Summer Vacation eating at home

The inception of this blog was prompted by a vacation to Las Vegas and the amazing food we had there.

Now, while we didn’t travel anywhere for our week of vacation this summer, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t or didn’t find a way to have some great culinary adventures in our own home town.

We started planning weeks ago to have lunch in places we couldn’t conveniently go with the Sprout in tow. We looked at food trucks, restaurants, sandwich places, anywhere we’d heard about but never been.

So in between working on shelving for our basement, we went out for lunch and had some great food.

The week began with lunch on Capital Hill in Seattle at Skillet Diner, the stationary location spawned by Skillet Street Food’s food truck. We’d had their food a few years ago at a Rat City Roller Girls bout at Magnuson Park. We’d seen them recently on a show called Eat Street, a show in the Cooking Channel devoted to food trucks all over the US. That’s where we learned about the Bacon Jam.

Bacon jam? Why, yes. Bacon jam.

Technically the jar says Bacon Spread. But they call it Bacon Jam. And we have a jar in our fridge waiting to be unleashed.

It was on the burger that day. Fresh, local beef, fresh baked roll from Macrina Bakery, gorgonzola, Bacon Jam and arugula. For an extra few bucks, you can upgrade your fries to poutine (fries with gravy and cheese).

This was the place that had been hyped the most, so I suppose it stands to reason it would fall the farthest in our estimation.

It wasn’t bad. The food was good. We could taste that the beef was fresh in our burger, but we didn’t expect the burger to be dry, which it was. The arugula was wonderfully peppery, which means it probably came from a small, organic farm. Most of the time if I have arugula at a restaurant, it doesn’t have the flavor I’m expecting. This bunch of greens did. The gorgonzola was tangy, the Bacon Jam smoky and sweet, the roll light and chewy.

It was a good burger. It wasn’t a great burger. And we were expecting a great burger.

The poutine was also very tasty. I wish I had been hungrier, because I thought it was delicious. I would have liked a little more gravy because I like my poutine a little wetter, but it was very good. For those Canadians reading, the cheese was cheddar and the brown gravy brightened with herbs. Not quite traditional, but a nice homage to the original.

My favorite part of the lunch ended up being my milkshake. I had a chocolate peanut butter, N had a chocolate malt. Both were generously endowed with the additional flavor. Since the shakes came well before our food, it was difficult not to down the whole drink before we even saw our burgers and fries. Maybe that’s why I didn’t have enough room for burger and poutine. :o)

All in all, it wasn’t a bad experience, but the food sat in our stomachs like rocks the rest of the afternoon and we had a hard time getting past the fact that our burgers were dry. For a patty that was supposed to be medium-rare, it was surprisingly devoid of juiciness and was barely pink.

Leaving Skillet hanging on the wall, the next day we went to another place we’d been anxious to try. This place had been recommended by a friend who’d recently dined there while in town from Utah (Hi, Jen!).

Tuesday, we went to Boom Noodle for lunch. After the heaviness of burgers and fries, we were craving some ramen. And we were not disappointed!

N had their miso ramen. I had their tonkotsu ramen (a slight misnomer because there wasn’t an actual fried pork cutlet involved). The miso ramen pleased the expert (N puts it on her list of comfort foods…if she liked it, it must be good). She would have liked the broth to be a little stronger, but that’s her personal preference. She said it was a lovely bowl of soup (to which she added a soft boiled egg, another level of comfort food).

The tonkatsu ramen was flat out the best bowl of soup I have ever had in my life. The broth defies description, but I’ll try anyway.

It’s a pork broth, simmered for 24 hours, bones and all. It’s rich and creamy (and by creamy, I mean it looks like it has cream in it, but it doesn’t), full of pork flavor. You could tell they used marrow bones, because the broth had that distinct, marrow-y flavor.

In the soup were some wonderful bits of roast pork, perfectly cooked noodles, soft boiled egg, green onion and pickled ginger. The pork had crispy bits on the edges and was delightfully tender inside. There were a couple of fatty pieces that I had to pick apart just because I have a weird issue with fresh pork fat (I have since I was a kid…I don’t get it…it makes me nauseous…maybe it’s a texture thing), but like N’s thing with the miso broth, it is a personal thing. It’s not anything to do with the quality of the food.

This soup was, in a word, heavenly. I felt transported by this dish. Like I told N, you can’t fake time. Not when it comes to broth like that.

We both had their yuzu lemonade to drink, which had a refreshing tartness to it thanks to some umeboshi plum. And we had a side of their kim chi, which was a little heavy on the sesame, but was delicious nonetheless.

