I’ve had a love affair with cereal for years now. And it’s not any type of cereal… It is with my beloved Honey Nut Clusters.
Since my iPhone is extremely slow, I don’t get too many apps, nor do I put any music on the poor phone.
I also never back up/sync my phone so after a grueling 2 hour sync I was poking around on iTunes and found some nifty new apps… At least new to me. 
WordPress! I can now update my blog via my phone. Oh the convenience! 😀
Quick stop at Sushi Tomi!
We got a bunch of rolls and bento…Salmon Skin, Dragon, Caterpillow, Spider, and a side of salmon nigiri!
Close up of the adorable caterpillar roll.
We celebrated a friend’s birthday out in SF earlier this week at Chez Spencer. Since I already went on my rant about how irritated I was, here are the happy points to this meal. Actually, the food wasn’t THAT great… the soup had fish bones in there but no seafood. BLeargh. Steak was delicious but the morel mushrooms were cold. And that ice cream a la mode looking thing on the pudding cake? Whipped cream. Not ice cream. Or gelato. Super disappointing.
Overall thoughts? Chez Spencer can probably survive on its regulars… I’m just not one of them.
After our dinner @ Maneki’s, we drove around Seattle to sightsee at night.
Which resulted in me driving across the Roosevelt Bridge no less than 3 times, slapping each other with our newly invented game of Starbucks-Slap, and checking out ANOTHER grocery store called QFC. Prior to hitting the sack, we headed back up towards the Fremont neighborhood to indulge in this new cafe called “Pie.” It served… pies… All sorts of mini pies! We each selected a key lime and we split the blueberry. MMMMMmmmm… Delicious! They had all sorts of pies… savory pies to sweet ones. Mac and cheese filled ones to peanut butter and jelly!
Fresh pies in hand, we went back to our room for the evening. We managed to do a lot considering that we landed at 12:30!
We were greeted with a lovely view from the room.
We woke up in the morning, had a quick snack of the pies from the night before and headed out to Pike Place Market. Where I proceeded to show an idiot tourist not to mess with this Asian driver! I was waiting for a spot and was backing into it when he flipped a U to try to steal it out from me. I laid on the horn. I also ended up with the spot. 😀
We jumpstarted Jenn w/ a lovely Latte from the first Starbucks.
And then proceeded to eat our way around Pike Place Market… Including Beecher’s Homemade Cheese for cheese curds and breadztels, Piroshky Piroshky, and if space permitted, we nearly ordered ourselves a baguette from a French bakery to gnaw on.
We bid adieu to Pike Place Market (Rachel was still in the Piggy ICU since she was ran over by a taxi a few weeks ago) and drove down towards the waterfront. While walking along, we came across this random car. So I proceeded to take a picture. I wonder if anyone ever Googles “Flamingo Car…”
Please note that the proud owner of the flamingo car is eagerly waving at us.
We proceeded along and checked out Elliot’s Oyster bar where we indulged ourselves and splurged on oysters.
They were amazing amazing beautiful little oysters. Waaaaaay better than the ones I’ve had here. Point Reyes has nothing on these oysters. Seattle Oysters… hand’s down the best ones I’ve had!
Post-oysters, we walked back over to Ivar’s and finished up our trip of food.
I heart Ivar’s. The fish and chips were amazing… so was the chowder. I’m missing Ivar’s again already. *sigh*
Unfortunately it was coming up on our flight so we had to make it back to Westin (thank you for the complimentary 2PM late check out!) packed up the rental car, returned it and hopped on our flight back home.
We’re already thinking about the next trip to take. Until next time…
*Rant up ahead*
Where does the fine line lay between “let’s get together and celebrate a friend’s birthday” and “let’s get together and throw an expensive ass party?”
I don’t even know where to start as I am sitting here silently seething and fuming. We were quoted a price per head. Aka, “expect to spend $XX per person” and yet what we paid was nearly double that. Because some chick wanted to throw her bf a fancy dinner party. At the expense of all the guests. WTH is up with that? Before y’all rip me a new one for being stingy, I went to wish the birthday boy a happy birthday, get together, etc. with the expectation of paying what she had quoted, which I assumed would be the cost of MY food, plus chipping in for the birthday boy’s food.
Lemme clarify. BIRTHDAY BOY”S FOOD. I was not know that I would be paying because there were minimums and people cancelled last minute so now my 60 dollar plate was now going to doubled.
Yes, the food prices there already was inflated for the ambiance and the setting, yet why should the “room minimums” be the guests’ responsibility? That’s the host’s responsibility! That wasn’t “come celebrate So and So’s birthday!” it was blatant robbery of “I want to throw a fancy dinner party and shaft the guests for it!” Imagine if you went to a dinner and was expected to chip in to pay for the table flower arrangement. WTH. I bet she’s standing around smirking that she managed to throw a dinner party with such a small hit to her own wallet.
Oh yeah… and the food? Not worth it. It was cold, there were lipstick stains of unknown origin on the wineglasses, and my water glass was constantly empty. SO NOT WORTH IT.
Happy Hatchday Blueberry!
You would have been 9 today.
I miss your feathered bratty butt.
To my little bird that thought he was a little person, I hope you’re getting lots of treats today…
Lemme backtrack a bit. Last year, I took my parents up to Seattle for a quick weekend getaway to visit my 87 year old grandaunt that’s like a surrogate grandmother to me. When we flew in, I did a quick Yelp search and found Maneki. Ohhhh Maneki. They only took reservations and turned us away until I nearly got on my knees and begged. Actually I pleaded. Somewhere between “flight from California” and “plllllleeeeeease!?” worked and they squeezed us in. And then we made reservations to eat there again the following night.
