Seattle Restaurant Week Causes 'A Stir' In The Gluten-Free Community

Although there are many gluten-free options available at various restaurants during Seattle Restaurant Week, it's hard to find a spot that is dedicated gluten-free.

Fortunately, The Blast was able to visit two dedicated gluten-free restaurants: Askatu Bakery and A Stir Bar and Restaurant.

Since A Stir doesn't open until 5 PM, we swung by Askatu Bakery for lunch. While they were unfortunately out of their signature monster cookies, we did enjoy a moist brownie and a slice of banana bread that had just come out of their ovens. While they mostly served baked goods, they had a special burger and fries offering for Seattle Restaurant Week.

The burger was an Olsen Farm beef patty (a vegan mushroom lentil patty is also available for vegans) served with lettuce, tomato, and ketchup. Bacon and house-made vegan cheese come at an additional price. The burger, which was perfectly cooked, was served up on a millet teff bun alongside sweet potato fries that were served with various spices, including paprika and oregano.

It was delicious and absolutely worth coming back for. Although it will likely disappear from the menu after Seattle Restaurant Week, hopefully, they got enough positive feedback to keep it on the menu as a full-time addition.

You could travel to A Stir and enjoy selections off their regular menu, but the restaurant featured two tasting menus with a pre-paid reservation during Seattle Restaurant Week.

While the tried and true menu – priced at $35 per person – came with classics such as kale Caesar salad, fish and chips, and a chocolate mousse, the adventurer’s menu – priced at $65 per person – gave curious eaters a chance to try some Mediterranean cuisine that is not usually offered on their full menu.  Naturally, we decided to go with the adventurer's menu. There were three options in each of the four courses to choose from, so we chose two from each, resulting in a sampling of eight different dishes.

First, we started off with the Baked and Chilled Dukkah Shrimp and Shaved Fennel. Dukkah is a house-made blend of nuts, pepper flakes, mint, sesame, cumin, and fennel. The dish also included Meyer lemon vinaigrette and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. We paired this with Barbunya, which is a Turkish pinto bean dish served with carrots, tomato, bell pepper, garlic, parsley, and olive oil.

I actually ended up dipping the shrimp in the barbunya, which was basically a loose salsa mixed with carrots, bell peppers, and yes... pinto beans. We were told by executive chef and owner Ton that the dish didn't seem popular among guests, who might have shied away from the name. This was a surprise, but if you add "salsa" to the name and throw in some crunchy tortilla chips, I don't think anyone would be complaining. They also serve a delicious baguette slice with their lobster bisque, which would go well here too.

The second course featured Roasted Brussels served with a vegan garlic aioli, piquillo pepper, and shallot jam. This has been a staple on the menu and one that I always wanted to try.

I didn't know what to expect, but I was surprised by how much I liked the shallot jam.

Cauliflower au gratin was covered with bell peppers, crispy rice panko, and pickled red onion. I was a little disappointed by the crispy rice panko, as there didn't seem to be much, if any, on the dish, but who can turn down cauliflower covered in hot cheese? The only other option on this menu was the fried white cheddar cheese curds served with apple butter. I would have gotten that, but as we had that twice before, we decided to try something new.

On a return trip, we will definitely revisit the fried cheese, and maybe the cauliflower au gratin. It has become so popular that it's actually been added to the menu as a main dish.

The third course featured a mixed grill kebab that contained marinated chicken skewers, a beef and lamb kofte, a piece of bibb lettuce, tzatziki sauce, and an olive tapenade. The olive tapenade was way past my tolerance level, and the chicken skewers were a bit overcooked, but that wasn't the real highlight of this round.

I had been anticipating/dreading the moment we made it to the wild mushroom lasagna since we ordered. The menu said it contained radicchio, a vegan bechamel, and vegan cheeses, and we were okay with that. But when the waiter took our order, we were asked how familiar we were with vegan cheeses and warned that a lot of customers didn't like the dish, which does not appear on the regular menu.

We decided to take a risk and order it anyway, and I can tell you, we didn't get lasagna. Instead, we seemed to get lasagna-esque noodles floating in a brown gravy with some mushrooms. There was some melted cheddar cheese on top, but this wasn't lasagna. It also didn't look anything like the picture on the menu, leading us to wonder what we did get.

But that was the dish, and overall, it didn't taste too bad. It certainly wasn't as bad as I had been expecting, given the warning. I especially liked the sauce and found myself dipping the chicken in that instead of the tzatziki.

The last dish of the night was, of course, dessert. I decided to try out the chocolate beet cake, which had made an appearance on their special Christmas and Valentine's Day menus but was not something that I had ever gotten to try. The chocolate beet cake features espresso frosting, mascarpone cream, and pomegranate arils.

I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. I felt that the chocolate was a bit bittersweet. I liked the fudge layer, but the cake on the bottom was dense and a bit dry. The other dish we tried was an apricot-orange cake that came with vanilla bean ice cream, accented with a drizzle of Aleppo pepper honey. We have tried the cake on a few other occasions and agreed that this was less moist than other cakes we've enjoyed in the past (the restaurant was packed at this point, so they might have been a bit distracted in the kitchen). Otherwise, when you have a dry dessert, ice cream always helps!

Looking ahead to next year, we can't wait to see what culinary creations A Stir and Askatu come up with, although we hope that burger and fries will be back on the menu!

Did you visit Seattle during Restaurant Week? What was your experience? Let us know in the comments below!