Chow Drinks on the Veranda at Culinary Communion
posted by on May 5 at 11:37 AM
Culinary Communion has found two ways around the recent Washington State Liquor Control Board crackdown on serving wine during classes at the Beacon Hill culinary school. According to an email from Culinary Communion, “private classes”—that is, classes paid for by an individual or group that are not on the regular Culinary Communion schedule—are able to legally drink their chardonnay by way of obtaining a banquet permit. Secondly:
…because C.C. House is a mixed-use building, with residential upstairs, common areas are not considered (by the city, according to the architectural plans and the lease) part of Culinary Communion’s property. “Common areas” include our beautiful front patio, which is shared by all portions of the building, including Gabriel and Heidi’s upstairs apartment. So, two plus two equals friends having wine on the patio this summer, and since you’re all our friends, that works out, doesn’t it? (BYOB, but better than nothing!) Look for new patio furniture ASAP!
Meanwhile, Culinary Communion is applying for a beer/wine specialty shop liquor license, as well as “making changes which will allow us to be fully licensed as a regular restaurant” (which involves specific commercial-grade kitchen equipment and meeting various other restaurant license requirements). These are the only two legal options currently available to cooking schools that wish to serve wine in Washington state; Culinary Communion’s also working to create a new category of liquor license for culinary and wine educators.
Bizarrely, state law not only prohibits drinking alcohol during culinary courses, it requires written approval to cook with alcohol during such courses—because nothing’s a greater threat to society than young urban professionals deglazing pans with red wine or making bread pudding with whiskey sauce at a cooking class (except doing so with a glass of wine in their hand).
Nothing further’s been heard from Gypsy, the highly publicized “underground” (and unlicensed) restaurant that Gabriel Claycamp, Culinary Communion co-founder/chef, has been admittedly involved in. Gyspy sent out an email in the wake of the Culinary Communion/Liquor Control Board contretemps saying they were going “deeper underground.” Some in the local food/restaurant community opine that Gypsy was only nominally underground anyway, what with having a website and garnering local and national media coverage, and that it was surprising Gypsy/Claycamp had gone several years without a hand-slap or more serious legal trouble.
From Gypsy’s (still live) website: “Imagine a world without rules, a room without walls, creativity without impediment: Gypsy.” Here’s Claycamp in the Gypsy “Rogue’s Gallery.”
The Stranger should start lobbying in Olympia. Y'all seem very passionate about the bizarre and outdated liquor laws of Washington State. They make no sense to me either. Let's lobby Olympia together.
I fondly remember legally drinking alcohol on Crown Land during military ops when they gave us 18 yo soldiers our required rum rations in the Canadian Army.
Silly Americans ...
Remember people: friends don't let friends drink and - um, eat.
I remember trying to explain to my English language students in Prague that in America it is illegal to drink a beer in the park. They had a hard time getting their minds around that one, with America being the land of the free and all. I'm not sure if how I'd even find the words to explain the idiocy behind these rules on cooking class drinking.
@3 - well, if you ate, you might throw it up, so that kind of makes sense.
Back in my tender years (which coincided with the rise of Reaganism) the drinking age was 19 in Iowa (when my sister was young, it was 18).
Thus, youth got all their binge drinking out of the way early on, and learned how to handle their booze. It was also no big deal for an underage person to be in a bar, as long as there was a fairly coherent adult around who was willing to take responsibility for them. Thus, the "mystique" of drinking was considerably lessened.
Compare that to Washington, where it was only recently that bars were allowed to have things like windows and accompanied minors, and private cooking schools get shut down for emulating Julia Childs.
It was also during my long-lost youth that the Iowa state run liquor stores went the way of the dial telephone, and the grocery stores took over the selling of booze - with much more efficiency, and no noticeable increase in either drunk driving or alcoholism.
And this is Iowa I'm talking about - nominally a red state, nominally in the "Bible belt".
Why we can't get rid of that moronic collection of Barney Fifes that we call the WSLCB is beyond me. Let the police do the policing, and let the groceries do the selling. If we want to throw a bone to the unions (who are one of the main opponents of privatizing the liquor sales) then make it so only the big unionized chains can get contracts to sell liquor.
But suggest this to any politician, from "far left" to "far right" and you would think I was suggesting state-sponsored Bible burnings to be held every Christmas Eve.
This is a very weird place.
There's probably still archaic laws from prohibition, is my guess. According to my grandparents - servers were not to allow any patron carrying their beverage in an establishment until the 70's. I'm sure enough business owners complained and they did something finally.
Unfortunately, most bar and resteraunt owners today have enough to deal with (ie - Nickel's own booze-sting operations) so this case is likely not to be something they'd fight for.
What I'd be curious to know however is who complains about this stuff and how does the WSLCB vet for cranks or neighboring business looking to sink the competition?
The Washington State Liquor Board is one of those old saws left over from a different time which cannot rightly be altered, changed, or modified to fit the needs and desires of its owners.....us! It needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up reflecting not its own interests, but the interests of and the purposes purposed by the citizens of Washington State.
Unfortunately, the Stranger only tilts at transportation-related windmills, nowadays.
@7: it's much worse than that. To buy liquor in this state, you used to have to go to a state-run store AND ASK A CLERK FOR IT. No browsing, no open shelves at all. If you didn't know the name of a brand, you couldn't have it. The only bottles on display were on a shelf behind the counter, a very limited selection (usually just one brand of gin, one brand of bourbon, etc.) Needless to say, there was a great deal of corruption, as distributors would pay bribes to get their brand on that shelf.
Seattle also used to be a town of (beer-only) taverns, as hard liquor sales were restricted to a handful of downtown restaurants, usually ones with great political connections (like the various Rossellini's). And this wasn't any microbrew or import shit, either; it was Oly, Rainier, and Bud in schooners (10-ounce glasses). Whatever happened to schooners? Does anybody sell beer in them anymore?
Not only were cocktails scarce, the WSLCB used to "protect" Washington wine producers - you couldn't easily get non-Washington wines, even most restaurants didn't carry them - so we had some really shitty, expensive wines in this state.
WSLCB officers, in cahoots with the SPD, used to shake down tavern owners - especially minority and gay bar owners. That's one of the reasons why the GSBA was founded.
If Eyeman really were concerned about fiscal responsibility, he'd have filed an initiative against them long ago.
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).