March 2016

Why Oyster Mushrooms Deserve a Bit More Attention

Why Oyster Mushrooms Deserve a Bit More Attention

Oysters of another kind are on a spring forager’s mind

Springtime is knocking and mushroom hunters are champing at the bit to get into the woods. For Seattle fungi fanciers, this usually means a trip over a mountain pass to the sunny slope of the Cascades in search of morels and porcini. But here on the wet side of the mountains, we have our own…

Sherry Cocktails are Having a Moment

Sherry Cocktails are Having a Moment

Set your sails in the direction of this delicious, modern sherry cocktail

The Cocktail: The Tale of Two CitiesFirst popular in the latter part of the 18th and early 19th centuries, sherry cocktails are having a moment. These fortified-wine-based cocktails are becoming increasingly popular because of sherry’s rich and varied flavor spectrum—and also because sherry isn’t as potent as other cocktail bases (about 18–19 percent alcohol by…

Women Still Play a Small Role in the Tech Industry. Why?

Women Still Play a Small Role in the Tech Industry. Why?

Women still aren’t dominating the tech industry, but Seattle innovators are trying to fix that

The number of women and minorities working in technology today is the lowest it’s been in three decades and is still heading downhill, says Seattle software engineer turned tech exec Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack. “The situation for women isn’t getting any better,’’ says Wheeler Van Vlack, author of Women in Technology, which is slated for…

SoDo's Gastropod Reopens as Mollusk in South Lake Union

SoDo’s Gastropod Reopens as Mollusk in South Lake Union

Mollusk highlights Near East and Southeast Asian flavors on the seafood-centric menu

When chef Travis Kukull and Epic Ales brewmaster Cody Morris shuttered Gastropod last fall, food nerds around the city sank into mourning. The modest, 600-square-foot SoDo restaurant, which tied with Capitol Hill’s Mamnoon for our 2013 Best New Restaurant, was home to some pretty eclectic, inexpensive food and fantastically off-the-wall beers.The duo closed Gastropod to…

Five Ply Design's First-Ever Lighting Collection

Five Ply Design’s First-Ever Lighting Collection

Chinatown/International District-based designer Peter Benarcik’s new lighting collection is construc

Designer Peter Benarcik says he never considered himself a wood guy, but admits that growing up around a lumberyard (his father owned a home improvement store) influenced his interest in natural materials. “I love taking something traditionally perceived as flat and creating an entirely new shape,” Benarcik says. Such unique shapes are evident in Benarcik’s…

Why We Really Are Sleepless in Seattle

Why We Really Are Sleepless in Seattle

Why our seasonal daylight swing could put your health at risk

It’s an annual ritual as familiar as the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: Spring brings sun-starved Seattleites out of hibernation, blinking in the daylight. As Seattle’s short winter days—with a mere eight hours of daily sunlight in December—give way to 16 hours of daylight by June, we often shift our own schedules in response, bedding down…

A Lovely Living Room Makeover

A Lovely Living Room Makeover

A Bothell home redesign offers serious inspiration for spring cleaning

“We are stuff people,” says Becky Fann of the collection of artwork and objects she and her husband, Mike, have in their Bothell home. But you wouldn’t know it stepping into their carefully curated living room, part of a massive redesign created by Ballard-based interior designer Keri Petersen for the family last year. “Becky knows…

What to Expect for the 2016 Seattle Sounders Season

What to Expect for the 2016 Seattle Sounders Season

What you need to know ahead of this month’s Sounders season kickoff

The Seattle Sounders have the home field advantage when they take on Sporting Kansas City on March 6 in their first match of the 2016 Major League Soccer (MLS) season. They’ll be cheered on by their fervent fans (the team is top of the league for attendance, with averages of more than 44,000 tickets per…

At-home Test Kits for Colon Cancer

At-home Test Kits for Colon Cancer

A study shows the kits have boosted screening rates by 16 percent

A team led by Seattle-based Group Health physician Beverly B. Green, M.D., and Gloria D. Coronado, Ph.D., of Kaiser Permanente Center for Health in Portland, Oregon, is helping boost colon cancer screening rates for low-income patients—by mail. With more than 100,000 new cases and 50,000 deaths annually, colon cancer is the county’s second-leading cause of…

Capitol Hill Light Rail Station Opens This Weekend

Capitol Hill Light Rail Station Opens This Weekend

Capitol Hill’s new light rail station serves double duty as an art gallery

While Seattle waits to see if infamous State Route 99 tunnel borer Bertha ever reaches the Alaskan Way Viaduct, we’ll celebrate her little sister’s work this month when the University Link light rail service opens six months ahead of schedule and $150 million under budget. The rail line—an extension of the existing service from Seattle-Tacoma…

Porcelain Works on Display at Bellevue Arts Museum

Porcelain Works on Display at Bellevue Arts Museum

Sculptor Chris Antemann brings sexy back

While art in the 20th century expanded its scope through abstraction, minimalism and conceptualism, something was clearly lost in the process. It would only be a matter of time before the sensuality and underlying eroticism of traditional Western figurative art—which held sway from ancient Greece until the Victorian era—would come back with a vengeance. Oregon-based…

Does Seattle Need to Define its Preferred Pizza Style?

Does Seattle Need to Define its Preferred Pizza Style?

A recent wave of pizza openings might bring us closer to defining a local style

When celebrated neighborhood haunt Delancey (Ballard, 1415 NW 70th St.; 206.838.1960) first started firing blistery pizzas, owner Brandon Pettit witnessed a funny moment: A local leaned over to her friend and said a bit too loudly, “This pizza is OK, but it’s not New York style.” A woman sitting at the bar overheard the comment—and…