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Resurrecting A Recipe

A favorite joint is gone, but one beloved dish lives on

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BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Enchiladas in the manner of the much-mourned Barbacoa restaurant are a sensuous blend of chilies, cheese, beans and chicken.

THE SAD FACT is, every restaurant you love will probably die before you do.

Five years after the fact, I still mourn Ezo, my neighborhood ramen shop where I did my first ever review for The Seattle Times. I can still taste the sweet and salty gyoza sauce.

This year's casualties include Red Line (pizza and sandwiches) on Capitol Hill and Mandalay Cafe (pan-Asian curry house) in Wallingford.

Then there was Barbacoa on Queen Anne Hill. Barbacoa was a tiny, Tex-Mex joint serving brisket, chiles rellenos, key lime pie in a crock and strong cocktails. It also had the best enchiladas in town, a Sonoran-style stack of tortillas with tomatillo-green chile sauce, smoked chicken, lots of cheese and a layer of beans hiding beneath it all. The space was taken over by Portage, a French restaurant that does not, to my knowledge, serve enchiladas.

When Barbacoa closed, I sank into a margarita-addled stupor for weeks, or at least several hours. Why hadn't I gone in for enchiladas more often? Oh, tangy green delights, why did I take you for granted?

Then I sobered up and sent an e-mail to Bob Colegrove, former Barbacoa co-owner, and asked him for the enchilada recipe. He was happy to oblige. Sort of.

See, when you ask a chef for a recipe, you can't expect something with carefully measured ingredients. Chefs speak in shorthand. In fact, Colegrove — now a food buyer for the culinary school at the Art Institute of Seattle — communicated the entire recipe in a couple dozen words. Most of these were devoted to explaining that I could not possibly re-create his "borracho beans" because they have too many ingredients and have to be made in an enormous quantity.

I smelled a challenge. So with the help of recipes from Rick Bayless and Robb Walsh, I created enchiladas that may not be exactly like Barbacoa's, but are the closest you'll get on this earthly plane.

Matthew Amster-Burton is a Seattle freelance writer. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at studio@barrywongphoto.com.