Marrow

Last Friday Carrie & I went out to dinner at the brand-new restaurant that opened up on 6th Avenue here in Tacoma: Marrow.

It’s a genre of food that hasn’t really existed in Tacoma before: haute cuisine. But, you know, really good. And not expensive; the priciest thing on the menu is $23 duck (we didn’t have that).

Here’s the premise: the menu has two halves, “Arrow” (which has only vegetarian dishes) and “Marrow” (which has meat-based dishes specializing in “under-appreciated” meats). You’re free to mix-and-match between them, of course. But Carrie & I ended up ordering exclusively from the Marrow side just ’cause it looked so durned good to us.

Here’s what all we had:

DAUPHINE POTATO DOUGHNUTS, BACON BEER DIP

Mashed potatoes that had been piped(!) into a ring, then deep-fried, served piping hot with a creamy sauce. So frikkin’ good.

SOUP OF THE DAY: BROCCOLI

Shockingly light and flavorful, with a good amount of spicy heat, but too heavy on salt for me.

ESCARGOT, BACON, BASIL BUTTER, POTATO BREAD

Pre-shelled snails languishing in a bowl of basil/garlic butter with enormous and thick chunks of bacon in it. Wow. Tender and delicious. The bread helps to sop up the juice.

BONE MARROW, OXTAIL, POTATO BREAD

I’d never had a bone marrow dish before. It’s basically meat butter; you spread it on the bread and eat it. I’m not usually a fan of meat fat, but this was much creamier than that squeaky & wobbly texture that tends to upset me. It was also nicely seasoned. The oxtail, though, was probably my favorite thing of the evening. It had been braised in something delicious and was ungodly juicy and tender.

We also had some cocktails, all of which are named after women. I don’t remember what mine were named, but one of them had ginger vodka and lime and coconut and something else tropical I can’t remember. The other one had rye bourbon and candied ginger on a skewer and some other things that were a little overpowered by the very good bourbon. Carrie had one that had tequila and blood orange juice, and I don’t remember her second one. But they were all very good.

So, in conclusion: Is good.

It’s interesting to have a place like this in Tacoma. It’s not that Tacoma has crappy food. In fact it has some of the best restaurants, but they all specialize in standard genre fare; we have the best hot dog restaurant, the best Indian restaurant, the best sandwiches and deli sammitches, the best tavern. And though we do have some fancier restaurants, none of them really do the unusual foods that are Marrow’s bread-and-butter.

Photo ripped from Marrow's Facebook page, used without permission (shhhh—don't tell)