It's been two months already since my husband and I returned from our three-week adventure in and around Italy. Geez Louise, time flies. The very quick overview is: four days in Rome, train to Venice where we spent one night before boarding our cruise ship. Onboard 10 days, with port stops that included Messina (Sicily); Civitavecchia (near Rome), Livorno (Tuscany); Monte Carlo; Ajaccio (Corsica); Naples; and Dubrovnik (Croatia), then three days back in Venice before flying home. There is no way I can do justice to all the things we did-saw-tasted-experienced on the trip, so won't even try. I think I'll just pepper this and upcoming newsletters with random highlights.

I'd last been to Venice as a poor college student, traveling on a cash-only budget (imagine, no plastic!) the summer before my senior year. My girlfriend and I had an amazing travel experience, splurging on museum visits rather than dining and drinking. This trip, however, I was determined to make up for it. And that included a pilgrimage to a bar I've heard about for so many years: Harry's Bar.

This one-time watering hole for the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Charlie Chaplin, ex-pats and artists, is perfectly preserved in a delightful time warp. I just ate the place up. The name is very subtly engraved in the glass of its door (which you can barely make out in the photo here), and if you squint your eyes and try to edit out the tourists, it's easy to feel that the soul of this place is very much intact. Not preserved in some awkward state of commercialism simply banking on its history.

One thing I'd determined before even walking through the doors was that I would not be one of the hundreds of customers that week (or day) ordering their famous Bellini cocktail, made with prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) and white peach purée. I just had to be a renegade and instead ordered one of my top-5 favorites, the negroni. Not a martini glass in this place, this and most cocktails come in a sort of mini highball glass; a cocktail served "up" comes in a smaller squat glass, as I found on a return visit at the end of our trip.

Harry's is a unique slice of cocktail culture that I'm most happy to have sampled for myself, at long last. I recommend a visit when life takes you to Venice. Have a negroni for me if you go.

Wild salmon season is in full swing, as you've surely noticed. Break out the wood chips for the grill and chill some good Washington rosé wine--it's time to dine in luxe Northwest style.

I got a particularly abundant dose of salmon early in the season this year. You surely have tasted the long-trumpeted Copper River salmon before. With a fishery that opens typically mid-May, this salmon is celebrated both as the harbinger of salmon season and one of the richest and most deeply flavored salmon available. It's possible, too, that you've heard about, maybe even tasted, the more recent salmon darling: Yukon River salmon. This river, farther north in Alaska than the Copper, and much longer (2000 miles, versus Copper's roughly 300 miles), produces robust, big, fatty salmon that may start giving Copper River fish a run for their money. Jon Rowley, who was instrumental in creating the Copper River mystique, is now helping spread the good word about Yukon River salmon, and put together a little side-by-side sampling last month. (The photo here is from my 2004 trip to the Yukon River, these freshly caught and filleted king salmon drying for a bit before being smoked.)

I don't encourage thinking of Copper vs Yukon as some sort of salmon smack-down. Since the seasons overlap by just a matter of days (Yukon starts around mid June), they aren't in direct "competition." It just means we're lucky enough to enjoy an extended season of big, rich, supremely delicious salmon early in the summer. During that blind tasting, I kept going back and forth between the two samples, from one unctuous, flavor-packed bite to the next, fickle in my preference for whichever fish I'd just tasted, until I went back to the other piece. Omega-3 overload, but such a problem to have! Maybe you can swing your own side-by-side comparison next year and see if you have a more determined preference than I did.

I was early getting to a Capitol Hill lunch event early last month and had some time to kill in the Pike/Pine/12th Avenue corridor. The landscape's changing up there so much, with new construction, new storefronts, new condos, new - yes - restaurants. We'd already fallen for the lovely new Osteria la Spiga that opened on 12th late last year, just a couple blocks north of where Lark started the trend a few years back. Since then, the growth pace has quickened, adding to existing favorites in the area, such as 1200 Bistro and Via Tribunali (you'll read about my visit to the original Via Tribunali, the street of pizza dreams in Naples, next issue). This is getting to be a neighborhood ripe for free-style progressive dining, a fun option on those indecisive evenings.

