Everyone is familiar with the annual tradition of Punxsutawney Phil and his shadow on Groundhog Day. (Bill Murray certainly knows all about it!) But the Belltown neighborhood in Seattle has its own custom on Feb. 2.
It involves a large metal baking pan, a shed-load of winter produce and a community event like no other. As long-time residents of Belltown will tell you, it starts with your roots. Root vegetables, that is.
Since the late 1970s, when Belltown was home to scrappy residents – living mostly from paycheck to paycheck – who would celebrate the midway point of a dark winter with a root pie baked with parsnips, rutabagas, beets, yams, celery, carrots, onions, garlic (along with spices ginger, salt and pepper) … and, of course, love. The pie is typically layered with mashed potato on top (like Shepherd’s Pie), although some versions include a flaky crust (like a chicken pot pie) and mashed potato as the base.
On that one special day, the old Belltown Café on 1st Avenue between Bell and Battery streets would bake and serve the pie in a pan big enough to serve a significant segment of the community. It wasn’t any old pan. It was a Belltown Pan, forged in steel or copper and shaped like a bell for its namesake neighborhood and the eatery that started the custom.
Owners of the Belltown Café would remove the large pan that it hung as an outdoor sign, clean it, and then put the large symbol to use as a baking and serving pan for the hearty meal. The pan would be returned to its proper place on Feb. 3, hanging as a symbol of unity and neighborhood roots.
In the 1980s, café owners would swap a warm plate of root pie for a donation – cash, food or even art – with their customers. Just as a bell tolls to call people, this Belltown Pan calls people to action and to celebrate being from this cozy corner of the city.
The event is expected to take a pause in 2021 as we look after one another by staying home and sheltering from a viral pandemic the likes nobody has seen in more than a century. But the tradition will be back when it’s safe to congregate and celebrate. And, oh, we will celebrate … with a heaping scoop of root pie!
The Belltown Café closed in 1983 and the building itself was lost to fire 4 years later. From the ashes came a new affordable housing development – The Oregon Apartments, a 4-story brick building with black iron gates. The name of the apartments is symbolic just like the pan, as the former café was directly next to what was the Oregon Hotel, an inexpensive place to rest after days at sea or before moving on to one’s next destination. (The hotel may be gone but the structure still stands, the only one along that western stretch of 1st Avenue to remain from the time.)
Many local businesses have carried on the tradition of baking root pies – and large cakes for dessert in the same style of pan – to maintain a sense of community. Cyclops, Jerk Shack, Macrina Bakery were among those that participated for years under a large canopy along Bell Street and often within their individual establishments. Many other participating places, sadly, have gone out of business in the past year (Local 360, Mama’s Cantina, Pintxo, Orfeo, to name a few).
As for the pan itself? It’s still standing in the form of a plaque on the spot where the tradition all began – anchored to the exterior of The Oregon Apartments for all to see and enjoy.
And in the future, if you see a sturdy-looking, bell-shaped pan elsewhere – hanging on a wall, laying against the store-front window or included as a photo or drawing in a special menu – know that those eateries are one of us, a Belltown-based establishment with a big desire to uphold tradition even in the middle of great change in our city and, more recently, in our lives.
The tradition will live on.