Saturday involved macaroons & a large quantity of rain. It also involved a rather marvellous nap on the couch, slap bang in the middle of the afternoon. I didn’t have much of a plan when Saturday started out. It just unfolded:
- Shuffled downstairs in my slippers, with Daisy the cat in tow, to a clean kitchen. I love when that happens. The nights when I have just enough energy left to load & turn the dishwasher on before heading to my big, soft, feathery bed.
- Whizzed a whole pound of strawberries up in the blender, threw a few other things in there & then lolled in the green leather chair by the window, slurping contentedly, while Florence & Penelope took up residence on my lap.
- Tackled the pile of papers on my desk & turned one large pile into 3 smaller ones. 1. To file. 2. To recycle. 3. To take action on. By a stroke of luck, pile # 3 was significantly smaller than the large pile I started with. Just re-piling makes me feel clean. Delusion can be a splendid thing early on the Saturday morning.
- Remembered that it is time to do taxes. Decided, for the 49th day in a row, that today was not the day.
- Fed the tribe. Scooted around Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest to get the overnight scoop. Spent too long in a very hot shower. According to The Internet my skin is now older than the rest of me. Some things are just worth the sacrifice.
- Drove to North Ballard. Lake Washington had white caps. The rain was falling sideways. The I-5 was pretending to be a snail. Got a text from my Curly-Wurly-loving gorgeous girlfriend, “There’s a stick in my undercarriage and I need to stop and dig it out”. Drove past a store on 85th that had an amazing array of large metal chickens, which reminded me of this.
- Guzzled down a large, chocolate-y hot chocolate & a ridiculously leek-y & Gruyere-y piece of quiche while gorgeous girlfriend (now with a stick-free undercarriage) downed some frothy-topped coffee drink & a slab of quiche with enough spinach in it to make Popeye proud. It did not make her muscles bulge, and we were glad for that. She was wearing Doc Martens or something very similar; and they were adorable on her.
- Armed with several boxes of pastries to take away, we headed south to Le Pichet, since gorgeous girlfriend was determined that today was the day she was going to partake of the best Chocolat Chaud this side of Paris. We stopped off at Whole Foods parking lot to carpool the last mile. This saved on parking & the inevitable trauma of having to find 2 spots in downtown Seattle on a Saturday lunchtime instead of just 1. Is that wrong? How about if I mentioned that parking in downtown Seattle for 2 hours costs more than your lunch?
- Le Pichet was packed like Londoners on the Underground; most everyone was as soggy, too. It was like hiking in a hurricane out there. We huddled at the very end of the bar where gorgeous girlfriend got bumped regularly by a particularly thin woman who we shall forever remember as ”Snooty Manager”.
- Gorgeous girlfriend’s Chocolat Chaud went down in a blaze of glory. It reminded her of Spain and Churros. Sadly there was not a lot of light at the very end of the bar. This is important if you’re a super-duper photo-wizard, like gorgeous girlfriend is. Instead, we caught up on life, ate Baked Eggs, a Ham & Cheese Baguette & asked the very lovely Rosey to move plates of pastries around so we could shoot them. Rosey was very obliging. Especially given how maniacally busy they were.
- We braved the hurricane, found the car still in the same spot unscathed & gorgeous girlfriend drove me back to Whole Foods. There were a few moments of hugging. Love that girl.
- Swung by Barnes & Noble to peruse some new books and make mental notes. Because no one actually buys books at Barnes & Noble. No. They just enjoy the peace & tranquility, the smell of fresh-bound paper & experience the deliciousness of roaming slowly up & down the shelves, gazing sideways. Then go home & order them from Amazon.
- Ate the best macaroon I’ve ever eaten in my life.
- Had a nap on the blue check couch with Dougal curled up in the crook of my knees & Penelope draped over my head with one paw on my nose. Luckily her purring is more soporific than annoying. Besides which, nothing was going to win against the carbohydrate coma that I fell into.