Wednesday we ended up eating in because we had a sick little boy on our hands. Leftovers were our friend that day. But Thursday G went back to daycare, so we went to a local taqueria we’d been wanting to try for a long time.

It had been recommended by a friend at work whose brother used to go there all the time when he was working in the area. It also had location on its side. We felt like we were on borrowed time because we weren’t 100% sure our little boy was all better and we really wanted to get work in our basement finished. At least the work that required both of us that couldn’t really be done while he was at home napping.

Taqueria El Sabor is in Shoreline, just about 20 blocks from where we live. It is the real thing, authentic Mexican food. Their painted windows advertise current specials, including menudo (tripe soup) and pozole (pork and hominy stew).

We weren’t adventurous enough to try the soup, but N had the enchiladas mexicanas with chicken and I had the chile verde.

It was refreshing to get Mexican food that didn’t have a thick layer of melted cheddar cheese covering it. My food had no cheese at all, N’s had some cotija sprinkled over the enchiladas, which were only lightly sauced, not drowning.

We didn’t talk much, we just tucked into our lunches. My chile verde featured bits of pork shoulder braised in the sauce, which was to be eaten with their fresh, handmade corn tortillas.

It was delicious, homey food, not fussy. And not too much food like at most Americanized Mexican chain restaurants.

We will definitely be eating there again. I want to try their tacos! Not sure if I’m brave enough to try tacos de lengua (tongue). But I will be all over the carnitas!

Today, we were planning to go for either another burger experience or to get Cuban sandwiches, but since our boy was home sick again today, we had to change those plans a bit.

However, since his schedule was out of whack from sleeping until 8:30 (when his usual wakeup time is around 6:30), we decided to take in the first day of the Bite of Seattle, visiting The Alley (formerly Hinterberger’s Alley), where you get bites from seven restaurants for $10. It’s now being hosted by local restauranteur Tom Douglas, who features one of his restaurants each day of the Bite.

Today, the menu was:
Seatown – grilled flatiron steak with a blueberry corn relish (sliced and served by Tom Douglas himself. Delicious, and the chef looked like he was having a great time)
Seattle’s Little Italy – grilled Italian sausage with onions and peppers (yummy, moist homemade sausage, really nice people)
Gordon’s on Blueberry Hill – Watermelon salad with feta cheese, seared tiger prawn and a rhubarb lavender vinaigrette. (phenomenal. Loved drinking the vinaigrette after I ate the salad. I got a really great hit of lavender that made all the other flavors bloom in my mouth.)
Andaluca – Spicy calamari on bruschetta (very yummy, and that’s saying a lot because I don’t really care for squid. The calamari was tender, not overcooked and chewy. And their Chef Wayne Johnson is going to be on Iron Chef America on July 31st!)
Purple Café - Shaved beef sliders with caramelized onions and horseradish mustard on a pretzel bun (not terribly innovative, but well executed and mouth-watering. The food was not overly seasoned, so the salt on the bun didn’t make the dish too salty.)
Din Tai Fung – Vietnamese steamed pork dumplings filled with soup (yes, a soup filled dumpling. Popped in the mouth, the savoriness explodes. Delightful!)
PinkaBella Cupcakes – Triple Chocolate Cupcake (a lovely little morsel of chocolate, the cake was a little dry, but saved by the chocolate chips inside, the ganache on top was gooey and wonderful)

This has always been my favorite way to experience The Bite of Seattle. It has become an increasingly good deal. The price was $10 when I went the last time, which was probably 15 years ago and it’s still $10 today. And now, if you want, you can go sit in the wine tasting section, pay an additional $15 and get wines that were picked to go with the food on your plate. We didn’t do that this time, but we might next year.

N and I talked about making this an annual thing…taking the Friday of The Bite off work so we can go and do The Alley and not have to deal with the weekend crowds. She’d never gone to The Alley and really enjoyed it. I love it because you get a lot of tastes for your money, the money goes to a local charity (Food Lifeline) and it’s a lot mellower than the rest of the event.

It was also a lot of fun today because we shared a table with a couple from Arizona who visit Seattle frequently and claim to eat their way through town every time they come. The first time they ever went to the Bite, it was still at Greenlake. And there was a single woman at the table who has been to the Bite every year since it started. She said it was still fun, even after all those years.

So, our vacation is at an end. We have the weekend and then we’re back at work. But the fun isn’t over quite yet. We’re planning to get milkshakes from Molly Moon’s tomorrow. I’m going for the salted caramel, because the first sip always sets my eyes rolling back deliriously at the sweet, salty, fresh cream taste of it.

Who needs to leave town to have a great summer vacation?