Wendy's Food Blog

Wendy's Food Blog

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Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts

Monday, February 3, 2014

Seattle Trip Day 2

Today we are doing the Pike Place Market tour from Savor Seattle Tours. Our tour is at 10:30 am, I figured we book an early one so we can avoid the crowd since it's a Saturday and a Seahawk game is in town!

We started the meet up at the Market Theater, with the famous Gum Wall. Yes it's quite disguising.. it started out as a mindless act that has turned into a tourist attraction. They cleaned off this wall several times and people just keep sticking gums back on the wall, so they decided to keep it as is.



meeting point - market theater
 
outside the theater



Our tour guide today, CJ.

1st stop is Daily Dozen Doughnuts - these bite sized donuts are hot and fresh right of the fryer. Good way to start the day. After tour we went back to get a dozen, which include maple-bacon flavor one which were to die for!
                                          
482 reviews Rating Details
Pike Place Market
93 Pike St
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
 
 


 

2nd stop - MarketSpice  - we sampled a hot tea here that I forgot to take a picture. It was really good and we sampled their apple wood spice rub, which was very delicious.                            
             
162 reviews Rating Details
85a Pike St
(between Western Ave & Post Aly)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 622-6340
 
Very gloomy day


our group sampling the teas.

3rd stop - Pike Place Fish - we sampled three kinds of salmon here. A regular smoked salmon, garlic pepper smoked salmon and salmon jerky. I am not a salmon person at all and these were very tasty! My favorite was the regular smoked salmon. They even demonstrated their infamous fish-throwing.                                      
             
192 reviews Rating Details
86 Pike Pl
(between Post Aly & Western Ave)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 682-7181





The smoked salmon we sampled. Quite expensive though.
Right in front of the Pike Place Fish is the famous Rachel the Pig, the mascot of Pike Place Market and she saved the by stopping a drunk driver the swerved into the Pike Place Fish. The money you donate into Rachel the Pig goes back into the Pike Market, help the local homeless there. You can also rub her nose for good luck.




4th Stop - Frank's Quality Produce - we sampled opal apples and Satsuma oranges.

41 reviews Rating Details
1508 Pike Pl
(at Post Aly)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 624-5666




5th Stop - Pike Place Chowder - this is the whole reason we came to Pike Market. These are the best clam chowder in the world! Well, maybe not the world but we've had a good amount of clam chowders and this by far, is the best one we've had.  This place along is good enough reason for us to move to Seattle. Yes, IT IS that good!
             
1794 reviews Rating Details
1530 Post Aly
Ste 11
(between Pike Pl & Pine St)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 267-2537


Regular clam chowder and a seafood bisque.  Both were delicious.

6th Stop - Chukar Cherries - everything is made from cherries here that are grown locally in Washingont State. We sampled a cherry salsa, and a variety of chocolate coated cherries.

    
97 reviews Rating Details
1529 Pike Pl
(at Post Aly)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 623-8043


The ladies here are very generous when it comes to samples.



7th Stop - Beecher's Handmade Cheese -  we sampled cheese & crackers and a mac n cheese here (it's their number one seller and Oprah even named this as her favorite mac n cheese!)
             
1041 reviews Rating Details
1600 Pike Pl
(between Post Aly & Pine St)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 956-1964


Fresh cheese being made in front of your eyes





8th Stop - Piroshky-Piroshky - this is a Russian bakery. We sampled a sweet (apple & cinnamon)  and a savory (beef and cheese), I prefer the savory one.

Categories: Bakeries, Russian  [Edit]
1908 Pike Pl
(between Western Ave & Virginia St)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 441-6068





9th and final stop - Etta's Seafood Restaurant - owned by a local celebrity chef Tom Douglas.  We sampled crab cakes here which was very good but a bit greasy.

Category: Seafood  [Edit]
2020 Western Ave
(between Virginia St & Pike Pl)
Seattle, WA 98121
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 443-6000

 
This is the end of our Pike Place Market Tour. We got lucky because at the end of our last stop it started pouring outside.  We waited a few minutes until the rain got manageable and walked back to the market to eat some more food. I was almost full at this point but we wanted to go back to get the chowder and couple more things we saw along the tour.

 


I got the chicken corn chowder and scallop chowder. I have to stay, the original clam chowder is still the best.


At the beginning of the tour we saw this "Saffron Spice" next to the donut place, we wanted to go back and try their food as well.
 
Chicken tikka masala and curry meatballs with saffron rice - this was sooooo good!!! I don't have much experience with Indian food because I was always to scared to try, this definitely converted me to an Indian food lover! It was spicy though, I got one of their homemade lemonades to wash everything down. It was delicious as well.


beef samosas with tamarind sauce

This tour was very fun, and I definitely recommend this for anyone visiting Seattle to take this tour. In this 2 hour tour, they tell you the history of the market and at every shop you stopped at. You get to sample at the top vendors and a good variety of great food. There were placed we wanted to go back and get more items but we just don't have the room in our stomach. (i.e. Fran's chocolates, the place that started the salted caramel trend today, and one of President Obama's favorite chocolates). Definitely coming back next time!

