Has Anyone Been Here?

I have been wanting to go to this restaurant for a long time now. I only wish I had found out about it before my birthday so I could have chosen it for my family dinner location. I'm hoping that I don't have to wait until my next birthday to go! Barrio describes themselves as "an approachable and inviting representation of modern Mexico" with two locations, one on Capitol Hill and one in Bellevue. After looking at their menu, I was excited to see that they have some of my favorite dishes that I ate in Chile such as cazuela, chorizo, escabeche and, yes, PISCO for drinks. You can check out their full menu of food and drinks on their website here. I hope it's as good as I imagine it to be. Anyone want to go soon? What special occasions are coming up?

Dessert To Die For

On Thursday, I was hanging with a couple girlfriends and we were having a nice complaining session, which usually leads to the need for some delicious something. Luckily my friend lives about half a block away from the Blu Water Bistro on Greenlake and they feature some excellent desserts. I'm a simpleton when it comes to dessert, anything with chocolate or ice cream I'll be happy with. Luckily here, they have a great dish that combines the two. A large skillet-cooked Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. Man, was it delicious. Nice and warm and not quite cooked all the way so it was the perfect soft consistency. Mixed with the cold vanilla ice cream made it heaven. Delicious. Will definitely go back for this again.

Restaurant Review

On Friday night, we headed out for a little family dinner at a quaint little Italian restaurant in the Wallingford neighborhood. The place is called Cantinetta and the company owns a few little restaurants around town. This is the second one I've been to (the first being How To Cook A Wolf on Queen Anne) and I have to say it is definitely the better one. While it was a bit of a wait, it was easy to understand. It is a popular place and we were there at 6:15 on a Friday night. At first it was slightly weird standing around the bar area, but the bartender made sure to pay attention to us, even though we weren't right up against the bar. Also there is a small partition, so even if you have someone in your party that is under 21, you can still wait in the area and have a drink. Once we got our table, we were served with some tasty olive bread (and I don't even like olives). My mom had been here before, so she recommended that we all start with a salad because the plates were small portions. I got spring greens with a balsamic dressing, while others had a roasted radicchio with a syrup dressing. It proved a little hard to cut, but I tasted it and thought it was pretty yummy. For my entree, I chose Tagliatelle pasta with clams. (Note: If there is something on the menu with seafood, you're almost guaranteed I will order it.) It was really delicious and very light weight. Also, all the dishes were served in smaller portions, which I rather like because you can have a whole meal and still feel good, not stuffed. We all ended with a little bit of gelato which was of course delicious. How can you screw up gelato?? Overall I really enjoyed the food. The atmosphere was very small and open and therefore created a lot of noise, sometimes making it hard to hear. And I'm glad we didn't get seated in the table right inside the door. I am more drawn to more private eating areas, but I would recommend this place for the great food and wine. They don't take reservations for parties under six so be prepared to wait, but you wont be sorry.

Happiest Hour

I was reading the newspaper the other day and saw an article that featured Il Fornaio, a restaurant in downtown Seattle, that was talking about their happy hour. While they do have a happy hour menu, it's apparently usually ignored because of their buffet of food that is FREE!! That's right. They have continuous little appetizers or amuse bouches during happy hour that are all free with a drink. And the drinks are not expensive either! $3 beers, $4 glasses of wine. So my friend and I definitely had to check this out. We expected it to be pretty crowded on a Friday and after the article, but it was a tolerable crowd. And while the food wasn't super incredible, it was definitely delicious and, hey, can't really complain about free food right? Try it out! Happy hour is from 4:30 - 6:30pm.

Neverland Sushi Bar

So last night I ended up in a pretty weird situation, but I got some free drinks and free sushi out of it! I went with this guy to Neverland Sushi Bar in El Centro of my city and it was a pretty cool place. I would have enjoyed it more under different circumstances, but I thought it was cute how they had theme nights. We happened to be there on Country Night and all the waiters and bartenders were dressed up in cowboy hats and scarfs and boots for the occasion. It was really quite cute. The sushi, of course, was not as good as what you can find in Washington. We ordered the Ebi Roll which was shrimp, cream cheese, rice and avocado, however it was mostly rice and not enough of the insides to stand out. Plus the rice was a bit mushy. Maybe that's just the way they make it here, but I would definitely stick to Seattle sushi! But it's definitely somewhere I might return, perhaps with different company.

Spokane

This weekend I decided to trek over to the other side of the state to see how my newly married friend now lives. Now, Spokane is no Seattle, but it still had some fun elements and it was nice to see a new city. Here are a couple places I recommend visiting if you're ever in the neighborhood.

Raw Sushi & Island Grill is the place I would recommend for dinner in downtown Spokane. They have amazing food, and I can say that because I am not the biggest fan of sushi and I thought it was fantastic. They have probably the best calamari I have ever tasted and so many selections of different sushi rolls that it was impossible to pick just one. I decided to go with the Mexi-Cali, an inside-out maki roll with crab mix, cream cheese and jalapeno. It had a dollop of spicy sauce on the top for the perfect amount of hot. If you love sushi, or even if you don't but are brave enough to try it, this place is definitely somewhere you'll want to visit.

The Marquee Lounge is a great bar located just blocks away from Raw Sushi right in the middle of downtown Spokane. It is a swanky bar with high ceilings and a towering bottle display. When we first walked in at around 8:00 there was close to no one in there, but we needed a place to watch the end of the game and the seating looked pleasing. Then we looked at the drink menu and were convinced to stay. They have pages of signature cocktails to pick from, all that looked delicious. We talked about just staying for a bit and then checking out some other places, but the cocktail waitress convinced us that the night would pick up. Boy did it! Within a couple hours, the bar was completely filled with people, the dance floor was packed and the bouncers had to move our table out of the way. We managed to get stamps to go up into the VIP section of the bar, which turned out was basically just a smaller bar upstairs, but it was a cool experience. To check out more pictures of the bar, visit their website. Or just visit the bar!

The Pink Door

Last night was bachelorette party number two this week and it was just as fun as the first. A group of us had dinner The Pink Door and it was so delicious! Definitely some of the best food I have had in a while. The restaurant is a quaint little place located in Post Alley in the Pike Place Market area with covered outdoor seating and decor that makes you feel like you're in Italy. It features Italian-American cuisine with some great seafood dishes. We started with the Bruschette Del' Estate and the Antipasto of the House. The antipasto was an amazing plate of salami, mozzarella cheese, topenade, peppers and beans and it made for a creative way to eat. I liked to take one of each thing and pile it up. All the flavors together were amazing. For dinner I had the Squid Ink Spaghetti which was equally as good. It's called "Squid Ink" because the spaghetti noodles are actually black so they look like ink! Some of the other girls ordered a whole fish which they served to us on a cutting board, bones and eyes and all. Between the food and the atmosphere, it is definitely a restaurant I would recommend.