Seattle: Dahlia Lounge

After searching for penguins at the Woodland Park Zoo on the 2nd day, we met up with Mikol who stayed behind since he was feeling sick for dinner at Dahlia Lounge in downtown, a restaurant by local celebrity chef, Tom Douglass.

So who is Tom Douglass? Well, he was the recipient of the James Beard Award in 1994 for Best Northwest Chef. If you don't know what the James Beard Award is, it is sort of like... the Oscar of the culinary world. He also beat Masaharu Morimoto in an Iron Chef America so the man's got some skills.

Dahlia Lounge

2001 4th Ave

Seattle, WA 98121

http://tomdouglas.com

Cool neon sign. Seattle businesses use a lot of neon signs for some reason.

Manny's Pale Ale, a great local Seattle brew. Seattle's got a lot of great microbrewery.

Rustic bread. Dahlia's also got a bakery right next door, selling everything from rustic artisan bread, pastries, desserts, salads, and sandwiches.

Connie started off her night with the Tsuyu Broth with Hudson Valley foie gras, shittake dumplings, and scallion. It seriously tasted like liquid mushroom hahah. Nice hint of foie gras.

Mikol ended up ordering the Sea Bar Sampler, which had 5 small plates of seafood appetizers.

Ahi tuna with yuzu kosho, avocado, and tobiko roe. Delicious and great textures too.

Dahlia smoked copper river salmon with hot mustard and sesame. Salmon was great. I'm not a fan of hot mustard though :P

King clam sashimi with pickled beet and fresh horseradish. Subtle sweetness from all the ingredients.

Halibut ceviche.

Dungeness crab with house kimchi, radish, and tofu. The kimchi was actually legit and the tofu gave it a creamy texture rather than the texture we're all used to.

Puget Sound oysters with daikon mignonette. Fresh caught oysters from the bay 10 minutes away with a sauce made with daikon, shallots, and vinegar? Yessir. Connie and Mikol approves.

Connie's entree: Pan roasted king oyster mushrooms with cheesy truffled potato, josh hyatt's greens, fennel crumbs, and grape must syrup. She went mushroom crazy that meal.

Diana ordered the Tom Douglass's famous Lemon Scallion Dungeness Crab Cakes with New Bay spiced cauliflower, pickled asparagus, watercress, remoulade, and bacon salt! Bacon salt!! Tom Douglass is known for crab cakes. One of the best crab cakes I've tried.

My Rotisserie Roasted Five Spice Duck with Hong Kong style noodles, bok choy, snap peas, mung bean sprouts, and pear jam. I'm not kidding when I say this is one of the best duck I've ever had, anywhere. That noodle too with the sauce was like crack. I couldn't stop eating it. The pearl jam is similar to the orange sauce Chinese restaurant gives out but 100x better. One of those times when I wish I could eat Chinese food everyday, and this was done in an American restaurant!! Really speaks for the versatility of Tom Douglass and his chefs.

Freaking delicious crispy skin.

We wanted donuts since Giada DeLaurentis raved about it on Food Network but they were sold out :[ Settled with another one of their famous dessert, Triple Coconut Cream Pie with white chocolate and toasted coconut shavings. Not gonna lie, it was damn good. The toasted coconut totally made the difference.

Dahlia Lounge is a great option if you're looking for fine dining in downtown Seattle. Menu can change depending on the season. It's a relaxing atmosphere and doesn't require you to dress up. You can if you want but I prefer to stick to my tees and jeans if I can!

Seattle: Tilikum Place Cafe

After grabbing Top Pot for breakfast and walking 30 minutes to the Seattle Space Needle to check out the view from up top, we decided to grab brunch somewhere and randomly stumbled upon Tilikum Place Cafe, a neighborhood American restaurant & bar, which just might be my favorite restaurant this trip.

Tilikum Place Cafe

407 Cedar St (at 4th Ave)

Seattle, WA 98121

http://www.tilikumplacecafe.com/

One block away from Space Needle.

Brunch menu.

Mikol's Roasted Golden Beet Soup with herbed goat cheese & hazelnut. I'm not a fan of beet but definitely surprised me. Sweet and creamy.

Mikol's Roast Chicken "Salad" with potatoes, peppers, egg, and some sort of aioli. It's interesting and funny how they deconstructed each and every major ingredient of a salad! Definitely a playful way of presenting a "salad!"

Connie's Pulled Pork Sandwich with grilled onions, peperoncini aioli, cilantro, apple-chartreuse chutney, and housemade potato chips. The pulled pork is so so succulent and the chutney combined grilled onions gave it a really nice sweet flavor to it.

