Mai Thaiku

About one week ago my Dad, Brother, Grand parents and I went to a Thai restaurant called Mai Thaiku on Phinney Ridge. I loved evrything about it. The space was an open flow (but small) house that (for every one who lives in Seattle) is located right across from the famous Red Mill. The food was great and it is now my favorite Thai restaurant.
To start we had chicken shish kabobs (satay) in a sweet and tangy sauce and they were so good. I probably could have had just that for dinner. Then we had something I have never seen before. It was some type of leaf and then there where different ingredients like ginger, coconut, lime , peppers, onion, peanuts, and a sweet sauce. You would then add the toppings on to the leaf and roll it together and eat it! They were pretty good especially with the sauce and coconut.
After that we ordered our main dishes. I got Khao Soi, it is a coconut curry with chicken and fresh and crispy fried egg noodles and it was amazing! Spicy but amazing. I am sorry to say I forgot to take a pic of it! oops!
My little brother who isn’t as adventurous as I am (he is only seven) got fried rice with chicken and that was good too.  He liked it and and was full pretty quickly so my family helped him with it. It was good good and they give you a lot.
For Desert I got coconut icecream and it tasted exactly like coconut. It was just the right amout of sweet for me and it served well as a pallet clenser after such a big meal. My dad got black sesame ice cream and it was vary good and such an unusual flavor. I love it when restaurants have new and different flavors it is just so much fun to try them!
The service was good and I got to personally talk to the owners and I just want to say thank you and good luck with your new restaurant!

I will have an new post about me TRYING to make lemon cupcakes with raspberry filling.

Larson’s Bakery

Larson’s is a small but popular Danish and Scandinavian bakery on 24th.
Tonight my dad went there and brought home a kringle. The Larsen’s Kringle is made in the original Danish way, where the pastry is made out of layers of flaky, buttery crust, enclosing a filling of almond paste and raisins, then topped with sugar and sliced almonds and finally twisted into the traditional pretzel shape.
It is like a flatter, almond, croissant. Sadly I didn’t go but they also make other pastries like croissants, cookies, and cakes. I will do a fuller review of Larson’s soon.
Have a good night,
Fiona

A La Mode Pies

On Wednesday my brother and I had to get our flu shoots. For me this is the worst time of the year. The shot is like a hard pinch that seems like it never stops. This year I sent my mom a link about mist that you breathe in. I was able to get that while my brother got stuck with the “old fashioned” method.
My brother was of course annoyed so my parent sweetened the deal. Literally! (Hahaha bad joke) We went to A La Mode Pies on Phinney Avenue. It is a cozy pie shop that sells a variety of different flavors including the classic apple to a modern take on chocolate that includes chile powder. I got key lime pie, which was good. It was tart but a little too sweet. The graham cracker crust was perfect with the smallest hint of ginger.

My dad got a slice of toasted coconut cream and my mom got a piece called Blue Hawaiian. It had blueberries, pineapple and toasted coconut with a brown sugar crumble. It tasted like Hawaii! It was sweet but it was my favorite. My brother ended up opting for vanilla ice cream, a local product called BlueBird. I didn’t taste it but he slurped it all up. I give this retro little dessert cafe three stars!
Blog soon, Fiona

Revel

Revel is a urban space in Fremont that makes Korean street food. One of the best parts of the resterunt is the space and decor. It makes you feel like this is where you want to have every meal.
The dishes change every month due to what is in season. But they always have my favorite dish… seared ahi tuna with kimchi and grilled bok choi on rice. The rice is perfectly steamed and not to sticky. On it was bok choi that had just a little salt and the spicy kimchi. (Kimchi is cabbage smothered in a spicy sauce then pickled.) It was a good spicy. It wasn’t so spicy it changed the flavor. It was just enough to make my mouth tingle.
Then there was the tuna. This is the best sered tuna I have ever had. It was a thick piece of tuna that is seared about half a centimeter in but still perfectly raw. It still isn’t too dark like the tuna at Nell’s (one of my previous posts). I forgot to say they bring you four sauces to put on every thing. one is a ginger soy. I should have written them down because I don’t know their other ones – that is the only one I use!
My dad and I shared a potato pancake. It was good. It tasted like a latke but had the texture of a heavier pancake. It was topped with a white blob of creme fraiche and an arugula salad with a lemon vinaigrette. Those things make the pancake have a tang. It was all good.
This is one of (if not my favorite) restaurants in Seattle. You can bring kids but for some things they might have to be adventures eaters. It also isn’t the cheapest place either. If I could I would eat lunch there every day. Five stars!
Post soon, Fiona

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Nell’s

It was an eight course meal at a little restaurant for New Year’s Eve.

