Chufi

I do really love sweets - it's just that in my 'normal' life, I only eat them for special occasions. Whereas on holiday, I let go of all inhibitions and what I want, whenever I want. we never made it to Salumi. We should have had another day in Seattle.. I also missed a couple of really good bakeries.. and I would have happily had another dinner at Monsoon! next time..

I discovered a truly glorious cheese yesterday.. well actually a friend of mine did.. she gave a party and had this plate of cheeses sleected by a really good cheesemonger. All cheeses were good but there was one that immediately stood out and was unlike any other cheese I ever tasted.. I could not stop eating it and she finally gave me last left-over piece to take home.. This is Testun al Barolo, a Piedmontese cheese made from sheep or goatsmilk with sometimes a bit of cowsmilk. It's covered in Barolo grape must.. it's firm but very creamy and buttery in the mouth, it's pungent but also very sweet..and it's really really good. Bad pic, but this was the left over piece, and after I took the picture I ate it all see here for a bit more info about this cheese.

Day 18 Our final morning in Seattle. me: "I hear Ballard is a very nice neighborhood". Dennis: "why, what's there?" me: "uhm, a bakery.. a really good bakery.. and uhm.. I think.. a Mexican restaurant..?" (Ofcourse, I knew there was a Mexican restaurant, and I was dying to go there, but knowing that Dennis does not have a very high opinion of mexican food (and you can't blame him, if you know the 'mexican' food served in Amsterdam) I'd thought it best leave to this part sort of vague, until we got there ) Dennis not only drove me around the country for 1800 miles, but very kindly and patiently drove me to every out-of-the-way bakery or restaurant I wanted to go to. He would say "so, someone recommended this place to you, eh? Okay, let's go! " I think after a couple of stops he knew that eGullet recommendations can be trusted! Anyway. On to Ballard! cafe Besalu. I'm so glad we went there.. this was, I think, the best pastry I had during the whole vacation.. light, crisp, melt in your mouth pastry.. a little bit of (I think) pastry cream.. just a couple of glorious raspberries. Perfection. Dennis' cookie is a cornmeal/apricot sage cookie.. I think he tried to be virtuous there Then, we just 'happened' to pass La Carta de Oaxaca around lunchtime.. So we had lunch! Really good.. Unlike any Mexican food we ever tasted... we also visited a very nice wineshop, Portalis, on Ballard Avenue. Dennis had discovered a used cd-store (fortunately, used cd-stores are often located near bakeries, bookshops or other places I like to visit ) and was browsing there, while I had a chat with one of the owners of the winestore. She was genuinely surprised that a couple of tourists were wandering around the neighborhood! "So how did you find Ballard Avenue?" she asked. Well, someone I know recommended it to me - thanks little ms. foodie!

actually, eGullet did! as I was reading the forums I noticed how many people from the PNW and BC were active posters.. this got me interested in the region. There were some great blogs... Daddy-A's Okanagan Adventure was inspiring.. Abra's last foodblog.. and so much more. Last summer I met Chef Metcalf and her partner in Amsterdam, and they really made me want to go to Vancouver! It was a region I never would have thought of visiting without eGullet.. many other regions were on my list.. but I am so glad we went.. the scenery, the food and last but not least the people, exceeded all expectations.

^ actually, no, that's not a tomato.. it's a physalis, aka as cape gooseberry, very often used as a garnish for desserts because of their paper 'wings'. In fact, Chef Metcalf brought some with her on the hiking trip that first day, shew grew them herself! it's a tart and firm little fruit, very nice actually.

Lunch on day 17 at Baguette Box. Another place that we wouldn't have found without eGullet's (hhlodesigns) advice. Great little place.. the truffle fries spoke to me but I had all these pastries in my belly.. so we had two 'light' sandwiches: braised tofu for me, roasted vegetables for Dennis. Baguette Box seems to love dogs.. there's a dog on the window and lots of dog pictures inside! Dinner at Monsoon. This was, maybe, the best restaurant meal we had on this trip. I wanted to eat everything on the menu.. this food is so wonderful, it's original, creative, it surprises you with every bite, it's fresh and spicy and you can really feel that all ingredients are of the highest quality. crispy duck wontons squid stuffed with duck and shii take caramellized catfish in a claypot really bad picture of one of the most delicious things.. firm fish in a spicy sticky sweet sauce.. the sauce reminded me of very thick Indonesian kecap.. we scraped the pot clean! spicy green beans with butternut squash and fresh corn with chanterelles. The corn was so good.. I wanted to eat bowls and bowls of that.. one of the best things I ate on this trip.. As I write this I remember that 2 years ago, when we toured New England in September, the best thing I ate on that trip was a simple side dish of creamed corn.. I guess this just tells you that it's impossible to find good corn in The Netherlands.. let me sing my refrain again.. why can't I buy that here??? Anyway, this was a wonderful dinner. We started talking to the couple next to us and the woman advised us to get the coconut creme caramel for dessert.. we did but i was foolish enough to order one creme caramel and one pandan leaf icecream. The icecream was good but the coconut creme caramel was divine.. the most creamy texture, with a subtle cocnut taste - unbelievably good. Next time I am in Seattle, that better still be on the menu!