- Ate a particularly fine Almond Croissant.
- Processed images, did the accounts (they balanced!), re-did all my recurring online bill payments with a new credit card & made an enormous pot of Leek & Cauliflower Soup. I do have a thing for leeks.
- Ate some Swiss cheese.
- Read some chapters from one of the books in the pile of 14 on my night-stand. I no longer recall which one.
Happy Saturday!
I have not been this excited about a new breakfast joint in quite a while. I have an entire dashboard of other posts that really ought to get written before this one. This one only joined the queue yesterday, but in my sheer excitement to share it with you, I am giddily letting this particular post jump the queue. What I really wanted to type then was JUMP THE QUEUE!!!
It was already a terribly exciting day, because I was having breakfast with Bea, and Bea was alive. What I mean is BEA IS ALIVE!!! Bea has just recently had her thyroid whipped out, after some naughty cancer decided to move in & get all cozy. Out, damn spot! And so, our dear Bea is now in recovery mode & gearing up to head back to work. Thank heavens for swift surgeons & company medical insurance. What Bea really needed today was a plate of fancy pants food & a little adventure, to get her warmed up for life back in the fast lane.
I picked out a nifty-sounding spot on Pike & Melrose, almost right under the freeway and just a few blocks from downtown. Terra Plata has been open a matter of months, and the reviews have already been a-raving. Bea deserved some raving food. We got there half-an-hour too early – not that we were excited or anything – and on wandering up the street looking for coffee & hot chocolate, we stumbled upon Victrola. We now wish we hadn’t stumbled, because although the place was beautiful, bustling, & brimming with both a case full of inspiring sandwiches plus a whole slew of people slouched over their laptops, books & kindles, my take on the hot chocolate was summed up in 3 words: pretty, lukewarm, tasteless. On our way back to Terra Plata for our appointed reservation time of 10 am, Bea’s coffee mainly ended up (literally) in the gutter. Not the cup, you understand – we threw that away in the trash can. We’re responsible people, you know. It was a shame about the coffee.
Unless you know, for sure, that a place is not going to be packed the second they open their doors, it’s always best to make a reservation, if they do such a thing. Standing on cold street corners is not at the top of my list of fun things to do. Even so, having a reservation & then showing up at an empty joint can feel a little silly. The upside – because there is *always* an upside – is that you get to pick the best seat in the house. I like that.
The space that Terra Plata fills is glorious. I want to eat here every single warm, balmy night we have in Seattle this next summer. Every single one. If I don’t answer my email, that’s where you’ll find me. Warm woods, miles of windows on the two long sides of the triangle, & lines & curves to make an a architect weep. Hey, who was the architect on this? I’d like them to come do my house, thanks.
Bubbly servers who couldn’t care less about my brandishing my camera all over, or lying on the bench to get the right angle for all those gorgeous lines. (Not a thing I’d ever do if there were other diners there, of course). The lovely Katrina just dodged around me. She was wearing beautiful, large, blue & green discs for earrings. They suited her.
The menu was mad. Bea settled on the Oatmeal Pancakes with Caramelized Apples & Fruit Butter. To say she liked her fancy pants breakfast would almost be a lie. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d estimate, from her squeals of delight, Bea would have this as an 11. The pancakes were crispy on the edges & the apples had an intense flavor along with their not-quite-firm-not-quite-soft flesh. Add a dab of cinnamon & some fruit butter and heaven help your taste-buds for the rest of the week.
I chose the Roasted Pulled Pork & Vegetable Hash. The bright red, I-was-just plucked-from-the-vine-today tomato sauce was a wee bit spicy for me, but the pork was ridiculous. Slightly crusted on the outside – think Chinese Crispy Duck - & fall-apart tender in the middle. The eggs were perfectly cooked. The veggies were the bomb.
Since one plate of hash was never destined to fill me up, I headed straight for the Churros with Chocolate Chili dipping sauce. Like you do when you’re a girl on a Saturday morning with a free reign on a menu. Yowza.
