Seafood is king at Valdi's, but menu doesn't stop there

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Seafood is king at Valdi's, but menu doesn't stop there

Saturday, November 20, 1999

By GREGORY ROBERTS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER RESTAURANT CRITIC

Chef Valdi Bjarnason grew up in a family of fishermen and holds a degree in fish quality control from his native Iceland. So it's no surprise when he says, "Fish is really my speciality. It's what I do best."

Since February, he's been doing it at Valdi's Ballard Bistro, the restaurant he and his wife, Patti, opened in the former Julia's Park Place.

True to his Nordic heritage, Bjarnason has dozens of herring recipes on file, and a couple of the pickled varieties alternate on the Tuesday night all-you-eat-smorgasbord ($10.95): one cool and tingly with curry in a creamy sauce, the other tinged red with beets. The rest of the spread includes open-faced sandwiches of shrimp salad, smoked salmon, ham or roast beef on little squares of thin-sliced bread, a chunky potato salad, chilled macaroni salad, potatoes, vegetables and pastries centered around a hot entree, such as the tender roast chicken ($12.75 on regular dinner menu).

Bjarnason rolls cod, frozen at sea, in a flaky breading for his fish 'n' chips, served at lunch ($6.75) and also on his nighttime bistro menu ($8.75), which offers sandwiches and pastas as well. He pan-fries a thick slice of lightly breaded fresh cod and tops it with sauteed onions at lunch ($7.25) and on the regular dinner menu as well ($11.95), where it joins grilled fresh salmon with sun-dried tomato butter ($14.95) among seafood entrees, served with soup or salad, vegetables and a starch.

RESTAURANT REVIEW
Valdi's Ballard Bistro. 5410 Ballard Ave. N.W., Seattle; 206-783-2033.
Breakfast 9 a.m.-3 p.m Monday-Friday and 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; lunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. daily; dinner 5-9 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 5-9:30 p.m. Saturday.
Beer and wine. All major credit cards accepted. No smoking. Free parking with validation.

Dinner starters include crab cakes, tasty and crunchy in a cornmeal crust with a sweet red pepper coulis ($6.95). The Scandinavian salmon soup comes with a blandly thick and creamy broth ($2.95/$3.95).

But Bjarnason's menu extends well beyond seafood and Scandinavia. Besides burgers at lunch and on the bistro menu, his dinner entrees edge up the scale to reach New York pepper steak ($17.95), roast duck breast with black currant sauce ($18.95) and pan-seared venison with lingonberries in a marsala demi-glace ($21.95).

The wine list ranges widely for its moderately priced selections. For his signature dessert, Bjarnason confects a sweet, gooey carrot cake ($4.25).

Bjarnason also inherited a breakfast tradition from Julia's, and he's kept that going seven days a week. And to the previous schedule of flamenco dancing on the second Saturday of each month, he's added live music most other weekends.

After leaving Iceland, Bjarnason hitchhiked around France, where he met Patti, and then moved with her to her hometown of Los Angeles. But the climate was too hot for Bjarnason's Icelandic blood, so the couple moved to San Francisco, where he attended the California Culinary Academy.

On vacation, they visited friends in Seattle. "I said, 'This is the coolest place I've ever seen,' " Bjarnason said. "It was rainy and stormy, and I felt like I was right at home."

The couple moved north again and Bjarnason worked in Seattle restaurants and as a food-service contractor for Microsoft while Patti studied speech pathology at UW (she works days at Ballard Swedish Hospital).

After taking over the airy Julia's space, they renovated it as a casually stylish cafe, with walls of hunter green, melon and beige and lots of gleaming wood trim.

Since opening, Bjarnason has made some adjustments to fit his market, de-emphasizing fancy dinners and adding the bistro menu at night, for example.

"The restaurant is still kind of feeling its way," he said.