Where are we? Oh, Seattle, this must be Day 16 Packwood - Seattle arrived in Seattle early in the afternoon. Visited Uwajimaya, (bought Pocky!!) and after that, went to have dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant Green Leaf. See this thread for more about this place. Vietnamese food is non-existent in Amsterdam, so this was new to us.. we loved this place. We had the sweetest waitress who helped us order.. she was afraid we would have too much food and was very proud of us when we ate it all On the table: green mango salad, Ban Xio, one of the specials: pork and jicama on Vietnamese bread, and a dish that I forgot the name of, i think it was some sort of duck in a spicy coconutsauce, very good and quite different from the other dishes. We had the coffee-flan and the fried banana pastries for dessert, both were very good, much better than desserts I am used to in Asian restaurants. We ate so much and still did not feel full.. instead we felt pretty euphoric. Wonderful food. Day 17 early morning visit to Dahlia Bakery. Now this cookie doesn't look very impressing but it was one of the best cookies I ever had.. chocolate with pecanbutter.. kind of a sophisticated twist on my peanutbutter/chocolate hangup.. oh this was really good.. next stop, Le Panier Very French Bakery (that's how they describe themselves). Palmier, sable noisette, coffee macaroon. The macaroon was wonderful, but I haven't tasted many macaroons in my lifetime, so it was hard to compare it to others. I thought the palmier was a little chewy, and the sable was a little dry and to be really honest, the hazelnuts tasted a bit stale.. Not the best pastries we had on this trip.

That anchovy pasta was mysterious. It seemed quite salty when we ate it (we shared a plate, which was still two very generous portions) but we did not have any of the 'afterthirst' which you can sometimes get after eating something very salty! There was definitely cheese in there, lots of anchovies, onions, garlic, I think chiliflakes. It was creamy, too, but not very creamy, and baked. I think it was baked briefly on the plate it was served on though, not baked in the oven for a long time. oh and I think some herbs.. parsley, some thyme and rosemary maybe. And black olives.

Day 15 Drove from Portland to Packwood (near Mount Rainier NP). Picnic in the car, because it was raining, with these beautiful tomatoes we bought at Whole Foods in Portland. It may seem strange to make such a fuss over tomatoes.. but I don't when, if ever, I am going to taste tomatoes this good again Dinner at Doobey's in Packwood.. nice little place with friendly people where the local color makes up for average fries and plastic cheese.. but the burger wasn't bad and the bacon was good!

day 14 the next day we spent many hours at the huge Powell's bookstore.. the most amazing bookstore I've ever seen.. the kind you want to camp out in! I browsed dozens of cookbooks and bought a couple. What a great place. that night we went back to the brwery to have more beer.. had a decent meal (burger and steak) and very nice dessert. Now I should explain that i have a special fondness for anything that combines peanutbutter and chocolate.. so when I see 'peanutbutter-chocolate mousse on a peanutbutter chocolatecookie' on the menu I can't resist! (during this vacation, I also consumed numerous reese's cups, peanubutter Twix, chocolate peanutbutter fudge, and chocolate peanutbutter icecream, and chocolate peanutbutter cookies...) sorry, blurry.. all that beer you know... we really liked the stout! beeramisu. Yes, made with beer. Good, but the Coho version is still the favorite

Day 12 Unfortunately we had to leave Port Townsend. We loved it there. But luckily, we were headed to Portland! The first evening we had dinner at Typhoon, as recommended by peppyre. It was really good! I had the crab Pad Thai - the noodles were delicious by itself, but even better with the heaping mound of fresh crab on top. Dennis had the duck curry.. the sauce was so good I could have eaten it as a soup Very nice restaurant, buzzing and crowded, and not expensive. Day 13 Brunch at Sympatica. Now this is a place we never would have found if it wasn't for eGullet.. see the thread here for more about this place! Dennis had the wild salmon hash and I had some picture perfect Eggs Benedict.. we stopped eating for the rest of the day.. late in the afternoon we went to the Bridgeport Brewery for some serious beertasting. These are samples of all there beers and 1 extra - the seasonal beer! can you tell research like this really makes me happy? After that we went to Peruvian restaurant Andina where we met eGulleter tejon and her husband for dinner! We had a delightful time, and were still talking until they started cleaning up around us... the food was fantastic. I did not get many good pictures, it was quite dark and I was impatient to keep chatting (and eating!) appetizers (the stuffed peppers were my favorite) my main, quinoa crusted scallops on golden beet puree, with pomegranate sauce. This was wonderful, the sweet scallops, soft puree, crunch from the quinoa, and the tangy sauce. Very unique and original flavors. Dennis had the Arroz con pato, which was a less elegant and more hearty dish of duck and duck sausage on cilantroflavored rice.. great earthy flavors. Dessert: trio of creme brulee: white chocolate, ginger and pisco/raisins. The white chocolate was my favorite, but the ginger was also really good and very refreshing and gingery.

