Two women meet in Cambridge, where they're both working toward Harvard MBA's. Some years later, having climbed corporate ladders, their paths cross in Seattle and they join forces for their own start-up-a hip urban wine bar, the prototype for an eventual chain. The first incarnation of this vision, by Sarah Munson and Allison Nelson, calls for 95 spots indoors and seating for 50 on the broad expanse of sidewalk Local Vine uses a sophisticated, Italian-designed system called Enomatic to store and dispense its most prestigious bottles. Example: Napa cult cab Screaming Eagle-a wine that's not available in retail outlets but sells at auction for $1,000 and up-up-up-will be will be available by the glass. "A once-in-a-lifetime wine," says Munson.

Menu items still under development, but will be more than generic "small plates."

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Another Vine just down the street

Joseba Jimenez de Jimenez long ago said adios to his native Basque country and for the past decade has delighted Madison Park regulars at a delightful house-restaurant called Harvest Vine. Now he's leased the former Pitcairn Scott gallery at Second and Blanchard and, mid-summer, plans to open it as a wine bar named Txori.

Are Munson and Nelson upset? Heck no. "Second Avenue is for Belltown's grownups," they say.

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There's a new fish in town.

Better believe it, the 25-year reign of the Copper River salmon is over. The new king comes from the mighty Yukon River, and the architect of its ascendancy is (no real surprise) the same power-behind-the-throne, Jon Rowley.

photo by Ronald

Technically, the more intense flavor comes from additional fat-up to 50 percent more of those nutritious Omega 3 oils. The Yukon River is 2,000 miles long and the salmon have to swim for up to two months without eating before they reach their spawning grounds. (The Copper is much shorter, though more rugged.)

Until last year, most Yukons were frozen and shipped to Japan; very few fresh fish ever made it out of Alaska. It's a long, tough slog from the village of Emmonak, pop. 767, so remote that a dozen eggs cost $5.50 past-pull-date milk is $10 a gallon, and an airplane ticket to Anchorage, 1,000 miles across the tundra, is $800. What's made the difference in this remote location is a five-year-old cooperative established by the local Yup'ik Eskimo community called Kwikpak Fisheries, which hooked up with Rowley to work out logistics and marketing.

Down on the Copper, the fishery is sophisticated-big boats with communications gear and power winches to reel in the gill nets. The mouth of the Yukon is broader and shallower, so boats are open skiffs; it's not unusual to find an entire family aboard to haul the nets in by hand. The natives have been fishing like this for the past 10,000 years.

What's different for the Yukon fishery this season is simple: ice. Kwikpak, buying only from boats that keep their catch iced, ships them by bush plane to Anchorage, then by regular airfreight to Seattle.

It's a short season, maybe three weeks, enough for 30,000 to 60,000 fish, max. You can find them at the Mackay restaurants: El Gaucho and Waterfront in Belltown. And if you're buying to prepare at home, Rowley reminds us that the oilier the fish, the denser the flesh, and the more important to cook it properly. No rare, pink-in-the-middle preparation here; it needs to reach an internal temperature of 115 degrees. A bit of salt is all it needs for seasoning. Sear it quickly, then let it absorb the heat of a 250-275-degree oven for ten minutes or so. It will ooze that nutritious Omega 3 oil all over the plate, speading its rich, deep flavors to a few simply grilled summer vegetables. The fish will taste like velvet.

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Paris, here we come!

Air France 046 touched down right on schedule Monday the first-ever nonstop flight from CDG to SEA, water cannons spraying the Airbus A330 in a festive salute, the pilot waving French and American flags from his cockpit window. Champagne toasts and official speeches followed, blessing this long-overdue rapprochement of the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle.

Francophile Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur said we'd finally been kissed on both cheeks by the standoffish French. But the rest of Seattle's media reacted with a yawn. No mention at all in the P-I, which hasn't prevented them from prominent displays of Air France ads for the past several weeks. KING's Glen Farley's workmanlike, two-minute clip covered the basics (50,000 passangers a year fly to Paris out of SeaTac, but have to make a connection), while KOMO's Akiko Fujita whined about the price of the nonstop trip. Got news for you, Akiko: if you think the flight's expensive, wait till you order the escargots (about $21 a dozen most brasseries these days).

Seriously, this is not about the cost of air travel. A nonstop flight from Seattle to Paris is about our own sense of identity. Sure, we've been able to reach London, Amsterdam or Copenhagen overnight for decades. But Paris has always eluded us. Now we can live happily in Seattle, just knowing that we can follow up today's lunch at Le Pichet with lunch tomorrow on the Champs Elysées. I tell you, it's life-changing.

