Pai's

I came across Pai's food truck late in the evening at the South Lake Union Block Party. Most of the cuisine related components of the event had long shut down, and the masses of hungry late-comers were hanging out in a parking lot surrounded by soft glow and smokey allure of the food trucks.

I have long coveted the Hawaiian plate lunch, and was thrilled to see the Pai's has a vegetarian friendly plate. It is a pretty far stretch from the traditional meat/rice/mac salad type of affair, but the deviations made it that much more awesome for me as a vegetarian.

I got a "plate special" with lemongrass tofu and bok choy over rice, and my two sides were sesame coleslaw (no mayo!), and vegetarian kimchee.


Thank you Pai's for creating such a rad option for the vegetarians! (And vegans too, far as I can tell).

Seven Stars Pepper

I have written about Seven Stars Pepper before, but the gist is this: it is a Szechuan restaurant in the International District, you take an elevator to get up to it, and it is rumored that they are one of the few Seattle restaurants to use real Szechaun peppercorns. A recent meal here reminded me of how tasty the food is, and sampling a few new dishes inspired me to put up a second post.

A meal at Seven Stars Pepper begins with a complimentary dish of their kimchee like salad: fermented pickled cabbage, carrots and celery in a slightly spicy sauce.

We ordered dry cooked (AKA deep fried, I'm guessing) green beans (that's the kimchee on the side). They were garlicky, spicy, oily and perfectly tender crisp.

We also ordered the Dan Dan noodles with tofu. These are humongous hand shaved noodles in a spicy peanut sauce.


And last but not least, soft tofu in Szechaun Sauce. The soft tofu was bathed in a beautiful bowl of oily garlicky spicy red sauce, green onions, roasted peanuts and peppers.

I should mention that this is rather intense food... it is spicy, salty, and oily. Definitely a treat to eat in moderation, but feels a bit like it needs to be interspersed with some salads!

Padrino's Pizza

Padrino's Pizza now inhabits the building that the fleeting Purple Rain Cafe used to occupy near the Silver Fork and Emerald City Fish and Chips on Rainier Ave. I admit, I was initially turned off by the place because of their logo:

But received a glossy full color menu/brochure/coupon pack in the mail from these guys that brought me around a bit. The clincher for me was the bold statement: FREE DELIVERY, in my delivery-neglected south end neighborhood. Good advertising!

I was recently racing the rain on an outdoor house project and decided it would be a perfect night to have dinner delivered. Ordered up an XL (had a coupon!) cheese pizza topped with broccoli and red peppers.

The pizza wasn't spectacular, but I wasn't really expecting it to be. It was, however, better than Pizza Hut or the like because it had a thin crust and a reasonable amount of cheese, and a nice list of interesting veggie toppings to choose from.

I won't be turning to these guys for honest-to-god pizza cravings (we are so pizza spoiled around here, especially with Flying Squirrel so near by), but it is fabulous to know that there is an option for delivery.

Ducks and Drakes

For all the sassy posturing and raunchy dancing of Woody Goomsba, Leavenworth it is actually a pretty low key town after hours; a fact that was to my disadvantage one recent weekday night when I was looking for somebody to make me dinner a little before 11pm.

It was kind of a demanding circumstance, I realize, which is why it was all the sweeter to walk into the Ducks and Drakes tavern and find that they have a late night menu. The late night menu wasn't especially geared towards vegetarians, but pizza and nachos were options, as was the Southwestern Chicken salad, which I ordered sans chicken.

I did my routine menu scan of some kind of protein I could substitute for the chicken, and landed upon a blob of hummus, which they gladly (though skeptically) added for me.

I was very hungry and this salad really hit the spot. It was huge, and made up of nice deep green romain lettuce with corn and tomatoes and onions and cheese and tortillas strips and spicy ranch on the side. I enjoyed every bite.

Great to know there is a late night option available in little Bavaria!

Tony's Bakery

I recently went to Tony's Bakery, in the MLK/Graham complex, to sample their Bahn Mi. In a similar style to Q Bakery (in the same complex), the bakery is full of both prepared packaged foods, prepared hot foods, baked items and sandwiches.

I ordered a tofu sandwich and a basil seed drink and took the food home.

The sandwich had some good attributes including lots of good fresh veggies, but there wasn't anything that really made it stand out. My normally non-finicky meat eating dining companion's pork sandwich was slathered in so much butter that he had to scrape his bread.

The basil drink was an experiment... I'd never had it before and wasn't sure what to expect. I was hoping for a lightly sweet, crisp, basil scented sparkling beverage, and was about as wrong as I could be. The reality of the basil drink was a mega-sweet, mega-viscous cream soda flavored syrup with basil seeds in little mucousy pods.

For dessert we chose on of the many interesting looking baked goods, and landed upon this deep fried hollow sesame rice starch ball with a seemingly raw, chalky dough ball bouncing around in the center. I found many of the Tony baked goods to be intriguing, but I think that my MLK/Graham tofu bahn mi preference lays with Q Bakery, if for no other reason because their bread seemed fresher and they have a spicy lemongrass sauce that I love.

All Purpose Pizza

Have you heard of the Seattle Bouldering Project, the new bouldering (rock climbing low enough to the padded ground that you don't need ropes)/yoga/fitness gym near the Goodwill at Dearborn and Rainier Ave? It's pretty darn sweet (even if you aren't interested in the climbing aspect, it's a good deal to join for the unlimited yoga alone!)

Anyhow, after a recent gnarly sesh at the gym, some friends and I went to somewhat near-by All Purpose Pizza.

We started with a giant family style house salad that stole the show for me. It was huge and loaded with tasty ingredients and came with slices of garlic bread made from Columbia City Bakery baguette.
Next we ordered a pizza, split down the middle with half caramalized onions/jalapenos, the other half arugula/fresh tomato.

The pizza has a thicker, sour dough type of crust, and if you go in expected that detail, it's pretty tasty. I made an ordering mistake though: the jalapeno was fresh and startlingly spicy to the degree that I (and, well, everybody else too) had a tough time eating the half I designed. Live and learn!

The Elysian

Sometimes I feel like the sort of celebratory meal that involves dressing up and savoring plates of exquisitely prepared fancy ingredients. And other times I feel like the sort of celebratory meal that involves drinking a 5000 calorie coal dark beer and eating a giant mound of french fries.


The Elysian brewery on capital hill recently colluded with my vision for the latter. True to a typical Seattle brewery, the Elysian has a ton of vegetarian (and vegan, and gluten-free!) options. I chose the black bean burger with pepper jack, red pepper aioli and skinny cut french fries.

It was a Friday night and this place was packed!