Camelama

Palisades

I met three lovely ladies and one charming young man for lunch the other day at Palisades.

I've only dined here at dinner, for special occasions, friends out for the night, or dates. I was interested to see if lunch was different.

Well, the service was excellent, even when it wasn't!    Our waiter seemed to be the only one working the entire restaurant floor, and was a bit flustered - please, oh please waitstaff, *WRITE DOWN THE ORDERS*. Our waiter forgot quite a few items - but always corrected them immediately when they were pointed out, we never had to wait long for anything.  And he went beyond normal service for us on a number of other items, like bringing us pretzel bread (YUM!) when it wasn't really supposed to be available.  So while he didn't do well on remembering things, he did very well on all-around customer service.

We had a gorgeous sunny fall day, so the view was wonderful - definitely different from the evenings, which is all lights and moonshine.   We watched boats weigh anchor or return to port, people strolling by, gulls and crows mooching about, and the city in the sun with mountains in a haze far off.

The food was, as always, delicious.  The first of my substitutions that the waiter was able to fulfill was just a regular green salad, no dressing, instead of the Ceaser salad.  The greens were fresh and crisp, the onion was sliced wafer thin, and just two crunch croutons made it finish off just right.  My fish and chips were tasty, well-prepared, and very pleasing.  I confess, I am NOT a fan of sweet potato fries, so I got the regular version.  I like sweet potatoes - but when they're in fry-shape, my tastebuds expect a Russet!  Silly tastebuds.  The aioli that came with a companion's sweet potato fries was tasty.  The frisse' (sp?) on the macadamia-nut-chicken was fascinating - and tasted good too, I'm told!  The chicken was delicious, the salmon that the last diner had looked like a substantial *and* good cut, and my fish was perfect.

Dessert was sorbet for all, a guava-passion-fruit treat that had a great tart kick along with the sweetness.

All considered, I'd definitely return for lunch or dinner.   And with their frequent diner's club, you can get discounts and special meals.  I'm signed up!

http://www.palisaderestaurant.com/

Rialto Pasta Bar & Grill revisited

On Sunday evening, Mr Cow and I took an old friend to dinner at Rialto in their new location in Fremont.  I was a little worried - sometimes a restaurant move means it's never as good again. 

No worries here!  The Rialto is better than ever!  More elbow room, more tables, even outdoor dining areas for the summer!  And the building is set back from the road so you feel completely removed from traffic. It's just lovely.  The interior is clean and simple, about 25 tables with white tableclothes and glass tops. The bread was delicious and bountiful, the salads were more of a mix of greens than before (and *tasty*!), and then what I was worried about most of all..... Rudy's Red Sauce.

Thank goodness, it's just as incredibly delicious as ever. Loved the sauce, the pasta was perfect, and I'm salivating now just thinking about it.

The Furat was perfect with the meal.  Mr Cow had one of his favorite specials, the Butternut Squash Ravioli with Walnuts (I snuck some,it was silky smooth and buttery and nutty and oh so good), and Gail Force Winds (our out of town pal) had the chicken in penne with a cream sauce and a bunch of veggies - also pronounced as yummy.

And of course, we rounded off the meal with their pizelle ice cream sandwich, split three ways.

Our hostess seated us perfectly, I think she heard us yammering away loudly and knew to tuck us away from other folks, in a corner, where we could laugh and tell stories all night long.  The server was spectacular - humorous without being annoying, perfect service of our different options (no salad dressing for me - most people forget that after I order it, he had it spot on!), fast refill of water glasses throughout our long stay, and i still smile when I think of his happy face and his charming manners.

Rialto lived up to past standards and then took a huge leap beyond.

GO.
NOW.

http://www.rialtopastabar.com/

Patty's Eggnest - Ballard

Waking early this past Saturday, I decided to treat myself to a breakfast cooked by someone other than me.  I decided I wanted egg-based items more than pancake-based, so chose Patty's Eggnest over the Original Pancake House (OPH also has "country potatoes" rather than hash browns, and I was in the mood for some good old fashioned hashbrowns).

Business at 7:30am on Saturday was light, so I knew service would be fast.

One big point in their favor: the hostess actually *considered* where to seat me, didn't just grab the first empty booth.  As I was dining alone, she took me to a lovely little table tucked away in a corner out of the traffic pattern, and having seen that I had a book, chose a table for 4 rather than 2 - so that I had room for plate, drink, jam etc *and* space to lay out my book flat.  Bliss!   The actual art of hostessing is well nigh extinct, even in fancy shmancy expensive places, so to find it at the Eggnest put quite the shine on my morning.

