Seattle, Part 4: The Ballard Farmer's Market

The morning of July 4th we headed over to Ballard, about 15 minutes from downtown Seattle, for brunch and a leisurely weekend stroll around the farmer's market there.

We ate at a contemporary French brasserie-type place, a la Balthazar or Schiller's, where we both had a decent duck confit hash with poached eggs.

Then we sampled some of the local food and produce at the market outside, like these mini sugared donuts (tasted just like churros!) that came off this cool machine that flipped each one over after a set period of time.

Finally we walked away with a pound and a half of some absolutely delicious Rainier cherries (in season) and this beautiful bouquet of sweet peas and some of kind of daisy. :)

Seattle, Part 1: Lunch in the International District

July 4th weekend, Chef K and I flew out to Seattle for a friend's wedding. Happily, I got to see another Seattle-based friend -- my college roommate, Angelica! Since I'd only been to the city once before, Angelica graciously showed me some of the sights around town en route to a delicious pho lunch in the International District (aka Chinatown). The restaurant we went to, Green Leaf (I think), had these ridiculous throne-like chairs with armrests in the shape of captain's wheels. Totally awesome and bizarre!

Afterward, we meandered slowly back to Angelica's office via Uwajimaya, a big Japanese grocery store here, and the attached Kinokuniya bookstore. Not even in San Diego have I ever seen an Asian supermarket so clean, so big and so neatly organized, with such over-the-top theme decor! Scratch that -- any supermarket. Every aisle seemed to hold a new treasure trove of amazing Asian foodstuffs, and the produce and sake selections were superb (Angelica's dad is quite a fan of the latter, I hear).

Here is an overall shot of the store. See the paper lanterns and fake wisteria vines?? And you can just make out the gigantic paper dragon sprawling over about 10 aisles in the background.

Plus I just have to include this pic of geoducks in the seafood section (eww!):

Best Dessert: Whiskey Bread Pudding, Acme Oyster House

I give this one to the whiskey bread pudding at New Orleans' Acme Oyster House. Loved how that whiskey tang set off the richness of the pudding!

Runner-up: the pralines from River Street Sweets Candy Store in Savannah.

Best Chain Restaurant: Outback Steakhouse

On this trip we sampled the fine cuisine at such chain restaurants as Applebee's and Sizzler's, but Outback Steakhouse would be my choice for when you are stuck in an area with few "local" options. The steaks were done just right, and the seasonal vegetable side memorably crisp and flavorful (I still remember the broccoli I had on my first visit to an Outback in Houston four years ago). I finished those veggies before I'd made it halfway through the garlic mashed potatoes -- surely a first.

Runner-up: Always and forever Mickey D's.

Best Overall Meal: Lunch at Mrs. Wilkes

This one was a tough one. REALLY tough. But I have to give up for Mrs. Wilkes in Savannah, GA, and her 10,000 refillable vegetable sides. (I'm told the fried chicken, BBQ pork and beef stew were excellent as well... but I was too busy stuffing myself with the sides.) I am still dreaming of the black-eye peas and lima beans.

Runner-up: Tan Tan in Houston. Beyond the fact that I was incredibly relieved to have Asian food after a week of deep-fried Southern cooking, the dishes here were far above average in taste and generously portioned.

Navajo Food for Dinner

Goulding's Lodge is sort of its own little community, being one of the only two hotels in the Valley. In addition to traditional amenities like a pool and fitness room, it also has its own restaurant, gas station, car wash, convenience store and movie theater (to screen John Wayne movies, of course!).

You would expect the restaurant to be a price-gouging disaster, but we were pleasantly surprised by both the quality and prices there. On our second night, I sampled a Southwestern-style pork & green chile stew, accompanied by Navajo flat bread. It's a massive fried thing -- kind of like youtiao, the fried bread sticks Chinese people eat at breakfast, if you're familiar with that -- and served with a bottle of honey.

Lunch in the Desert

For lunch, our guide killed this horse, tore the flesh off its bones with his bare hands and cooked it over an open flame.


Just kidding!

We came across this horse carcass in Mystery Valley and our guide ever so thoughtfully reconstructed the skeleton for our photographing pleasure. I have pix of the leg, which still had hair on it... but I'll spare you. :)

Anyway, the lunch he did make was pretty yum -- he made a little fire in the shade of one of the arches and grilled us hamburgers. The rest of our box meal included chips, an orange and a cookie.

Roadside Eats: Chinese Food in Cortez, CO

We're bunking for the night in the town of Cortez, Colorado -- quite the surprise destination since we were planning on staying somewhere else. But passing through Cortez, Kaii suddenly realized it's much closer to Mesa Verda National Park, which we'll be visiting tomorrow, so we pulled into a Holiday Inn Express here and booked a room.

