Monthly Archives: June 2012

The beginnings of a list …

Well, it turned out to be much more difficult than I thought to assemble a list of “must go” restaurants in the Seattle area.  The problem: just too much to choose from!  I spent a few hours going through the lists I talked about in an earlier post.  I also spent more time on Google.  The result is that I was completely overwhelmed.  I did put together the beginnings of a list that we can use more as a guideline than a target list:

Wild Ginger El Gaucho Le Pichet Agua Verde
Dahlia Lounge Lola Harvest Vine La Carta de Oaxaca
Canalis Daniel’s Broiler Monsoon Lampreia
Cafe Juanita Crush Volunteer Park Café Sutra
Rover’s Steelhead Diner Le Gourmand Salumi
Metropolitan Grill Cactus Salish Lodge Elliott’s Oyster House
Cafe Campagne Purple Café & Wine Bar Kingfish Café Taberna del Alabardero
Etta’s Ruth’s Chris Steak House Corson Building Palace Kitchen
Ray’s Boathouse 13 Coins Sea Garden Tavolàta
Serious Pie Flying Fish the Herbfarm Altura

These are mostly restaurants that were mentioned as top restaurants on multiple lists or were in some of the areas where we will be spending a lot of time.  For instance our new office is in the Belltown district, so I gave Belltown restaurants preference.  For the most part, however, we will simply use this list as a reference when we don’t know where to go.  We will mostly continue stopping in places that look “cool” or are recommended by people we know.

Since we are heading up to Seattle today to do a walk through on our new house and check construction progress at the new office we may actually get a chance to have a meal someplace which would give us an opportunity to write about our first experience.  We shall see …

-Randy

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How to decide where to go?

Well, we now have our mission, and we have approximately 25 days to plan our approach since we don’t actually move to Seattle until July 20th.  But, how do we decide where to go?  If you Google “Seattle Restaurants” you get a map that looks like it has the measles (see below.)  There are literally hundreds of restaurants in Seattle proper, so figuring out where to start is a bit daunting.  I have a few ideas of places to go based on suggestions from friends, TV, and newspaper stories.  I also started to peruse some of the well known lists:

Plenty to choose from ...

Seattle restaurants, plenty to choose from.

First, there is Zagat’s ‘Most Popular’ list.

Then there is Yelp’s List of Seattle Restaurants.

I could check the restaurant reviews in the Seattle Times.

Open Table has it’s own list of Top Seattle Restaurants.

UrbanSpoon.com has a pretty cool list of top rated restaurants.

There is also Tripadvisor.com, the Seattle Weekly, Fodors, Lonely Planet, and restaurants.com.  The list seems to go on forever!

I did however especially like the article ‘The 30 Seattle Restaurants Experiences You Must Have Before You Die” in Seattle Met website as it seems to have some of the more off-beat establishments.

At the end of the day, I decided to use all these lists and more to build my own super-highbrid list of places we want to try.  As soon as I get the list compiled, I will share it here.

-Randy

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Welcome to our new blog

Welcome to our new blog!  If you want to know a little more about Claire and me just check out the “About Randy & Claire” link at the top of this page.

One year ago Claire and I moved from Dallas Texas to Olympia Washington.  We are both “foodies” and enjoy cooking at home and dining out.  So far we have found the Pacific Northwest to have amazing seafood options, great wines, and some world-famous restaurants.

Next month we move from Olympia to Seattle and decided to set a goal of visiting and sampling as many cool venues for food and of course the occasional “adult beverage” as we can.  We make the move the third week of July and we are anxious to experience all that Seattle has to offer.

Our goal is to try one new special venue each week and share our experience.  The first question is how do we assemble our initial “target list?”  Any suggestion for “must go” establishments will be much appreciated.  We plan to share our experiences as we eat our way around Seattle, and we encourage others to share their experiences here as well.

Let the adventure begin!

Categories: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

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