Seattle Archives

Scenes from a Book Tour

Remember that time I told that joke about how I was going to blog my book tour as it happened? That was a hilarious joke! Because, as you might imagine, things got a little crazy after I wrote that. It became impossible to blog my tour as it happened and now, a few days after my Googleplex post, I’m feeling guilty about ever making that promise.

So let’s rewind. After the Eataly dinner, but before flying to San Francisco, I hosted a panel discussion in Brooklyn at the Greenlight Book Store with Amanda Hesser and Jonathan Waxman (seen above in a picture by Lizzie).

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A Return to Sitka & Spruce

The last time I wrote about Sitka & Spruce in Seattle, I praised the place but called the food “challenging.” That was in January. On this most recent trip to Seattle, we returned to Sitka and Spruce–this time for brunch–and the meal was so good, so beautiful, that “challenging” was suddenly the wrong word for it. I decided I needed to do a follow-up post and that’s the post you’re reading right now.

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Sitka & Spruce

Should good restaurant food challenge you? Or should it comfort you by reflecting what you already like to eat?

Sitka and Spruce, a restaurant in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, is the first restaurant that I’ve visited in a long time that fully embraces the former strategy. The food, while very delicious, challenges you while you eat it. It makes you ask questions. It reveals your prejudices, your fears, your secret desires. And it does so in a beautiful environment.

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The Salvadorean Bakery, Delancey & A Glogg Party

There are three experiences I forgot to tell you about from my trip to the Pacific Northwest this year. The first experience happened on a morning in West Seattle (I’d written “East Seattle” and then Craig corrected me) with our friends David and Celia and their new baby, Johanna. Early in the morning, before my appointment with a chef at 9 AM, we all had breakfast at The Salvadorean Bakery.

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Archie McPhee

Growing up, Craig was a big collector. He collected matchbox cars, stamps, shells, stickers, Star Wars action figures. “You name it, I collected it,” he tells me now.

By the time he entered fifth grade, he started collecting what he and his friend Joe referred to as “Creepers.” He recalls: “These were basically rubber skeletons and animals–frogs, lizards, snakes, bats, bugs–and we treated them like action figures and played creeper games and created a whole universe like Dungeons and Dragons.”

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Food and Gays and Bears… Oh My!

[Hey, this is Adam The Amateur Gourmet. I’m on vacation in Barcelona, Spain and while I’m gone I’ve asked some awesome people to fill in for me. Today is theater legend day and our first post comes from one of my absolute heros, Mr. Hunter Bell, Tony-nominated book writer for the hit Broadway show, [title of show]. Last year, Hunter told us what Broadway stars eat backstage, and this year Hunter takes us on a cruise with Rosie O’Donnell. Except Rosie wasn’t on the boat with him, but we’ll let that go. Take it away, Hunter!]

Hello food nerds or f’nerds. Hunter Bell here and I am honored to be a guest blogger. A year ago I guest blogged about pre-Broadway show eatin’

[See here!]

Well now, my [title of show] peeps and I have taken the show on the road, or on the water rather. We had the good fortune to write and perform a new show we debuted on the most excellent r family cruise.

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The Kindness of Food Bloggers

What’s worse than traveling during the holidays? The answer: traveling from one snow storm to ANOTHER snow storm during the holidays.

That’s what I attempted to do yesterday in what may have been the worst travel day of my life (though I’m sure you’ve experienced worse.) Let’s not talk about the 12 hours on the plane, the refueling in Salt Lake City, and the waiting for a gate to open once we arrived in Seattle. Instead, let’s focus on my helpless situation once I got off the plane. You see Craig, whose family lives in Bellingham (two hours north of Seattle), was stuck in Las Vegas because his connecting flight was canceled (he’d left the day before). The Bel-Air Airporter bus which goes from the Seattle Airport to Bellingham was all sold out; the idea of taking a car there was ludicrous (the snow was pummeling down from the sky.) My only option was to spend the night in Seattle and, utterly exhausted, I flipped open my phone and though Craig has many friends who would’ve let me stay with them, my eyes fixed immediately upon a food blogger friend who you all know and love: Molly, aka Orangette.

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Where To Eat In Seattle

Seattle is a city I never expected to know well. Geographically, it’s pretty much as far away as you can get in the continental U.S. from where I grew up in Boca Raton, Florida. My impressions of Seattle were entirely limited to that which I saw in movies (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “Singles”) and TV shows (“Frasier” being the obvious choice; though, interestingly, Craig says the view from Frasier’s apartment window is an impossible view.) If it weren’t for Craig, in fact, I’m not sure I’d have made my way to Seattle as early or as often as I have. Since knowing him, however, I’ve been to Seattle three times: once as a newbie (one year ago exactly), once as a drifter (Craig was shooting his movie this summer and I drifted my way around town while he did his work) and finally as a tag-along (this most recent trip was Craig’s annual Christmas visit). In the process, I’ve made some pretty wonderful food discoveries and though I’ve covered much ground in previous Seattle posts (see this search) here’s a guide to what I’d recommend to anyone visiting the city for the first time.

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