Super crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle. What all good churros dreams are made of. The chili is very slight – even I could have done with a bit more to transform the sauce from chocolate to chocolate chili.
Other members of the Saturday Morning Brunch Bunch started drifting in soon after we did, and by the time we were ready to leave we had been treated to watching a long line of dishes headed to other peoples tables, most all of which we wanted to eat.
We talked a lot about Bea’s last 6 months, and how she got to where she is today. The {most} important part is that she got to tell her tale; and got to eat a fabulous plate of Oatmeal Pancakes. Take THAT, cancer.
They have done an outstanding job on Terra Plata. Please go. I mean, PLEASE GO!!! I think you’ll love it.
After all that eating & celebrating life, I drove us over to Alki Beach. Although it was cold, it’s still a special place to go and just be. We walked along the beach until we’d all but exhausted Bea’s energy. I love Alki. It’s where I go when I need to think. Where I go when I’m sad. When I need reviving. When I just need some space. It was beautiful walking there with Bea today. I think she felt it too.
After plopping herself back into the passenger seat, I took Bea on one last adventure. If there was ever a girl who had earned the best pastry this side of Paris, it was her. Honore, here we come.
Today was the first time IN MY LIFE that there was no line outside Honore when I rolled up. For 10 whole minutes, there was no line. We gathered up Hot Chocolate, a Caramel Chocolate Tart & a Lemon Meringue Tart & headed for the little courtyard out back. It was chilly, but the seats inside were taken, & anyway, we had our fluffy jackets. We could smell the heady aroma of wood-fired smoke drifting over the back fence from Delancey. I have to go eat pizza there, one of these days.
I was reminded of how good Honore Hot Chocolate is. I was reminded how good Honore Lemon Meringue Tart is. Bea revelled in her Caramel Chocolate Tart with the slightly over-cooked pastry. She mentioned when we sat down that she didn’t think she could eat it all. It all went down.
I hadn’t planned to be gone all day. I had a ginormous list of to-do’s. Turns out none of it mattered. Celebrating Bea was so much more important than anything I had to do. Saturday = perfect girlfriend time. Especially when there’s great grub, a walk on the beach & pastries involved.
In my continuing effort to un-bury myself from WAY. TOO. MANY. draft posts in my dashboard & the subsequent anxiety, I bring you…a bunch of breakfasts.
For each set, click on the large image to start the slide-show.
Polly Pitt & the Corned Beef Hash
Polly Pitt and I, we toddled off down to Trellis to have breakfast with the lovely Elicia. Twice a year we like to do that. It’s what we call our Team Week Planning Meeting. These things *always* go better if food is involved; and, as you’ll know if you’ve ever eaten at Trellis, the food is scrumptious. Not to mention pretty. I’ve always said that if there were an award for Best Looking Breakfast, Trellis would win it.
On this particular visit I decided to have the Corned Beef Hash. I wanted to compare it to the chew-defying Corned Beef Hash at Skillet Diner. As it turned out, you really cannot compare the two – being so entirely different as to wonder how they could possibly be called the same thing. Both delicious, both unique, but as different as chalk and cheese – as we say in England.
Polly had a classic breakfast of bacon & eggs, along with a croissant, while Elicia downed an enormous pile of some dishy-looking scramble. Surprising though it may seem, we also got all our work done. Yay for breakfast meetings at Trellis!
June in December & the Incredible Duck
It’s true. The Milligans are some of my {very} favorite people to hang with. Since Mr. Milligan hopped across the pond to join Mrs. Milligan in Seattle last May, our respective travel schedules have meant not many weekends where we’ve been in Seattle at the same time. Given that we love to hang out over brunch, we planned this one months & months ago, during our last brunchy adventure over at Cafe Presse. 2011 whizzed by. How could it possibly be December already? That meant Mr. Milligan had been stateside for 8 months. It felt like it had only been a month since he first rolled up, all bright-eyed & bushy-tailed, eager to discover the joys of America. Are you sure it wasn’t June? I mean, if you looked at the weather, it certainly could have been – brilliant blue sky, cheery sun shining down – except I admit, it was a bit nippy. Anyway…it wasn’t June, it was December. Except, not only was the weather like June, we also went to eat at June. So really, you can forgive me for being confused, I am sure.