For dinner, we were craving something different from all the Mexican recently and decided to take our chances with... Chinese! Yes, it could have gone very, very badly, but we had an all-around enjoyable meal at Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant: sizzling chicken, shrimp & scallops w/ vegetables and fish w/ garlic, soy sauce and ginger (a little dry but still tasty).

Mexican Food in Santa Fe

The Mexican food binge continues!

We've now had, like, five straight meals at Mexican restaurants. And that's not counting Southwestern-style eggs and omelets w/ salsa for breakfast.

Something particularly noticeable about Mexican food in Santa Fe is that they like their dishes "smothered" here -- the sauces are abundant, almost soupy. Compare this to, say, the drier style of San Antonio Mexican food. It can be tasty, but overall, it's not for me. I like dry!

Here's a summary:


Plaza Cafe: The one meal that wasn't so gloopy. I had a pork pozole soup, and Kaii had chorizo & mushroom sopes. Excellent.


The Shed: Look at my chicken enchiladas swimming in sauce. I was unable to eat more than a few bites. The guacamole was to die for, though!


Tomasita's: Pretty good! I had a combo plate w/ a relleno, chicken enchilada and beef taco, all smothered of course.


Five and Dime: Kaii was dying to try their famous Fritopie, aka Southwestern chili poured into a bag of Frito's. Apparently Kaii has made this before with friends -- they call it a "walking taco"!!


Posa's: Tamales smothered in a smoky red chile sauce.

Lunch with the Hipsters @ Food Shark

So who the hell lives in Marfa, you might be wondering? It is 100% unbelievable, but just imagine if someone took a chunk of Williamsburg and dropped it into the middle-of-nowhere, Texas. YES, that is Marfa.

This became obvious during lunch at the Food Shark, which serves gourmet sandwiches and salads out of an airstream in the middle of town. (Btw, "town" means about 20 blocks and a single traffic light -- a single blinking one at that.)

Everyone there was in their 20s/30s, wearing plaid shirts and Wayfarers and talking about things like "yoga tonight," getting service on their iPhones and listening to "Running with Scissors" on tape. Apparently they are all architects/artists/art history graduates. And they do things like run the galleries/work at the restaurants/build solar-powered communes in the middle of the prairie.

HELLO hipsters!!

Mexican Food in San Antonio

We're having quite a lot of Mexican food here in San Antonio, as you might imagine. Rosario's last night was pretty good. Today was a mixed bag.

For lunch, we scored at an awesome, awesomely random place in a depressed part of town called Taqueria Guadalajara (top). From the road you just know it's good, because there are a lot of cars in the parking lot (while every other place is deserted). I had some pretty yum carne guisada (beef tips in gravy) and an horchata.

Dinner at Casa Rio on the Riverwalk was a miss, though (bottom): My tortilla soup and tamales smothered in Texas chili con carne were too salty.

Dinner at Rosario's

Actually, we ended up going to this Mexican place called Rosario's, which the hotel concierge described as being "four blocks away." Yeah, more like 15 New York city blocks! Everything IS bigger in Texas.

San Antonio seems pretty cute. On our (lengthy) walk to the restaurant, we got psyched to see it in the daylight. The Hispanic influence seems much more pronounced than in either Houston or Austin.

Anyway, by the time we got there, it was 8:50 and we realized to our dismay that the restaurant closed at 9. The owner was nice and seated us anyway.

The food was great. Any time I see Mexican-style beans looking fluffy, like maybe they had a lot of interaction with lard, rather than completely whole and swimming in water, I know they're done right. I had enchiladas in a green sauce, while Kaii had a yummy grilled tilapia Veracruz (olive, caper & tomato sauce). The chips were amazingly addictive.

Day 9: Sunday Brunch at Moonshine

We got up this morning resolving to take it easy today. After putting in time at the gym (first time in two weeks -- oof), we headed to Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill for brunch. Wow, little did we know brunch here means a massive buffet -- yum!

Just a few of the things we had: chicken tenders, chicken fried steak w/ chipotle gravy, mini bagels w/ three kinds of cream cheese, honeyed ham, mashed sweet potatoes, cheese & broccoli rice, scallion and ham fritatta, two kinds of home fries, green chili grits, biscuits, asparagus omelet, deviled eggs, jalapeno sausages, ham/egg/cheese croissant, green eggs, eggs migas (w/ tortilla chips and peppers), King Ranch casserole (apparently a Texas specialty w/ smoked chicken & tortillas), three kinds of muffins, fruit salad, cappuccino bundt cake, M&M pancakes, cinnamon roll, white chocolate bread pudding and cream cheese turnover.

