Fancy & Interesting

Fourme d'Ambert cheese with melon terrine ~ Courtesy of Ideas in Food via Twitter. Sometimes it pays to fire up the ol' Tweetdeck.

Uncommon food

It's quite rare we go out...financial constraints join the fact that a lot of dinner food to be had out there is simply not so great, compared to the home thing.

However, there's a gem of a local restaurant we love and we decided to grab a bite on, of all things, a work night.

Here's what Hitchcock served up. To start with, the perfect summer menu and and some pastis (Pernod and water to make drinks from).

         

Then we raged through small plates, all based on the kind of summer we're having in Seattle (Sorry, Texas, Missouri, East Coast, et al.), which means, shortest growing season ever for sunloving things!

These are local oysters dressed lightly with the likes of olive oil, hyssop, pickled watermelon (grown on Bainbridge Island, not sure how you do that!), etc.

And OMG the tempura- fried smelt! Delish whole small fish served hot and light over fried fingerling potato slices...fish 'n' chips? Yes.

Also: watermelon and cheese salad and the pickled turnip with bagna cauda dressing.

Bun!

Picky Lunch went for Vietnamese takeout today, little knowing there was a pan-office plan to dine together. The day was all meetings, so it was just as well I grabbed lunch on my own before I heard about the plan. Plus, I had to leave early to avoid the predictable SeaFair traffic melée.

I went to a place I hadn't tried before, Pho Tai. I thought it was a little pricey for the strip-mall location, but look what wonders I got for $7.50!

Urbanspoon reviews of the place are pretty bad, and it wasn't the pinnacle, but it was a hearty and happy lunch with nice sparkly veg & cilantro alongside the "variety-pack" of meats and noodle base.

Welcome email

It's rare that a business sends you email (whether you subscribe or not) that you actually welcome. I love the email I get from Big John''s PFI (Pacific Food Importers).

It's a great offbeat — and off-the-beaten-track — location in Seattle to buy bulk olives and whatever kind of edible wonders you may or may not be looking for. For instance, they carry my favorite packaged pasta, Rusticella d'Abruzzo (brand) Croixetti (shape) pasta I crave and can no longer get at my local grocery, as well as surprise finds I cannot resist.

As a visual designer, I cannot say I love everything about the email. It is intensely hard on the eyes. And I am utterly amazed that somehow they manage to send their email as an embedded image rather than HTML or text. Wow.

But, it's kinda cute in a "Que?" kind of way, and it makes it way easier to share here, and it's worth your and my read (Click to see larger:)

A perfect bite

A slice of Italian sausage and an equal slice of jalapeno. Umami meets its counterpoint.

No, that knife handle was not always bare wood. I don't remember what it used to be actually, after so long.

N

Office drinks brought to you by Facebook

It all started with a Facebook post by my former boss.

I shared it with a co-worker who had long been daydreaming about instituting "tea time" in our design group's office. A concept stolen from our previous stint on a design team at Microsoft. You know, certain Thursday afternoons after 4...

So, starting Friday, tea time it is at the office. Cute story, but that's just part of it. 

Thanks to the power of Facebook to create truly strange happenstances, my mother is now ordering Armenian brandy online and having a geography-independent tasting with my former boss who — if I recall correctly — she's never met.

One of the much-touted attributes of Google+ is that your mother is not there yet, and I love me some Google+, but I don't want to live in a world where this doesn't happen:

Ad-hoc, defining summer dinner

Look who's having me over for dinner! A dear friend is a longtime favorite urban caterer and going to her house for a casual, stolen bite is always a revelation.

First off, I got to see the innovative table design her amazingly creative team is putting out. I want these terrarium balls on my table every day. Fat chance, but hey.

And then we had clams she quick-steamed with not so much butter, which turns out to be not a bad thing. Not at all, they had their own true flavor. Followed by an amazing shared plate of shrimp, quinoa, and diced veg that had sparkle and panache. An incidentally homey lean meal that had all the jollies. Mmmmm.

This, along with unrepresentatively (this year) sunny summer weather, all the backdrop to great conversation, some work ;-) and some great wine I don't remember from Garagiste. Heaven.

Invite me over again!