1. Essential Bakery – There are different kinds of coffee shops in Seattle, I’m learning, and this one specializes in baking while also doing coffee, and doing it well. I had a croissant which the server abbreviated “Chris” which was weird because then she said “a Chris for Chris!” Croissants in the Midwest are viewed as butter vehicles, a method of getting more butter into your mouth which, in my opinion, is a method of covering something else up. Not the case here: light and crispy on the outside, delicate on the inside, and layer upon layer pulled apart perfectly. The latte was smooth and creamy. I’m used to espresso having a deep bitter flavor to it and this had none of that. Mom had a non descript omelette with bacon, cheese, and onion and too much paprika on the top. She said her drip coffee was adequate and I took her at her word. She had ordered “wheat toast” but apparently they heard “several enormous slices of whole-and-multigrain bread with a wonderfully tart cherry jam”. It was so good, we made a sandwich out of it to save the leftovers. The secret is to coat the bread with a little butter – it prevents whatever is abutting the bread from soaking in. These are the things you learn when you eat with my mother.
2. Chukar – This was a cherry stand in the Pike Place Market. I had a dark chocolate covered dried cherry that was dusted in cocoa powder. It had a bitter start that was actually quite pleasant and the fragrant cherry in the middle was quite wonderful.
3. Starbucks – VLat. Standard fare.
4. Brimmer and Heeltap – This, I am told, is a restaurant style known as Northwest Fusion. I don’t know what means. Like the night before, we ordered family style so everyone could try a little, so I’ll break this up into paragraphs.
Cocktails – Bigfoot Tears: rye, punt e mes, suze, and sea salt. Garnished with orange zest. Retained the potency of the rye with little added sweetness. Overall nice. Greenlet: muddled arugula, gin, lime. This was a real winner. I will definitely attempt this at home in an effort to supplant the Gin-N-Tonic for summer drinks. Now, I know what you’re all thinking: arugula in a cocktail? and the answer is yes. They even used it as garnish. And it worked.
Pickled oyster shooter – Steven and I each tried one. Mine was cucumber lime and his was miso ginger soju. Mine came in a tall shot glass and looked like a green margarita shot with mortally injured mollusk. The rim was dipped heavily in salt. We were playing around with my mother’s iP6 in slow-motion video so you might actually see a video of me taking this shot. It was honestly too much volume for one mouthful, and if you see the video, you’ll notice a drip escapes and is caught. It was good, but honestly not something I’ll repeat.
Bread – sounds boring, right? This was a four-inch thick slice of bread baked after slicing (because toasted sounds soo pedestrian!) and sauced with butter. The thickness of the bread actually meant the inside was still moist but warm. It was analogous to a medium rare steak, actually, only with gluten.
Cauliflower salad – very different from yesterday, this was caramelized micro-florets of cauliflower served in a sour garlic vinaigrette. There were pickled mushrooms that accented the vinaigrette and helped even the balance of this dish. There was also arugula and a touch of quinoa.
Grilled fingerling potatoes – I would be okay with it if we, as a race, could adopt fingerlings as the traditional potatoes and give our current “bakers” a derogatory nickname, like “fatties” or “diabetes-givers” or “starch-hounds”. After grilling, they were poached in duck fat, and served with mini-anchovies which were crunchy. There was great debate about the table about the necessity of the anchovies. Steven and I agreed that they altered the consistency of the dish, adding a nice little “crunch” to an otherwise soft dish. The women at the table all seemed to agree that consuming an animal whole is gross.
Halibut – I’m working on my palate in an attempt to distinguish certain fishes from others. In Indiana, you see, fish is fish is fish. But this is not the same mystery meat found in a Filet-o-Fish. This is a thick white fish that has a nice rubbery texture to it (as opposed to the flaky fishes, although it did split along fascial planes quite easily). It was poached in a sour cherry sauce and served with pickled chards which, if you mishear the server, sounds like something you never want someone in food service saying to the patrons (chards sounds like sharts). This was an excellent experience with an otherwise unfamiliar fish to me.
Grilled pork shoulder – strips of tender pork served with grilled kimchi. My experiences with kimchi have been bimodal, having lived with someone who made his own, but this was great and really accented the spice rub on the pork. Unfortunately, pork is such a boring meat that the only real flavor is what you put on it, but this spice rub was very complex. It wasn’t just Old Bay and salt (I’ve been in college, I know what that’s like).
Braised Lamb Belly – strips of tender, juicy lamb were served tossed with lightly sautéed kale, pickled fresno chile, and a black sesame vinaigrette. This was the clear winner for the night for me. The lamb was succulent and the rest of the dish was drawn up on blueprints to support it. The flavor of the lamb! What more is there to say? Now, the menu says that there was brown rice in this dish, but I sure don’t remember it. Could I possibly have forgotten such a boring ingredient for the lamb? YES.
We decided to forgo dessert at this restaurant and go to somewhere specifically for dessert.
5. Hot Cakes (Tagline: Molten Chocolate Cakery)- the kitsch for this place is that they will bake a cake for you while you wait. Granted, they’re small cakes, but still. And they’re served with fresh ice cream. Well, I don’t like either of those things because I’m a regular stick-in-the-mud. I got a frozen shake called The Drunken Sailor, which was ice cream, peanut butter, and whiskey. I think there was carmel in there, too. It was amazing. I really didn’t think booze and ice cream could coalesce but they do! It was topped with chopped peanuts as, and this is absolute law, vanilla ice cream always should be.