Eat All About It

Readers on my old Seattle P-I blog have been asking about rumors that Culinary Communion, a lightning rod for commentary in recent weeks, has shut down.

Here’s what I know:

1. Chef Tom Black, who had taught classes at the cooking school for the past seven months, said yesterday that CC owner Gabriel Claycamp told him March 10 that the business was closed. Black is now looking for a new job. That doesn’t seem to leave much room for debate.

2. I had called Claycamp March 13, though, before hearing such first-hand information, and asked him if there was anything to the rumors. He said no. I asked him to tell me more. He made a reference to the last time we spoke, when he had asked for a favor he did not receive, and said he would therefore not talk to me. Then he repeated that it was not true that CC had shut down. Then he hung up. (Claycamp had, politely, asked for P-I staff to remove or shut down comments on the heated thread on his Swinery business. The P-I declined, though the New Media staff did remove posts that violated the paper’s terms of service.)

3. A lawsuit was filed in King County Superior Court March 9 against Culinary Communion/The Swinery, suing the business for breach of contract. In the complaint, Complete Restaurant Repair, a Kent-based business, claimed that its final invoice for improvements to The Swinery space was unpaid, and asked the court to foreclose on the property to pay its $3,588.66 bill.

4. Culinary Communion’s web site is still up, and is still advertising “Chef Tom Black’s Restaurant School.” The calendar still lists a full roster of classes, including some naming Black as the instructor. If you try to sign up, though, every individual class on the March and April calendars is listed as full, with no available seats. CC’s new restaurant venture, Lunch Counter, is still listed as opening April 1. (The lunch-time restaurant already had a “soft opening,” for a few days a week, earlier this month.)

Now you know what I know. I’ll update if there’s more.

Starting on Thursday, March 19, I’ll be blogging here with my usual mix of food news, interviews, and recipes. If you’d like to reach me in the meantime, please e-mail me or drop me a line. 

And, if you were just coming for my mom’s brownies, I don’t think she’d mind me sharing them here. I believe she originally found the recipe in a fund-raising cookbook from Delaware, my home state:

Mom’s Senate Brownies
2 sticks butter
4 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1 1/2 cups walnuts
6 ounces chocolate chips

Melt butter and chocolate in saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat.

Stir in sugar until combined.

Add eggs, 1 at a time.

Stir in vanilla, flour, and one cup walnuts.

Spread in greased 9×13-inch baking pan

Top with 1/2 cup walnuts and chocolate chips

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.