Seattle Spots in Good Company

Somehow I have made it into December without simmering a pot of cloves, anise, citrus peels, and bay leaves down into a sweet syrup and adding a few bottles of red wine to the pot until the liquid is steaming and aromatic, and there is mulled wine for all. It's such a lovely drink to gather around when in the kitchen on a cold evening, and everyone wants a hot mug to hold and a gentle warmth in their bellies. To me, it is the color and the smell of autumn and the Christmas season, and after writing these sentences, I'm quite ready to close my computer and go find myself some wine and spices.



Before I completely open the subject of holiday cookies, puddings, and pies, though, my mind is still on a few memorable restaurant experiences shared with a friend just a month ago.

Seattle is just far enough away to feel like a treat, and any sort of trip down there merits a good meal, but being in the big city and having a friend visiting from out of town, it can become quite hard to select just one (or two) good restaurants to dine at. We managed to eat at four different places in the course of two meals, and I think we were quite wisely restrained in this selection.

We hit our favorite spots, discovered one new one on our way back down to Seattle at the end of her visit, and garnered a lovely collection of photographs and memories our palates will remember for years to come.

First up: An early lunch at 11:30am at Oddfellow's Cafe. I ordered the grilled cheese sandwich with Manchego and a Tomato Onion Jam, and Lauren got the biscuit with scrambled eggs, Gruyere, and ham. Oh yes, and a bottle of Rachel's Ginger Beer to share.







Pre-dinner: This was actually unplanned, but while poking our heads into The Walrus and the Carpenter (just to let Lauren have a peek), we inquired on how long of a wait for two, mostly out of curiosity. When we found out there wasn't one, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to share some cozy space along the wall with a group of men slurping down oysters and tall glasses of beer. We ordered bread and butter, three oysters each, and a fruity but not-too-sweet cocktail to share (the Avenue West, I believe).







Aperitif: Wanting to save plenty of room for the dinner our mouths were already watering for next door, we put our names in at Delancey and then pulled ourselves up to the bar at Essex for Lauren to have her first experience in the whale-wallpaper bar sipping its exquisite cocktails. I had The Flaneur, which had Campari in it and was available on tap, and Lauren had their Autumn Sweater. Both very repeatable (as is the 70th Street Sour, as I know from my last visit, but you simply cannot go wrong with anything created by Essex's bartenders.)





Dinner: By the time dinner came, I was working with incredibly low light in their dining room, so I set aside my camera, and we simply sighed and savored every bite of the white pie we shared (and had topped with roasted delicata squash).

After getting in a lot of walking and a good hike in the following days, we were ready for a few more Seattle treats on the way back to SeaTac airport.

Thanks to Sara and Hugh's recommendation on their blog, The Sprouted Kitchen, we stopped at Revel in Fremont for lunch. My albacore tuna rice bowl with fennel kim chi was utterly satisfying, and I intend to drag my next willing companion there as soon as possible.



And since we hadn't squeezed in Molly Moon's yet, we simply had to make an ice cream stop for Salted Caramel before saying our farewells.



It's times like these that I am so grateful for the means to have these sweet occasions, for my tastebuds and the senses of sight and smell, and for the friends who so greatly enjoy good food, too.

High time

It's awful to go without something perfectly good and healthy that you love. I do not enjoy becoming so devoted to one thing that all of life starts to turn in its direction. I can almost sense a funnel-like cascade as the planes that my relationships, my writing, my resting, and my other interests/priorities sit on tilt downward in unison toward a central hole that has swallowed them up. That deep, dark hole isn't so bad on it's own plane, but I've had to bring school to the smack dab center of my life of late.

I don't mean to paint this shift as being pure misery. I'm so grateful that I can say I've kept my sanity and maintained some peace-of-mind. If there wasn't an end in sight (now only two weeks!), you might need to be more worried about me.

As the weeks without finding time to blog slipped by, I resigned myself to waiting till after finals. After all, I've been making other sacrifices to meet my requirements; this seemed fitting too. But, I find myself here on Saturday night -- another weekend night, just me and my computer -- and my mind is whirring and my fingers are itching to type, so I'll watch the clock, but I'll also spill a little something out into the blogosphere. It's high time. I've missed this place.

I'm reading Molly Wizenberg's (a.k.a. Orangette's) book, A Homemade Life, and I'm sure that has something to do with my yearning for good words. She is a phenomenal writer, and I have been, fittingly, gobbling up each chapter that she vividly constructs through stories and recipes.

Whether or not you spend much time in the kitchen, I believe the autobiographical story she weaves through these pages is capable of thorough enjoyment. Her vulnerability is stunning. She does not hold back on the subjects of love and loss.

I received the book as a birthday present and am about halfway through. Surely, if guilt didn't hound me about doing anything but holding a paintbrush in my hand or researching female furniture designers of the mid twentieth century, I would be done with the book and working my way through each recipes by now.

There is one recipe that I already got to try. I brought the book, with a barely creased spine, on a mini vacation to visit my uncle and his family during Easter break. Being that our conversations and activities often fall into the category of food whenever I am there, I knew it would be fitting to share the book. That first night my uncle was scanning through it and spotted Molly's recipe for Custard-Filled Cornbread. Apparently another one of my uncles has a similar recipe that he loads up with raspberries, and so this uncle decided we ought to compare over breakfast the next morning.

It ended up being his comparison more than ours. It would have been too much for our small company to make two batches of cornbread, so we happily ate while he tried to jog his memory at the breakfast table and comment on the results.

I don't know what I'm missing from my uncle Jonathan's recipe, but I can tell you that Molly's is lovely. Surely, a kinder adjective can't be bestowed on creamy, slightly sweet cornbread served up with coffee and a pool of maple syrup while the morning sunlight is still strong. Lovely is just what it ought to be.



I can't make any promises of when I'll be back, but if I'm lucky, two whole weeks won't go by. If they have, though, you will encounter a different voice. One that is light and free and so ready for long conversations and lounging in the sun. I know the day will come. For now, I'm glad that I'll be able to look back and know that I gave my all in these last weeks of my last semester of undergrad.