Urban Market
6757 8th Ave. N.W.
206 420-8104
Daily 8 a.m. - 8 p.m.

What better time than these sizzling days to pick up dinner on your way home? The heat wave can suck the joy squarely out of cooking, with even we die hard grillers feeling uninspired about standing over 400 degree embers.

Luckily, Ballard's new Take 5 Urban Market wants to make dinner for us. In fact, not only do they want to, they already have, and all we have to do is go get it.

The focused menu offers an ample variety, without the menu overload that dilutes quality of small delis.

We always wonder how it is that small restaurants and delis, particularly when obviously not overloaded with customers, can offer 30 items and keep it all fresh. Try and ask about the availability of the weirdest item on the uber-menu of some places; if they have it, then you're in trouble. Do they freeze it? Is it five thousand years old?

One of our college buddies used to crack us up by ordering the french onion soup on the menu of a Eugene, Ore. burger drive-in. Once a week we'd go in, he'd say "I'll have the French Onion soup," pointing to menu, and they'd say, week after week, "we don't have that."

Not so at Take 5. Located on the corner of 70th and 8th Avenue Northwest, Take 5 Urban Market is right on the way home. It's a convenient place to pick up essentials -- eggs, milk, bread, beer or wine, ice cream -- but it's also a charming little cafe.

Stools at a counter allow customers to eat in or out, and to pull up a stool and chat with a neighbor while waiting for the order to be ready. Warm greetings from the friendly and enthusiastic staff ring out and make all feel welcome.

Experienced chefs may not be what one expects in a neighborhood market, but that's what we've got here. While Take 5 has some things in common with the old corner stores where we got candy and our dads got cigarettes, it stakes out fresh new territory with the chef thing.

Along with the daily soup and sandwich specials and dinner special, Chili and Tomato Carrot Bisque are on the menu every day, and with three sizes ($2.75, $3.50, $4.25) all conceivable soup needs can be met. Caesar and Spinach salads are $6.50, and the deli sandwiches (Reuben, chicken, meatloaf, grilled eggplant and peppers) are $6.95. And frankly, they are huge.

Now let's talk about that dinner special, the idea that first got the overheated and hungry Food Police interested.

The special changes daily, and Take 5 welcomes customer calls to find out what's for dinner. At $9.95 it's certainly a bargain, and that bargain is doubled by the fact that it's enough for two hungry adults. Who knows how many small children it could feed, probably 7. So sharing is an option, as is having the dinner special pull double duty as both a dinner and lunch selection foe the next day.

On our chosen night, the ginger sesame pork ribs tempted us, and tempted us hard. Shiny and spackled with sesame seeds, the bones served as vehicles for some very pillowy meat.

While claiming top billing, the ribs were escorted in a most dignified manner by simply prepared fried rice and a most generous component of vegetables. As licensed food police, we regularly encounter meals that disappoint. This meal did not.

A word about the vegetables: the melange of broccoli, carrots, celery, onions were crisp and al dente. We have relatives who would complain about this level of crunchiness, raised as we were at the business end of canned produce. Luckily our training at the food police academy exposed us to the magical word of al dente vegetables, allowing us to wallow in the mystical fortune of nature's harvest, done right.

Of course we had to try a roast beef sandwich, too, and the crunchy pickles, horseradish with just the right bite, hearty bread, and minimally processed beef -- eaten of course only for research purposes -- sung.

As if we need more to like, Take 5 offers Herkimer coffee and espresso, a community bulletin board, free Wifi, a few chairs outside to enjoy coffee in the sunshine, meatloaf and macaroni and cheese. We take comforted just knowing Take 5 Urban Market is there.

The Ballard Food Police visit all establishments anonymously and pay for all food and drink in full. Know anything we should know? Tell the Ballard Food Police at ballardfoodpolice@gmail.com.