A Taste of Seattle

What can I tell you about Seattle? We spent a little less than a week in the area and barely even hit the highlights (of food!), but we still enjoyed plenty of good stuff.

First, the blackberries. They grow wild around there like kudzu grows in the south. We first found them around Green Lake near my friends’ home, but also found huge bushes growing in parking lots and along the side of the road. And apparently no one picks and eats them because all the vines were just heaving with huge ripe sweet fruits, some of which fell apart after picking and then just melted on my tongue when I popped them in my mouth. Even better, no chiggers! One night after dinner at Ivar’s (a local seafood joint I went to for the benefit of the SO), we picked the equivalent of about a quart of them. They were delicious on their own and also as a topping on some organic lemon sorbet we got at a local market.

We did actually buy some produce while we were there, too. We took a trip down to the famous Pike Place market where along with the fishmongers, there are tons of flower sellers, produce vendors and people selling just about everything else you can imagine. We bought fresh figs and Rainier cherries (cultivated locally) and enjoyed them all week. Also in the Pike Place market: the Daily Dozen Donut Company, where you can get freshly-made tiny cake donuts. Cinnamon, powdered, plain, and chocolate with sprinkles. Or get a mixed bag like we did. They were fresh out of the fryer when we got them, so we had to wait impatiently for them to cool, but it was very worth it (as you can see from this report). I’ve never had a better donut; even though I come from the land of the Krispy Kreme, I prefer cake donuts.

We also saw the original Starbucks down at the market and though they’re as ubiquitous there as just about any city of size, there were an astounding number of other coffee joints—just about on every corner. I don’t drink coffee, so I can’t tell you much about the quality, but I did enjoy some good breakfasts courtesy of some of the local coffee shops. This great little place in Queen Anne, The 5 Spot has an ever-changing menu (and décor) based on a featured area of the country. While we were there, the theme was Oregon. From the Oregon menu, I ordered the hazelnut pear French toast described thusly:

Three slices of thick sliced bread dipped in Oregon Chai custard, griddled golden & topped with Justin's slightly sinful cinnamon-pear syrup, mascarpone-chai whipped cream and toasted hazelnuts

Oh wow. That whipped cream was just divine…not too sweet and nice and thick (and not oily like canned whipped cream).

One morning, we ate at a lovely café on the ridge (where you can see the Olympics in the distance over the city below) called Fresh Flours. The SO got some savory pastry called a pithivier and I got, well you can see I had a difficult time choosing just one pastry, so I got some basque cake, an orange currant scone, and a caramelized pecan muffin. Not a crumb was left behind. My only regret is that I didn’t try one of the Japanese pastries.

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It wouldn’t be a trip to the Pacific Northwest without some seafood, right? Ha! The SO thought he’d be able to get me to eat some fish, but he failed. Luckily, Ivar’s had a couple of vegetarian-friendly items on the menu (not hard to find in Seattle). While he ate some local Coho salmon, I ate some local heirloom tomatoes and a salad with local blueberries and cheese from the Columbia Valley. I really appreciated being able to eat vegetarian, eat local and eat well.

But I couldn’t sacrifice every night. There are just too many vegetarian and vegan restaurants in town and I couldn’t leave without trying at least one. So my friend Christy and I left the menfolk to fend for themselves and we headed off to Carmelita.

Oh, wow, the luxury of being able to order anything on the menu! And the torture of not being able to eat everything. So Christy and I negotiated and decided to share several plates. We started out with pickled bing cherry salad topped with hazelnut vinaigrette and the grilled corn-scallion beignets. The salad was excellent, but those beignets…oh, yes. Savory corn donuts—perfectly seasoned and perfectly fried so that they were crisp on the outside, moist on the inside and not greasy at all. Yum. And that was just the beginning…next up was a fig pizza with “Oregonzola,” walnuts and honey. This could have easily been a dessert instead of a main course. Delicious. Our other main course was the mascarpone-polenta torte with grilled summer vegetables. It was good, but not good enough to fill up and sacrifice dessert.

Ah, dessert. Again, there was too much good to choose from, so we chose two: a grilled peach galette with honey ricotta and crème fraiche and a duo of ice cream sandwiches. The galette was rich and flavorful, but those ice cream sandwiches were sublime. The first was blackberry-mascarpone ice cream in pistachio-orange cookies (hey, somebody’s actually picking those blackberries!) and the other—probably one of the best desserts I’ve ever had—was lemon curd ice cream in ginger-pine nut cookies. The cookies were almost like pralines and the spice of the ginger was the perfect accompaniment for the lemon curd ice cream which was so good, I can still taste it now. Rich and creamy with just the right amount of lemon flavor.

Speaking of ice cream, on our very last day in Seattle, we finally made it over to Molly Moon’s in Wallingford. Christy had been telling me about their salted caramel ice cream for a while, so I was very eager to try some. But when we got there, I was faced with an amazing selection of flavors. I opted for a double scoop: one cardamom (more delicious than it sounds) and one scoop of honey lavender. The SO had cherry chunk and balsamic strawberry. We got a pint of the salted caramel to go. Molly Moon’s ice cream is so rich that it’s soft and creamy right out of the freezer. I loved every bite of every flavor, but if I could have any of it again right now, it’d be the cardamom. I have some cardamom in the pantry…yeah, no.

On our way out of town, Christy packed some local chocolates (how many times have I used the word "local" now?? Seattle seems to be very locavorious): Fran's gray salted caramels and a Theo's 3400 Phinney chai milk chocolate bar. I'd say they were more than a fair trade for the Goo Goo Clusters and Moon Pies I brought for them from Tennessee.

If you go to Seattle, I'd say that mid- to late-August is definitely the time to go. It rained more than I'd really care for and the humidity put the Redneck Riviera to shame, but the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables and other local foods available at this time plus the occasional ray of sunshine (and rainbow) make it worth getting through the grayness of the average day.