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.

Thanh Vi

(Back in Seattle!)

Thanh Vi has a couple of locations around town, including one on the Ave in the U. District. I recently went to this location looking for a cheap, fresh and savory dinner, the usual desires that send me to a Vietnamese restaurant.

I was pleased to see that Thanh Vi has a large section of menu dedicated to Vegetarian items, including multiple vegan broth phos and a handful of vermicelli bowls. I chose my usual favorite, the lemongrass tofu vermicelli bowl, aka Bun Dao Hu Xao Xa (can't figure out all the accent marks to really make that right!).

The upsides of the dish were that it had WAY more veggies than usual... bell peppers, celery, carrots, cucumber, green onions, in addition to the regular lettuce and white onion. Down sides were that it was really light on herbs, not at all spicy, and I found the lemongrass paste to be a little mealy and bland. Another downside was that the bowl of sauce that came with it had fish sauce in it (always taste it first!). I was surprised about this because of how generally vegetarian (vegan) friendly their menu looked, and when I asked the waiter if they had a vegan version, he told me that there was already enough sauce on the dish without the bowl, and the bowl was just extra for dipping if I wanted. Hmm.

It's hard to complain about an inexpensive, huge bowl of fresh ingredients, but I can say that I have had much better versions of this dish elsewhere. (And the recent stellar version at King of Pho in Auburn might have seriously spoiled me!)

Burma Superstar

I LOVE eating in San Francisco, and it's always a tough call determining which restaurants will make the cut on a short trip. This time I decided to try the extremely popular Burma Superstar. Burma Superstar doesn't take reservations, but they will call your cellphone when your table becomes available so it is possible (and recommended) to check in and then go have a beer elsewhere while you wait.

Once in to the busy, cozy restaurant, my dining companion and I drank white wine sangria with Asian pear, lychee and oranges.

We started with a traditional Burmese Tea Leaf Salad, which came to the table with compartmentalized ingredients: Romain lettuce, toasted peanuts, fried garlic, split yellow peas, toasted sunflower seeds, toasted sesame seeds, chopped tomato, fresh jalapeno, lemon, and a wet pile of fermented finely chopped tea leaves. If you don't order it vegetarian style, it also includes dried shrimp.

The waiter then mixed the salad at the table. It was spectacular. I don't think I've ever had a better salad than this... the mix of textures and savory and bright flavors was absolutely incredible. The fermented tea leaves reminded me a little bit of the salty briny flavor of capers, and added a really interesting dimension to the overall flavor. I would come to Burma Superstar for this salad alone!

In addition to a designated vegetarian portion of the menu, Burma Superstar indicates on their menu that many of their meat dishes can also be made vegetarian (which, I believe means vegan in this restaurant's vernacular). Awesome.

My meat eating dining companion kindly ordered vegetarian so that we could both try multiple dishes. We ordered the Shan Noodles, vegetarian style, described as rice noodles in a spicy tomato sauce with pickled radish, cilantro, peanuts and tofu. Similar in presentation to the salad, the Shan Noodles came to the table with compartmentalized garnishes that the waiter stirred in as we watched.

Shan Noodles Pre-stir

Shan Noodles Post-Stir

We also ordered a Tofu Vegetable Kebat, which consisted of tofu with onions, tomatoes, squash, carrots, green chilis and mint leaves. This was eaten over rice.

I'd never had Burmese food before this, and it really was different from any other culinary ethnicity I've ever eaten. All of the dishes tasted different from what I'd expected based upon how they looked. To best describe it, I'd say the dishes have the earthiness of Indian food, the fresh herb flavors of Vietnamese food, the sourness of Korean food, and the dry/fresh pepper heat and roasted flavors of Thai food.

With reasonable prices and friendly service, I'm not surprised this place is as ragingly popular as it is!