Lots of grilled onions & cilantro :]

Diana's Egg Benedict with pancetta crisp, roasted red pepper with paprika hollandaise. She's a egg benedict freak and almost orders it every time it is on the menu. Diana gave it her stamp of approval!

My Tilikum Fry Up. Egg, bacon, housemade sausage, beans with pulled pork, roasted tomato and cheddar toast completes the Fry Up. The pulled pork is the same from Connie's sandwich but they simmer it with the beans to give the beans extra dept and flavor. Orgasmic. The best savory breakfast plate I ever had.

I liked their homemade sausage so much that I convinced Mikol to share an extra order with me hahah.

Any place that makes their own ketchup shows me that they are willing to make the effort and give their customers something unique!

Tilikum Place Cafe is definitely on my list of restaurants that I must visit again for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner. I want to live around this area just because of the quaint neighborhood-feel this place gives off.

Seattle: Top Pot Hand-Forged Doughnuts

Hands down... my favorite donut shop. EVER.

I love donuts, whether it is from the 24hr donut shop on the way to work or the donuts from my local bakery. I even love the donuts from Ralphs. Donut and chocolate frosting are probably floating in my veins. And for me, Top Pot Donut trumps over all the donuts I've tried, whether it is the famous LA donuts form Randy's, the fried beignets from Italy, or the Asian-fied Duncan Donuts in Taiwan. Shoot, even a NFL player from Seattle Seahawks got arrested cause he broke into Top Pot in the middle of the night for some donuts haha. (Here's the link from ESPN: http://es.pn/dDAaf3)

By the way, I really should be 300lbs by now with the amount of donuts I eat. Let's hope it doesn't catch up to me :]

Top Pot Hand-Forged Doughnuts

609 Summit Ave E

(between Mercer St & Roy St)

Seattle, WA 98102

The display case full of wonderful donuts, or doughnuts :]

Had to go for their classic, Chocolate Old Fashioned.

Also got a Chocolate Cake. Should've got a chocolate chocolate but I wasn't thinking straight with all the donuts staring right at me. I did get it the next time around though haha.

Chocolate cake - dense and flaky. Don't know how they did that but amazing. No skimping on the frosting either.

Chocolate old fashioned - seriously the best ever. Crispy outside, flaky soft inside. You can tell it's kneaded by hand cause you see the air pockets in the donuts. Another amazing thing is that when you eat donuts, many times the chocolate frosting will start melting in your hands, but at Top Pot, their frosting doesn't do that. It's a sign of high quality chocolate and that they actually put the time into making it.

Diana's Sugar Coated Ring - sweet, fried perfectly. Better than Krispy Kreme? Yes.

Connie's Boston Creme. Honestly I'm not a big fan of any filled donuts but it's surprisingly tasty! I could only take one bite though haha.

They fill it UP.

Mikol's Raspberry Old Fashioned. A little girly but it's really light and refreshing and delicious. You can even see the seeds from the raspberry.

Their logo on the coffee cup. I think it's cool how their logo doesn't have anything to do with donuts, just man holding an iron, "forging" donuts haha.

If you get a chance to go to Seattle, Top Pot is a must. Yes, two was a little too much since they are actually bigger than your average donuts but trust, the last bite is as good as the first. When I went again two weeks later after this trip for work, I woke up early one morning, walked 30 minutes in downtown, just so I can have another go at Top Pot haha. Makes me sad that there really isn't a true gourmet donut shop here in LA. We have enough cupcake shops already!

Seattle: Amber & Umi Sake House

So after walking around Pike Place for the majority of the day and resting at the hotel, we decided to go somewhere where we can watch Game 6 of the Lakers VS Suns series. We just happen to pass by Amber, which apparently is a popular lounge/bar at night in Seattle. They had a great happy hour so decided to sit at the bar, take advantage of the happy hour, and cheer on the Lakers (or wish for their demise like Diana did).

Amber

2214 1st Ave

Seattle, WA 98121

Located in Belltown. All happy hour items are only $3!

Kobe beef sliders. Small Kobe beef patty, pickles, mustard, and ketchup. Nothing really special about them. It's probably not Kobe beef. Heck it's probably just American Wagyu... and the cheap parts haha.

Margherita pizza. For $3, this is a great pizza. Good amount of basil and it's a decent size too.

Pepperoni & sausage pizza. $3 as well.

