Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream

 

917 East Pine Street

Seattle, WA 98122

Seattle was hot over July 4th weekend! Afer basking in all that sunshine, when we passed by Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream, we all swerved inside with the same idea. I asked for one scoop of strawberry balsamic (look how big it is!), while others chose cucumber mint sorbet, salted caramel, and thin mint. Everything was good, though the cucumber mint sorbet was particularly refreshing that afternoon. My ice cream fell off its cone, but somehow I managed to catch it in my arms and save it. I smelled like strawberry ice cream for the rest of the afternoon, but that's not actually so bad.

Beecher's Handmade Cheese

1600 Pike Place
Seattle, WA 98101-1529

Another sad photo that totally does not match how wonderful the food is. A big bunch of us met up at Beecher's Handmade Cheese where we tried cheese curds (squeaky) and then went with more traditional options of macaroni cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches. O kindly shared some of her macaroni cheese with me and it was creamy, tangy, cheesey goodness. Could be improved by a crisp breadcrumb topping, I think, but that is a minor quibble. N loved her grilled cheese with fresh tomato and basil (so much so that she also returned a couple of days later for more). Outside, C and I watched the giant machine creating curds and the workers inside straining giant bucketfuls of curds and whey - well worth a stop.

Chicken Valley Farm Stores

Pike Place Market

Seattle, WA

Call me crazy (or Chinese) but I love chicken gizzards and hearts. When I heard that there was a little stand inside Pike Place Market selling fried chicken gizzards and hearts (and liver), I was determined to hunt it down. Chicken Valley Farm Stores also sells "normal" fried chicken (N & V shared a drumstick and liked it so much that they brought K back a couple of days later to have more) but I was concentrating on a tray of mixed fried gizzards, hearts and liver. Crispy (and surprisingly ungreasy), these were a huge treat for me. If only somewhere in London would do this...

High 5 Pie

1400 12th Ave.
Seattle, WA 98102

Oh man, I have to apologize for the horrible looking photo above as it does not do that pie justice at all. High 5 Pie was a lucky find - we all happened to need a Citibank ATM and walked to Capitol Hill to the nearest 7-11 and passed by this pie shop and were sucked in by the fantastic looking pies. I chose rhubarb custard and N had a hard time choosing between lemon blueberry and apple, so she got lemon blueberry first, and then a small apple hand pie right before we left. She liked the apple better (she always likes apple better). What was truly amazing about these pies was the crust - I'm generally not a crust fan, but these crusts were so flaky, crisp and fantastic that I had to ask the guy behind the counter what their secret was. His answer: "A lot of butter."

Cafe Paloma

93 Yesler Way
Seattle, WA 98104-2530

And here begins some posts from Seattle, where I managed a quick weekend to see K & D get married (woohoo!). I met up with A & C on Friday evening, straight after 18 hours of travelling, and A took us to Cafe Paloma which a friend of his had recommended. We sat outside, enjoying the gorgeous weather, and had some cold beers. I am going to blame my tiredness/jetlag for my lack of memories about the place - I think we had some cheese, olives and hummus to start, and then split a chicken dish and a lamb kofte dish. Whatever was in the mashed potatoes with the chicken was pretty incredible - it was definitely my favorite part of the whole meal. Everything else was fine, but I do remember being way more excited about seeing A & C than I was about the food.

Gelupo

7 Archer St
London
W1D 7AU

Post-Spuntino, we wanted a wee bit of sweetness and P cleverly remembered that we were very close to Gelupo. A cupful of salted caramel gelato later, I was ready to roll home. Of course, the next time we ended up in Spuntino, we also ended up in Gelupo (I am sensing that the two go hand-in-hand now). I enjoyed my black forest gelato, but the real winner was P's combination of coconut sorbet (so creamy! how?!) and mandarin orange sorbet, which was the perfect touch of acidity to counteract the coconut.