Another big point in their favor: they didn't "push" their fresh-squeezed orange juice.  Since they didn't try to sell it to me, I was open to trying it.  Yum!  Another big point for their side.

I ordered a very simple breakfast - scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, and sourdough toast.  The meal arrived quickly - I barely had time to drink half my glass of water.  The portions were *huge* - I ended up taking a lot home.   This could be bad if you weren't going straight home - I probably won't stop there on my way out birding, for instance.  Don't want eggs and bacon sittin' in the car all day...

The bacon was delicious - thick cut, straight, and well-marbled (not too much, not too little). 

The toast was delicious - thick and chewy, yet crispy - a perfect vehicle for the jam.  I could have wished for more sanitary jam selections - one freezer jam dish on the table.  Who knows where the serving spoon has been, or what other dirty implements were thrust in there for more jam? I decided to ignore this and just eat.  (I'm really not a germaphobe, I swear!  I used to go barefoot around the horse barns, for heaven's sake.   But for some reason, other people accessing my butter and jam really bugs me.)

The hash browns were delicious.  Thick hash cuts, no shoestring potatoes here.  Cooked crispy in spots, perfect browning.  They were a bit too greasy for my liking, as it meant I couldn't enjoy as many of them as I wanted (perhaps best anyway, considering cholesterol count!).   I'd rather have less grease and more potato - but for a mass -produced diner type hash brown, it was just dandy.

Scrambled eggs: also felt too greasy.  Look, you don't need a lot of grease to scramble an egg.  So to get a pile of what should be tasty eggs, and discover them to be lacking all flavor and at the same time leaving a puddle of grease .... well, that's just not right.   They weren't *bad*, just ... tasteless.  I salted them (first time salting food in months!) and peppered liberally and ate about half the serving.  I wish I'd had half the portion, with more taste and less grease.  They seemed like real eggs, I have no idea why there wasn't that nummy scrambled egg taste.  At OPH I never salt, just pepper, and at home sometimes I don't even pepper, the eggs taste so delicious - but then, at home, I use organic butter and milk, and organic free-range etc etc brown eggs. 

But I didn't have to do the dishes here.  Nor be awake enough to use the stove - so it's a tradeoff.

I'll be going back, for sure, but I'll be forewarned - anything that could be greasy will be greasy.  And expect large portions. 

Hale's Brewery

http://halesbrewery.com/

This is a local spot, easy to get to, street parking, nice place - so I've always wondered ... why don't I go here more often?

Tried it again last night and remembered - oh yeah.  THAT's why.  It's not bad ... but it's not somewhere I'm yearning to go try again.

The bready items are great, made by a number of excellent local bakeries. Their side options are rather potato-centric, with none of them being interesting enough to make me say "let's go get some of [whatever] at Hale's!". 

We started out with their spent-grain pretzel and I had a cup of french onion soup.  The pretzel was fine (could have used better, larger, more obvious rock salt on it) but the soup - oh dear.  WHY must you ruin a perfectly good Gruyere covering with shredded Parmesan?  Stop it!  Just give me that lovely smooth cap of melty gooey cheese.  The hard, unmelted parm just made the cheese top impossible to actually eat while on the soup (hard enough with just the guy, but the parm made it stiff and tough and unable to cut with a spoon).  And then the soup itself ... well, let's just say it wasn't soup, it was Onion Stew with a teaspoon of broth.  Guess the tip is: tell the waiter you want more broth than onion, hold the parm, and maybe not go late at night when they're trying to get rid of everything they have left at dinner service.

As entrees, and because we were at a pub, we sampled their burgers and I'll most likely never order one again.  HALF POUND.  Who the heck needs an entire half pound of burger?   Or if you like a half pound, that's great - but offer a smaller size burger so that the rest of us don't waste food!

Dessert was nice, if somewhat boring choices (please - have something light and airy and small available!  sorbets, mousses, fruit and cheese plate, etc).

A good enough local spot, but too expensive for me to visit frequently, and wasn't impressed by the choices available. 

Oh, and the beers?  NUM-MEE.  Those I'll go back for.

Wild Ginger

http://www.wildginger.net/

Now, as a Timid Nibbler the restaurants that really scare me are the fashionable places whose menus seem like someone chose random words out of a dictionary and threw 'em all together on a piece of paper and called it done. 

Wild Ginger seemed, at first glance, to be this kind of place. Trendy, right next to Benaroya Hall so you get the artsy crowd, well-dressed financial district workers lunching there on expense accounts, etc.  But then I browsed their online menu and realized that under the hype, under the high-heels and iphone-users, there was an actual restaurant.  Amazing.

