Hi All - looking for some recomendations for November (Seattle: 2009, hotel)

[iisfaq]

Hi

I am from Christchurch, New Zealand. I have visited Seattle a couple of times before but I am visiting with my wife for the first time in November 2009.

She and I love the food scene in the USA - as we watch Iron Chef and love what we see.

We want to visit some up & coming resturants and not pay a small fortune if possible.

We want to try some foods that we would never see in New Zealand like Plantains. We just do not get them at all in NZ. I also hvae never tried Wagoo beef.

We really would love to see food of a very high standard but without the high price tag (if such a food exists).

We cook ourselves, but we are not chefs.

We are staying in CBD zone in November 2009 for 1 week and would love to checkout some great chefs that are in the Seattle scene.

If you have any suggesions when we would love to know if it is not too far in a cab to travel too...

Cheers

Chris & Pam (Christchurch, New Zealand)

[allforcats]

Hi, Chris and Pam. Welcome.

First, Wagyu beef. Wagyu (pronounced phonetically Wahg-you) is a Japanese word (which actually translates as "Japan bovine") indicating Miyazaki Wagyu, a specific pedigree of a type of cattle, deliberately kept very few in number, from a very small geographic area of Japan.
Kobe Beef is a term that identifies very similar, but not exactly the same, cattle, raised similarly but without the Miyazaki Wagyu pedigree and also without precisely the same strict, regulated, specific upbringing and pampering of Wagyu.

Wagyu Beef is extremely, profoundly, nose-bleed expensive. Kobe Beef is just very, very, very expensive.

The most expensive restaurant in Seattle, Canlis, serves Wagyu tenderloin and Wagyu rib eye. Canlis Restaurant
Here are the 3 other Seattle restaurants that serve Wagyu:
http://www.affluenttastes.com/meats/restaurants-that-serve-wagyu.html#seattle
Please consider very carefully before you choose to eat Wagyu... If you do eat Wagyu, you will be content to die right then and there, and your life will never be the same...


About plantains: that's a tropical fruit. This is the worst place to try to buy plantains. They are available, in season, in expensive markets. Hard for you to get to. Save plantains for your trip to the tropics.


About Seattle chefs. Many, many Seattleites are "foodies". So we take our chefs seriously and don't have cut-rate chefs. Here are some favorites.

-- Tom Douglas. Etta's and Dahlia Lounge are among our favorite restaurants of his. Lunch or dinner. http://www.tomdouglas.com/

-- Tom Douglas's wondrous mind supplies the menu of a unique 3-hour dinner experience which is lots of fun and which you might enjoy, Teatro ZinZanni: Teatro ZinZanni Seattle

-- Nobu Matsuhisa's wonderful Japanese restaurant, Nishino. Lunch or dinner.
NISHINO + Seattle + 206.322.5800

-- The current chef -- Philip Wendt? -- at McCornick's Fish House. Fabulous. My favorite non-Japanese Seattle restaurant. The one on 4th Avenue. Lunch or dinner.
McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant - Fresh Seafood, Aged Steaks, Salads, Pastas

-- Armando Batali, who is not a chef. If you enjoy "Iron Chef", you might enjoy Mario Batali's parents' tiny shop, Salumi, for lunch only. In Pioneer Square. Be prepared to stand in line outside for an hour, because the lunch foodies know where the good stuff is.
Salumi Artisan Cured Meats


You will be here in November, which is well into our rainy season. Please be prepared with shoes you can wear in the rain -- very important -- as well as rain-appropriate coat covering, and collapsable umbrellas. Or it might never rain while you're here! Have fun!!


Another thought: here is a good collection of Seattle restaurants. Click on the location you want. I don't know what the CBD you mentioned is, but I'm assuming it's downtown which is what we call the center of Seattle proper, and if so click on Downtown. And/or click on type of food. You can use Mapquest.com to enter the street address, city and WA (state) to find the location relative to your hotel.
http://www.urbanspoon.com/c/1/Seattle-restaurants.html

[BellevueGuy]

Allforcats had some wondeful recommendations.