Spuntino

61 Rupert Street
London
W1D 7PW

P is my eating buddy. We meet, we eat, we catch up on things, we eat some more. This time we agreed to eat at Spuntino. We did not regret it at all, even though there was a short wait for two spaces to open up next to each other. The whole menu looked desirable, but sadly with just two of us, we had to make some choices. Duck ham salad, truffled egg toast, shoestring fries, pulled pork slider, some kind of lentil/sausage dish - we gobbled it all down, but what really won us over was the fried stuffed olives. Savoury green olives stuffed with the briny punch of anchovies, then breaded and deep fried. We kept returning to them until one bowl was gone, which we quickly replaced with another bowl. And then we both dreamt of them until we passed by a few weeks later and were able to pop in for some more. In my last meal on earth, I want these fried stuffed olives to make an appearance.

Moro

34-36 Exmouth Market
London
EC1R 4QE

With J&A in town, we decided to try out Moro which several friends had raved about. Perhaps our expectations were raised too high, but I found it mildly disappointing. Our favorite part of the meal were the tapas that we ordered to start -grilled chorizo, piquillo peppers, fried chickpeas (especially nice!) and tortilla (also an exemplary dish). Things all fell down a bit when we got to mains - A and I shared the wood roasted chicken with chermoula and cooked Moroccan salads and the charcoal grilled lamb chops with garlic purée and slow cooked green beans, while J&A had wood roasted pork with turnips cooked with sherry vinegar, lentils and slow cooked piquillo peppers and pan fried bream with clams, scapes and salsa verde with new potatoes. A left quite a lot of her bream, saying it tasted extremely fishy, and it was also swimming in an oily pool of liquid. J thought the pork was pretty fatty, and while the chicken and lamb were decently cooked, there was nothing special enough about them to justify the high prices. 

Drinks were slightly better - a Manzanilla sherry - La Goya Delgado Zuleta- went down quite well to start, and we had a chilled Borsao (Garnacha/Syrah/Tempranillo) Joven Seleccion Campo de Borja, Spain '09 to go with our mains. Service was polite, but somehow the whole meal was underwhelming and I doubt I'll be back, considering how much it cost. A much better option, I think, is to go next door to Morito for the tapas - which we did a few weeks later.

Le Marché du Quartier

Recently my brother J and his wife A came to London for a visit before heading off to France for the rest of their holiday. This meant that I wanted to show off some cool things about London that I thought they would enjoy, and one of those things was Borough Market. I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding the changes that are being made to the market traders there and you can read all about them elsewhere - it's still a nice place to bring visitors since you get to see and try so many strange foods in one place, and the potential for deliciousness is high. I saw a few people go by with duck sandwiches, which meant I was searching for where to buy them while walking around, and finally when we made it over to Brindisa, I saw it - a giant pan (much like those enormous paella pans) filled with duck confit. The shop is called Le Marché du Quartier and I think they sell imported French goods. I went straight for the sandwich and asked for some extra crispy bits, which the guy manning the pan was happy to oblige with. Salty, fatty, crunchy ducky bits on a roll with some rocket and a swipe of mustard - my idea of heaven for a measly 5 quid. Others complain that the duck is dry - I did not have any issues with its juiciness and would highly recommend it if you love duck.

Kimchi Cult

P and I had bought tickets to go to the London Zoo Lates. This was exciting because 1) cute animals and 2) no children. Alas, the day we were scheduled to go, it was raining. Pouring. But we are hardcore, and went anyway. A different P had been a couple of weeks before and told me there were a lot of food options, so we did a quick scouting trip, sloshing through puddles, and then decided on kimchi sliders from Kimchi Cult. Of course, my vision was blurred by the water streaming everywhere and I mis-read the sign and ordered what I thought were bacon and kimchi sliders (i.e. bacon and kimchi on top of a hamburger slider) but was instead just bacon and kimchi in a tiny bun. I say "just" but bacon and kimchi is totally enough to make a great snack, no need for beef. Anyway - of course the kimchi burger at Hawksmoor is better, but if you just want a tiny bite to take the edge off a craving for kimchi, this works too.