
John Howie’s scallop dish can value $56 or $24—the latter provided that you will get in.
On the bottom ground of a suburban workplace constructing, I ate a wonderfully cooked scallop; the tantalizing caramel coat giving solution to just-opaque insides, tender, creamy, and tasting of the ocean. Scallops are notoriously troublesome to arrange, susceptible to overcooking earlier than they develop that crisp exterior. To search out one this good, right here of all locations, took me unexpectedly.
The flash-seared shellfish got here floating on velvety beurre blanc, beneath a tangle of thinly sliced frizzled onions, and with segments of jewel-toned citrus brightening the plate. The same dish at chef John Howie’s Seastar Restaurant, 12 minutes away, runs $56. Howie is the chef at In.gredients, too, however there, I paid $24, and that included an appetizer and a flourless espresso chocolate cake to complete. With a deal like this, the restaurant must be mobbed. It isn’t, as a result of it could actually’t be: In.gredients is a sit-down restaurant hidden inside Microsoft’s Redmond campus. The one solution to eat there’s to be an worker or the visitor of 1.
I walked by means of the traditional cafeteria in Constructing 34, a normal tech firm canteen, that includes the generic plainness inherent in these areas. Stepping throughout the edge of In.gredients demonstrated the ability of decor on our brains: The smooth, dim lighting immediately relaxed me. Bronze pots and pans held on the wall. The one actual ornament within the in any other case minimalist area, they weirdly signaled to my mind that actual cooking was taking place right here. One step and the hubbub of every day life echoing off metallic chairs in a cavernous room pale out, changed by the calm tones of a server asking if I had a reservation and escorting me to a cushioned nook sales space.

Chef John Howie is the person behind the menu at In.gredients.
The restaurant opened in 2014, a part of an effort to spice up worker retention on the software program firm. An government contacted Howie with the thought: a rotating seasonal menu that’s all about offering folks with nice components. From the start, the chef was given free rein to do what he wished, so long as it didn’t require a wood-burning oven. (Open fires and workplace buildings, apparently, don’t play properly collectively.)
My starter, the Indian vegetable truffles, was like samosa filling fried into patties. The opposite possibility was a citrus ceviche that appeared too just like the scallops. Every menu has two appetizers, 5 entrées, and two ending programs (one candy, one savory), at all times with vegetarian or vegan choices for every course. These choices change fully each six weeks. The faux-meat Inconceivable Wellington was one of many early vegetarian hits. In spring, the chef brings in Copper River salmon. Upscale consolation meals performs nicely to the group: halibut fish and chips and Wagyu beef sliders.
Regardless of prospers just like the steak knife arriving by itself tray, no one would mistake this for a high-end restaurant; once I go away, I wander down a hallway the place workplace doorways open to messy desks and whiteboards filled with notes.
Microsoft notably by no means jumped on the free-lunch pattern bandied about as an worker perk by tech firms, at the same time as Google’s elaborate spreads made headlines. Microsoft has at all times been rather less snazzy, rather less flashy about advantages than the later technology of tech firms. And it’s unlikely anybody takes In.gredients into consideration when weighing profession choices, however a restaurant like this does make campus life just a little extra nice for many who patronize it.
Teams of coworkers are available to have fun the top of a venture, managers tout it as a perk to recruits or deliver new hires on their first day. Workers deliver their households in to point out off their workplace. The restaurant nerdily plods together with extra PowerPoint-style utility than latest-iPhone pleasure, doing one thing fairly spectacular all of the whereas: serving a three-course meal that prices lower than two days of rush-hour commutes over the 520 bridge.
A meal at In.gredients is the perfect eating deal on the Eastside—if you will get in. No, there’s no well-dressed-but-snooty younger hostess manning an epic waitlist. However there are a pair of directors working a couple of computer systems on the entrance to Constructing 34 who have to know which worker is signing you in at the moment to allow them to print you a visitor go.