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!