When is no choice the perfect choice? Sutra

Sutra is now closed. In what seems like another lifetime, my husband and I spent three weeks camping in Italy, Austria and the country formerly known as Yugoslavia. It was kind of our honeymoon. The reason we were in "Yugoslavia" was because we were sometimes traveling with another couple, the husband of which was a draft-card burning, rabble-rousing, SDS member who was researching the working conditions of factory workers in Eastern Europe, and was hoping to visit factories there. (Did he visit factories? I don't think so.) Whatever the reason we ended up there, it was beautiful and fascinating, and we loved our travels in that country. Anyway, we met up with our friends in Dubrovnik, and, taking a break from the tenting life, were eating out in a fairly fancy restaurant — cloth tablecloths and all. I was the first to order from the very extensive menu, and as I started naming my choices, each one was met with a statement from the waiter proclaiming, "sorry, we don't have that today." After three or four failed options, I finally said nicely, "Why don't you just tell us what you do have." Pointing to the menu he said, "we have this, this and this." It certainly made our selection process easier. (We weren't yet vegetarian on this trip or our choices would probably have been limited to bottled water.)

Now that we've been vegan for such a long time, I'm used to limited menu choices — grateful for ANY choices, sometimes. But we recently had dinner at a restaurant where we had NO choices (they will accommodate allergies, special diets), and it was heaven. It was perfection. We had dinner at Sutra in Seattle. Sutra is a tiny box of a restaurant with simple furnishings and bare-bones but cheerful atmosphere that serves a four-course, prix- fixe menu of exquisite, vegan food of the highest standards. Every presentation was gorgeous, and every bite blissful. The menu changes often, and reflects the seasonal availability of organic, local ingredients, with utmost respect paid to issues of sustainability and eco-responsibility. A prix-fixe menu is offered because it "respects food of the moment, [and] eliminates the need to stock, and most likely waste, food that may not be ordered." The food was prepared and served with love and grace, and we enjoyed every morsel.

Unfortunately, even with my fastest lens on the camera, it was too dark to photograph the food in the manner it deserved, and I was forced to use a flash, which isn't the most flattering way to photograph food. Next time I will sit at the bar where the light is much better.

We started the evening with roasted sunchoke kaffir lime and toasted pecan soup, with a pickled rhubarb, navel-blood orange and radish salad. I'm having trouble coming up with words to describe the mellow yet complex flavor of the perfectly creamy soup so let's just leave it to your imagination. I pine for all the sunchokes I didn't roast and make into soup instead of adding them to the compost.

The second course was miner's lettuce, Asian pear, tri-colored carrots and fried fiddlehead ferns served with wild-foraged blackberry habanero vinaigrette, and finished with toasted black sesame seeds. Oh my.

Course number three was cashew cheese, carnival squash and luna pumpkin stuffed into nettle mung bean crepes with smoked morel-sage demi-glaze served with wild-foraged wood sorrel, and finished with a balsamic reduction. I can only sigh at the memory.

For the fourth course, dessert, we enjoyed chocolate-(made with Theo's Madagascar chocolate), coconut-rose ice cream and raw cacao nib brittle. Rich and creamy — a perfect finale.

As they say on Lost, "we've got to go back."