While loitering in the neighborhood that day, after visiting with Café Vita pals in front of their shop, I saw the now-vacant corner spot next door that had been home to a Mexican joint (one of no particular note). I got a nagging feeling that I was supposed to know what was going in there; later that day Scott Staples reminded me it's his baby now. The chef-owner of Restaurant Zoë in Belltown will be opening Quinn's Tap there this fall; mid-October is the goal. His "upscale pub" will offer a gamut of beer-lovers' options on tap, from local craft ales to PBR. As for the menu, count on meat-driven selections, with great burgers, "braised animal of the week" (as Scott described it) and other carnivore delights. Yes, some seafood and vegetables as well! He'll also have a sausage program, making his own from rabbit, pork, lamb, venison in the fall, I guess whatever four-legged creature he thinks will translate deliciously to a sausage casing. A recent newsletter from Zoë said Scott plans to start a Quinn blog on the Zoë site soon.

Just opened a couple of weeks ago is Café Presse, the latest from duo Jim Drohman and Joanne Herron, owners of the little-trip-to-France Le Pichet downtown. The new bar-café-news seller has dozens of magazines and newspapers for sale at the front, where Seattle U students and other passers-by can drop in for a better than average to-go latte or coffee. On the food side, it's a bit more sidewalk-café than Le Pichet, with an all-day menu that includes a range from yogurt with honey and croque monsieur to steak tartare and fish of the day "à la meunière." I haven't had a complete Café Presse experience yet, just a glass or two of wonderful chilled rosé at the opening, but will be back soon to tuck into the Parisian fare.

If you're in the neighborhood of the Pike Place Market this Saturday, July 21, swing in to The Tasting Room between 1:00 and 4:00 for a visit. I'll be signing books from my Northwest Homegrown Cookbook Series, and plan to have samples for you to nibble as well (hope to have enough to last all three hours!).

The third annual Incredible Feast is around the corner as well, Sunday August 26, 4:00 to 7:00 pm. You may want to get your tickets ($50 adults/$10 kids) before it's too late-it was a sell-out last year. This delicious event is put on by the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance (on whose board I serve) and net proceeds this year are due to go to establishing a new farmer relief fund for local farmers who experience crop loss due to weather, flooding and other hardships. You can purchase online or at the NFMA markets (including University District, Columbia City and West Seattle).

I had hoped to get this out in time for Father's Day, but that just didn't happen. Still, I'm happy to share this simple, wonderful salmon recipe with you, in the beloved memory of my dear father.

You'll see mentioned in the introduction to the recipe (linked below) that this dish "wowed" out of town guests. One of those guests was a French friend, Anne-Marie Choplain who was the host/coordinator/den mother/travel advisor for my study abroad program in Dijon oh so many years ago. On one of her visits to the Northwest, we had dinner at my father's house and he made this signature recipe. Anne-Marie was ga-ga over the salmon that evening, absolutely buzzing with delight at how glorious the flavor was in such a simple preparation. And many times over the years since, she's reminded me about that night, that meal, that moment in time that's captured in a wonderful box of memories that are brought to life by the food that we share.

Well, not "walk" exactly, more like "walk for hours on end and acquire a taste for Gatorade," that's more like it. I'm deep into training for the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk early September, when I'll be walking--along with about 3000 others--60 miles in three days. After my first 8-mile training walk back in March, we've slowly crept up to the 15-plus mile mark. I may moan like a wounded animal (to myself as much as possible) when we work through the post-walk stretching, but ultimately each long walk comes with a great feeling of accomplishment.

The training's great for practical reasons, physically preparing for the rigors of the 3-Day, breaking in the shoes and socks and old muscles. But the side benefits almost outweigh that. The camaraderie shared with dozens of great women itself is outstanding, and so is taking in my hometown at a 3-miles-per-hour pace, exploring side streets, parks, neighborhoods I otherwise wouldn't. We literally stop and smell the roses in sidewalk gardens, at Woodland Park's now-bursting rose garden, in vacant lots with wild creepers. This shot is from a particularly scenic walk a few weeks back that took us from Gas Works Park, up and over Queen Anne hill (the photo's in Kerry Park), to the Olympic Sculpture Garden, downtown library, Freeway Park, around the east side of Lake Union back to Gas Works. I'm tired again just thinking about it, but what a glorious day!

Each of us walkers is expected to raise at least $2,200, proceeds benefiting Susan G. Koman For the Cure and National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund. Many thanks to those of you who have already donated, I so appreciate the support and am near my $2,200 goal (though I'm secretly hoping to make it to $3,000). You can link to my fundraising site here.