Georgetown Liquor Company

I'm going to take a moment here and say, again, how much I enjoy the Georgetown Liquor Company (I've written about it before, here). Every time I go I am thrilled with the breadth and deliciousness of the vegetarian (and very vegan friendly) menu.

On a recent trip, I ordered a Lowell Sandwich, which was a complete delight of vegetarian "ham", green chilies, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, baby greens and chipotle veganaise on a toasted whole wheat hoagie roll. I had a choice of sides: soup, salad, or chips and salsa, and chose the salad, which was large and perfectly dressed with homemade vinaigrette and shaves of Parmesan.
My dining companion ordered the Portobello Salad, which was the biggest salad I've ever seen in a restaurant. It was a beautiful, enormous pile of baby greens, gouda, sun dried tomatoes, pine nuts, and delicious marinated slices of portobello mushroom. I don't generally like mushrooms, and portobellos are no exception, but here they were so perfectly seasoned and marinated that even I enjoyed a taste.
The ambiance of the Georgetown Liquor Company is a little brooding, with black walls and dark themed art, and is the sort of place where I might be initially skeptical about the state of the kitchen. But I have been completely consistently impressed with the food that they make, and would even go so far as to say it's just as good as any other vegetarian restaurant I've been to in Seattle.

I love the Georgetown Liquor Company!

Kisaku

Social restaurant feasts seem to involve sushi these days in my world, the most recent of which was a celebratory evening at Kisaku in the mysterious Tangletown neighborhood near Greenlake.

The group began with a bunch of appetizers, two of which were somewhat appropriate for a vegetarian: edamame and agedashi tofu, which came covered in bonito flakes. When I order agedashi tofu for myself, I'm always careful to specify that I'd like it without the bonito. On this occasion I simply scraped it off and continued to eat the lightly battered tofu.

While the rest of the table ordered platter after platter of creature based sushi, I secured myself a nice little supply of vegetarian goodies: Tofu Dengaku: tofu in a (surprisingly sweet) red miso sauce, a $1.50 Kobachi salad with a scoop of mashed potatoes, and a beautiful Devil's vegetarian role that had an outer skin of marinated, fried eggplant.

It can be tricky with Japanese food to get seemingly meat free options truly free of fish products, but these all seemed to be genuinely vegan (with the exception of the mashed potatoes, which might have had some mayonnaise in them). It was nice to have some unusual options!

Taqueria El Rinconsito

In honor of a recent visit from my lovely out of town sister, my aunt and uncle treated us to a midday feast at their favorite Mexican Restaurant in Burien: Taqueria El Rinconsito. Off the bat, Taqueria El Rinconsito passed the first superficial test for Mexican Restaurant promise: the place was full of Spanish speaking patrons.

The menu is mostly meat based with only cheese enchiladas as a vegetarian option, but the staff was friendly and happy to oblige my request to put some beans in there too.

The taqueria also gloriously passed test number two, the salsa bar. I am an absolute salsa bar fiend, and was immediately swooning (discretely) over what I saw:
Four types of delicious, spicy, varied blended salsas ranging from sweet to smoky, some sort of pico de gayo that was cabbage based and outstanding, pickled carrots and jalapenos, fresh radishes and lime wedges.

Next was the third test, the agua frescas:
I have yet to see a more complete display of these sweet tasty beverages. Taqueria El Rinconsito has horchata (rice milk with cinnamon), Tamarindo (tamarind), Guayaba (guava), Jamaica (hibiscus), and mango. I had a taste of each, but ultimately decided the creamy horchata would best sooth the burning mouth I was so looking forward to from the salsa bar.

My meal was huge and delicious. I'm still not sure what to call this style of Mexican food... it is usually referred to as "family style" but that doesn't say much. On my plate of 3 enchiladas made with fresh tortillas and delicious rich red sauce, I also had a scoop of well seasoned yellow rice and a pile of whole beans (made without lard).

Taqueria El Rinconsito isn't exactly classy-date in ambiance, but it is full of natural light, clean enough and the food is fresh, delicious and inexpensive.

Thanks K & M for the wonderful afternoon!

Thai Tom

Thai Tom is the tiny, cramped University district darlin' where the food is fast and delicious and the air is smoky with the flavors of Thai delight.

The concise menu includes tofu as a meat choice, and it seems the brisk staff is used to dealing with the fitful culinary whims of university students and didn't bat an eye when I asked for my spicy noodles (more or less phad kee ma0) made vegan.

