kiliki

There was a very good article in Gourmet a few months ago on this, and what it means for consumers, producers, organic farms, etc.

I often swing by a Vietnamese take out place on my way to the airport (which, I understand, you may or may not have on the way to YOUR airport). Bahn Mi, rice noodle salad bowls and fresh spring rolls do just fine with no refrigeration (heck, the places I go generally keep these things right on their counter), they're healthy, and they don't suffer much if crammed into a carry on and taken out later.

Perfectly reasonable-I think it's what most people I know in shared housing pay. I'll also add that the UW is a bus hub-if you look at www.metrokc.gov for the Metro link, you'll see how many buses go there. Herbs do great here, as so most veggies, including tomatoes as long as you get varieties that ripen before October. I've never been to an Australian grocery so I can't say how supermarket selections compare, but I don't have any trouble finding what I want-free range chickens, naturally raised meats of all kinds, good cuts of beef, etc-in a decent supermarket. I never had gas until we remodeled last year. Yes it's better and easier but if you can cook, you can cook on either gas or electric. Marcella Hazan has only electric in her Florida condo so if she can deal with it...

As someone who has spent the last five years in grad school, first, I'll assure you that you can eat quite well on a grad student income/stipend. I'll try to answer some of your specific questions: Though the U District is convenient and affordable, if you're over 22, it's not a very interesting place. The University District Farmers Market is terrific, there is a Trader Joe's (and a Whole Foods just north of the neighborhood), and there are a handful of decent places to eat. But, in my opinion, most of the restaurants cater to young, broke students who aren't very picky about their food, and the main grocery store in the neighborhood (the Safeway) isn't good. A lot of my grad student friends live on Capitol Hill, which is a very diverse, interesting neighborhood with a wide variety of housing options/price ranges, restaurants, shops, coffee shops, one or two natural food stores, a farmer's market, a Trader Joe's, and great bus service. Fremont would be a great option as well, though pricier options will outnumber affordable ones. Fremont has good bus service, a bike trail to UW, a great natural foods coop called PCC Natural Market (there are 7 or 8 locations around the Seattle area, and membership is not necessary), and tons of restaurants and bars. If you found a place in Ballard (great farmer's market and many good restaurants), Wallingford, Ravenna or Greenlake, you'd have good bus service and at least bus access to markets, food shops, etc. Be sure to look at Craig's List for apartments or shared housing. The UW has a housing office with a great, very organized bulletin board but I'm not sure it's online. Often times landlords don't advertise so many people just identify an area that they want to live in and drive/walk around looking for "For Rent" signs. Very easy. Most groceries carry a good selection of Asian and Mexican ingredients but you can find even more in the International District (for Asian-at Uwajimaya and many smaller places) and at the Pike Place Market (The Mexican Grocery-there are also many Mex. groceries in other neighborhoods). In the U District at University Village, Mrs. Cooks. Downtown, Sur la Table (Pike Place Market) or City Kitchens (across 4th from Westlake Park). I'm fairly sure we've got a thread about this if you search. If you can't find it it might be worth starting another thread. My favorite is Than Brothers Pho. Agua Verde has decent Mexican food and a great view. We have fantasic local seafood, produce, cheeses, and at the farmer's markets you will also find a good selection of locally raised meats. I'm not sure any of it's ridiculously underpriced, though. Maybe the mussels? This site tells you what's fresh and when: Puget Sound Fresh Mostly correct, though there are good fish stores in non-tony neighborhoods (there is a good one in the U District-University Seafood). Butchers are rare. There are so many farmer's markets now (btw, I haven't been to a bad one yet)that it won't be hard to find great produce. Hope that helps-that's all I can get away with here at work!

Oh, that's right, it went up a buck. Well I guess knock the fresh spring rolls off the list.

