Dinner and a movie
February 12, 2009
Chaco Canyon: Vegan café unlike all others
By Matthew Jackson
Photo by Rob Watters.
Chaco Canyon features organic, vegetarian food with a community spirit.
2.5/5.0
As the only café in Seattle with a menu featuring exclusively organic, vegan and raw foods, Chaco Canyon Café, located on the corner of 50th Street and 12th Avenue, is a truly one-of-a-kind establishment.
The café’s extensive menu features a number of vegan sandwiches, salads, hot soups, rice and quinoa bowls, raw food, juices, coffee and teas.
For experimental food connoisseurs, these offerings are certainly appealing. Many options are not available at any other restaurant in the area. Vegan patrons and raw foodists will especially enjoy the café’s wide selection, but everyone can appreciate the 80 to 90 percent organic menu.
Their fresh juice and smoothies are made to order and consist of blended organic fruits, vegetables, greens, herbs and roots. The Green Dragon features apple, fennel, parsley and kale, while the Maui Grass combines pineapple, apple, wheatgrass and mint. Both are vibrant green and frothy, with sharp acidity and herbaceous fruitiness. The flavor of both beverages is reminiscent of kiwi, though an herbal grassiness tinges the Green Dragon while the flavor of pineapple marks the Maui Grass.
Raw food is a lifestyle promoting the consumption of uncooked and unprocessed food for the majority of the diet. The idea is that by not heating food above 104 degrees Fahrenheit during preparation, the health benefits of the ingredients are at their peak.
However, do not order the raw pizza in anticipation of the traditional meaning of ‘pizza.’ Chaco Canyon’s pizzas are comprised of a dehydrated crust of almond, garlic and flax covered with oregano, sun-dried tomatoes, herbed macadamia cheese and marinated onions. Served with an excellently zippy salad, this interpretation of pizza leaves a lot to be desired — the pineapple pizza left my dining partner and myself wondering where exactly the pineapple was.
The vegan sandwiches come with a choice of soup, salad or tabouleh. Chaco Canyon’s reinvented reuben has the traditional sauerkraut on rye, but it deviates from the norm with vegan cheddar, marinated onions, tomatoes and sprouts. Though fresh and flavorful, the sandwich is overshadowed by its side dish, the cucumber quinoa tabouleh, a fresh and nutty blend of bulgur, parsley, mint, cucumber, scallions, and herbs.
The Thai Peanut rice bowl is truly delicious, featuring the U-District’s best peanut sauce, brown rice, fresh spinach, sesame bok choy, and a topping of sesame seeds and spiced peanuts.
Chaco Canyon also has some unique raw desserts — like raw carrot cake. As it turns out, these treats are surprisingly tasty. The carrot cake is a moist and delicately sweet two-layered affair. The bottom is a wedge of ground almonds, carrots, dates, raisins, citrus zest and heavy spices, while the top is a thick paste of lemon cashew frosting, decorated with bits of carrot and a sprig of parsley.
The raspberry cheesecake also makes for a refreshing raw dessert. With a generous smothering of chocolate on top, the thick filling is smooth and flecked with seeds, delicious in its fresh raspberry flavor. Somewhat jarring, though, is the seed-studded bottom crust’s likeness to a Clif Bar.
With prices reflecting the organic and locally-produced ingredients involved, Chaco Canyon Café is excellent for its intended clientele. However, for the average college student grabbing a bite to eat, the menu is rather inaccessible and somewhat unrewarding.
Reach reporter Matt Jackson at arts@dailyuw.com.
Friday the 13th: Turns out it's just another day
By Robert Frankel
Photo by none.
Friday the 13th
1.0/5.0
Friday the 13th is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with current American horror.
The film brings nothing new to the table and, to make it worse, what is stolen from previous installments in the franchise or from other films is reenacted joylessly.
The camera is placed in Alfred Hitchcock fashion so that Jason Voorhees can appear behind shower curtains or from under bed sheets. Such a ploy succeeds once or twice in inciting surprise, but fails miserably at inducing true horror.
The characters in the film are pitifully stupid. At one point, it becomes clear that their idiocy is actually used as an excuse for plot contrivances. Not one single character makes a good decision short of calling the police, and anyone familiar with traditional horror films will know how this turns out.
All the trademarks of formulaic slasher films are present. An apathetic police force, foreboding locals, clueless teenagers and random female nudity all have a home here.
The story is slightly changed, but the conventions remain same. Clay Miller (Jared Padalecki) is searching for his missing sister, Jenna. He runs into a group of fellow youths, led by Trent (Travis Van Winkle), who are on their way to a lake house near Camp Crystal Lake. Jason appears, and sex and violence ensue.
If the plot seems like little more than set-up, rest assured that it doesn’t take very long for heads to roll. The characters are nothing more than set pieces for Jason to slaughter in both dull and unique ways.
But in truth, what is the point of listing the film’s grievances? The people who pay to see it have certain expectations in mind, and Friday the 13th stops at nothing to surpass them. Gallons of blood are spilled. Cheap shocks and scares are employed throughout by quick cuts and loud pangs of music. The characters die in a predictable order. If it isn’t obvious enough that one is heading towards doom, the music is always a reliable source of inference.
In short, fans of the original series will have plenty to love in this reimagining. Jason is as effective a killing machine as expected. He has acquired interesting powers in that he can now teleport halfway across the lake in the space of one or two cuts, and can appear on the roofs of houses without too much difficulty.
The film often shows a locale or references something from the older movies. While this is an admirable attempt at fan service, many times it comes off as a non sequitur or even as downright plagiarism.
This new Friday the 13th is a retread of a classic in the genre, without any of the excitement or innovativeness that earned the original the respect it has accrued. Director Marcus Nispel, also responsible for the awful 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, misses the inherent ambiguity of the 1980 version. He has chosen instead to contribute to the debasing of the horror genre by inflating it with expendable junk.
Reach reporter Robert Frankel at arts@dailyuw.com.
0 Comments
0 Comments
Post a comment
You must login with your dailyuw.com account or connect with Facebook to post a comment.
If you have any questions about this policy, send us an email. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
Post a comment
You must login with your dailyuw.com account or connect with Facebook to post a comment.
If you have any questions about this policy, send us an email. We'd love to hear your thoughts.