Reviews: Downtown Bellevue Eats

Part of exploring a new metro area is eating your way through the lunch week. I've been trying to experience a different eatery for the days that I eat out either by myself or with co-workers. I thought I should keep some notes about finding new places to eat. The alternative is to brown bag it. While the weather is still nice I think I should try something new.

Review: Serious Pie (Seattle, WA)

Serious Pie is exactly what its name suggests. For a corner pizza place in downtown Seattle, this restaurant isn't ordinary and their ingredients are far from the usually expected. I ate here on Sunday with my sibling and his wife. We ordered two really tasty pizzas (roasted yellowfoot mushrooms, truffle cheese and the penn cove clams, house pancetta, lemon thyme) and promptly devoured both. The mushroom pizza was a little saltier than I like; but the clam pizza more than made up for it.

The shop doesn't have much footprint inside, so it's best to come here at a off-eating hour. And, they don't take reservations. I'm told that during the summer, the line to get into the restaurant goes out the door, down the block, and around the building. It's that popular.

The only downside is the limited food menu. There are only six starters, seven pizzas, and three desserts. The rest of the menu are beverages.

It is one of many eateries that was created and managed by Tom Douglas, a Seattle chef, who also owns Lola, Palace Kitchen, Dahlia Lounge, Dahlia Bakery, and Etta's.

Price: $$ to $$$
Serious Pie location: 316 Virginia & 3rd Street, Seattle, WA
Menu
Website

Review - Rose's Restaurant & Bakery at Fisher's Landing

Was here on a Friday for lunch. For a deli cafe, it's pretty easy to not eat healthy or eat of healthy portions here.

There were to very eye-opening items on their menu. From my table, I had a view of the food prep counter and saw the final dish prep for their matzo ball soup. It was a brisk, windy day too. Matzo ball soup would have been perfect if I was in the mood to eat a 4" diameter matzo ball served up in a cup with some broth. It's no different if you order a bowl of matzo ball soup... two enormous 4" diameter matzo balls are in the bowl. Big does not mean that it would be better. And eating it would not have been a simple matter. It would have been the talk of those at my table. Anyhow. I was in the mood for something simple and not terribly complex. I had the Rose's Deli Cobb Salad since there aren't many ways one can go wrong with a traditional salad. Ok, well, maybe I should have requested the dressing on the side because my salad was drowning in the bleu cheese vinaaigrette. It made the chopped egg taste like I was eating an egg salad salad. I'm just a picky eater, I suppose. There were only praises for the sandwiches and entrees that other people had ordered.

The other eye-opening menu item were the pastrami fries. Imagine if you would a pound of thick-cut French fries topped with melted Swiss cheese, shredded pastrami, sauerkraut, and Thousand Island dressing. Sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen. It was very tasty. And, for a shared appetizer, this one had no leftovers.

Next time, I think I'll try their specialty desserts.. either the Texas donut or the giant cinnamon roll. Those things looked impressive in the bakery case.

Price: $$
Location: 3205 SE 192nd Ave, Vancouver, WA 98683

Review: Voodoo Donuts (Portland, OR)

Voodoo draws in crowds for its wacky topping combinations, but lacks substance when measured against a grocery-store's generic donut. I love donuts and eat them on occassion. My all-time favorites are the vanilla cream-filled chocolate glazed donut and apple fritters.

Buying donuts goes beyond the fact that they're sweet and remind us of our younger years when we could eat anything and not gain weight. I rank donuts by a few factors: aesthetics, taste, availability, variety, and price. Note that price really isn't that much of a factor if the donut has been made really well. Donuts are priced about the same wherever you go, slightly on the cheaper side if you buy a pre-packaged mass produced box, and slightly more expensive if you get them from a bakery or really good quality donut shop. The first two factors pretty much make or break the case for good donuts. The best donuts are eaten the same day they're made. And, having grown up with Winchell's donuts, I have a slight bias towards donuts made the Winchell's way. Unfortunately, the closest Winchell's locations are in Seattle, WA (150 miles away) or Salinas, CA (600 miles away). Sadly, no Winchell's for me.

The Voodoo donuts that showed up at my workplace were of an interesting variety and pretty much represented most of their menu: bacon-topped maple donuts, mini M&M sprinkled donuts, mini marshmallow-topped donuts, a pink-glazed donut with a wrapped bubblegum piece on top, chocolate glazed donuts - round and rectangular, a chocolate donut that didn't seem to have much chocolate flavor, apple fritters, etc.