I always need a good breakfast and in fact think it's cheating when RR has a cup of coffee and pastry/donut for breakfast to keep within $40. Anyway. Breakfast: Jade Garden: Tea and dim sum, $9 (okay, this is an estimate based on at least 2 people eating, but you could eat there cheaply alone, too, just with not as much variety) Lunch: Market Grill, Salmon sandwich, $9 Snack: 2 flavors of Bottega gelato, $3 Dinner: Green Leaf, Buhn Xeo or just about anything else there-$7 I'd also put myself a couple bucks over my budget to get the fresh spring roll appetizer Cocktail: Whatever is the house special at Sambar, $10 That was actually pretty hard-there are a lot of good cheap eats in this town. You could have a great $40 day never leaving the Market.

Well I didn't have the raspberry rhubard! We went for the non-fruit flavors since I didn't think any fresh fruit was in season but of course rhubarb would have been. Next time.

Ling, have you tried the pastries at Little Prague? I had my weekly apricot pastry from her booth at the Ballard Farmer's Market and as always it was first rate-one of my favorite baked goods in town. I'm ashamed to say I never try the other flavors.

Thanks for all the help-we had a great trip. Unfortunately, there was a big marathon in Duluth the morning we went through, and so many roads were closed we gave up trying to get to Northern Waters Smokehouse and Cub Foods after driving around and stopping at gas stations for help after 45 minutes (half our car used to live in Duluth but they were confused, too). We did stop at Russ Kendall's and buy jerkys, cheese curds and hand parched wild rice (which I would not have known was the kind to get except for the recommendations here). I would have bought smoked fish but no one else wanted to try it. We saw a lot of signs for the hand parched rice on Hwy 1, so if you're heading up that way there are lots of places to get it. The Rustic Inn was a good lunch stop though the pie was just okay. Anyway, since we hadn't stocked up in the Cities or Duluth, we did have to rely on the sad (some very visibly bad), shrink wrapped produce found in Ely's two stores. If you are heading up there, definitely bring a cooler full of produce bought elsewhere. Ely does have a small specialty foods store one block off the main street, with good breads, cheeses, olive oils, etc, as well as panini and salads, so that was nice. Not a big selection but certainly a godsend if you need bread, cheese, olives, etc. The Chocolate Moose (an Ely restaurant that was recommended here) had great breakfasts. The sourdough cornmeal waffle and the hash browns were particularly good. The fishing was very good and we caught and ate a lot of Walleye, though my boyfriend's brother's recipe for cornmeal-fried walleye was so good I never wanted to horn in and make something different. There weren't any farmstands on the way up but we did see a guy selling buckets of fresh strawberries out of the back of his truck in Two Harbors on the way back. I definitely would have stopped he been there a week earlier! I also really enjoyed some of the sights-Split Rock Lighthouse and the Wolf Center, for example-that you guys recommended. I went on a couple of nice hikes and even saw a moose while driving. So thanks again for the help and I'm sure we'll end up back in the Ely area in a couple years for more fishing.

Thanks!

Well, I can't tell you when the last time I had KFC was, but I get your point. However, the difficulty mostly came when no matter which way I ate it (actually, everyone at the table had this problem), I spent most of my time trying to separate little shards of bone from the meat. Whether it was on the plate or in our mouths, bits of bone found their way into every bite, because of the way it was cut. We actually gave up on the dish before we'd finished it because we were all so tired of dealing with these bone bits. That makes sense-I guess I need practice.

Any tips on how to eat this? I ordered something like this recently and was completely perplexed as to how to eat it without getting stabbed by sharp bone edges (where they had been cut). Nibbling at it while holding it with chopsticks took forever, but putting a whole piece in my mouth and trying to work the meat off the bone was downright painful.

Are these picks still the best for Chinese in Oakland or the east bay? I'll be staying downtown at the Marriot, but I'll have a car. I'd especially like Szechuan.

So speaking of the Phinney 'hood...two weeks ago in the P-I, Rebecca Dehn (sp?)reported that a new place called Oliver's Twist would open at 6820 Greenwood by mid-summer. That address is an antique store that doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon, much less be transformed into a restaurant by mid summer. Anyone know the scoop? Wrong address?