To start I got a shaved fennel and apple salad. It had a great texture. There was a crunch when you bit into the apple and fennel. There wasn’t too much salt. It also had a few pomegranate seeds to play off the bitter taste of fennel. Five stars on the first plate.

The lobster was fine. I am not a big fan because it has such a sweet taste to it. It is also chewy but a good chewy. It is different from your everyday shellfish so it feels more compelling to eat. Over all if I had it a few more times I think I would like it more.

Then we got foie gras with poached apples. It was amazing. The favors of the apple blended so well with the grilled, buttery flavor of the foie gras. Foie gras is goose liver. When cooked properly it melts like butter in your mouth but tastes like the sauce you get when you cook a steak. The problem is, to make foie gras, you have to force feed the animal. There is a lot of controversy about if this is humane. Some geese farms let them range free, meaning after they force feed them, then let them go live their lives until they are killed. In the old days they’d pin the geese down and force feed them and not let them walk around. One is somewhat better than the other but it’s still controversial. In California foie gras isn’t allowed because of cruelty to animals. Now that I know all of this I can’t say if I will want to eat it again.

The next dish I was excited for. Cumin crusted ahi tuna with hearts of palm, mustard greens and ginger mint raita. However, this was a mistake. There is nothing more than I like then a good piece of seared tuna. But I can honestly say that it was the worst tuna I have ever had. Maybe it was the flavors of the mint and ginger side dish but it wasn’t good. The tuna it self was ok with the cumin, but with the mint raita, it was just too much. I almost spit out the mustard greens into my napkin! Which I have never wanted to do more. I give this a thumbs down for sure.

It is strange, but the next dish was the best of the night. Munster cheese with organic field greens and a poached pear. It was all very good and it all complemented each other very nicely. The dressing was quite simple, an olive oil, salt, and pepper vinaigrette on the greens. I got the end of the pear so it was the sweetest, and that counteracted the vinaigrette. The cheese was one of my favorites also. This shows that sometimes simple can be better.

The last thing we got was dessert. I got macerated blood oranges with a lemon and olive oil cake and vanilla bean yogurt sorbet. It tasted good seperettlly but to tether it muted each flavor. The cake was moist and the oranges were just the right amount of sweet. But the yogurt sorbet was one of the best I have tasted! It basically tasted just like a frozen scoop of Tillamook vanilla yogurt. Tillamook is based in Oregon for those who don’t know. They sell lots of milk products.
Overall I would give Nell’s a three and a half stars for there New Years dinner. Next time it will be just a regular dinner menu and I am interested to see what it is like.

The pictures loaded backwards so first you will see the desert then the sales then the tuna and so on.
Thanks, Fiona

Pictures of the Collections Café

I just have to say sorry it has been so long since my last post. this week in the end of the semester and it has been crazy. I have three more post that should be out by Friday. Enjoy!

1.  2. 3. 4.5.  6. 7.8. 9.  10.

Top to bottem. Left to right: 1. Is a doll collection. 2. Is the celling 3. The table. 4. Is more art. 5. Bottle opener collection. 6. Glass sculpture. 7. Is the salad. 8. In Seattle. 9. Is the flat bread. 10. Is the pulled pork and fries.

Blog soon, Fi

Collections Cafe

Today for lunch my family went to the Seattle center for the day. My brother had a birthday party around one o’clock so we wanted to get a quick and easy bite. My dad made reservations at Collections Café witch is located next to the Dale Chihuilly glass exhibit. I would recommend making reservations a day before or, come in the first half hour of opening.
“Collections” definitely describes the decor. Its tables have glass windows and they are filled with collections of different things like radios and ornaments. Hanging from the celling are accordions. Overall all the decor was fun and urban.
For lunch I got a pressed pork sandwich on Macrina ciabatta with fries. On it, it has apple butter and a spicy cider vinegar slaw. It was ok. The meat was juicy and the bread was good but together it was dry. I think the reason they put the apple butter on it was to moist it. The only thing it did was make the bread taste like apple. The cole slaw was nice but it wasn’t as spicy as I would have wanted it to be. The fries weren’t good. They were very dry. The potatoes were over-cooked. Or should I say fried.
My mom (who got the same thing) on the other hand liked the sandwich but also not the fries. My dad got flat bread with mushrooms, caramelized shallots, and motserella. It was good. The sweet shallots went nicely with the mozzarella. Then he got a frisée salad with a tomato, poached egg, and a lemon vinaigrette. There was also some bits of bacon. It all went together nicely and was the best dish of the day. I give this place three to four stars and I suggest you check it out even if it is just for the collections. Will post the photos in another posts.
Blog soon, Fi

