Seattle

Just spent the weekend in Seattle. Some highlights:

• the butterfly room at the Pacific Science Center
• the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park
• the Pioneer Square Underground Tour — hosted by an actual member of the Washington State Legislature (!)

The Space Needle is definitely a somewhat-dated but still interesting architectural highlight, and Rem Koolhaas’ Seattle Public Library is a marvel to behold first-hand. For a city of just under 600,000 residents the skyscrapers and other elements of urban architecture are top-notch.

The aquarium was kind of a disappointment, that Pacific Octpus on display is not exactly giant. Colorful, kind of afraid of the screaming kids, and interesting, but not giant. Overall Seattle strikes me as a more family-friendly city than San Francisco, which means that at this point in my life I find the rugrat overrun a little annoying.

Apparently Tom Douglas owns every restaurant in Seattle. We ate at three: Lola, Dahlia Lounce, and Serious Pie. Lola was one of the only restaurants in town open after 11PM when our flight arrived, and a late-night dinner of lamb gyros and oregano fries hit the spot perfectly. Dahlia Lounge was also pretty good, but the restaurant seems to have an odd identity crisis in that the decor is pure retro-Chinese, but most of the menu is modern Northwest. The “sea bites” appetizer is a selection of five fresh seafood preparations on ice, all delicious (five spice smoked salmon? who knew!), but with two breadsticks bizarrely placed over the dish. Halibut and King salmon entrees arrived perfectly cooked and in abundant portions — though the total bill was just as expensive as you might find in San Francisco. Serious Pie, though, had some serious problems — a morel and arugula pesto pie had so much salt in the squeeze-bottle-applied pesto so as to render the delicate morels invisible, and a fennel sausage and pepper pizza was pretty sparsely topped. At a price (and with a reputation) equivalent to my current San Francisco favorite Pizzeria Delfina, the quality seemed oddly low.

Macrina Bakery is some serious bread and I would love to seem Leslie Mackie open a southern outpost for us in the city. The breads there are easily comparable to SF’s Acme or Boulangerie Bay Bread products and would sell like hotcakes (hot rolls?).

The pulled pork sliders on buttermilk biscuits at BOKA Kitchen + Bar are not to be missed; they serve a decent crab cake and a nice plate of mussels. The menu layout favors small plates, so we got to try these as well as the house-made charcuterie, of which a pate and a mole-spiced salami were pretty memorable. Portions are again rather large, but BOKA’s menu is definitely underpriced compared to the market.

Leaving tomorrow morning. The two things I skipped due to travel time constraints were Zoka Coffee and the Museum of Flight. I really wish I had found time for Zoka so I could do a Zoka vs. Blue Bottle shootout. Overall, the espresso drinks I had up here in restaurants were surprisingly poorly made — nothing but bitter notes, perhaps it’s a local preference?

Anyway, good times. Lastly, the Pan Pacfic Hotel Seattle is a modern and beautiful place to stay that’s within walking distance of all of the sights and restaurants I just mentioned. We managed to get most of our vacation task list accomplished with exactly zero carbon footprint, yay!