edible seattle | Spring 2025 23 Tsukasaki offers guests a variety of chinmi, which translates to “rare tastes.” Among this chinmi at LTD Edition are sea cucumber innards, fermented squid, salt-cured bonito organs, monkfish liver and cod milt. “We want our customers to enjoy these items so we go to great efforts to make them appetizing, and people are happily eating these dishes,” says Tsukasaki. Some of the curing processes take up to a year or more, all of which are done in-house. “We would love to start making these chinmi with Puget Sound fish, but it is difficult to find a consistent supply.” A connection to tradition Victor Steinbrueck, owner of Local Tide in Fremont, has found a way to make use of an often discarded ingredient found inside the plentiful local favorite, Dungeness crab. Within the carapace of a crab is a deposit of sweet, rich crab-flavored goodness, also known as tomalley, or crab fat. It is, in fact, a digestive organ called the hepatopancreas and functions, as the name suggests, as the crab’s liver and pancreas, and is considered a delicacy. “It’s the essence of the crab,” says Steinbrueck. “We make it into the mayo for the crab roll, we do a crab fat curry, crab fat butter. It’s a real umami blast and full of flavor.” When Steinbrueck opened Local Tide, he wanted to present something that was true to the Pacific Northwest. Growing up in Seattle he often went to Uwajimaya or Lam’s Seafood to buy crab to eat with his family. “My grandma, her favorite part of the crab was the crab butter. So when I started the Local Tide, we wanted to bring in live crabs and crack it ourselves and offer a true, fresh-cooked and cracked crab,” says Steinbrueck. “We ended up with all this crab butter, and I was like, damn, my grandma would be so happy, you know? And I love it, too.” If memory and nostalgia are the basis for many of our food habits and preferences, it would seem that integrating offal into an uninitiated adult’s diet would be a tall order. However, that is precisely what sister and brother team Trinh and Thai Nyugen are trying to do at Ramie, a Vietnamese restaurant that opened in Capitol Hill in summer 2024. “I had a recent conversation with [our] sister about how she and her friends who are in their early 20s have always wanted to try balut or hột vịt lộn,” says Trinh Nyugen. Balut is a fertilized duck egg embryo that is eaten whole, and is considered a culturally significant food, particularly in Vietnam and the Philippines. “But they’re terrified of it. The idea of eating a 17-day-old embryo egg or a fertilized egg is scary because you can see the beak, you can see the [down] and you can see everything in it. They didn’t grow up with it, but they’re curious.” In response, Nyugen crafted a dish that could help ease the younger generation into eating this traditional food. Instead of an embryo cooked in its own broth, she makes a creamy duck egg custard and tops it with duck ragu and rau răm (Vietnamese cilantro) oil. Nyugen tested her gateway version of balut on several of her Vietnamese friends who were curious, but hesitant to eat a fertilized duck egg. An Off Alley pasty filled with pork and sweetbreads. Despite the fact that many “lesser” cuts of meat can require significantly more labor to serve compared to prime cuts, chefs are saying these items are becoming prohibitively expensive to use.
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