I will stick my head out to say that I absolutely detest McCormick & Schmick's. National restaurant chain like this ruined Bellevue downtown's dining scene. Teatro ZinZanni is a very fun touristy spot, but please also expect horrible food.

I like the Union restaurant at 1st Ave & Union. The owner also has a "How to Cook a Wolf" at the top of Queen Anne that's quite nice.

[BellevueGuy]

Also, for even more expensive "experience" dining:
- Rover's in Madison Valley
- Mistral in Belltown
- Herbfarm in Woodinville

[iisfaq]

Hi

Thanks for your recomendations - very very much welcome.

All for Cats your response is amazing and gives me a lot to think about.

I noticed after searching around at the restrurants you gave me a site called Dine Around Seattle

Have you ever tried their fixed price $30 menus - They are on offer for the whole month of November.

Thanks in advance.

Chris

[iisfaq]

Originally Posted by BellevueGuy

Allforcats had some wondeful recommendations.

I will stick my head out to say that I absolutely detest McCormick & Schmick's. National restaurant chain like this ruined Bellevue downtown's dining scene. Teatro ZinZanni is a very fun touristy spot, but please also expect horrible food.

I like the Union restaurant at 1st Ave & Union. The owner also has a "How to Cook a Wolf" at the top of Queen Anne that's quite nice.

Yes that is often the case - too touristy is almost always a lower quality food since they know you will never be back.

chris

[allforcats]

Lisfaq, you're very welcome. Glad to help.

About McCormick"s Fish House on 4th Avenue:
notice I specified McCormick's Fish House, on 4th Avenue. NOT McCormick & Schmick's. Same owner for some years, but very different operation. McCormick's Fish House on 4th Avenue is very crowded every weekday for lunch -- you can't get through the door without a reservation; that's because so many executives who work in the neighborhood and have access to countless good seafood restaurants choose McC's on 4th. They might know something, eh?

Lisfaq, you requested info on restaurants that are "not too far for a cab to travel to" from your downtown hotel. You need to know that the suggestions for restaurants in Woodinville and Madison Valley would be long, costly to extremely expensive taxi rides from your downtown hotel. Very nice restaurants, but not meeting your request. Mistral is also a very nice restaurant; you didn't request expensive restaurants but that's a very nice one.

For you, the fixed price menus sound like a favorable possibility if you want what's on the menus. Many of the restaurants are local favorites for reasonably-priced seafood. I see that three of Tom Douglas' restaurants are on the list -- he's constantly contributing to the community.

A thought (well, another one ): This is the Pacific Northwest, where seafood is king. Our "local" seafoods come almost entirely from the northern Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea whose waters go from very cold to two degrees below freezing. The seafood that come from these extremely cold waters are very different from seafood living anywhere else in the world. So seafood restaurants here are serving something special. Usually the less expensive the seafood the lower the quality and duller the flavor. Something to remember.

[iisfaq]

Thanks for the tip on the Seafood - I love seafood and really want to try some local seafood specialties.

The crab you see on TV look pretty big and interesting from the Beiring sea so I would like to try that somewhere. I guess they are going to be expensive but then how often am I in your country? Not very often so well worth it.

Generally through the day while I am there I will be busy so it is night's only. The company I work for has paid for me to travel to a conference so they will pay a "normal" meal price (me for) and I can just top it up for myself and pay for Pam.

Is gooey duck worth trying? I saw that on a menu while hunting around - now we only have ducks with wings in New Zealand.

