you know about the G&T made with tonic water brewed just that afternoon, and you'll try a glass of that too. See full review.
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