Flour Restaurant Heads West to Host New Pop-Up Series at Spotted Owl

Some pairings – say, spaghetti and meatballs – make perfect sense. Others – say, Flour Restaurant and Spotted Owl bar – don’t. But that’s precisely why Flour chef-partner Matt Mytro decided to reach out to Spotted Owl owner Will Hollingsworth to cultivate a new partnership.

Beginning January 19th and 20th, and each Tuesday and Wednesday thereafter for the foreseeable future, the Spotted Owl will host Flour pop-ups from 5 - 8 p.m.

“I saw that Will was doing these pop-ups at Spotted Owl and thought it was fucking genius,” Mytro says. “We’re in such a specific area, with a very specific clientele, so sometimes it seems like people on the west side have a hard time getting out here. I thought that this could be a really good opportunity to be a little bit closer to some of those people, but also an opportunity to be a little more creative.”

Given the unconventional setting, Mytro says the plan is to keep things pretty simple, offering a concise menu of four pasta dishes. Each will be small and affordable ($4 to $8) so diners can try more than one.

“The plan is to not go overboard with options, but just make sure that each one of them is awesome,” he says. “Just something fun and different.”

Along those lines only one of the starting four pastas will be pulled from the Flour menu: the popular Peas & Carrots, ricotta agnolotti with truffle and mint. The other three will stretch the creative envelope of the chef’s Italian repertoire.

The Nori Bucatini, for example, features a toasted seaweed-infused pasta with mussels, nori butter and a shaving of grated cured, smoked and dried scallop. Cacio e Peppe is a marriage of black pepper spaghetti, Ritz Cracker and brodo. The most straightforward dish is the fusilli with tomato sauce, Sicilian Pecorino and crispy parsley.

“This isn’t meant to be fancy; we’ll be serving these in disposable bamboo platters,” says the chef.

The plan, adds Mytro, is host these “for as long as we feel like it.”

“There’s no set formula for this so we’ll just let it evolve,” he notes. “If something isn’t working we’ll change it.”

Hollingsworth will curate a beverage program geared to the dishes.

No reservations are needed as these events are first come, first served. 





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Douglas Trattner

For 20 years, Douglas Trattner has worked as a full-time freelance writer, editor and author. His work on Michael Symon's "Carnivore," "5 in 5" and “Fix it With Food” have earned him three New York Times Best-Selling Author honors, while his longstanding role as Scene dining editor garnered the award of “Best...
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