Thanks for the tips again much appreciated and I can't wait to get there to try some local dishes.

chris

[allforcats]

GEODUCK or GWEDUCK is the Roman-letter writing for a Native American word. The pronounciation is "gooey duck". No wings. Not even a beak! A Geoduck is a type of mollusk, and looks like a science-fiction-sized clam. It's delicious. A little different from usual steamer clams. When dug out of the sand by people who know what they're doing, like restaurant suppliers, Geoducks are sweeter than clams. Since you will never, ever find Geoducks anywhere but here, you should try one. You and Pam order just one and share; they're pretty expensive (labor-intensive), and who knows if you'll like it. If you like clams, I consider mussels to be clams with a Ph.D. and Geoduck clams with an elegant, exotic accent. Definitely worth a try!

About CRAB: Some of us are impressed by size. Those folks order Alaskan Crab. Some of us are impressed with delicate, sweet flavor. Those folks (me included) order Dungeness Crab or Snow Crab. Do you receive the TV show "Deadliest Catch"? The huge ones that Jonathan Hillstrand, Sig Hansen and the rest fish for are usually listed on menus as Alaskan. The "opillios", much smaller, that Andy Hillstrand fishes for are usually on menus as Snow or Dungeness.

In Pacific Northwest crabness, you really do get what you pay for. The cheaper restaurants buy the less desirable critters, as well as pieces. The more expensive restaurants (like the Tom Douglas ones) buy and serve only high-quality critters.

A crabby alternative target, instead of aiming specifically for crabs from Alaska, is to aim for Dungeness Crab. They also grow around the Puget Sound area (where Seattle is), so you might be getting very local Dungeness. Doesn't matter -- Dungeness is northern Pacific or Bering Sea, and it's all yummy.

A note about MUSSELS: According to chefs, including Anthony Bourdain and Alton Brown, one emotional and foody, the other scientific and foody, there are two places on Earth where the "best" mussels grow. One is in France. The other is right here, a few miles west of Seattle. The place is called Penn Cove (on Whidbey Island). McCormick's Fish House and many other good-quality seafood restaurants here have Penn Cove Mussels on their menu. Clams with a Ph.D. ... D i v i n e ... If I were a prisoner on death row, my last meal would include Penn Cove Mussels. And Wagyu!! Hahaha!!

HALIBUT is a local favorite fish from up there near the Arctic Circle. Also COD. Back to mollusks, SCALLOPS are another fave in local restaurants; yummo! Fish again: AHI TUNA, either raw or barely cooked; ohboyohboy...

How's your appetite for SUSHI? Seattle is a heaven for sushi lovers. There's even a thread here on our own picks for favorite Japanese restaurants: http://www.city-data.com/forum/seatt...staurants.html

WEATHER: You're probably familiar with weather.com. If not, here's the page (updated twice per 24 hours) with the 10-day forecast for Seattle so you can plan your clothes. This forecast is as accurate as it gets here, where the weather can change every 10 minutes.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/health/allergies/tenday/98101?from=36hr_fcst10DayLink_allergies

[shoegal111]

Originally Posted by iisfaq

Hi

I am from Christchurch, New Zealand. I have visited Seattle a couple of times before but I am visiting with my wife for the first time in November 2009.

She and I love the food scene in the USA - as we watch Iron Chef and love what we see.

We want to visit some up & coming resturants and not pay a small fortune if possible.

We want to try some foods that we would never see in New Zealand like Plantains. We just do not get them at all in NZ. I also hvae never tried Wagoo beef.

We really would love to see food of a very high standard but without the high price tag (if such a food exists).

We cook ourselves, but we are not chefs.

We are staying in CBD zone in November 2009 for 1 week and would love to checkout some great chefs that are in the Seattle scene.

If you have any suggesions when we would love to know if it is not too far in a cab to travel too...

Cheers

Chris & Pam (Christchurch, New Zealand)

I absolutely adore Lola's. Schuckers @ the Farimont Hotel has some of the best seafood as it gets first pick off of the boats and planes. Beechers at Pike Place Market for Mac n Cheese. Pike Place Market is a great place to sample food from around the world. Best place for a leisurely walk and nibbling as you go along.