This appetizer they make- it kills me. Since sampling it, I have actually considered stopping by Enotria and getting a batch for take-out or coming in for a purely Sottocenere based meal. Words like “rich” or “delicious” fail to do it justice. The dish is named after the truffled cows milk cheese it contains- Sottocenere. To create the appetizer, the cheese is wrapped in chard, cooked in butter and then finished with a splash of truffle oil. I shit you not when I tell you that I hesitate to swallow when I have one of those little morsels in my mouth- they are truly truly that good.

While chatting with Chef David Hahne, he had me try a bite of the cheese by itself…oh and it was lovely. Not overly rich…almost sweet with a trace of truffle. Then, he threw one together right before my eyes…chard wrapped the cheese, placed it in a small pan of browning butter. I watched the chard/cheese square grow tender in the heat. Then, out of the pan- onto the plate. The browned butter was poured over top the warm softened parcel and a swirl of truffle oil drizzled to finish it. He toasted a little bread and together, we ate. I’m pretty sure the first thing I said was “Jesus Christ…wow.”. The cheese inside the chard was molten, the truffle flavor thickly pronounced. This to me tasted like comfort, not in a familiar sense but in that it was so thoroughly satisfying- the taste, texture, warmth, fullness of flavor. I pushed my pieces through the oils left on the plate, taking my last bites as slowly as possible…I was holding on tight to my first experience with Sottocenere. The space is bigger than I had expected. During the day, when I came in to chat with Chef Hahne, the restaurant struck me as simple with a whole lot of windows and not a lot of warmth. But in the dinner hour it is entirely transformed. Sexy dimmed lighting, candles on the tables…romance permeates the place. Amber, Hahne’s partner, runs the front of the house and the night we come to dinner I am pleased to see her. This woman is infectiously joyful…shes all smiles and boundless energy. The Chef is more reserved but the both of them are wonderfully engaging and altogether good natured. Amber recommends a few things on the menu and based on her enthusiasm for the dishes she speaks of, we follow her lead. Warmed figs are our appetizer (they ran out of Sottocenere…understandable but disappointing nonetheless). The figs are stuffed with a bit of warm Gorgonzola and topped with a short stack of prosciutto…it was tasty but the Gorgonzola was a tad overwhelming in my opinion. Our main dishes- hand cut sage pappardelle with a boar ragu for Wes (which he liked very much and wanted more of). A tender very flavorful lamb dish with porcini for me. We, of course, had beer/wine throughout and ended our meal with a chocolate mousse for dessert. The mousse was stellar…studded with fresh raspberries and dense pieces of sweet dark chocolate. Each plate we enjoyed that night had an interesting ingredient that made it pop. With the figs- it was the Gorgonzola, Wes’s pasta had the savory boar meat, my lamb had a particularly fantastic spicy crust and the dessert had the surprise of rich chocolate shards cloaked in the softness of the mousse. Its refreshing to be caught off guard- it seems as though that sort of thing doesn’t happen often enough. Enotria delivers…Chef David Hahne is truly gifted with a natural ability to effortlessly dazzle with every dish. Interview with Chef David Hahne. A little bit about your background? How Enotria started? Ive been in restaurants all my life. Amber and I moved here from Minneapolis about 3 years ago. Enotria was conceived about 2 years ago. We have a third business partner, named Judd, who is a pilot for Delta Airlines. He would come to Minneapolis and we became friends. He would say “If you guys ever wanted to move to Seattle…”. I owned 2 restaurants in Minneapolis…I had a business partner situation there that wasn’t going so well so I decided to sell my portion of both restaurants. So, Amber and I called up Judd one day and said “Hey, we’re moving to Seattle…here we come!”