I'm not sure Thai Tom is necessarily the best in the city, but it is consistently tasty, fresh, and hot. A seat at the bar (sometimes a necessity if you wish to be seated ahead of the giant hungry line) is an entertaining peek into the madness of flying hands, flames and sauces as the sweating cooks blast out order after order.

Add all of that to the inexpensive prices, and it's no wonder the place is so popular.

Six Arms Brewery

I was recently on east capital hill looking for dinner around 9:30pm, just past the witching hour where regular restaurants close their doors and late night establishments reveal themselves. I ended up at Six Arms, a brewery with the sort of late-night food that makes me glad to live in a city like Seattle. Not only did the menu have all sorts of tasty vegetarian appetizers like hummus, roasted corn black bean salsa, and goat cheese torta (if you like that sort of thing), and multiple vegetarian mains like a grilled smoked mozzarella sandwich and a tofu burrito, they had two different types of vegetarian burgers: boca burgers, and garden-type burgers made with their own Hammerhead Ale and malted grains. Holy crap, yes please on the latter.

The burger comes with a choice of sides including fresh cut fries, tater tots, salad, etc.

Long gone are the days of vegetarian choices limited to brewery nachos!

PS: Happy Hour starts at 10pm, which I unfortunately missed. Had I made it, my garden burger would have cost just $4.

Aoki

A recent cold, rainy evening inspired a night of sushi with some friends at Aoki on Capital Hill. Aoki has a couple of simple vegetarian rolls, but no real clincher on the menu and I decided to order non-sushi items for my dinner instead of requesting anything special from the sushi bar.

Many sushi restaurants have a delightfully low-priced simple salad on their menu, and Aoki is no exception. For $1.50, I received a nice size bowl of crisp ice burg lettuce with thinly sliced red onion in a delicious sesame dressing.
I also ordered my Japanese restaurant standby: Agedashi tofu. If you are a regular reader, you may have noticed that I tend to special order my tofu non-fried. This is because I generally find fried tofu to be a less delicious, unpleasing textured, excessively greasy version of what it could be fresh or steamed, not because I have an aversion to eating fried things. Agedashi tofu is an exception to my general tofu rule in that good agedashi tofu (and I've never had it bad) involves all the best of both worlds: fresh, custardy, smooth tofu on the inside with a delicate but crispy, salty, crunchy crust on the outside. It is an example of deep frying done with a a concerted culinary aesthetic rather than as a default, and it is exquisite.

I also ordered a plate of Yakiudon with tofu. The price for this plate was $6.50, and at that price I wasn't sure if it was going to be a tiny sampling, consistant with what $6.50 tends to get you at expensive sushi restaurants, or a full meal. I was extremely pleased to receive a huge plate of steaming noodles. It is unusual to feel that a sushi restaurant delivers good quantity value for the price (no doubt because all of the non-vegetarian items are so precious), but Aoki absolutely did. Nice.
It was a lovely evening out, just what I needed. Thanks P & B!

Mayuri Bakery

A couple of years ago I visited Mayuri, a delicious east side Indian restaurant, and have since heard rumors of other avenues to experience the Mayuri empire including a deli, a grocery store, and a video store. A recent quest for a cricket uniform set me off on voyage to the Indian flavored area of Redmond near the Microsoft campus, and while driving around I came across what I thought was the Mayuri deli and decided to head in for dinner.

After entering and getting a feel for the place, I lost confidence that we were in the deli. This particular location was dominated by a case of colorful desserts and seemed to be the Mayuri Bakery instead, but there was a savory dinner special written on a board, and a lovely selection of savory condiments on the tables, so my dining companion and I decided to go ahead with dinner. The special was poori, a deep fried flat bread, with some sort of saucy dish to eat with it. I got curried chick peas, and my dining companion got some sort of spinach with potatoes.

Under the fried bread was a pile of chopped fresh red onion, some fresh chili peppers and a wedge of lime. I doused the whole thing in some nice spicy garlic chili vinegar and scooped up bits of everything with the greasy bread. It was tasty enough, but certainly not outstanding.

Our specials also came with some really good, really creamy and sweet mango lasse, and a square of double-layered cake that was so boring even this dessert lover didn't bother eating it.

I guess the slow search for the real Mayuri Deli continues.