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Posts tagged ‘restaurants’

Jun 18

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Coming Attractions: Blue Fox Cafe in Victoria, British Columbia

I spent the weekend celebrating a friend’s birthday in Victoria, BC. After you’ve been deep into your cups, you’ve gotta follow it up with a, ahem, hearty breakfast. The Blue Fox Cafe in Victoria, British Columbia has an amazing list of Eggs Benedict options. More from the Blue Fox Cafe and other trip highlights coming this week.

May 8

Traveling Chefs: Matt’s in the Market Meets Pok Pok

You never expect a Monday to be the best day of your week. But man, yesterday was about as good a Monday as it gets around here. A sunny, 75 degree day, where I sat out on the deck at lunch and then wrapped up the day with a Thai-themed extravaganza/ Traveling Chefs dinner at Matt’s in the Market, with dishes from Matt’s Chef Chester Gerl and Pok Pok’s Andy Ricker, 2011 James Beard Foundation Best Chef Northwest.

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Jun 25

Seattle: Marjorie

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Over the weekend, OJ and I were in Seattle. We’ve been trying to get one meal in the city on our last few trips — this time it was Marjorie in Belltown. It’s a funky little place (in a good way) with what you might call a “New American” menu. We lucked out because it was warm (for Seattle in June) on Saturday and since the sun doesn’t go down until 9:30 pm — it was a great night for sitting out on the side patio sipping a mojito. Well, except for me — I was sipping a Bordeaux blend from Whitman Cellars.

I love that they play a random mix of music (on elementary school record players!!) – so we’re talking vinyl here. I think we heard Billie Holiday and an artist singing in Hindi and they definitely had a Donna Summer album in the bathroom. Service is friendly and there’s no rushing you out to turn over tables. We had a 6:30 pm and didn’t leave until 9pm-ish.

Food-wise, Marjorie is doing the local, organic thing and everything was quite good, but let’s start with dessert, shall we? The photos tell the story and it starts and ends like this, “Mmmmmm…..”

Meyer Lemon Cake
Bourbon Bread Pudding w/ Butterscotch Sauce
But getting back to the main courses…you can go for a couple of small plates or a larger plate. I went for the shrimp and grits and the blue cheese souffle. Shrimp and grits was solid — good portion of shrimp — 4, I think. Grits had bits of smoky bacon in them. If I had one complaint about the small plates, it was that the blue cheese souffle was a tad small (even for a small plate). And even so, how about a little more greens to balance the richness of the souffle?

Shrimp and Grits (background)
Fallen Point Reyes Blue Cheese Souffle (foreground)

Here’s the highlight of the mains — the hangar steak. This is “medium” btw. A nice portion of protein alongside roasted asparagus and fingerlings. Doesn’t get much simpler and that’s what made it so good. No crazy sauces, just a bit of au jus. All well prepared.

Hangar Steak with asparagus and fingerling potatoes


Marjorie
2331 Second Avenue
Seattle, WA 98121
206.441.9842

Apr 22

South Food & Wine Bar

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You know you’ve had a really terrific vacation when more than a month later, you’re desperately holding on to the vestiges of the trip. Sure, I’ve stopped reading the Sydney Morning Herald and even more recently given up using the milk frother everytime I make coffee, but we did find ourselves at South Food and Wine Bar this weekend.

And even though Saturday was super windy and we found ourselves in a restaurant without power within about 15 minutes of sitting down, I kept my sunny Sydney disposition (and the wine probably helped, too).

South is even smaller than I thought — probably no more than 50-60 seats in all, even with the communal table just across from the bar.


The menu features the sorts of things you’d expect — barramundi, lamb, venison — but sadly no meat pies (perhaps too stereotypical). But the preparations and ingredients are lovely enough that you get over the eco-guilt of knowing they were probably flown nearly 8,000 miles to get to San Francisco.

Spring Pea Soup with Creme Fraiche

The wine list was quite broad and we had several lovely selections by the glass (unforeseen consequence of the power outage) and though I’d read about the Layer Cake Shiraz, the way the timing worked out with ordering wine and our food arriving once the power came back on, didn’t allow me to try it. Just as well, I read somewhere it retails for about $15 a bottle – and they were charging about $10 a glass. The Jug Shop carries a good number of Southern Hemisphere wines, so I just may get a shot at it.

Service is just fine, although still trying to relive my vacation, I wished our server had engaged us about why we were there (clearly not ex-pats) and whether or not we’d been to Australia. But no such luck.

Bonus points to South for serving Antipodes sparkling water. That, in and of itself, was almost enough of a reminder of our time at qualia to make for a lovely evening.

South Food and Wine Bar
330 Townsend St. (at 4th St).
San Francisco

Mar 18

Oz: The Most Important Meal of the Day

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bills corn fritters w/ bacon

Our first morning in Sydney we had breakfast at bills in Darlinghurst. Bill is Bill Granger and he’s apparently a well-known chef in Australia (which I didn’t know, but I might have seen him on Sara’s Secrets once, but maybe I’m making that up). They’re open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but breakfast seems to be the draw. We were there on a Monday, but apparently there’s a long wait on weekends. I can see why — after the corn fritters with bacon up there and the ricotta pancakes down below, we came back the following Monday for breakfast again. And I had to buy his book – bills sydney food.

Dee-lish!

bills ricotta hotcakes with banana
Another morning in Sydney we had breakfast at Two Good Eggs in Surry Hills. It’s more of a cafe that also serves breakfast, but it’s at Two Good Eggs where I discovered how much I like roasted tomatoes and mushrooms with my eggs and bacon. I guess its sort of like a classic British fry up, which usually has sausages instead of bacon, but anyway – it’s veg and I like it!
Two Good Eggs: poached eggs, bacon & sourdough toast
Two Good Eggs: French Toast with Clotted Cream & Blackberry Syrup

bills
433 Liverpool St.
Darlinghurst NSW 2010 Australia

Two Good Eggs
2/148 Goulburn St, Surry Hills