By Diana Brement,
JTNews Columnist
A 30th anniversary is significant enough for most things, but it’s a noteworthy, if not momentous occasion for a restaurant, and this month Karen Binder, owner of Seattle’s Madison Park Café, celebrates 30 years in business.
She and her former business partner started the café as a coffee and teahouse back in 1979 with a focus on breakfast and lunch, coffee beans and coffee-related stuff. Drawing upon her experience living in Europe for a year, Karen brought croissants and good coffee to the town at a time when — it’s hard to believe — those things were hard to find in Seattle.
Her partner had two young kids and Karen soon followed suit. “We ran the restaurant the way a mother runs a restaurant: you run car pool, open the restaurant, close the restaurant, run car pool.”
In 1999, Karen became sole owner of the café, turning it into a dinner house, drawing of course on her love of all things French to create a bistro menu of traditional and non-traditional items (plus weekend brunches).
She’s best known in the Jewish community for her catering. The time we spoke was sandwiched between a planning meeting for the Federation’s spring Lions of Judah luncheon, and a full day of cooking for the Seattle Jewish Community School gala.
She has been catering long enough to have couples whose weddings she catered come back for their kids’ B’nai Mitzvah kiddush luncheons, and kids whose kiddushim she catered come to her for their weddings.
“It’s been a very big, encompassing, life-passage experience in terms of the Jewish community,” she notes.
Karen’s own kids, Sarah and Jake, grew up at the café, learning early on to “make a great latte.” Sarah lives in Hawaii and is a teacher and Jake is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, but they still come in and work when they’re home.
Wine is the main focus of Karen’s attention now. She writes a food and wine column for the Madison Park Times and sells wine at the restaurant, too.
“It’s still a hands-on business,” she says while admitting that she’s not good at delegating and that “schlepping cartons of wine and eggplant around is not for a 63-year-old.”
The café is celebrating their anniversary with a weeknight prix fixe dinner for $30 through April, at least. Karen would love to see you, so give a call at 206-324-2626. Chances are she’ll be answering the phone.
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I am certain, dear readers, that you can hum. And many of you can whistle. But Keith Cohon can whistle and hum at the same time.
Okay, you say. You can squeak out a whistle while making a humming sound in your throat, but can you whistle one part of “Three Blind Mice” while your throat does the second part in a round? How about two parts of a Bach Invention? Then Keith wins.
Keith developed this skill around age 12, walking to and from junior high school in the Lakewood neighborhood of Tacoma.
“The really cool kid in my class” could whistle and hum one note, Keith says, “and I said, “˜I want to be like Pete.'”
Once he’d mastered that, he managed different notes. Then, he says, “I wondered if I could hold one as a drone and do a melody with the other.” He tried parallel thirds, then harmony, and then a round, accomplishing each goal.
Keith already had a pretty solid music education with a piano teacher mother, a violinist brother, music theory classes and music camps. Also, “I was on my fourth instrument…. I wasn’t a prodigy,” he explains, “I was more of a quitter.”
He’d played piano, cello and violin when his 7th-grade band teacher inspired him to take up French horn. He made rapid progress, which “overcame my natural inclination to quit,” he says.
He played through college at Princeton and law school at Harvard, taking time before and after law school to play professionally.
Ultimately, he chose the law. He’s been working for the Environmental Protection Agency for 18 years in water enforcement, recently switching his focus to Native American tribal law.
Moving from New Jersey to Tacoma at age 5, he lived in Lakewood until the 11th grade, when the family moved back to New Jersey. He’d always considered the Seattle area his home, however, and returned here to work during summers and upon finishing school.
Not ready to be done with music, Keith took up viola at age 25, dutifully playing at his teacher’s student recital, sandwiched between a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old.
“I was probably the most nervous I’d been in my whole life,” he says. He continues to play with friends and family (his wife, Yumi Hiraga, and daughters Maya and Hana, are all accomplished musicians) and recently joined the Northwest Symphony Orchestra. Ever modest, he insists, “my best skill by far is the whistling and humming.” He’s happy to demonstrate if you meet him, but says it’s difficult as it usually results in smiles and laughter.
“Whistling is a delicate proposition when you’re laughing.”