. Ive always been interested in Italian food. I worked with a man in Minneapolis, he opened 3 restaurants that I helped him with. He was from Florence. That’s where the whole Italian thing came from. Do you have formal training or did you work your way up and in to the kitchen? A little bit of both. I went to a technical school for 2 years and a lot of it has been self taught as well. You learn basics in culinary school. I grew up in North Dakota on a farm, we always had a farm the size of a football field. Killed our own animals…did all that stuff. I’m not too into that these days…I’m happy now with the animal coming in already dead and clean. Did you always know you wanted to cook? I think so, yeah. I remember before even attending cooking school, my Mom bought me a subscription to Food & Wine…a long long time ago. I just remember paging through that and thinking that being a chef was very glamorous…I had the perception that it was almost like movie stardom. That was way before the celebrity chef thing. So you moved from Minneapolis to Seattle…did you work for anyone out here when you arrived or did you know right away that you wanted to start up another restaurant? I didn’t work for anyone, no. I had enough money from the sale of my restaurant in Minneapolis to take a year off. Amber worked at Flying Fish for a year. I tried to apply a couple times to a couple places. One time I didn’t get the job, one time I turned it down when I realized I didn’t want that yet. The chances of me taking a year off ever again probably will never happen in my life so I think it gave me a lot of time to think…to put this project together. As far as the menu goes…you spoke about being influenced by a friend in Minneapolis, is that what inspired you to make Enotria Italian? Yeah. When you go to cooking school you learn French techniques and you learn about the way things are done in France. I did all that and right out of cooking school I worked at a very nice French restaurant in Minneapolis and you know, I always thought French food is where its at. Then I met Georgio and he took away all the butter, he took away all the cream…he took away the reduction sauces. We were doing things that I thought were…you know, there was a lot of struggle there because I was so used to the butter and the cream, all that. But finally, I latched on and realized that olive oils make beautiful sauces and its about the freshness of the ingredients and not heavy sauces and stuff. Do you miss the French style of cooking? No, not at all. I do incorporate some of that in the entrees that have some reduction sauces with them but we don’t use veal bones to do that…we generally use vegetables, wine or basic chicken stock to do that so they’re not as rich. What would like to do outside of Enotria if anything? I have dreams for doing other things. I want to do a mozzarella and pasta bar, I want to do a gastropub…I would like to do a hundred dollar per person restaurant with about 10 seats in it. We ll stay here until we really decide what else we want to do. Have you ever done anything outside of food or the restaurant industry? When I was in high school I was an orderly at a nursing home. The nursing home came to the senior class and said “we want 3 guys”…they were looking for guys that were able to lift and I was one of the guys chosen. You know, I thought of nursing for awhile…it was either nursing or cooking. But I didn’t have the strong science background so I took the longer route. Whats your favorite part of this? I like the independence of it. I guess that’s one reason I didn’t get a job when I took the year off…I just wasn’t ready to work for someone else. Once in awhile, like in the past when the economy really sucked, we would throw around ideas as to what we would do. We both came to the conclusion that we would do whatever job was offered to us if we had to. That would not make me happy at all. Ive been independent for so long…its so hard. In Minneapolis I had a lot of success, I did restaurants fairly well. I really love to cook and I really love to feed people and those are up there. But I think being able to do the food I want to do and not have someone barking down my throat is the best part. Your least favorite? I’m not crazy about the book work but I know what has to be done. We’ve been lucky to get good people as employees for the most part. I mean, are there times employees piss you off? Yes, but as a whole not really. I would think one answer would be the long hours…but I’m used to the long hours. There is nothing I really dislike…I guess I dislike coming in when its my day off. Amber and I have our days off together and its our pride and joy. Your favorite thing on your menu? We’re doing porcini mushrooms right now which I really like. Being in Seattle, I love that we have so many things that come from the area. In Minnesota you didn’t have a lot of that…you had a lot of California produce that was shipped in. I like all the local stuff here. We’re doing a porcini dinner next Wednesday with 3 courses and some wines. We also do this thing that I’m proud of because we’ve never seen it anywhere else. The name of the cheese is called Sottocenere- its a cows milk cheese that comes from the Veneto region that has black truffle infused in it. When the cheese is room temperature there’s a hint of nutmeg. Its very old world. So