Some restaurants drop spinach dishes from their menus

Spinach tortas, salads, calzones and pasta are disappearing from menus around the region as restaurants try to steer clear of a growing E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that had sickened 131 people in 21 states as of Tuesday, including two in Washington.

And the Food and Drug Administration's advisory against eating fresh raw spinach from any source has prompted some Seattle chefs to improvise in their kitchens.

Icon Grill has replaced spinach in its recipes with a blend of red chard and arugula. Serafina has swapped romaine lettuce for spinach in salads. Six Seven restaurant in The Edgewater hotel is subbing escarole and pea vines for the leafy green.

Il Fornaio replaced its baby greens salad mix with a blend of romaine lettuce, watercress, radicchio, escarole and red-leaf lettuce. Boka Kitchen is serving up New York steak with watercress rather than creamed spinach.

All say they will keep spinach off their menus until they get an all-clear from the FDA, which is investigating the outbreak that appears to have originated from farms in California.

"It's such a challenge with customer perception. They just don't want it. That's why as a company we just decided to take it off the menu until the FDA tells us it's OK," said Nick Musser, executive chef at Icon Grill.

"We even took [spinach] out of making pasta," said Alessandro Negrette, assistant general manager at Il Fornaio.

Even tossing together salads has grown trickier, as salad mixes delivered to local restaurants often include baby spinach.

One Seattle chef bought out Tolt Gardens' lettuce supply over the weekend to prepare his own salad mix, said Karen Kinney, associate director of the Farmers Market Alliance.

For cooks at home, chefs suggest substituting chard, kale or arugula in hot recipes and to braise, steam or sauté it a bit longer than fast-wilting spinach.

"Red chard tends to be a little hardier than spinach is, so you just have to braise it a little longer," said Musser. "What you end up with is a flavor profile change. Arugula is spicier. Chard is a bit more flavorful than spinach is."

Jackie DeCicco, who puts together recipes for PCC Natural Market's cooking classes, recommended red bor, green or lacinato (dinosaur) kale and Swiss chard as good substitutes.

"One of my favorite recipes for spinach is to sauté a little garlic and add spinach and let it wilt down, but it would be fantastic with Swiss chard. You just have to cook it a little bit longer," DeCicco said.

Some diehard spinach fans ignored the FDA's advisory and headed to weekend farmers markets to get their fix. Farms that happened to have fresh spinach, including Tolt Gardens, sold out and still got requests from customers, Kinney said.

Canlis, for instance, has such confidence in the local farms from which it buys its produce that spinach remains on its menu, albeit cooked. The restaurant will continue to offer spinach unless the FDA finds conclusive evidence that spinach grown in Washington state has a problem, said owner Mark Canlis.

"Our spinach comes from a couple of local farms, and to me and our chef there was absolutely no reason to take it off the menu," Canlis said. "If we didn't serve it to our own children, we certainly wouldn't serve it to our guests."

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618

or kgaudette@seattletimes.com