What's more, some of those 65 million Frenchies now get to do the same thing-visit Seattle. Little-known fact: the average French visitor to the US is on his third or fourth trip. Air France knows that travel demand can't be one-sided, but until recently, Seattle was in the backwoods of French consciousness. Now, with media exposure and the boom in hi-tech, that's no longer the case. The clincher, for Air France ceo Jean-Cyril Spinetta, came at a dinner with French business leaders (carefully orchestrated by Port of Seattle officials) just a few months ago. Finally convinced of the pent-up demand from the European side, Spinetta okayed that 200-seat Airbus, promising to switch to a Boeing 777 if the extra 100 seats can be justified by the headcount.

Allons, les enfants! On va a Paris!

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The Queen's birthday Regal as ever, she turns 20 and celebrates with an early-evening $20 menu. Queen City Grill, at the corner of First and Blanchard, has seen her once-seedy neighborhood transformed. Her glowing mahogany bar has become a club for Belltowners who avoid Belltown's clubs.

Part-owner and general manager Robert Eickhof firmly at the helm. Sit on the deck overlooking First and order the crabcakes. "Sidewalk Dining" at its best. This little piggy Too disturbing for the Market? Lemme tell ya, this whole Pigs on Parade thing has gotten out of hand.

You know the concept: local artists create fiberglass scultpures based on Ur-piggy Rachel, eventually sold to raise money for the Pike Place Market Foundation. One such sculptor is Colin Reedy, an Oregon furniture designer whose previous contributions include a couple of ride-em "Pork Choppers." This particular creation, titled "Prosciutto and Melon Pig," ought to be positioned at a deli counter like DeLaurenti, not on the sidewalk in Belltown next to, gulp, the pork-free Tandoori Hut.

Where will it lead, all this "On Parade" stuff? Cows in Chicago, Cows in Zurich, "Sound of Moosic" cows in Salzburg, Vach'Art in Paris, nutcrackers and ponies in downtown Seattle, more piggies in Cincinnati, ducks in Eugene, salmon in Salem, hearts in San Francisco, donkeys and elephants in Washington, DC, bulls in Torino, Italy, lions in Venice. Whales on Parade to raise money for ocean research? Rats on Parade for urban sanitation?

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Meanwhile, back at the Hut

Balvir Singh is trying to be a good neighbor, but some of his neighbors will have none of it. Indian food is both spicy and fragrant. Some of it is cooked in an 800-degree clay tandoor, after all. The landlord, TRF Properties, knew (or should have known) all that when they proffered the lease.

Not so simple. Some of the Seattle Heights neighbors are complaining about cooking odors. All parties hope that a thorough cleaning of the ventilation equipment will solve the problem.

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Out and about in Belltown, I espy a hand-lettered chalkboard in the window of Bambino's, promising "New York Style" sandwiches, including my favorite, beef tongue.

Aha! A chance to write a post in support of a neglected cut of deli meat and say something nice about Bambino's for a change, instead of griping about the lackluster "East Coast" pizzas and the dinner server's tattoos. (Not just Bambino's, either; tats last week at Cucina DeRa, too, with a lip piercing thrown in. Is this a trend? I could understand this on Broadway, but it seems a bit aggressive for genteel Belltown.)

Printed menu says all nine sandwiches are served "Pilled High," a typo, no doubt. Anyway, there it is, the Piemontese, $7.90 for beef tongue with garlic mayo on a baguette. I settle in (on a stool) with my book, The Journals of John Cheever.

The (untattooed) lunch server returns. "Um, we're out of the tongue," she says. "It hasn't been all that popular."

How hard would it be, I ask tartly, for the shift manager to simply erase the tongue from the blackboard? Cheever, I imagine, would have found something gracious to say. By coincidence, this is the 25th anniversary of his death. Could wander a block down Cedar to Mike's East Coast Sandwiches, get a more-than-passable reuben. But it wouldn't be tongue, dammit. Ah, Cheever might say, we are so demanding, so spoiled.

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Speaking of Lunch

Spencer and Donna Kim have returned to Seattle to take over Kyeong Han's Wild Fish at First and Broad. They've renamed it Sushi Wave. Seven-nights-a-week happy hour brings $2.95 beer and sake along with $4.95 sushi sets. At lunch, there's a choice of several combo plates (no bento boxes) for less than $8 that feature delicate tempura, salmon or chicken, a California roll, salad, rice and miso.

New lunch "program," as owner David Leong calls it, at Karma. Satays and noodle dishes, $6.50 and up.

Twice that price for lunch at Qube, but you get three courses, exquisitely prepared by exec chef Lisa Nakamura. And a terrific by-the-glass wine and sake list.

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TRANSITIONS: The space at the corner of 6th and Wall claims another victim, this time El Portal. It's now closed to the public, serving instead as a kitchen for Russell Dean Lowell's catering operations. After a slow start, Tom Douglas's spacious Palace Ballroom (across Virginia from his Palace Kitchen) is going great guns; it's the venue of choice for almost nightly events, from wine tastings to fund-raising dinners. Ronald Holden's blog, www.cornichon.org, was named one of the Internet's "Top Ten Food Blogs" by About.com.

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