Out for Inlander Restaurant Week 2023: Zona Blanca

The 11th annual Inlander Restaurant Week kicked off yesterday, with more than 100 local restaurants debuting their three-course menus to diners across the Inland Northwest. This year's menus — priced at $25, $35 or $45 per meal — range from creative comfort food to decadent fine dining and everything in between. International flavors and culinary mashups are another standout trend.

Restaurant Week continues through next weekend, with the final day on Saturday, March 4.

Now, on to the food!

Last night, I checked out James Beard semifinalist Chef Chad White's Zona Blanca Ceviche Bar, a coastal Mexican-inspired eatery in the heart of downtown (157 S. Howard St.). While White's spot is known for its fresh ceviche and its oyster bar, his Restaurant Week menu ($45 per person) is actually an entirely new creative combination. None of the dishes he chose to feature have been served in this form before.

It's worth noting that this is also the eatery's first time participating in Restaurant Week. For that reason, White chose to focus on executing his three-course Restaurant Week menu, although a small selection of "greatest hits" off the regular menu are also available to add on, like oyster shooters, house guacamole and a couple ceviche dishes. The rest of the menu is on a 10-day hiatus.

I'll preface the following account with this: I've been at the Inlander since Restaurant Week started, back in 2013, and have eaten at dozens of places during the 10-day event each year since. Some meals are memorable and delightful, while others have faded from memory.

Last night's experience at Zona Blanca, while fresh in memory today, stands out as one of the best Restaurant Week meals my partner and I have ever experienced.

Each dish was full of carefully balanced flavors and ingredients. The presentation was creative and portion sizing was perfect. The courses were each distinctly different from the next, and introduced new combinations we'd never tasted before.

We started the meal with the tuna belly tartare, a heap of fresh, smoked tuna atop a perfectly crispy tostada. This appetizer showcases the careful interplay of flavor and textures — fishy, salty, spicy, crunchy, chewy, acidic — offering an explosion of sensations in the mouth with each bite.

The sopa de calabaza, meanwhile, was creamy, nutty and smoky, with sikil pak, (a slightly spicy Mayan pumpkin seed paste), black onions and house-made requesón cheese.

For one of our entrees, we ordered the cochinita pibil, smoked pulled pork with all the accoutrements: recado rojo (a spice paste from the Yucatán and Oaxaca regions), pickled onion, habanero salsa, pineapple vinegar, cilantro and warm, house-made tortillas. The dish is served in a small, lidded enamel pail. White tells us it was inspired by a recent meal he had while visiting Mérida, Mexico. Traditionally, the meat is smoked underground for hours, but for this version he prepped the meat at his Spokane Valley barbecue spot, TT's Old Iron Brewery & BBQ.

Our other entree, the farro esquites is a take on Mexican street corn, with the slightly nutty grain used in place of corn, and blended with chile, lime zest, cilantro and queso enchilado. It was packed with flavor and a careful nuance of textures from the chewy farro to the creamy, oily cheese smeared around the bowl's rim.

Finally, dessert. Of our two equally satisfying choices, the milk-soaked tres leches cake and the bunuelos, the latter was my favorite. It's essentially a Latin take on the elephant ear — a fried, flat piece of dough dusted in cinnamon and sugar, and topped with flakes of oregano-infused chocolate, powdered sugar and candied kumquats. Perfectly crunchy and sweet, with bites of lightly bitter chocolate for some balance, it'll send your tastebuds to a warm and fuzzy place.

Complementing this excellent combination of food, we sipped on a couple cocktails. The Tepache Cocktail, house-made pineapple spirits, or tepache, with rum, tequila or mezcal, was my partner's choice. He described it as the "nectar of the gods," for its clean and sweet qualities and a hint of smooth warmth. I enjoyed the Celestún Fizz, highlighted as one of Zona Blanca's Drink Local beverage pairings. Also featuring tepache, plus lime, Dry Fly Distilling's gin and foamy egg white, this sour-meets-slightly smoky drink was refreshing and light, pairing perfectly with everything on the menu.