Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Springtime in Seattle

Originally uploaded by innergeek

Ben and I are visiting Seattle for a few days, and I don’t know what people are talking about regarding the cloudy/rainy weather. It was beautiful today! Check out all the photos I took by clicking that link over there on the right.

We arrived Wednesday evening and made our way to the Taphouse Grill downtown for dinner. The food was delicious (I had the coconut curry with rice noodles and tofu; Ben had a salmon burger that didn’t taste “fishy” at all). Unfortunately, we only got to try a few of the 160 beers on tap… Ben liked the Scottish Kilt Lifter beer and I liked the Baron Maibock from my sampler.

We didn’t stay out too late because we had to get up for a 10am Savor Seattle food tour of Pike Place Market.

The food tour was great—we learned a lot about the history of the market as we went through, and were fed lots of yummy samples. Freshly fried mini doughnuts, Market Spice tea, various smoked salmons, chowder (clam and seafood for everyone else, coconut-based vegan for me because of a shellfish allergy), piroshky, muscot grapes, Beecher’s handmade cheese (their gourmet Mac & Cheese is really incredible), chocolate covered cherries, and Etta’s crab cakes (where I had cornbread pudding as an alternate and I think that was my favorite thing on the tour, even though it doesn’t sound like much, ZZOMG it is the best!). The tour guides were fun (normally there would be only one, but Stephanie was training David) and if you visit Seattle in the future, I would recommend starting your trip out with this tour of Pike Place.

As I said before, the day was gorgeous, so we spent a lot of time walking around the market after the tour. The craft stalls had really cool stuff, and we found a small hand-blown blue glass pumpkin that had to come home with us. We mostly made notes of where to go back so that we didn’t spend all of our money at once… though we very easily could have. I fell in love with some sizable forged steel and blown glass lamps by Paul Petersen. They’re a couple hundred dollars each, so I’m not sure we would actually get one at this point. But they are absolutely on my WANT list. I just loved them. The one in the photo here was at least 24 inches tall.

There were (permit-holding) street buskers all over the market and at designated places along the sidewalk who added to the atmosphere of cool. Also, we spotted two women sharing a tender moment on a side street in front of a park. You don’t see that every day in Utah…

After our food tour, there were still several stalls that offered free samples. I really loved the Fireweed Honey at Moon Valley Honey, which Ben thinks would turn into some incredibly yummy handmade meade.  The potato leek soup at La Buona Tavola was good—but even better after an eyedropper of “instant happiness” (aka white truffle oil) was infused into it. We were lured into the store to taste some 12-year-old aged cherry balsamic vinegar, and would have purchased some if it weren’t for the fact that is was $50 a bottle. I was almost ready to become a world-traveling professional balsamic vinegar taster after that. The Savor Seattle tour guide had also told us about one of her favorite wines made from muscot grapes (which, if you’ve never tried them, taste nothing like how you imagine grapes tasting and everything like you imagine ambrosia tasting) that was sold at this shop. The really friendly guy at La Buona Tavola gave us a sample of the award-winning 2008 Tre Donne “Moscato d’Asti” wine imported from Italy, and we couldn’t walk away without taking the bottle with us. Now the question is, will it last long enough to make the trip home with us? We would have to put it in our suitcase, so I’m not sure…..

We also got a free sample of Pappardelle’s Dark Chocolate Linguine and had trouble resisting its chocolatey temptation. Truth is, chocolate is not as dear to me as it is for most women, but this was damn fine tasting pasta—and it wasn’t even cooked yet. The dry samples were definitely good enough to eat in copious quantities. And recipes were included with each package that included ingredients like vanilla ice cream and fresh fruit (on top of PASTA!) so you better believe that a package of this stuff went straight into our suitcase.

The girl who initially offered us the sample—and then schmoozed us with her great sense of humor—let me take this photo of her. I missed her name, but she was fun and I told her about my blog so maybe she’ll stop by and tell us who she is so she can be Internet Famous. Or maybe I’ll walk by the booth again in the next couple days and ask her myself!

Btw, the “lime cilantro linguini” next to the chocolate stuff in the photo? Gross. Cilantro makes me sick. (I have to be very careful when eating Mexican, Thai, etc.)

We rounded out the day with a lovely dinner and lively conversation at my cousins’ house near the University district, where we were served a fresh salmon steak and then savored some mini cheesecakes we picked up at The Confectional at Pike Place. We took a bus to get to their house from downtown, and en route had an engaging conversation with an older guy sitting near us who has lived in Seattle for 40 years. “Everything is an exception here,” he said with fondness.

The guide book that I browsed through before coming to Seattle had said that people in Seattle are “cool,” in that they’re more aloof. I have not had that impression at all here. We really like Seattle. The people seem very laid back and “cool,” if by “cool” you mean fun and friendly.