The reception area at WG always seems to crowd up and become completely unusable.  Whenever I meet a friend there for lunch, it's packed with suits and everyone's (happily) shouting at one another and it's very difficult to a) find a host and b) be heard by said host when giving your reservation name.  Then it's difficult to wait for a table and to be seen/heard by the person trying to find you to walk you to your table, as there's nowhere to stand and again with the shouting - take them up on their offer to wait in the bar! 

Don't let this experience put you off, though.  This place is a gold mine for timid yet interested eaters. 

The appetizers here are wonderful for us wimps.  Every starter, every satay is VERY well described - there will be no surprises when your plate arrives (Knowing is Half The Battle, remember!).  And nothing is overwhelming - any dipping sauces or such are in separate dishes, the food is not wallowing in it's own sauce.   The presentation is lovely, and the food is *good*.  Good cuts of meat, the chicken seems to be mostly white meat and hardly any gristle, the short-ribs were very good once and ok the next, and I haven't tried the salads because I'm still working my way through all the interesting satays! 

Now, I'm a pot sticker conneisseur.  I try them everywhere I go, and never get tired of them.  WG's chicken pot stickers are tasty, well-formed (they don't fall apart while you're eating them), have actual flavour, and the dough is nummy.  I'd eat the filling or the dough alone, the sign of a really good dumpling.  The dipping sauce that accompanies the little pillows of flavor is delicious also - not too spicy or too garlic-y. YUM.  Even just typing about them gets me drooling.  It's difficult not to order these every single time.  Or multiple orders.  "Bring me a round dozen of your pot stickers, good waiter!"

I haven't tried their Emperor Bowls because, as a timid eater, the idea of being presented with a very large extra sized serving of a dish is too threatening.  If I hate it upon first bite, then I have this ginormous lump of unwanted food on the table!  This is why I love places with great appetizers and satays - you can experiment without committing yourself fully to a family-sized entree.

Their noodle dishes are wonderful, tasty and spicy but not overly populated with strange things! Veggies are always fresh, meat is usually of a good cut (though sometimes the meat bits seem to be those leftover from more visual dishes, where a good cut is demanded due to presentation).  The noodles are delicious, whatever kind you get.

Their lunch entrees don't really sing to me, so I normally just order an appetizer, a satay, and some other non-entree item.  If I do an entree it's usually a curry - they do such a great job with those!

For the dessert I typically go for the fruit sorbets, an excellent way to finish off a spicy meal before going back to breath on coworkers. 

I always have a pot of their tea, love the pot and tea cups on the table.  Sometimes, if we're talking a long time and it's not one of their frantically busy lunch hours, we'll even go through two pots - but the one pot is large enough for quite a few cups between two people.

If I'm dining here at lunch for the Dine Around Seattle (aka "25 for 25" or now "30 for 30" or other such name), the choices are a bit different on the prix fixe menu, but they always seem to include those yummy potstickers, and the entree choices are a bit different from the normal menu.  I had one of their omlettes once through this program, and it was astonishingly good.  This was a HUGE jump out of my normal eating area, but it really paid off.  Their omelettes are not thick eggy beasts, but more like a dry egg tortilla folded over ingredients. And the ingredients when I had them were all veggies, including golden raisins, carrot strips, bean sprouts, cucumber strips, etc.  Oh. My. Goodness. Delicious, fascinating tastes on the tongue, and I've watched for this to appear again on the menu and I've never seen it since - what a shame!  There was also a version of Pho once, that was delicious but again, has never shown up again that I could see. Pho is great for timid eaters because you can see everything, you know what everything is, you can eat around the things you don't like, and it's filling and while typically a big serving, it's not unusual for even non-timid eaters to have to take half of it home! So only eating part of it will not raise eyebrows. You can always take the rest home and be picky in private! 

Dinner sees a few changes.  Soups appear, none of which have ever made me want to order them.  Ditto salads.  No specific noodle menu, a shame.   Entrees are some duplicates from lunch, some are appetizers livin' large, and there are more seafood dishes.

Frankly, I like eating here at lunch more than at dinner ... I feel like I get my money's worth more, and that I'm not wasting their time and mine.  The Dine Around Seattle prix fixe menu is a great deal here at lunch, I heartily recommend it.

So, Timids, there are many options here (including a vegetarian menu I haven't browsed because, well, I likes my meat!) that are great for us.  On first visit, or for the very timid, stick with appetizers, satays, dessert and tea and you'll be fine and have a wonderful meal.