If you like to eat and if you are visiting Seattle, there is one book you must have. It is called "Seattle Cheap Eats," edited by Kathryn Robinson. It includes everything you need to know to relish Seattle, except for the city's outstanding expensive restaurants, which are listed in any ordinary guidebook. "Seattle Cheap Eats" is filled with treasures that tourists (and, we dare say, many Seattleites) might not otherwise discover: neighborhood coffee shops, oyster bars, noodle parlors, fish 'n' chips joints, ethnic feasts of every persuasion, colossal burgers, crumpets and scones, for gosh sakes, and the best turkey sandwich in the West - at Bakeman's.
Unless someone clued you in, you wouldn't likely stop at Bakeman's, down a half-flight of stairs on Cherry Street. Once you're inside, nothing you see immediately reveals the culinary pleasures that await. There is a bar on one side of the restaurant, separated by a bamboo curtain from a short cafeteria line. The tables in the restaurant are worn wood. Many customers sit around between mealtimes drinking - but not liquor. The drinks of choice at Bakeman's are the Seattle favorites: espresso, caffee latte, cappuccino.The choices in the cafeteria line are minimal. There are different soups each day: turkey noodle, beef vegetable or, on one memorable occasion, Chinese eggflower soup, a kind of egg-drop variant made with cucumbers and mushrooms. There are Waldorf and potato salads and such, but they aren't very interesting. Nor is dessert a thrill: chocolate or lemon poppy seed cake, sliced like bread, or fruit pies. It's the sandwiches that make Bakeman's great.
Turkey or meat loaf on white or whole wheat: Here is sandwich perfection. The bread is homemade, stacked up at one end of the cafeteria line. It isn't spectacular bread on its own, not like some elegant French baguette. It is bread for sandwiches: tender and simple slices that come to life when spread with mayo and/or mustard and/or cranberry and/or shredded lettuce, then heaped with turkey or slabs of meat loaf.
If meat loaf is your dish, we recommend it on whole wheat with ketchup and shredded lettuce. The meat is tightly packed but tender, gently spiced and with a dizzyingly delicious aroma. As for turkey, get it any way you like; because this is superb, REAL, carved-from-the-bird turkey with subtle, homey flavor. The dark meat is lush; the white meat is moist and aromatic; either variety has an occasional piece of skin still attached, a nice reminder of just how real it is. The way we like it is, in the words of the countermen who hustle things along at breakneck pace, "white on white" (white meat turkey on white bread), with mayonnaise, shredded lettuce and an order of cranberry relish. Turkey sandwiches get no better than this!
To make such sandwiches at home, you will need good, fresh white sandwich bread. Shred some lettuce, and make (or buy) cranberry relish if you wish. The only thing left to do is roast a turkey breast. Breasts are not only quicker than a whole bird; they're wonderful for families who, like us, are all white meat fans.
Now available! Nearly 200 of the most-requested recipes from this column, all in one book, "A Taste of America." It includes Jane and Michael Stern's favorite restaurants, as well as photos from their coast-to-coast eating adventures. Available in paperback, it can be ordered by sending $9.95 plus $1 for postage and handling to Taste of America, in care of the Deseret News, P.O. Box 419150, Kansas City, MO 64141.