June is was a delightful eatery in the equally delightful suburb of Madrona. I just went to their website to get a link for you and discovered that they are closed. Huge bummer. We loved our brunch there. They even had great Hot Chocolate, and there’s not many of those around. Sad. Here’s the shots anyway.
A Load of Old Blarney & an Irish Sausage
I have no idea why I have procrastinated so {very} long over my last Big Breakfast Adventure in West Seattle. If I am procrastinating it usually means that something at least slightly icky was involved & I am trying to wriggle out of writing about it. In this instance, the whole darn thing was deadly, or savage, as they say in Ireland. In America that would translate to wicked, or just plain awesome.
This Big Breakfast Adventure was entirely Nesi’s fault. Nesi is the super-charged, super-organized, front-of-house superwoman at Derek’s Detail in Issaquah. If I had a job open, I’d hire her in a heartbeat. I really only went back to Derek’s Detail because Nesi made it such a lovely experience. Yes, really. You can have a lovely experience getting your car detailed. Just as long as Nesi is at the helm.
Nesi & I were chatting up a storm when the conversation all swung around to food. That seems to happen rather regularly with me. Nesi told me how the best Eggs Benedicts “IN. THE. WORLD.” were to be had at A Terrible Beauty in West Seattle. Or Renton. There’s 2 of them. Irish pubs right here in Seattle. I flipped open the laptop, right there in Derek’s, pulled up the website, opened up the menu & the first words I saw were “Mick’s Banger Benny”. I was SO there. Irish sausages made into an Eggs Benedict – are you kidding me?
Long story short, this place rocks. The people are fantastic, so much so that I took their pictures, which, as you know, I rarely do. How could I not take a shot of those socks? The food was fantastic, even if it did come with a pile of fruit on the same plate as my Banger Benny. They’ve done a great job of integrating Irish-ness with American-ness, to keep everyone happy. I wanted to eat most everything on the menu. I need to go back for such things as a Drunken Blarney Bird, a Banger Burger, a Tuna Malarky Melt, Tipperary Shepherd’s Pie, Limerick Caramelized Peach Pork Chops, Drunken Sailor Salmon ‘n Chips, Death by Mac ‘n Cheese, oh, and about 10 other versions of Eggs Benedict.
GO!
Just Me & a Cup of Joe
Peppermint Tea and a Twice-baked Challah. There’s something about Grand Central Bakery’s Twice-baked Challah that just floats my boat. Maybe it’s the heady aroma of almond syrup that’s soaked into the bottom before baking the second time around, or the crispy edges, or the beautifully browned almonds scattered across the top. Maybe it’s the soft-as-cotton-candy middle. Whatever it is, when I need a little something sweet to tide me over, these puppies are P E R F E C T.
Jeff was in town. He doesn’t come that often, & he stays over a weekend even less so. As soon as I knew he was en route, I popped him an email. “Hey, if you fancy a Big Breakfast Adventure on Sunday you can be sure I’ll be going somewhere”. We had planned on going to Taste at the SAM, but their new hours don’t have them serving up food until 11 am, and there is no way I can not eat until 11 am. Plus Jeff had meetings to head to. We needed food early.
It was, by all standards, a miserable day weather-wise. Cold, grey, drizzling, windy. Right claggy, as we say in the north of England. We toyed with the idea of a trip to the fabulous Lola to munch on her Greek delights, but instead headed further west on the European continent & landed at Le Pichet. Nothing better on a grey, wet Sunday than a couple of hours lolling at a French cafe over Oeufs Plats & Chocolat Chaud.
