Category: Good and Bad Eating

This isn’t directly about Cafe Campagne, I just happened to come up with this rule while leaving there with a meal half-finished.

The Rule? If you enter a low-ceilinged restaurant and you see a party of 8 or more seated (or waiting), just leave immediately.

On Friday, we sat down to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants during my favorite time of the year to eat there (Cassoulet season). We had our favorite table. Perfect for a romantic dinner. There was a group of around 10 middle aged women seated a couple tables over from us. They were well dressed and seemed nice. Soon, the volume level from that table was near airplane-engine-roar level with the occasional laugh-squeal or scream making me want to put a fork into my eye. They drew angry looks from all around the room, but the usually very attentive staff ignored the situation. I don’t think the ladies were trying to be rude. I don’t even think they understood how insanely loud they were. They were just trying to hear each other over the din of a busy restaurant with no soft items to absorb sound and low ceilings and tons of mirrors and windows which amplify it.

That kind of thing makes eating at any restaurant feel like eating in the bar at TGI Fridays.

If you can stomach the noise level, it might be worth a shot.

Marco’s Supper Club is nearly a landmark, tucked away on 1st Avenue. The atmosphere seems funky but romantic, the staff is excellent and the prices are reasonable for downtown. I was wondering why we didn’t eat there more often. So we visited last night for the third time in 12 years and I was reminded of why we don’t eat there with any regularity. It was loud. Ear-split-tingly loud. It’s a large room with a low ceiling and almost nothing to absorb the sound of the various conversations. In order to speak to my wife, I had to yell over the obnoxious young microsoftie bragging about his new house to his date. He was not at the next table, he was several feet away. My food was good, but not amazing. My wife’s salmon was undercooked and had to be sent back. On its return (after I had finished my entree), it was cooked more, but still rare. To the staff’s credit, they handled the situation perfectly, but it still put a cloud over an otherwise ok dinner.

I can’t really recommend it, but I can’t suggest avoiding it either. This is one you need to try for yourself. My only suggestion is to visit on a weeknight when the crowds won’t be so intense. This might make a meal there a much more pleasant and romantic experience.

Good, but not good enough for the price.

While I detest the Zagat guide, they do have one thing absolutely right. They rate restaurants on three axis: food, service and decor. When a restaurant has entree prices in the $25-$50 price range, you better expect all three.

I was a bit disappointed at the decor of the Hunt Club, I had been to the lounge before and thought that decor was lovely. The Hunt Club continues the dark-wood-paneled-gentlemen’s-club feel, but one side of the restaurant is small and nearly windowless, making it feel more like one of those theme restaurants from the 70s with peanut shells on the floor. The other side is more open, but unfortunately, that is partially because it is connected to the bar and only separated by a flimsy curtain.

The service was quite good. I was concerned beforehand because I had read many accounts of poor service at the Hunt club on the web, but the service staff was friendly, helpful and prompt in our experience. The Sommelier was one of the best I’ve had; recommending not only the higher priced wines, but also some of the less expensive (without being asked).

The food was a bit uneven. The wild greens salad was a disappointment, but my grilled broccolini was delicious. The Salmon was pretty good (but for the price, we should have expected Copper River King). The Chicken was also quite good.

In general, the Hunt Club is a worthwhile choice if you are staying at the Sorrento (in which case, the cost of the menu won’t seem unreasonable), but in comparison to the many other high quality restaurants in its price range in Seattle, don’t bother.

The chocolate artisan of St. Remy, Provence, France

website

Best known for his Chocolate Alphabet series; he creates delicate, subtle and delicious confectionaries. His alphabet chocolates are small, square chocolates stamped with letters in gold-leaf. Each letter is a different flavor. My favorites are the ones that showcase the provencal flavors: lavender, violet, thyme. We bought a box from his shop and he was there and very friendly. Since we got back, I’ve been metering mine out to preserve them as long as possible, although now that I see he sells them on-line, I might just have to become a regular customer.