After witnessing Lakers advancing to the NBA Finals, we bid our Taiwanese bartender goodbye and headed off to our dinner spot, Umi Sake House. I was already full from beer and the food we ordered, so going to Umi was just a bad idea haha. Nevertheless, it had the highest review out of any Japanese restaurants so I was determined to eat as much as I could.

Umi Sake House

2230 1st Ave

Seattle, WA 98121

Had to wait about 45 minutes on a Saturday at 8pm. Place was popping.

Cool wall of sake bottles as decor.

This being a sake house, we had to get a bottle. Our sever recommended the Kamikokoro Toukagen Shiboritate since Diana and Connie wanted something sweeter. This unfiltered sake is fermented using the same yeast found on white peaches in the area so it has a fruity and floral nose to it. Very smooth. It actually has a higher alcohol content since it is unfiltered, and we learned the hard way :P

Something Miko & Connie ordered. Totally forgot what it was but it had too much avocado for me :P

Connie's nigiri sushi set. A little over $20. In her words... "Not worth it" hahaha

007 roll with spicy tuna, avocado & cucumber wrapped with salmon, lime, cilantro, shishito pepper & jalapeno. Definitely a kick from the lime.

Casino Royale Roll. Spicy tuna, avocado & cucumber wrapped with yellowtail, lime, cilantro, shishito pepper & jalapeno. Almost the same as 007 except for the yellowtail. Fail on our part to notice it lol.

Tarantula Extreme Roll with soft-shell crab, cucumber & tobiko wrapped with avocado& topped with spicy crab, mayonnaise & jalapeños. Favorite roll of the night.

The best dish of the night, hamachi kama!!! This gigantic piece was for only $10. It could seriously rival Sushi Gen. Actually, it is better than Sushi Gen. Probably the freshest and the best kama (fish collar) I ever had. I should've just ordered this and the salmon kama instead of the rolls haha.

So at Umi, I experienced the food wall, for the first time ever. If you don't know what a food wall is, it is when you eat so much and when you hit a certain point, you just can't take another bite. In fact it actually hurts, both physically and mentally. You get this dull ache in your stomach and the thought of eating another bite just makes you feel sick. Not fun at all haha.

Lesson learned: never go to happy hour, then eat a crapload of seafood and rice.

Seattle: La Buona Tavola

On Pike Place, near the market, there's a small Italian specialty shop called La Buona Tavola, and they call themselves a "truffle cafe." It's not the chocolate truffle, but the earthy aromatic fungi. Truffle is beginning to be a popular ingredient in many restaurants, being used in new American cuisine, Japanese fusion, and even gastropubs, whereas before you can only find truffle-related items in Italian or French cuisines.

At La Buona Tavola, they carry everything related to truffles from oil, cream, spreads, to truffle-infused salt. Since it's a specialty store, they also carry a variety of hard to find Italian goodies such as legit balsamic vinegar aged in barrels and small-vineyards-type wines.

La Buona Tavola

1524 Pike Pl.

Seattle, WA 98101

Store front.

What really attracted us was the $5 wine tasting.

Inside the shop they have a table set up where you can sample all sorts of stuff. Truffle creams, truffle oil, truffle salt, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, pesto spread... everything the store has to offer.

A look at all the different oil offered for sampling. Favorite was the white truffle oil on the left.

Of course a variety of pasta that I've only seen in Italy can be purchased here.

Wonder what this tastes like haha.

More pasta.

For the $5 wine tasting, Mikol and I opted for red wines and first up was a small vineyard production from Italy in the variety of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. I didn't think too much of this haha.

2nd red wine was a Barbera D'asti, which I did like. Similar to a Pinot. Beautiful color too when you hold it up to natural light!

Since we were from out of state, our server decided to let us try a syrah from Columbia Valley in Washington. I've always liked syrah from Washington since I find it not as harsh as the ones from Australia and the Haystack Needle is no exception! Smooth and the flavors just lingers on your tongue. Suppose to taste vanilla in there somewhere but I'm too noob :P

The girls opted for white wines and started off with an Italian Prosecco, which is sparkling wine similar to champagne.

Another sweet wine from Italy. Forgot the name or where it was from but girls definitely likes the sweetness. The last white one was actually a Moscato you can buy from wine shops everywhere so I didn't bother taking a picture. For $5, the red wines were definitely a good value since they also offered some pairings with their spread, preserves, and oils.

La Buona Tavola ended up being one of my favorite shops in Seattle just because the proprietor was extremely nice and took the time to explain what each oil, cream, or condiment is. Sampling everything was really fun too. Free samples of truffles FTW!