Seattle forever in my belly... I mean heart! -- Part 1

Seattle. Space Needle. Pike Place Market. Yada yada yada, sights to see, just like any other city. But MAN can they cook down there!

Joe and I stayed at the very nice Westin Seattle, with a view directly towards the Space Needle, where we also had the chance to watch the sun set every night, had we stayed in our room. But no, we had eating to do!

The first night, the front desk person at the hotel recommended that we checked out Palace Kitchen, an open late type restaurant right next door. Palace Kitchen is owned by Tom Douglas. Mark that name, you might come across it again... Just sayin'.

Palace Kitchen has an impressive menu, with features I have certainly never seen on a menu after midnight! Hand crafted cheeses, oil poached tuna, oysters - oh my! They also do a late night breakfast of steak and eggs, all the way up until 1am! Now I'm a fan of breakfast, but even I don't call food at midnight breakfast... Lunch maybe, but not breakfast.

We didn't take any pictures from Palace Kitchen, because it was after all veeeery late, and we were veeeery hungry and veeeery tired. Nevertheless, their beet salad with pistachios and cheese and orange segments, was perfect. Just what I needed, with moist, juicy, fruity and earthy beets. Mmmmm... And I did pick at Joe's charcuterie... Sausages, pork belly and sauerkraut. Gotta get my protein from somewhere!

So Tom Douglas got another visit from us Friday morning, in his restaurant Lola. Get this - Lola serves an octopus, bacon, celeriac, leeks and eggs breakfast! It originally comes with a coriander yoghurt, but in my garlic free world, it comes with a side of plain greek yoghurt. Joe had the truffled crimini omelette, with smashed garlic potatoes.

Needless to say, octopus for breakfast wins, hands down, any time. The egg creates a sauce for the dish, as does the yoghurt. Mix it all up, the bacon is salty, the octopus has a nice char from the grill... Oh my. Lola, come to Vancouver! Or maybe it's good they're not here. It could get expensive!

We continued our culinary travels down towards Pike Place Market. What a vibrant place! Like your favourite farmers' market, with all your local artisans and hazelnut growers and t-shirt makers and fish throwers (ever seen the leadership training movie Fish! ? It's from here!), beautiful flowers and thousands of visitors per hour. You can taste test hot pepper jellies hotter than the hottest coffee from the first and original Starbucks across the street. Try some fresh fruits at the green grocers, or a stick of dry chocolate spaghetti from the pasta guy. Yup, you read that correctly, chocolate spaghetti. He claims it tastes just like chocolate. I'm thinking he's never had good chocolate...

Pike Place Chowder is in an alley right across the street from the market itself. They make a minimum of 6 different chowders every day, they even have two garlic free ones! :) Thanks for that! The chowders were good, rich, creamy, salty, fishy and just pure savoury goodness. With oyster crackers on top, and sour dough bread on the side. This goes to show that you don't need fancy plating (see the cardboard cup of chowder, the plastic spoon, the iron grate table and the plastic wrapped oyster crackers) for full on, repeatable flavour that will bring us back to Pike Place Chowder for a bowl of awesome whenever we return...

That's it for the 1st 24 hours in Seattle. There are another two installments to come, with a cracking good time at The Crab Pot, and superb dim sum in the International District...