After all that food we definitely needed to walk off those calories, I had planned for us to visit the EMP Museum in by the Space Needle. This is a museum of music, sci-fi, and pop-culture.  There was a display dedicated to Nirvana, Jimmy Hendrix, a Guitar Gallery, Icons of Science Fiction and Horror Film, a found lab for everyone to explore and play with all kinds of musical gear and audio technology. Kaelan and I played DJ for the first time. It was a small museum but fun nevertheless if you are a music and sci-fi fan like we are.
             
603 reviews Rating Details
325 5th Ave N
(between Thomas St & Harrison St)
Seattle, WA 98109
Neighborhood: Lower Queen Anne
(206) 770-2700
 
Our hotel is next to the Westlake center, where the monorail is and will take you directly to Seattle Center where Space Needle and EMP Museum is located.






very impressive sculpture made of guitars.



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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Seattle Trip Day 1

We were thinking of places to visit during winter break with Zoey and there weren't very many good options, so we decided to go back to Washington and visit my parents. It was Kaelan's birthday weekend as well so we went down to Seattle for 2 days.

The weather was suppose to be rainy and gloomy and in the 50's. We just hope it doesn't start pouring when we are walking around the Pike Market. I had come across a food tour group that had a lot of 5 star reviews when I was searching around on Yelp for restaurants near by. It seem like a very cool idea to get to know the Pike Market and try some food while you are at it, so we sign up for 2 tours. The site offers few different kinds of tours, we signed up for the Booze-n-Bites for the first day and the Tour of Pike Place Market on the second day.

Savor Seattle Food Tours
             
665 reviews Rating Details
1916 Pike Place
Ste 12-480
(between Western Ave & Virginia St)
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 209-5485
We had arrived half hour early before meeting up with the tour, so we decide to walk around for a bit and check out the area.









Do you know what this is?

Yes, it's a wall made of gum... yuck!




Something you don't see everyday!! I dare you to try it!





We came across this shop called Rachel's Ginger Beer that makes their own "ginger beer" aka ginger ale.  You can get it flavored or mix with alcohol.

Rachel's Ginger Beer
            
83 reviews Rating Details
1530 Post Alley
(between Pike Pl & Pine St)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 467-4924


Blood orange ginger beer (very spicy but very yummy!)
Very cute store display.
This is the first meet up area for our Booze-N-Bites Tour.

Lost River Winery
            
16 reviews Rating Details
Pike Place Market
2003 Western Ave
Seattle, WA 98121
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 448-2124



Everyone gets to start with a glass of local red and white wines.

Our second stop is Long Provincial restaurant, we started with their spring roll - a traditional Vietnamese appetizer that is a variety of veggies rolled up in a rice paper, with a peanut dipping sauce. It was very good.

Long Provincial Vietnamese Restaurant
             
416 reviews Rating Details
1901 2nd Ave
(between Stewart St & Virginia St)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 443-6266

Spring rolls with caramelized shrimp and pork


To pair with our spring roll we got a lemongrass martini.



Our third stop is Mexican:

El Borracho
             
61 reviews Rating Details
1521 1st Ave
(between Pike St & Pine St)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 538-0440


AL PASTOR marinated grilled pork with pineapple Taco with a house Margarita

Zesty lime margaritas

Our fourth stop

Can Can
             
220 reviews Rating Details
94 Pike St
(between Post Aly & 1st Ave)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 652-0832
This is a French Burlesque venue in the heart of Pike Market. With our tour, we can come back later for a free show for each person using our ticket stubs. The show cost $30 per person I believe, so it's a great deal and I would recommend taking advantage of this.

The bartender making our drink - Green Fairy absinthe and rum cocktail, which became legal here a decade ago (I think?).

Goat cheese with mache salad with golden beats and apples.
Last stop for the night:

Von's 1000Spirits
             
137 reviews Rating Details
1225 1st Ave
(between Seneca St & University St)
Seattle, WA 98101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(206) 621-8667
They have a giant spinning wheel with drinks on there and every 30 minutes it gets spun and the drink it lands on will be the drink special for that half hour. The restaurant is very upscale and hip and it was PACKED on this Friday night.


Our drink here was very cool, it's spun candy martini (not sure the exact name) but you can see the process here:


End result

Sourdough Goat cheese flatbread
Overall, I would say Booze-N-Bites Tour was very fun but was it really worth $59.95 a person? Probably not. I would still recommend this because you get a free show that was worth $30 so it evens out the price. But at every stop, the food, drinks and tables are ready for you, there's no waiting in line and you get to sample food from each place. It doesn't fill you up by any means but it gives you a great chance to go back to the restaurants you liked for an actual sit down dinner. We went back to The Can Can and had a sit down dinner with show. The food and drinks were fantastic there, which you wouldn't expect a show venue to have great food, but they do. Kaelan still talks how much he loved their Poutine (a Canadian dish - steak fries with gravy topped with cheese curds). The show itself was very entertaining, the host was very funny and with it's intimate atmosphere (looks like it only seats no more than 30 people in there, our show only had about 15 people), it was a great experience overall.

Our hotel was 6 blocks away from the Pike Market, it was a great fun night. Here is a view walking back to the hotel.

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