Phinney Market

This morning I don’t have school (I love my school) so my grandparents took me to breakfast. We went to Phinney Market. Apparently they have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We have gone to dinner there before and it is pretty good. It is a very open space and it is kid friendly. It would be the perfect place to take a toddler because it is loud and there is a train set in one corner. Anyways, this is the first time I have been there for breakfast. There is a different menu for the weekend but I liked what i got. It was just half of a buttered and toasted Macrenea baguette with some jam on the side. I really liked it because it was simple and wasn’t too much. My grandparents got breakfast sandwiches. They liked them. It was very fast. I know that the dishes come with more food on the weekend like a side of potatoes. It wasn’t busy today but I know that dinner gets busy so make a reservation a few hours ahead. Over all it is a quick and easy place to go! Blog tomorrow,
Fiona

I cooked dinner

Tonight I cooked lingcod wrapped in pancetta baked in vegetables. I also made boiled asparagus with hollandaise sauce. And for desert I made pear clafouti. I was pretty impressed with myself. My friend Giorgia came over and I cooked it for her and my family. She said she loved it and she is still alive so I didn’t poison her. That’s good. The ling cod with vegetables was very good. I got it from a revised version of the Silver Spoon. The Silver Spoon is a famous Italian cook book. I have a kid version which I love because it is the same recipes just easier to make. The vegetables were carrots, leeks and caned tomatoes. The cod was actually wrapped in thinly sliced Spanish bacon not in pancetta. We just went to Whole Foods but I am sure you can find it at a local butcher or maybe even Central Market.
The hollandaise sauce is basically two sticks of melted butter, some lemon juice, an egg, cayenne pepper, and some salt and pepper and then you blend it all together. You just dipped the boiled asparagus in it and it was a perfect starter. I ate about six or seven of the dipped asparagus when I realized that maybe eating basically straight melted butter wasn’t the smartest idea before dinner. My friend Giorgia said that if she was on a stranded island that she would be happy with just that. I got that out of one of my favorite cook books, Barefoot In Pairs by Ina Garten. She is on the Food Network and I love to watch her cook.
The last thing I made was a pear clafouti. It is from the same Ina Garten cook book. It is like a custard substance. It comes out like a fluffy pancake. Like a sweet, creamy frittata. Then there are fresh pears on the bottom that float up when it is in the oven. It was all fantastic.
I did not go to a restaurant this week (that is why I cooked) but on Thursday (Thanksgiving) my family, including my grandparents, go to the Fairmont Hotel downtown and eat at the Georgian Room. The food is amazing.
I want to say sorry for my previous spelling errors. I have written each one of the posts on my iPhone. Then it auto corrects everything. I will post soon!
-Fiona

Saltoro in Broadview

Tonight I am at Saltoro. It is on greenwood and 140th. It is just a few minutes from my house so it is our “go to” place. Just as I am writing this my brother spills some of his ginger ale on my menu. Oh well. As I was saying we have been coming here forever.
I sit down with my family and my grandparents. The first thing that comes is a plate of fries. It is more of a mountain of fries.
Resently I have gone on a fry fast. This is because my mom has been visiting her mom a lot so my dad watches my brother and I on the weekend. We have had burgers and fries, tacos, and pizza way more then anyone should. Don’t get me wrong my dad is a great cook it is just that the other food is quick. Finally I put my foot down one night saying I will not eat any more food like this until the holidays are over.

Tonight I caved in because these fries are unforgettable. They are thin cut but you can still taste potatoes. Some thin cut fries fry away the potato and all that is left is the Skeleton. These fries also have a little Parmesan cheese grated onto it to. They are fantastic. My brother is towering over then like they are water in a dry desert.
My dad then got a salad and shared it with me. I was good. It was just some mixed greens with a simple tart vinaigrette and some blue cheese and slivered almonds.
Next the main course can I got Sea Salt Roasted Chicken. It came with mashed potatoes and brocolini. The chicken was very good. It was sea salt crusted but it didn’t taste over whelming.
Over all everyone should try it. They have pizza, pasta, lamb, sirloin steak, and lots of other dishes that rotate out (like tonight they was venison).
I recommend making reservations on the weekend because there is a line tonight. Also this is a good place to take smaller kids. They have kid menus and it is loud enough that if there was a yelling kid it wouldn’t matter much.
Will blog tomorrow,
Fiona