The last time I went to Le Pichet was back in May 2010. Eeek! Can that really be true? “To me there’s something magical about sitting in the window of a little Parisian café watching the sun play with the leaves on the trees lining the pavement (sidewalk). Especially in the spring & summer & especially in the early morning”. Yup. Sadly, there was nothing magical about the weather or the season on this visit, but who cares when the food & the ambiance is still fantastically French?
Le Pichet is the sophisticated older sister of Cafe Presse, and they are the same, but different. The menu is pretty much the same; the style & ambiance are entirely different. Since you’ve read about Cafe Presse SO. MANY. TIMES…I’ll save you from the {usual} literary swooning & just give you images of the splendidness that was our perfect Sunday breakfast.
Yes, we had Pear Crumble for breakfast. You should try it. It was awesome: hot, sweet, slightly firm pears baked under a crispy, crunchy, golden brown crust of oatmeal topping. Plus melty vanilla bean ice cream. Happy Sunday!
I have 81 draft posts sitting in my dashboard. I have a bunch more drafts in my head. I am not entirely sure how I got to this point, and, it doesn’t really matter, since this is the point I am at. In a desperate attempt not to add to that number, I’m going to combine a whole bunch of dinners into one post, so you get the info & I get some relief. And no more drafts.
Click on the big images for each dinner to start a slide-show.
Dinner with The Dashing German: Seastar
The company was awesome. The food was disappointing, and overpriced. The service was average. I swear the fruit that came with the Panna Cotta was fruit salad out of a can. Seastar, huge disappointment. Mind you, given the company, I’d have eaten pretty much anything and still been happy.
Holiday Dinner with The Boss: Rover’s
The company was awesome. The food was stunning, and ridiculously good. The service was extraordinary. Rover’s blew my mind – I had no idea that a cute little house tucked away behind a row of shops in Madison Park was dishing up food this amazing. The Boss said, “Of all the holiday dinners I’ve eaten in my time, this was by far the best.”
We ate innumerable courses, so here is a small selection of them for your viewing pleasure. This dinner was a culinary delight. GO.
Holiday Dinner with The Team: Le Grand Bistro Americain
The company was awesome. The food was awesome. The service was awesome. I was expecting it to be good – it was way beyond that. Foie gras on your steak? Yes, please. Chocolate desserts made with Valrhona? Yes, please. French food in a typical American bistro setting? Yes, please.
There was a bunch of us, so here’s just a few shots to whet your appetite.
Dinner with The Boss: Cafe Presse
The company was awesome. The food was awesome. The bill was awesome. The service was awesome. And sassy. And patient. I *finally* went to Cafe Presse for dinner. Can you even believe it? The thing that blew everyone’s skirt up was a menu special - Shrimp Pate (or something like that) – the flavors were incredible. This place was so much fun to have a group at. We ordered a bunch of different things, we shared, we laughed. A lot. It was awesome. And we took a few moments to remember our team mate, Brian Glasgow, who was being laid to rest in Melbourne while we ate. We raised our glasses & toasted him: the “mad bastard”.
The bill was $200 for 8. Including booze. Really.
Dinner with The BFF: Bis On Main
The company was awesome. The food was good. The service was *very* handsome. And charming. We really just swung in for a quick bite. BFF just had a main course, I downed a salad & a main. We shared a delicious side of Brussel sprouts with bacon, walnuts & truffle oil. The food did not make me swoon like it usually does, but the company more than made up for that.
Dessert with the BFF: Belle Pastry
The company was awesome. The food was awesome. The service was young & cute & very jolly given that it was past 8 pm. Despite being full when we left Bis On Main, after a 15 minute stroll around Old Bellevue, we nipped into Belle Pastry for a hot chocolate. And a pastry. Well, there’s {always} room for a pastry, right? The pastry on my Lemon Meringue Tart was a little on the soft side, but I expect it had been sat there all day, so really to be expected. These peeps just know how to do pastries right.
|
by cb
no comments