Che Argento at 78th and Greenwood (next to Pete's) is finally open! After teasing us for more than a year with the smell of bread baking for their wholesale operation, they finally opened their cafe. It's open 9-7 daily and has a very nice looking menu of sandwiches (a tenderloin sandwich caught my eye), salads, soups and pizzas. I wish I could remember more of the menu, since it wasn't your typical American style sandwich place, but I'll report back after eating there. They are going to try opening earlier for breakfast but aren't sure how that will go, since "it won't be typical American breakfast." Liquor license is pending.

Today's lunch was all from the Ballard Farmer's Market: Mt. Townsend Creamery's "trailhead" cheese, Tall Grass bread, english peas, radishes, tomatoes and cherries. So so good.

Well, I'm not a local and not the expert on Minneapolis restauarants, but on a recent visit I loved Nye's. They have a website with their menu, and the site gives a pretty accurate representation of what the place is like, so be sure and look at that first. It's, ahh, old fashioned is I guess how I'd describe it, not for everyone maybe, but if you want cocktails and that kind of supper club food it's great. They have free valet parking which is nice. You probably know this, but just in case-Old Spaghetti Factory is a nationwide chain of very low quality. I loved it as a kid-it's primarily a family place-but it's hard to imagine a group of adults, even non-foodies, enjoying it.

I hadn't been, either, but we had a great time there last night. Despite the fact that it got a bang-up review in yesterday's paper, they found a spot for us. Service was great throughout. The trout was terrific and my king salmon, potato cake and spring vegetables were lovely. And it seemed like a really good value-our entrees were $16 and $20, respectively, and the portions were fairly good sized. Lots of inexpensive wines by the glass, too. With appetizer, 2 entrees, one shared dessert and two glasses of wine, our total was $75 before tip.

If you haven't seen Frontier House, you might look into renting it (or checking it out from a library). They "lived" in Montana in ~1880 and two of the three families, at least, did a much better job remaining faithful to the concept than the Cookes did.

I'll just report back that I LOVED Nye's. To this Seattle girl, a place that has "all your supperclub favorites" is actually quite exotic and I loved everything about the place-the pierogies, the cocktails, the salad with tons of homemade blue cheese on top, the relish tray, the waitresses that have been there forever, and the piano bar. We needed to eat breakfast early on Sunday so no Al's, but Hell's Kitchen was good enough. It only occured to me later-I was very sleepy-that I got regular hash browns instead of the cream cheese/onion rosti that were supposed to come with my breakfast. Those rosti sure sounded good. You get homemade peanut butter and jams with your toast which was nice. Another food highlight was the Black and White Hamburger Cafe in Little Falls. They had probably the best hash browns (shredded, and fried in butter!) I've ever had in a restaurant. Edited to add one more: I tried Salsa a la Salsa, too, and while it was better than, say, chain tex-mex, it was generally average. One thing that was noteworthy was the complete absence of any type of chili pepper. I've never had salsas (there were 2) that had zero heat. Zero. Very strange. Same with our entrees.

La Spiga will be moving into one of those redeveloped spaces in September, but I think there are a few other restaurants moving in, too.

I just read they don't open until 9 on Sunday! I was thinking that most people would sleep in a little on Sunday, and we could go early and avoid the wait, but nope.

Thanks for the Al's tips. It sounds like a don't miss place. Even on a Sunday, I need to get there right when they open? I'm also thinking about Hell's Kitchen-it's right by our hotel, and they take reservations. We actually need to get up to Little Falls that morning for a Memorial Day thing, so we don't have time for a long breakfast wait, but going right when Al's opens would work. Also, now I'm convinced that Nye's is worth at least a drink.

Anything you guys would recommend for something unique to the city for both food and drink? Various people have recommended Al's Breakfast, Nye's Polanaise, Lyle's Liquors, and Tavern on Grand. Obviously I'm not looking for fine dining, but I don't want bad food, either-would you steer me away from any of them in particular?

You think that's pathetic? We go to Seven Stars and get (among many other things) a Szechuan crab every week, usually on Friday. One out of every 21 meals is that damn crab. And: La Spiga Green Leaf, for the past 6 months or so Lunch: Market Grill Mae Phim-in large part because it's cheap, fast and close to work Mr D's Greek Deli-ditto