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!

Sutra

I have written about the (vegetarian/vegan, prix fixe) Sutra experience before here, so shall spare the details but will say that I had the pleasure of recently visiting Sutra again with some lovely dining companions, and this is what we ate:

Nettle Miso Soup with a salad of Baby Tom Thumb Lettuce, Pickled Shunkyo Radish, Sea Beans and Goose Tongue (sea vegetable), with lime-ginger-tahini dressing and a sesame seed crisp.

Housemade buckwheat fettucini, roasted asparagus and truffled watercress, masa breaded fiddlehead fern and shiso with a tamari, yuzu leek broth.

Roasted Cauliflower, mung bean, cashew cheese, house smoked morel cake served atop sauteed chard and radish greens, an eggplant mousse and peppercress oil, finished with black lemon molasses reduction and parsnip chips.

Chocolate-coconut ice cream with mirin-blueberry coulis and cacao nib brittle.

El Chupacabra

I vicariously experienced a funny mixing of worlds recently while on a bike ride with a bunch of friends through west Seattle. It was one of the first genuinely sunny days of the year and Alki beach was PACKED. As we slowly weaved our way through the throngs, the group decided it was both hungry and thirsty and took a turn into the beach side El Chupacabra to order some burritos to go. I couldn't coax myself into the dark bar/restaurant and waited outside with the bikes.

Turns out I lost my comrades as they nestled into the "kinda douche-y but really cool" bar and had a few beers and some chips and salsa among the scantily clad in the in the dark and artsy cave. They emerged squinting and rubbing their eyes about an hour later with burritos and chips and salsa in paper sacks.
My vegetarian burrito was mostly rice and sour cream, but other people randomly got more ingredients in theirs. The salsa was mostly good, and included an unusual variety that had a nacho cheese color (as well as a decidedly not good "too cumen-y" green salsa). It's hard to complain too much when you're sitting in the sun on a summery Alki day, but I am positive I wouldn't make a special trip to El Chupacabra for the burritos alone.

Big Mario's Pizza

Big Mario's sells giant, cracker thin slices of tasty New York Style Pizza. I happen to love this style of pizza with the thin almost crisp crust, a complete layer of browned and blistered mozzarella, simple tomato sauce, and a slice so large it begs to be folded into a pizza taco.

You can buy pizza by the slice or by the pie, and there were nearly a dozen different pizzas at the ready for the hungry slice-buyer. I saw plenty of vegetarian options: cheese, fresh tomato and basil, mushroom and spinach, and some kind of Greek looking option. I didn't see any vegan pizzas.

Another plus is that Big Mario's is open LATE (4am on weekends!), which is awfully nice for the bar go-ers in the Pike/Pine boozebath.