More good Seattle food

Unlike Dixie’s, these places don’t quite deserve their own posts. But they’re still the best places I’ve been this summer. And they’re all in Bellevue.

Mediterranean Kitchen – I don’t normally go for Mediterranean food… in my experience it’s mostly been dry and disturbingly-flavored meats and oily vegetarian dishes. But a friend of Annie’s was up here and requested it (she lived here before). Hoo boy, was I wrong. I had one of the House Specialties, chicken wings. They were whole wings grilled to perfection, smothered in this rich, creamy sauce, served over a bed of some of the best rice I’ve ever had. And of course a little dollop of hummus (this was just ok, but I’m not a huge hummus fan anyway). La Vierge (Annie’s nickname for her friend… man, Annie has nicknames for *everyone* :) had Lamb Shanks served over couscous and Annie has some Kabob… Ketzel, maybe (it was ground beef of some sort). All of the food was tremendous, both in flavor and sheer quantity. No-one ate more than half their servings, even me! Of course, since La Vierge had to head out of town and Annie has work, I got to eat alllll the leftovers… mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Sichuanese Cuisine Restaurant – Not much to say about this one. Great Chinese, cheap prices, no delivery. Stay away from the dumplings, though… they’re kinda blah. This place stands out more due to the lack of other good Chinese places, and how ridiculously cheap it is.

Sushi-ten – Pretty good sushi. The Salmon and Hamachi were fresh and cut nice and thick. The rolls were decently made and the selection was quite good. So what makes them so special? Why do they make the cut? It’s because of the deal. Every night from 5-9 they have all-you-can-eat sushi for 22 bucks or so. And this isn’t buffet crap, this is sitting-at-the-bar, ordering-from-the-chef-off-of-a-decent-subset-of-the-menu quality. Oh, and they don’t kick you out after an hour either… you can sit there all night if you want. Spiffy. And if you’re really weird… I mean, so weird you were born in some frigid non-American country, you’d be happy to know that they even had chicken sushi on the AYCE menu :)

Dixie’s BBQ in Bellevue, WA

Thought I’d use the first few posts to detail the yummy restaurants we’ve found up here so far. First, and by far the best…

Dixie’s BBQ – A hole-in-the-wall that instantly became one of my all-time favorites. First and foremost, they have Sweet Tea! And not that ‘flavored’ tea crap. This is the real thing… tea that has been super-saturated with sugar while it’s brewing. I’ve been looking all over for this, and it’s the best I’ve found outside the South. As for the food, the brisket was tender, the hot links were hot, the ribs were succulent and the lemon cake side was amazingly moist and fruity.

And finally, there’s “The Man”. So, while you’re eating, there’s this old crotchety dude walking around with a cast-iron pot. When he comes to your table, he asks if you’ve “Met the Man”? If you say no, he puts a tiny bit of the sauce on your plate and tells you dip a tine of your fork in it and eat a big bite of food. And he’s certainly not pleasant about this. Crotchety, remember? You have no say in the matter. Now, “The Man” isn’t the absolute hottest sauce I’ve ever had (but don’t led the dude know that), but it’s pretty damned close. You’ll be happy for your sweet tea and Lemon Cake to drown out the fire.

Before you go, he forces you to put a pin on a world or US map indicating where you’re from. They already have several years worth of these maps high up on the walls, which only lends to the decor. If you’re *very* lucky, the dude will give you a nickname and constantly refer to you over the course of your meal. I became “Alligator Soul” when he found I was from Florida :)

Oh, and I also have to mention… this place has a rep as being similar to the ‘Soup Nazi’ place. Don’t cause trouble while in line or they’ll kick you out! I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to test that though, I refuse to chance missing out on the BBQ!

A Blogging Start

I’m thinking about trying to blog semi-regularly. Maybe it’ll help my writing skills? Maybe it’ll help my state of mind. At the very least, it’ll keep my friends up to date on my goings-on. We shall see :)

So, what shall I start with? Recently I’ve rediscovered (thanks to Annie and her book-addiction) the public library system. Highlights are American Gods by Neil Gaiman, the latest Sword of Truth novel (sigh… does any long-running SF/Fantasy series *not* peter out after the 3rd or 4th book? Harry Potter excluded),  one of the later Callahan’s books (see previous note… although these have stayed better than most), and Roger Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead.  I used to be a big Zelazny dork, but haven’t read anything of his in a long time.  And color me a big Spider Robinson fan… the man can weave a powerful tail (amazingly poor pun intended :) .

What else?  Seattle has been great.  Wonderful, in fact.  I’ve been meeting up regularly with some old Intel friends living up here, and playing *lots* of new board games (Alhambra – great, Goa – meh, El Grande – fantabulous, Caylus – undecided, and a few others).  The food here absolutely rocks (just had Dixie’s BBQ today… wowwowowowo… this might be might favorite BBQ place of all time…. those who know me know how serious this statement is).  And living with Annie has been better than I could possibly have hoped.

Oh, before I forget, i have bone to pick with some of the Internet community.  Recently a US Senator described the Internet as a series of tubes with information going through them.   He presented this when arguing against Net Neutrality.  Certain folks (Cory Doctorow, John Stewart, etc) have been ridiculing him endlessly for this.  Now, I firmly support NN and think that the Senator Stevens argument was silly, but his Internet metaphor was nowhere near bad enough to warrant this sort of asinine nitpickery.  In fact, when trying to describe the net’s infrastructure to a layman, it’s not bad at all.  Stop lambasting the man for this just because you don’t like his argument or politics in general!  Cory is obviously a nut-case, but I expected more from Jon.

Ahhhh… that felt better.  i can see why folks like this blogging stuff :)

I think that’s good enough for a first post… later ya’ll.