SEEKING THE CURE IN SEATTLE Gourmet If you ever get trapped on a runway in Seattle for three hours, have the foresight to make a pit stop at Armandino's Salumi. We were saved last fall after a spice dealer we met told us we could get amazing cured meats at this minuscule storefront near Pioneer Square downtown. It was just before 11, and the shop was still locked, but an older man inside took pity on us and let us in to buy sandwiches. There was no real menu; he just offered to make two and we wisely left the fillings to him. First he layered thin slices of soppressata and copacola on a round of panzanella, laid a tongful of sautŽed beet greens on top and finished with caccio cheese and a splash of garlic sauce. He shoved his masterpiece down the butcherblock to be wrapped in white paper by his wife as he set to stacking fennel salami on ciabatta with more beet greens, onions, fresh mozzarella and aromatic salsa verde. As he happily worked, he looked up to ask where we were flying and said: "Oh, my son is a chef in New York. You might know him - Mario Batali?" The natural first question was: Did you teach him to cook, or did he teach you? But Armandino Batali laughed it off. Later, in an interview, he told me his fascination with food started when he grew up on a farm in the Yakima Valley where ãwe killed our own meat, milked our own cows, made prosciutto and salami and blood sausage,ä but his real education started after he went to work for Boeing. When he was sent to Spain, England and Italy for 18 years, he and his wife Marilyn and three children "exposed ourselves to everything foodwise we could." He later went back to Italy to train with masters of the cured meats known as salumi. Once he retired, he set up shop in January 1999 in this 700-square-foot glorified hallway diagonally across from the site where his grandfather opened the first Italian food market in Seattle, in 1903. They started off curing meats, then grinding sausages and making mozzarella and pastas (potato gnocchi and pinci, a long Umbrian type shaped by hand). Every week Batali now cures 180 to 220 pounds of meat to sell in sandwiches or over the counter; every other week he opens for 10-course dinners for 12 (from shrimp bruschetta to Tuscan grill with lamb, pork cheeks and fresh sausage) that are now booked a year in advance. In the curing room, Batali usually has 10 meats like finocchinona, spiced with fennel; soppresata; oregano salami, cured beef tongue and Dario salami, named for one of his teachers in Italy. All of it is sold only retail; even Molto Marioâs restaurants canât buy (although he himself might get the occasional gift). On a typical day Armandino serves 150 sandwiches between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. with the help of a few fellow retirees who work for the excitement of working here, and the pay is commensurate: they get lunch and that's it. For now he is using traditional recipes, but like his son, Armandino, now 62, has an adventurous side. ãThere hasnât been a lot of ingenuity in the salami business ever since it started, with the Egyptians salt-curing meats in the sixth century, he says. "I think there's some room for creativity..." Today he is innovating with lamb prosciutto. Down the line, he fantasizes about the ideas he might get by going to work in a Chinese restaurant for a couple of months. Armandino's Salumi, 309 Third Avenue South, Seattle 98104 phone 206.443.3503