Upscale Sockeye’s shows great promise
Published 1:56 pm Thursday, September 20, 2007
MONROE — On a recent Friday night, my friend and I spent a few minutes catching up on the latest news with neighbors across the road, who were coming home from dinner at a newly opened restaurant on the edge of Tye Lake in the Fryelands area of Monroe.
They highly recommended it, so my friend and I decided to stop by the following night for dinner. What we didn’t know, until our server filled us in, was that our neighbors were part of the pre-opening, invitation-only VIP dinner and we were having dinner on opening night. That was a surprise, but more surprising to me was the crowd: There wasn’t an empty table in the place — and how dinner was almost perfect.
Sockeye’s has an outdoor dining area, and two sides of the dining room overlook Tye Lake. Lemon-colored walls and cherry-stained wooden tables and planters that act as dividers give the dining rooms a touch of elegance, while original artwork — watercolors and sculptures with nautical subjects — complete the sophisticated feeling.
The menu’s just as classy, with choices like prawns stuffed with Dungeness crab and served with tomato-onion marmalade ($28). The restaurant’s specialty is Pacific Northwest flavors, so there’s cedar-planked salmon ($26), Penn Cove oysters on the half-shell ($12 for a half-dozen) and potato-encrusted halibut in a coriander-celery root broth and hazelnut-leek butter.
I started my dinner with a cup of razor clam chowder and my friend had the mixed greens dinner salad while our friendly server kept us well-supplied with house-baked bread. Razor clams are milder than others, so the chowder was a delicate blend of spices with onion, celery and potato bits. My friend’s salad had new-restaurant-itis: Extremely fresh greens with shaped cucumbers and grape tomatoes appealingly arranged on a salad plate with an uninspired, standard dressing choice — ranch, blue cheese or Thousand Island. Hopefully chef James Barbara is planning some more interesting choices.
For our entrees, my friend decided on the Dijon chicken ($19), a moist and tender chicken breast encrusted with Parmesean cheese and served with wine-poached mushrooms, Dijon sauce and fried onions. It came with a side of steamed green beans, carrots and herb-roasted red potatoes. It was as delicious as it sounds, and so was my smoked chicken and hazelnut fettuccini ($17), which was accented with chanterelle mushrooms and topped with fresh asparagus spears.
Between our salads and main dishes, there was a glitch in the kitchen and our dinners were delayed. We filled the time by relaxing, enjoying the sunset and view of nearby fields and the hot air balloons riding the thermals. We also had a glass of wine. The restaurant features Washington wines with a few from California, Oregon and Idaho. Bottles range from $19 to $57, with most in the $30 range.
Sockeye’s doesn’t have a dessert menu yet, so our server brought us a complimentary plate of tiny tarts that were just a taste of what’s to come.