 

Here's what I think about how Voodoo stacks up against like competitors:

1. Specialty Bakery/Deli, like Winchell's
2. Bakery counter at local grocery store
3. Dunkin' Donuts / Krispy Kreme / your average local donut shop or donut franchise shop
4. Donuts you can find at a gas station's minimart (minimarts get their supply from any of the above places)
5. Donuts you make yourself on the first try
6. Pre-packaged donuts of any mass manufactured brand
7. Voodoo

If you are looking for a real donut taste, you might want to get yourself a real donut somewhere else.

 

Price: $$

Website: http://www.voodoodoughnut.com/

Location: 22 SW 3rd Ave, Portland, OR 97204

Review: Fong Chong Restaurant (Portland OR)

Today I was in downtown Portland near the Chinatown area for a work meeting with our ad agency. Not wanting to be stuck in worse-than-Los Angeles traffic for the ride home, I walked about in sweltering heat (like an average summer day in LA) for a few blocks in each direction from where my car was parked and picked a random a restaurant to eat at. I don't know much about Hongkong styled cuisine, but I've eaten my fair share of dim sum. The sign outside read: Hong Kong dim sum. Who could resist? Besides, a nice Indian-ish-looking couple came out of the restaurant and spontaneously pitched the restaurant to me. I guess the locals really like the place. This particular local said that he lived in HK for a few years and this place serves up authentic-tasting HK cuisine, but (he adds) that some of the beef has an off-flavor to it. Maybe 6pm was too early for dinner, especially when it was still about 100 degrees F outside. The restaurant was sparsely populated, and by that, I mean to say I was the only patron at the time. The menu reads "Fong Chong Tea House", but given the very limited varieties of tea on the menu, I think they dropped that aspect of the business. Besides, this entire metro area is about 95% caucasian. The food: If the restaurant really does serve dim sum all day, I didn't really see any while I was there. A cart that had some leftover desserts from the lunch hour sat quietly by itself near the front counter. I could see egg tarts and sesame balls on small rounded plates; but given how hot it was today. Eating deep fried or baked egg desserts that have been sitting out all afternoon.. not such a good idea. My order's portion size was good and perhaps too much for one person to eat in one sitting. I had the beef in garlic sauce. It came with a scoop of what tried to pass itself off as fried rice, BBQ pork that should have been reconstituted in a broth, a crab puff (might have been the chef's invention), and a slathering of overly sweet and spicy brown sauce with mixed vegetables. Overall, the dish was way too sweet, though probably just right for the American palate.

In my food..

• Meat - the beef was very tender and tasty, as it should be; the BBQ pork should not have been added to the dish at all and it was dry, hard, flavorless and chewy
• Sauce - typical brown sauce with soy sauce, chili sauce, corn starch, garlic, sugar
• Vegetables - green bell peppers, celery, bamboo, carrots, white onion, snow pea, white mushroom, mu erh (wood ear fungus), and zucchini (which, unfortunately was very bitter)
• Rice - had bits of egg in it, tasted entirely wrong, and someone probably stir fried it up with soy sauce several hours ago. It had the taste of salted egg coated rice. Bleh. Nobody eats salted egg in anything except in rice porridge.
• Crab puff - It's a wonton wrapper stuffed with "crab" meat and deep fried. It's an appetizer, but not terribly appetizing.
• Egg roll - who knows what's in it. I didn't touch it.

The tea: Ordinary black tea, and not a particularly quality one either. Generic. Maybe a Lipton black tea or something. I didn't get a choice about the tea, but I also wasn't charged for it either unlike other Chinese restaurants in the Portland area. Service: Only one host for the evening, which might have been fine if there had only been a few customers, but by 6:30pm several more sets of people wandered in and it took a while for me to even get my bill. The host speaks at least three languages that I could tell...Cantonese (to the kitchen staff), Mandarin to the family of six sitting to my right, and somewhat decent English to the rest of us. Surroundings: Decent. It looks like this place would have no problem accommodating the needs of a large banquet, as it could seat about 300 people in its main galley area. There might be private rooms at the back, but I wasn't feeling too adventurous at the time. Among the evening's patrons were asians, besides myself. That's at least a sign of decent food that another Chinese person would eat. That's also not saying much because there aren't a lot of restaurants to choose from, not in Old Town. Overall: I'd say, for dim sum, it might be passable to the locals who live on the west side / downtown Portland. From looking at the menu and eating here for dinner, I still cannot fathom what it really means to have Hong Kong sytled food. For eating lunch or dinner from the specials menu, I'd say skip it and go eat elsewhere. The place: Fong Chong Restaurant 301 NW 4th Ave, Portland OR 97209 (503) 228-6868