Posted by Jamie Forrest, May 15, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Photograph by the Seattle Cheese Festival
For all you Seattleites and those from neighboring areas in the Pacific Northwest, the 2008 Seattle Cheese Festival starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday afternoon. Held outdoors every year at the wonderful Pike Place Market, the fourth annual Seattle Cheese Festival is open to the public, has a suggested admission of $1, and represents one of the largest gatherings of cheese aficionados in the country.
On display (and available for sampling) are hundreds of cheeses from around the world, and for the more serious turophiles, there are seminars and panels, cooking demonstrations, a wine garden and a children’s scavenger hunt. (Seminars, panels, and the wine garden have additional admission fees.)
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, April 7, 2008 at 11:30 AM
When I heard the Georgian Room, Seattle's fanciest hotel restaurant, would be holding an etiquette class for 8- to 13-year-olds, I had one question for instructor (and Georgian Room maitre d') Tony D'Agostino: are any kids going to come to the class on their own accord?
Not likely, he admitted. "How many kids go, 'Mom, I want to go learn etiquette?'" D'Agostino said. "It's right up with the adult classes, though. You go around the table and ask, 'Why are you here?' The husbands go, 'My wife is bringing me.'"
So how do you keep a captive and potentially unruly audience entertained? In a word, snacks. And not those cucumber sandwiches, either. The tiered tea trays will hold scones and clotted cream, peanut butter sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches (crustless, of course), and chocolate chip cookies. To drink, kids will get a choice of hot chocolate with whipped cream and mini-marshmallows, or herb tea. This doesn't sound like much of a choice to me.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, March 31, 2008 at 2:15 PM
Even though I don't live in Seattle, I'm hooked on MSG150, a blog that aims to review every restaurant in Seattle's International District (Chinatown) with freakishly precise data (such as quality of chopsticks, length of waiting time for food, and fortunes received from post-meal fortune cookies), excessive photos, and humorous commentary. If all this information is too much for you, you can skim reviews just by looking at the number of chopsticks awarded to each restaurant from a scale of 1 ("dog food") to 5 ("great!"). The world needs more obsessively comprehensive food blogs like this one.
Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, March 24, 2008 at 11:00 AM
What is it about taco trucks? Does anybody not love them, aside from competing Mexican restaurant owners? Do four-year-olds love taco trucks?
I decided to find out. I took my four-year-old daughter, Iris, to Tacos El Asadero this week, and I think it's fair to say Tacos El Asadero is now her favorite place in the entire world.
El Asadero is Seattle's best-known taco truck—a bus, actually, where you can sit inside and enjoy your taco, mulita, or torta while staring through filmy old bus windows. We stepped inside and ordered several tacos at $1 each. Iris's favorite was the lengua, tender braised beef tongue. She entertained other customers by singing, "Lengua, lengua, lengua," to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Then she stole one of my tortillas and created her own taco with a mix of lengua, carnitas, and carne asada. "I'm eating a real taco!" she declared, dropping meat on the floor of the bus.
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Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, October 8, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Everyone knows you can torture your kids by substituting apple slices for fries in a Happy Meal, but what about the important part of the kid's meal: the toy?
Burgerville is an unusual burger chain found only in Oregon and Southwest Washington. They use sustainably raised beef and Northwest fruit. The fish and chips is made with fresh Alaskan halibut. You can put Rogue Creamery's awesome Smokey Blue cheese on your burger or salad.
Recently, my daughter, Iris, got the kid's meal at Burgerville (plain burger and fries), and the toy was a plastic cup, a small trowel, and a packet of zinnia seeds. Iris loved planting the zinnias on our balcony. The other seeds in the series are sunflowers, forget-me-nots, and baby snapdragons. Collect all four! Dirt not included. (The regional chain has since moved on to a bird-watching toy series now that growing season has come to an end.)
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 16, 2007 at 6:00 PM
Photograph from UCLAcyc on Flickr
Philly's got cheesesteaks, New York's got pizza, Chicago's got hot dogs, and Seattle has ... teriyaki?
According to a story in the Seattle Weekly, the grilled meat dish is fast becoming the ubiquitous dish in the Emerald City.
Nothing seems to stop the exponential growth of teriyaki shops in Seattle and its surrounding environs, including market saturation. To wit, the Washington Restaurant Association recently generated a list of all the restaurants in its master database with "teriyaki" in the name, listed by date of entry. As of 1984, the database contained 19 (that is, restaurants still in business). That number doubled by 1987. In the mid-1990s, 20 to 40 teriyaki joints appear to have been opening every year, and the database now contains 519 listings statewide (there are more than 100 teriyaki shops within Seattle's city limits alone)—which doesn't include restaurants that favor "Bento," "Wok," or "Deli" over "Teriyaki" in their titles.
