KNOWING WHAT IT MEANS TO NURTURE
story and photo by Pat Tanumiharadja
On a sunny spring afternoon, I find Ericka Burke and Heather Earnhardt behind the counter of their very popular Capitol Hill café. The chef-owners are huddled over a panini grill deep in a heated discussion with a team of repairmen. Sandwiches are a staple on the café’s daytime menu so their furrowed brows rightly demonstrate their concern.
< All around them it’s business as usual at Volunteer Park Café and Marketplace, a light-flooded yellow brick building wedged into the corner of 17th and Galer. Staff take orders for salads (there are five deliciously fresh combinations to choose from), Burke’s seasonal pot pie (today’s was chicken), or espresso drinks plus any one of Earnhardt’s assortment of fresh-baked sweets (I vote for the pear-cardamom muffin).
Everything on the menu demonstrates Burke and Earnhardt’s commitment to pure, fresh, tasty foods. “It’s our responsibility … to give our customers good food … and basically go about in our unspoken, nurturing type of way,” explains Burke.
As moms, both Burke and Earnhardt know what it means to nurture. While the café isn’t 100 percent organic (in the summer, 80 percent of their ingredients are organic), they use seasonal ingredients sourced from local farms and purchase hormone-free dairy as well as high-quality meats. Above all, they seek out small batch and handcrafted products and support family farms that have a passion for their produce. Behind every ingredient is a local producer. And Burke and Earnhardt can tell you a story about each one.
Full Circle Farms’ bounty--be they cranberry beans, golden beets or Thumbelina carrots--appear on the café menu often. Burke and Earnhardt have worked with them since 1997. “It’s nice to watch them grow from a broken down truck to the big business they have now,” says Earnhardt. In fact, Full Circle’s owners live in the neighborhood and are regulars at the café.
The café also gets its supplies in quirkier ways.
There’s Brandon (they don’t even know his last name!), who appears at their doorstep every week during season with a rainbow assortment of heirloom tomatoes. “He just showed up at Carmelita (where both Burke and Earnhardt used to work),” says Burke and they’ve been buying his tomatoes ever since.
Earnhardt adores Rachel and Peter Christianson, whom she dubs the ‘hippie couple.’ “They go to organic U-pick farms and bring back flats of strawberries still warm from being picked.”
Even their customers get in on the act. A neighbor down the street goes blackberry-picking with her three boys in tow and brings in flats of fruit for the café. Earnhardt turns the blackberries into individual “hand pies” and also spoons them over her dense yet soft-inside shortcake. Another neighbor’s plums and Concord grapes find their way into tarts and pies.
Such is the close-knit relationship between Burke and Earnhardt and their customers.
In addition to being the baking maven, Earnhardt is also the resident gardener. I’m chatting with her in early April and she admits with an “I know, I know” shrug, “I’m way behind.” But she hands me her list of “intentions”: freckles lettuce, mache, cucumbers, sweet peas, yellow brandywine tomatoes, black prince tomatoes, Pruden’s purple tomatoes, and a hodgepodge of herbs. The organic garden is small, says Earnhardt and most of the yield will go toward the monthly wine dinners.
Held every second Saturday of the month, the wine dinners feature small boutique wineries with an emphasis on organic and biodynamic wines. The accompanying dishes follow the same concept as the weekly-rotating dinner menu.
Burke, the mastermind behind the café’s savory selections, celebrates food while respecting the original form of the ingredients. “There are never more than five ingredients on a plate, nothing is over-sauced and we use ingredients that we care about and want to highlight,” she explains. Simple and straightforward, every dish that emerges from the café kitchen extols creativity and comfort.
Small plates might include deviled eggs, a mini chicken pot pie--made with free-range chicken, of course--and a mini mac layered with gruyere, white cheddar and fontina cheeses and topped with a parmesan-breadcrumb mixture. They’ve also become known for their home-style braised meats; beef brisket, braised shanks, or a short ribs dish is always on the menu. All their meats come from the Meat Shop of Tacoma, the oldest certified organic meat shop in Washington.
In the tiny back kitchen, Burke shows off a trio of branzino from Mutual Fish Company which will be roasted whole and accompanied by saffron-roasted Yukon potatoes and fresh spring asparagus for that evening’s dinner menu.
While the quality and provenance of the food they serve is very important to their mission, Burke and Earnhardt want the café to bring people together and promote a sense of community and conviviality in the neighborhood. “Our goals are to be part of and help create that sense of community, to provide high-quality food from local sources, and to make your lives more comfortable,” says Burke.
From the looks of it, they’re doing a great job. At dinner, people who don’t know each other leave as friends, says Burke with pride. “We’ll introduce neighbors who live on the same street,” she continues. “And you’ll see them coming to dinner together the next week.” This conviviality extends to the relationship between owners, staff and customers as well. Often, customers will make their way to the kitchen window in the back just to tell them, “Thank you, dinner was awesome!” “It’s great for our young staff to know that they’re part of something bigger than themselves,” says Burke.
As I gather my things to leave, I hear an order called for the pepper bacon BLT. Ah, the panini grill is working again!
Volunteer Park Café and Marketplace
1501 17th Ave E
Seattle, WA 98112
206.328.3155
alwaysfreshgoodness.com
Pat Tanumihardja writes about food, culture, and travel through a multi-cultural lens. She has been published in Saveur, Seattle Magazine, and Sunset, and is currently working on her first cookbook, The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, to be published by Sasquatch Books in 2009.
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Check out Volunteer Park Café's recipes for strawberry chevre salad and pomegranate vinaigrette.
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