OK, I think I got it all. :)

Dan Flavin or Not?

Ha ha, it's Southside Market. This is what happens when you look at too much art.

Early Dinner at Southside Market

We were almost all the way from Houston to Austin when we started seeing signs for Southside Market, a Texas BBQ joint that Kaii remembered reading about in his beloved Gourmet magazine.

According to Gourmet, Southside's sausages are to die for -- so we decided to make a little detour. Guess what? They were! I got the sausage plate with cole slaw, slices of white bread, pinto beans w/ bacon and a pickle.

By the way, I agree with their sign.

Dinner at Tan Tan

You know what was so exciting about dinner tonight? We stumbled upon a totally amazing place completely by accident.

So, I got a top-notch recommendation for a Mexican restaurant but Kaii and I were both feeling like Asian after five straight days of hardcore Southern food, so we asked around and found out that the Asian part of town is in Bellaire.

We just kind of nosed down Bellaire Boulevard and waited until we saw Chinese characters and then drove around a couple strip malls to see which places were full of people. Lo and behold, we found Tan Tan -- a monster Vietnamese/Chinese place easily the size of seven normal restaurants, all lit up with neon and mirrors and with fake trees inside. And completely packed. SO Asian! We knew we had come to the right place.

I had a seriously revelatory wonton noodle soup. Kaii had some Vietnamese dish that was chicken, pork and egg over rice. On top of that, we shared a plate of double-fried noodles with shrimp (cooked perfectly) and Chinese broccoli. Omg so good.

Muffuletta

Day 6 dawned way too early for me. But we had to pack up our things and get ready to make the trek to Texas. And we had a bit of unfinished business in New Orleans -- muffuletta. We had to make a pilgrimage to the old-school Italian grocery store Central Grocery on Decatur to have their famous sandwich of Italian meats and cheeses topped by a garlicky olive salad.

My god! That was some sandwich. It was EIGHT inches around, cut into quarters, and cost $14. (In the last photo above, the quarter is there for scale.) The oil from the olives dripped down in a greasy, delicious mess.

Dinner at Mandina's

Kaii took a quick nap; then we took the street car quite far from the city center to Mandina's, a neighborhood-y Italian/seafood place that had been recommended to us. It felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, but we were reassured when we went in and there was a big ass line. (Ha, there's the New Yorker in me again!)

I was so full after the turtle soup (it's actually made with veal) and shrimp remoulade (cold shrimp in a creamy mustard sauce -- another Nola specialty), that when my trout almandine came, I could only manage a few bites. Seriously. The fries were amazing though -- they kind of reminded me of my favorite fries of all time, these golden beauties in St. Petersburg over 10 years ago that were almost definitely cooked in lard. Ah... they live on in memory.

Anyway, Kaii insisted on having milky way pie for dessert, but I was DONE.

Afternoon snack at Mother's

On the way back to the hotel, Kaii wanted to stop and try the food at Mother's, a local place renowned for its po' boys. It was cute, but unfortunately, we weren't blown away. Kaii had a gigantic po' boy w/ beef brisket on top of turkey and ham, while I just had a little cup of red beans and rice (with bits of pork and bacon in it).

Cooking Class

After beignets. we headed to St. Louis Street to take a cooking class at the New Orleans School of Cooking. Yes, super tourist-y, but it was fun! And yes, there was a "general store" out front where you could buy all the spices and mixes that are ever so conveniently mentioned in class.

Our teacher was actually reasonably good about not over-promoting. His name was Kevin, aka Big Kev, and he has a restaurant in the Hilton called Lil' Dizzy's Cafe. He was a funny dude. Kept us entertained as he made first a coconut bread pudding (so it could bake in the oven), then gumbo, jumbalaya and finally pralines. He cooked up on a stage kitchen that had a big mirror over it so you could see what he was doing, and we sat at round tables of eight or so covered in checkered cloths. Big Kev was really casual with the measurements and everything -- drove the Virginia ladies at our table crazy. They kept asking how many cups of this and that, and he just laughed at them. It was funny.

YUM, the food was good! Especially the gumbo and pralines, in my opinion. I can't wait to try my hand at them at home. :)


Us in the mirror over the cooking area.


Big Kev in the process of making a jumbo portion of the jumbalaya in a cooker so big it looked like an Airstream.


The gumbo. Do you know why gumbo's so brown like that? I had no idea -- the base is a "roux," or flour cooked and browned in oil. That's what makes it so thick and tasty.


Jumbalaya, served with Abita root beer. Real Abita beer was being served too, but I opted to keep it PG.


The bread pudding, with praline on the side. He made the pralines look so easy!