I just want to show off this gorgeous British Columbia honeycomb that I brought back from my trip overseas.. a gift from a generous eGulleter.. it's so beautiful and unlike any honey I ever tasted, very light and fragrant...

I can understand you about the cheese... infact, Dutch cheese is about the only food-item I miss when I'm on vacation! But chocolate.. I have seen chocolate in supermarkets in the PNW that I've never seen before.. I really think BC and the PNW is one of the best foodregions around.. not that I've been everywhere ofcourse.. but even tiny supermarktes in small towns seemed to have such a great variety of high quality produce..

Day 11 Coffee and pain au chocolat at Bread and Roses bakery That night we went back to the Fountain Cafe for dinner. Sometimes on a trip like this it's nice to return to a place.. to have a waiter remember you and the wine you drank a couple of days ago.. to view a menu you've seen before.. instead of something 'new' every night. Dennis had all kinds of seafood in a spicy tomato sauce: Fried oysters for me.. Oh these were so good.. crispy herby garlicky coating (Panko, I think) and oh so soft and juicy inside. They served it with a smoky spicy sweet sauce though that was much too overwhelming for the oysters.. that's where their 'gutsy' style of cooking went slightly wrong.. Not too big a problem though, I just skipped the sauce.. Dessert: Icecream at the Elevated Icecream Company in Port Townsend.. rocky road and white chocolate for me.. don't know what Dennis had.. espresso, I think.. he doesn't drink coffee but he likes anything coffee-flavored.. It was good icecream, but I think it was served too cold.. if that makes sense for icecream.. but I have noticed that at other places in the US too, the icecream is served frozen solid, and you have to wait a couple of minutes for it to soften before you can enjoy it.. is it a health regulations thing?

Day 10 breakfast (granola, soymilk, fruitsalad) at the Bread & Roses Bakery in PT. Then we bought some spinach/cheese pastries there, and oatmeal raisin cookies, and headed to Olympic National Park. It's breathtakingly beautiful up there.. we hiked for a couple of hours, observed 2 lazy Olympic marmots and a couple of deer, then came back to Hurricane Ridge to have lunch on top of the world. It was a good thing we brought lunch, considering the smell of old frying oil that came from the visitor's center! That night we went to the Wild Coho for dinner. It was Thursday, which is 'small plates' ight in the restaurant, which means you pick from an extensive menu of small dishes ranging from 5-8 dollars. Everything looked good. We had a beautiful beetroot/mascarpone risotto, a salad with goatscheese, salami and organic greens, Duck liver pate with wine jelly roasted organic vegetables with harissa We also had 2 wild salmon dishes that were both very good (one with shii-takes, bacon and miso dressing, one with chive butter, tomatosauce and sweet potato rosti). Sorry for the bad pics, it was really a candle-lit dinner! dessert: tiramisu.. again. This was so different from the one the night before.. very light and elegant.. maybe not as luscious.. but maybe even more seductive... We loved the Wild Coho. One of the nicest things was that most ingredients that I saw on my plate, I had seen at the farmers market the day before.. everything so fresh, and bright-tasting.. it was one of my favorite dinners from the trip.

Grub, I have used this pastry with succes for a similar dish: flaky pastry It's made by mixing grated frozen butter into the flour.

Day 9 (are you all tired yet? we have to keep going till Day 21! ) Rockport - Port Townsend We left Rockport very early, without breakfast, and drove drove drove till we arrived at La Conner, very hungry. Now I usually like to have a light breakfast, just some joghurt and fruit, but i said i wanted at least one 'proper' breakfast this holiday. So we went to the Calico Cupboard in La Conner. Dennis could have his healthy breakfast and I could have my pancake (they call it a griddlecake, it was very light and fluffy), bacon, syrup and poached egg. Sooo good! Their pastries looked really good too but I resisted those.. Drove on to Coupeville for coffee and sweets in the Coupeville Coffeehouse. Such a charming place with huge comfy chairs, a whole library to pick books from, pleasantly slow and erratic service (we're on holiday, rememberm so we don't mind to wait) and nice pastries. Peanutbuttercookie and lemon cranberry scone, the scone was the best. We took the ferry to Port Townsend. The weather was rainy and foggy, but the moment we came to Port Townsend the clouds broke and we had glorious weather all through our stay there. We stayed 3 days and we absolutely loved this town! On our first walk we stumbled upon a little farmers market with amazing produce. I know for many of you this is easily obtainable stuff, for me it was another occasion to sing the holiday refrain: "why can't we buy this in Amsterdam"?? Really nice beer in the Water Street Brewing House in PT. Apparently, the 'barscene' in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman' was filmed in this bar! Richard was here! Dinner at the Fountain cafe. We really liked the food there. It's deceptively simple, but with real interesting and gutsy flavors. Not expensive, great service and a very warm and welcoming atmosphere. Dennis had a soupy dish of clams and mussels (fantastic mussels) in a pesto broth, I had a wild salmon potatocake which was so good that I almost ordered it again when we went back there for dinner 2 days later. Then we shared the anchovy pasta: ..and a really over-the-top delicious tiramisu. I know that's not a very trendy dessert but I feel, chocolate, mascarpone, booze, what's not to like?

