By Diana Brement ,
JTNews Columnist
When you see “The Music Man” at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater (starting Feb. 7), keep your eye on 9-year-old Jasmine Harrick. The North Seattle resident plays Gracie Shinn in her first professional stage production. Getting the part first involved an open audition with 400 other kids, plus two callbacks, a process that took so long she was sure she wouldn’t get the role.
“I was really surprised,” she says.
Jasmine started acting lessons when she was 5 and this is the third musical she’s appeared in. She played Pepper in “Annie” in drama school Broadway Bound’s production last year, and this past summer her whole family — mom Deb, dad Tod, and sister Eliana — were in Kitsap Forest Theater’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Jasmine’s favorite parts of “Music Man” so far are the dances for “Shapoopie” and “76 Trombones,” and her favorite song is “Iowa Stubborn” (me, too!). Jas, as her family calls her, took up tap dancing this year, and in her free time she enjoys climbing “just about anything,” and, she adds, “I really love art.”
As a homeschooled student, Jasmine has an easier time fitting her schoolwork into the demanding rehearsal schedule than the other kids in the production, which includes Josh Feinsilber, who was featured in this column in November.
The Harricks are members of Temple Beth Am, but as Deb teaches at Kadima, the sisters go to religion school there.
“We have a rich Jewish life in our home,” says Mom, and, no surprise, “we’re always singing.”
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Adam Gold and the object of his expertise: Turkey. (Photo: Katherine W. Kehrli)
I ended my interview with Adam Gold craving Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixin’s.
The long-time Woodinville resident and I talked turkey, specifically about Gobble, his all-turkey-all-the-time restaurant in the Woodgate Mall there. Gobble opened just in time for Thanksgiving last year, and though you can always get turkey with trimmings, Adam says it’s about more than just that holiday.
“For those who aren’t into [Thanksgiving], we’re doing a whole Italian thing,” he told me the week we spoke. “Yesterday we did a turkey cacciatore,” and a turkey “osso bucco” sold out quickly.
It’s all, he says, “about the bird.” Whole Foster Farms birds, provided by Costco, are slow roasted on-site daily and are the basis of most of what is served there, which depends on the day and either Adam’s or the chef’s whim. Diners order at the counter, watch their meals prepared, then sit at communal farmhouse-style tables. Turkey sandwiches are a permanent fixture and Adam spoke glowingly of the turkey potpie made on premises, and delectable desserts, including chocolate cake, bread pudding and, of course, pumpkin pie.
Adam does like to cook — link to his YouTube cooking videos at the restaurant site www.gobblerestaurant.com — but he’s discovered that restaurant ownership is about much more than food. The day we spoke he was working on an employee manual, “86 pages of bureaucratic fun,” he says. The experience has been “an adventure and an education.”
The Southern California native moved to the Northwest about 30 years ago because he liked the seasonal weather. A former marketing executive, he worked in the television industry on production and market research and “spent a lot of time on airplanes.” After working for the Food Network, “I got tired of telling people what to cook and tried to do it myself,” he says, and gave catering a shot.
“People would say, “˜You ought to open a restaurant,'” so he did.
When he’s not working at “the store,” he does enjoy cooking for family and friends, and spending time with his kids, ages 20, 16 and 13. And no, they don’t work at the restaurant.
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At Congregation Beth Shalom a few weeks ago I found myself talking to two people about whom I had made errors in this column. The first has already been corrected on the contents page of a previous issue, but winemaker Stan Zeitz pointed out that I’d made him a World War II, rather than a Vietnam War, veteran. “I’m not that old!” he said. And I meant no slight to his wife, Nancy, and his daughter, Deb Lawson, or any other friends or family members, all of whom spend many hours helping when the grapes come in!