A pair of firsts: Lychee and cow tongue
The next day we went to Seattle. It was my first time to the city and I highly recommend having the ferry do the introductions. There's something soo delicious about approaching a new city by boat.
It was an untypically sunny day in Seattle and we planned to spend the day at the Pike Place Market and downtown.
Pike Place Market made me giddy. It's a market and street baazar almost a block long. Women selling flowers, rows and rows of fresh produce, just-pulled-from-the ocean fish and lots of artisan foods, art and other wares. If this isn't a foodie's dream come true, I don't know what is. I bought some smoked salmon and Christian and I ate it outside.
I loved this board above the fishmongers case where people had tacked all kind of messages. It looked so seaworthy, it did.
This group of fruit and veggies growers were also really vocal in selling their produce. Here's a guy passing out samples of the most delicious peach!
Here's a guy trying his first lychee, which is a funny-looking fruit with a rough skin. The inside is very slippery and sort of rubbery in the mouth. It had a giant pit inside.
This is what they look like on the outside.
Here's the woman who sold me the lychee and the pomegranate, I like that her hair and shirt were both the same hue as lychees and pomegranates.
How to tell if you've got a good pomegranate? The woman above suggested I choose the one with the dullest looking shell and it would taste the most flavorful.
Before I left Seattle, I tried to catch at least one bite to sastify the gourmand in me. Foodies must be careful in Seattle, you can easily burn through money here on amazing finds. While walking back to my car, I stopped to ask a guy for directions and for recommendations of some places to eat.
As luck would have it, the guy who I asked was the pastry chef at Volterra, a Zagat-rated Italian restaurant in town. His name is Tom (I think the expression on his face is so funny considering what his shirt says. He looks almost guilty.)
He and his chef/server friends who sat outside drinking beer said, "we were just going to eat, why don't you come with us." Little did I know, I would soon eat my first morsel of a cow tongue surrounded by an bawdy group of slightly intoxicated men- or should I say boys :).
We walked up a half a block to a little french diner called Le Pichet.
This is Ben (left) and Josh (right). Josh works as a saute cook at Barrio. Michael sits beside me. All agreed that cow tongue is one of their favorite things to eat. Josh believes it has a cinnamon-like flavor. I'd have to put eating cow tongue on the top of my list of food adventures (you can see the taste buds on the slice of tongue) but these boys, especially Tom, have some stories to tell about edible adventures. One of Tom's most wild adventures was eating sheep brains in Morrocco. He tells me I've got to try a kind of Oyster that comes with a little sandcrab inside. And the boys inform me, "that myth you hear about the cooks having sex with the waitresses, it's not a myth."
"You don't want to know what goes on behind closed doors, it's fowl," one of the boys said. And I don't think he's talking about chicken.
Michael is a server who tells me he had some kind of dream that he was surrounded by people from India and he thinks he needs to travel there.
Their order came: Assiette de charcuterie: a selection of cured and preserved meats. On this plate was liver and cow tongue and the boys were happy to share. I pulled out a wedge of truffle sheep cheese and offered it to them as well.
I ordered the Rillete de lapin et sa confiture aux fruites d'arte: Potted rabbit-pork spread with caper berries and stone fruit jam. The rabbit pork pate had a layer of fat on one end, "the best part," the boys said.
Michael of the guys ordered this and offered me a bite.
Ham and eggs done-up more deliciously than I've ever tried 'em.
Nice guys. Thanks for sharing a plate.
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