we take this cheese and we wrap it in blanched leaves of chard and then essentially melt the cheese while we get the butter browned. It becomes this melty little packet…then finish it with a little truffle oil and a little Parmesan cheese. They are my original recipe…I had made them in Minneapolis and I brought them here. People that have had them really like them. I’m really proud of those. Whats most popular? We do these squash raviolis this time of year…we make those in a browned butter sauce. So its the squash pureed and it has a fair amount of nutmeg in it. Then we put it in a pasta…a ravioli…that’s really popular. We re not doing rabbit now but we’ve done rabbit with gnocchi which people really loved. We do gnocchis pretty well….we get rave reviews on them. Anything you wont put on your menu? I would never do a basic marinara or an Alfredo sauce…you know if I do something like meatballs Ill make it with rabbit or duck. This isn’t a red checkered tablecloth type restaurant you know? We try to always buy wild fish and humanely raised meats. What would you like to see change in the way that people eat? We, Amber and I, go to the gym…we re pretty health conscious. We read publications along those lines and the #1 rule to eating healthily is always- stay away from junk food. We re fans of whole food not packaged stuff. I’m an advocate of fresh- eat locally, eat fresh. We don’t have meat with every meal. Meat is an accompaniment…I think people eat too much meat. But at the same time I would never rule it out…I’m a fan of steak like most are. What do you eat at home? Last night we had this delicious rib eye steak with a double blue cheese from Denmark and caramelized cippolini onions. We have one day a week where we eat whatever. We cook…we get a box from a CSA (Full Circle Farm) and we go through that. Some nights it could be a bowl of popcorn for me, it could be a couple apples and half a jar of peanut butter…it could be some sauteed veggies from our box or it could be a steak. We re a fan of buying and roasting a whole chicken- we did that a couple nights ago. We had chestnut flour pasta a week ago which I had never tried…we made that with dinosaur kale. Do you still stick to Italian flavors for the most part when you cook at home? Well, we do these Asian soups- my father gives us these Dungeness Crabs- so we chop up the crab and make like a pho soup but without the noodles…we do that. Amber does these great tacos that are really healthy with squash, avocado’s. We experiment…we like Indian food and we make super flavorful Indian sauces. Favorite foods? I’m a huge fan of pasta and Italian food but I also really really like Thai- the spicier it is the better. We re big fans of Wild Ginger…we sit at the bar and order everything off the menu. Foods you dislike? Fast food. Food that is over processed. Don’t like cinnamon but Amber puts cinnamon in our oatmeal in the morning and I eat it but I’m not a big fan of it. I don’t really like rutabagas. You mentioned Wild Ginger as one of your favorite’s…what are other places you like to eat at in Seattle? We went to Moshi Moshi recently and were fucking blown away. Quinns, Occhio…Red Mill for a burger. We like the whole fried fish at Flying Fish…we keep talking about doing that. Oh and Paseo…we just went there the other day. Why do you choose to source locally? What inspired that? I guess there’s a lot of choices out here and I wanted to use that. Our menu reflects the changes in seasons…we use whats abundant out there and people like it. I didn’t do that when I started Enotria but Ive evolved and so has my menu as Ive become more knowledgeable. People like to know where their food comes from…me too. What would you be if you weren’t a chef? Maybe I would go to design school. I really love good design. I have an eye for it. Free time? We do lots of hiking, backpacking…back country camping. We re kind of winding down…we ll do one more little hike this coming weekend then we ll probably pretty much be done. We re taking up skiing this winter. I want to do some snow camping..I want to try it. We like to travel- love to go to Vancouver for the weekend. We go to the gym three times a week…weightlifting, cardio. That’s not exactly fun but we fell off the wagon a little bit so we re getting back into it again. Proudest achievement? Turning into something. My parents didn’t have a lot of money. They divorced when I got out of high school and they hated each other the whole time I was in high school. My dad drank too much and my mom was basically a bitch. I didn’t do great in school and I’m proud of what Ive done since then. I’m proud of my restaurants. I’m proud of the relationship I have with Amber- it’ll be seven years in January.