The story traces teriyaki's history in Seattle, which begins, possibly, as early as 1908 in the city's Nihonbashi district but which really takes off with the opening of Toshi's Teriyaki in 1976—a time of great Asian influx into the Seattle area and one that saw diners searching for healthier fare and Asian flavors—creating the perfect nexus for the teriyaki explosion.
Posted by Alaina Browne, February 16, 2007 at 6:00 AM
Photograph by Adam Kuban, Serious Eats
Chinese New Year and the year of the pig according to the Chinese zodiac, begins this Sunday, February 18. Because Chinese New Year is tied to the lunar calendar, it falls on a different date every year, usually between January 19 and February 23. It begins on the second new moon after the winter solstice and ends 15 days later with the Lantern Festival. According to tradition, the celebration gets under way on New Year's Eve with a family dinner hosted at the eldest family member's home; it is considered the most important annual family tradition. Family members travel from near and far to attend. A family's given menu will vary by region, but here are some of the more popular dishes and their symbolism:
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Posted by Nathalie Jordi, January 25, 2007 at 8:49 AM
Seattle's got its latte artists at Caffe Vita, while the Londoners that jam Monmouth Coffee like their coffees understated.
The coffees in Perth belong to another category altogether, thanks to "cappuccino Michelangelo" Simon Law.
For other latte art, check out the pics at Google Images.
Posted by From Roadfood.com, January 15, 2007 at 7:00 AM
We asked our friends Jane and Michael Stern over at Roadfood.com to give us their top five chili picks. Here are their choices, with tasting notes.
DOT'S | 3 West Main Street, Wilmington VT 05363 [map]
Year after year Dot's takes the People's Choice First Prize in the New England chili cook-off; and while Southwest chiliheads wouldn't even recognize it as their beloved bowl of red, this true Yankee chili is terrific. It is listed on the menu as "Jailhouse Chili," but it's most respectable. Beefy, thick with beans, spicy but not ferocious, it comes as a cup or bowl under a mantle of melted cheese. Originally reviewed by Michael Stern on Roadfood.com
REAL CHILI | 419 East Wells Street, Milwaukee WI 53202 [map]. 414-271-4042
Real Chili serves bowls of chili mild, medium, or hot, with spaghetti or beans, or spaghetti and beans. The full and complete arrangement is known as the Marquette Special. (The original Real Chili parlor has long been a favorite of Marquette University students.) The degree of heat is determined by the amount of meat; i.e. more meat equals more heat. The meat is ground fine, brilliantly spiced, and deliciously oily. It goes atop layers of noodles and beans; and on top of the meat is piled a large fistful of shredded cheese (melting from the heat). You can also get sour cream and raw onions as a garnish. Every bowl comes with a side dish of oyster crackers to crumble on top or to eat as a sort of palate-cleanser between bites of chili.
This true downtown chili parlor (of which the original branch is at 1625 West Wells Street, 414-342-6955) is the sort of beanery once fairly common in big cities throughout the region. With the exception of Cincinnati, where chili has remained a bona fide mania, most of the Midwest has forgotten its chili passions; and old-time chili parlors are a rarity. That is one reason we are so enamored of Real Chili.
Granted, heartland chili gets little respect from gastronomes who prefer the southwestern kinds, but even for the Texas-style chili purist, Real Chili is an inspiring and enjoyable adventure in declasse dining. Sit at a counter or at one of two communal tables with backless stools and accompany your chili with beer or cherry Coke. A super-fast, friendly staff dole out second helpings at half price of the first, and if you need a bumper sticker for your car, there is always a stack of them at the cash register. A while ago, we got one that said, "REAL CHILI: IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE." Recently, the bumper stickers have proclaimed Real Chili "A MILWAUKEE LEGEND." Originally reviewed by Michael Stern on Roadfood.com
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Posted by Adam Roberts, January 9, 2007 at 8:18 AM
Eggs Benedict and Martin Short have very little in common. Eggs Benedict is made with Canadian bacon; Martin Short is hammy and Canadian. One is served on an English muffin with hollandaise sauce, the other co-starred in ¡Three Amigos! And the comparisons end there, except for the fact that Martin Short and eggs Benedict were two looming obstacles in my relationship with Craig, my boyfriend of nine months.
I can't remember precisely when or where it first happened, but my hunch is that we were at Balthazar enjoying one of New York City's best breakfast bargains (eating in a lustrous environment at diner prices). Craig ordered eggs Benedict, and when it came out, he tasted and said, "It's good but not as good as Glo's."
Glo's, he informed me, was a small homey diner in Seattle that served the best eggs Benedict anyone could ever fathom.
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