Since that trip, I’ve been longing for Maneki. Ohhh.. the black cod miso dish… and fresh sashimi… and their one pot rice. MMMMmmm…
I wanted to go through their dishes one by one so I separated out this post from the Seattle Trip recap.
This was buttery, savory, delicious. I heart miso-yaki fish. Black cod makes it ten times better. Maneki… Can you please move down to California? 😀
It was grilled with plenty of garlicky goodness. Not stenchy garlic, but savory fresh smelling garlic. The portions were generous and the squid was delicious… *in love*
Super fresh tuna roll. I love the Pacific Northwest… The fish up there is amazingly fresh.
The wild salmon nigiri was extremely lean but extremely flavorful… yet stayed super buttery even without all that fat. Amazing. Amazing… Makes me want to move up to Seattle immediately. And preferably in a nice high rise condo overlooking Puget Sound within 5 minutes of Maneki.
They have these amazing one pot rices that take about 25 minute to cook.
The big reveal…..
Oh yeah.. this broke our bank, all this food was a whopping $20 per person… including tax and tip! 😀
MMMmmm… Need to fly back up to Seattle to get my Maneki fix….
And in celebration of Daylight Savings, I finally got around to changing my banner… and fiddled with my link colors so the blue didn’t clash with the cherry blossoms. When I find a banner-worthy picture that has more blue in it, the blue theme will be back.
I’m taking a quick break from my Taiwan Trip recap since I have been a bad bad girl and haven’t uploaded pics from my big camera yet… And because Taiwan tired me out, so tired that I needed another vacation to recover from my vacation. 😀
Which leads to the Seattle Trip posts. Work was exhausting… February puts me in a funk. I know there are all these great things in February, such as a highly commercialized Valentine’s day and President’s day… but the gloomy weather and post holiday routine usually puts me in a funk.
Jenn and I planned a quick weekend getaway and after checking the flights, we hopped on a delayed plane and landed in the Emerald City.
Love Priceline… since I pricelined our rental car while waiting for the delayed flight and I got us $8 bucks a day. 8 bucks!!!! We had spent the prior week planning/yelping/torturing each other with food pictures and suggestions and laid out a schedule so we could hit up all these random places.
Two foodies + Seattle = Happiness.
We got our rental car and drove towards Paseo. (Yelp Review Here) With my stomach giving me directions – it actually didn’t do a really good job since I had to refer to Jenn’s iPhone. All it said was “press on the gas. hurrry. gas it a little bit more!”
We found parking and quickly got in line; oh how torturous that line was… since we could smell the fresh toasted bread… seasoned roasted pork… OMG… *DROOL*
We ordered and found a table… and resumed to wait for them to deliver our precious sandwiches. I had the Cuban Press and Jenn had the roast pork. Both were equally drool worthy. MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm
I was slightly put off by the faux-Asian dishes that you find at a cheapy Chinese restaurant. It didn’t make for a flattering picture but the sandwich redeemed itself.
Post Paseo-gorge, we walked off our tummies at the Ballard Locks. Salmon weren’t running yet but the view and the boats were gorgeous.
We rounded out more walking by heading over to UDub where we found a very VERY friendly bunny. 
Then we proceeded to regain whatever calories we burned off with some ice cream @ Molly Moon’s. Ice cream was good, service was bad. Stick with Bi-Rite in SF. Although I have to admit, the waffle cone was AMAZING!
We checked in and and found our room. I love the Westin Seattle!
Unpacked… And headed out for dinner.
Dinner restaurant is getting it’s own post coming soon!
While I’m jetting off on a quick trip up to Seattle to stuff my face, I’ll leave this scheduled post behind. Hopefully I’m not slumped and drooling against the poor soul whose sitting next to me on the airplane.
It was inspired my friend Jenn W’s review for her Valentine’s Day meal with her husband. I can say I’m slightly bitter since we had agreed to be each others’ valentines but then I went and booked a trip off to Taiwan. I must have issues since I’m the bitter one and not her. I ended up spending V-Day with my extended family. I guess it wasn’t too bad in retrospect.
I write a lot on Yelp. I’ve been Yelping since my post college/first job days. I’ve managed to rack up a number of reviews on there and Sam and I will get into discussions post meal on how to rate a restaurant. I’ll say 4 and sometimes he’ll say 3 or vice versa. We get into debates like how many stars we should give our neighborhood pho place that we eat at on a regular basis when we don’t want to pay an arm and a leg yet is super convenient, fairly decent, and has awesome hours. He says it deserves a 4. I say it deserves a 3. I like to rate it in comparison to other pho places of the same caliber. AKA, hole in walls get compared against hole in the walls.
After read Jenn’s post about her Vday dinner, I realized that there’s another caliber of rating restaurants. The correlation on how quickly/how much quantity they serve over time. Apparently her husband got hungrier and hungrier through their meal since service took a long time and the portions were tiny. Poor man was craving a pizza when they were done. Ouch! How would a restaurant like that be rated? Against other high end, slow-service, tiny-portion restaurants? Or based off of how amazing the food was? Or how it rated amongst all meals eaten in a person’s lifetime? (Cause if that’s the case, I’d rank a freshly made large french fry from McDonald’s eaten while I’m PMS-ing a 5 star rating.)
Hmmm… Back to pondering over my Yelp stars…
by Vicky
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