1) In Nice, if looking for quality food, avoid the places near the Promenade De Anglais, unless you have a specific recommendation from someone you trust
2) In Paris, avoid any place offering a 10 Euro menu. It is a tourist joint that doesn’t think you know better
3) Don’t eat dinner in the old town of Eze. You have three very expensive choices, none of which are worth it.
4) Don’t start doing the conversions between Euros and Dollars for the food you are eating because you will give yourself a coronary.
5) If you are eating in a decent restaurant, a carafe of their house wine is going to be much higher quality than you would guess and it will be substantially cheaper than a demi-bouteille or a demi-litre of a wine off of their wine list. In a similar vein, learn how to order a carafe of water unless you enjoy paying for bottles of expensive mineral water everywhere
6) If you are going for Soca in the Cours Selaya in Nice, do it early. It is closed when the rest of the flower market is packing up, not when lunchtime is over.
7) If you are having a hard time finding a good place to eat, hit up a boulangerie, a charcruterie and a légumerie instead; you’ll be happier.
8) Order in French even if you aren’t very good at it. Outside of Paris, they will appreciate it and will help with your pronunciation and grammar. In Paris, they will just switch to English, but I think that they still appreciate the effort
9) French people eat late. This can work to your advantage, especially in Paris where the good restaurants fill up and long waits are common. We usually ate around 7:30 when most of the restaurants were just opening. After dinner we would walk around and if we noticed a place that was packed with locals (you can tell by the (lack of) overall volume and (large) amount of smoking) we’d head there the next night.
10) If you know where you want to eat, make reservations. It will guarantee your spot and will get you better service
11) In Paris, they now have no smoking sections, but they are filled with Americans and are not in any way separated from the smoking sections. Actually, in most of the restaurants we ate in, they would create a non-smoking section the first time it was requested. It would be in the worst spot in the restaurant and would still have clouds of cigarette smoke billowing over it. Better just to not stress over it: look for a table with its neighbor tables having no or very few butts in the ashtrays and sit there.

Seattle Bon Vivant is an excellent Seattle Area food resource

Here are some of my favorite meals by neighborhood, these aren’t the once a year meals, there are the once a month meals (not that I eat all of these every month, I’d be dead of heart disease if I actually ate like this every night). I mean that they are all reasonably priced (and some are quite cheap!)

Pike Place Market
Duck Confit or Cassoulet at Cafe Compagne

Belltown
Mixed Seafood Grill at Queen City Grill
Poulet Forrestierre at Le P’Tit Bistro

Downtown
Paella in the bar at Brasa

Queen Anne
The Brisket or honey stung fried chicken at the 5 Spot

Ballard
Mixed Tandoori platter at India Bistro
#2 at The Other Coast
Udon at Bento Sushi
Chicken Pad See Eiw at Thaiku

Fremont
Indian Buffet lunch at Quazi’s
Gyro Omelette at Costa’s
Captain Neon Burger at Dad Watson’s

Greenwood
Super Chicken Burger from Red Mill

U-District
Sausage and Black Olive Chicago Deep Dish Pizza from Delfino’s

Capitol Hill
Veggie Sandwich from Olympia
Super Chicken Burrito at Bimbo’s Bitchen Burrito Kitchen
Lasagna Bolognese at Machiavelli Ristorante

worth checking out if someone else is paying

Walking in the door any night at the Icon Grill, you’ll see large parties of people. These are business groups on expense accounts. You will also see a fair number of tourists due to its proximity to the Westin and other hotels. That these groups are the staple customers should point out one thing to you, which is that this place looks better than it is. The atmosphere is funky yet kind of fancy. However, the booth we were seated in had a huge hole in the vinyl seat that was covered with packing tape. This would be OK in a Denny’s, but not somewhere with $20-$30 entrees. The food itself is Northwest-fusion with some staples. The pizza Margherita was worse than tasteless, but the squash soup was good. Their Stuffed Tuscan Chicken was tough and hard to chew, but the sauce it was in was good. My drink was watered down which I find to be the height of evil.

Basically, this place is just a bad bang for your buck. You are paying for the atmosphere, but not the quality of the food. If atmosphere is all that is important to you, there are better places to go. If food is what is important, then there are better places to go. I think you get my general drift here.

If they dropped their prices by a third, this would be a fun go-to. Not the first choice, but an occasional one. As it is, there is much better food to be had near by for the same price or less. Check the place out if you are on an expense account or stop by for a beer or wine (which they can’t water down), but don’t spend your own money here.

Great and affordable French

Le P’Tit Bistro is a small, unassuming new spot a bit out of the way on Second Ave in Belltown. The staff is friendly and the food is excellent, especially for the price. The Crepes are very good and the entrees are wonderful. Given its out of the way location, it has been having a hard time attracting more than the neighborhood traffic. It definitely deserves to stick around and thrive. I definitely recommend giving it a try if you are looking for some non-stuffy French food or a non-overly-hip-overly-crowded Belltown meal.

[I updated this review in Jan/06 because they’ve made some really positive improvements in their atmosphere, it definitely has a more cozy feel now]