Did you see the cinnamon twisp, Lorna? I know you were especially curious about that

Day 7 Oliver -Twisp. Drove on south and crossed the border into the US again. Landed in Twisp. Now, I am sure the River Pub serves great beer and good food, but when you're in Twisp on a Mondaynight the pub is closed and so is pretty much everything else.. Our only option was the pizza place across the street from the River Pub. We did not have high hopes when we entered and our spirits sank even more when we found out they did not serve beer... But, again, we had a pleasant surprise.. this pizza was actually good! afterwards we got beer and icecreamsandwiches at the gasstation. Consumed lying on the bed watching the Foodnetwork. A true Holiday-Moment Day 8 Twisp - Rockport Drove over the North Cascades Pass and made a stop for a hike. Now, with a view like this anything will taste good, but it's even better with a cinnamon twisp from the Cinnamon Twisp Bakery in Twisp.. Just outside of Rockport is the famous Cascadian Farmstand. A huge cup of blueberry icecream, the last of the season: this icecream was utterly delicious.. it tasted like blueberries and cream that had only just been frozen, so fresh and light. The pink scoop is raspberry chocolatechip, also good, but not as good as the blueberry. It was a good thing we had that icecream because dinner at Clark's cabin's eatery was nothing special.

Day 6, continued. we visited some more wineries. It was just the right time to see the grapes in their full glory: a visit to Burrowing Owl Winery for a tour of the winery and lunch! view from the patio. Vineyards as far as you can see Dennis had a glass of the 2001 Burrowing Owl Merlot and I had a glass of Wild Goose Gewurztraminer from Okanagan Falls, Food: Chardonnay-poached pear & blue cheese tart, and duck confit salad. Lavender cheesecake It was a very memorable experience. The patio, the sunshine, the wonderful view, good food and wine. It doesn't get much better than that!

I would wait with the hourly check-in, because it's now 1 AM here, and I have to get some sleep!

Day 3 Next morning coffee and a fig scone at café Artigiano. The scone was not that good, a bit dry, but it was the prettiest coffee I’d ever had. I made a museum trip to Whole Foods, which was impressive – both the selection on offer and the prices! That evening we had dinner at Rare. I did not take pictures, and I did not even write down everything we ate. We had the 6-course tasting menu, with items chosen from the menu, and the wine pairing, and just let ourselves float through the evening on the succession of courses and glasses. The food is subtle, creative, and another word I thought of, is 'glamorous'. This is not so much because of the fancy ingredients as the way the food is presented, and the flavor combinations. My favorite dishes were the cauliflower soup with truffle, the smoked sablefish and the mushroom ravioli. Dennis loved the quail stuffed with sweetbread. Chef Fowke kindly invited us to the kitchen after dinner and showed us around, but I am afraid that after the wine we had before dinner with Chef Metcalf, and the six glasses with dinner , I was in no shape to make intelligent comments anymore, about the only thing I could say (or can remember saying) was that dinner had been wonderful and that the kitchen looked very nice. Sorry Chef! Day 4 Drive to Kelowna. In Kelowna, the menu of Fresco looked tempting, but we were trying to budget a bit, so we ended up at a wine & tapas bar near the water, the Rotten Grape. Lots of wine by the glass, food okay – a bit uninspired, but the wild boar chorizo pizza was very nice. Next door is icecream shop Moo-lix, where we had large cones of delicious icecream. Peanutbutter-chocolate, my favorite! Day 5 drive from Kelowna to Oliver. Lunch in Penticton, the Gypsy Dream café. Very nice place with great atmosphere and cheap, nice food. Dennis’ splitpeasoup was delicious. I can also recommend a visit to the bookshop on Penticton Mainstreet, they have a nice collection of secondhand cookbooks (lots of volmues from the Time Life series). Winetasting in the Naramata Bench area. We went to Poplar Grove and bought some wine and cheese. After a number of other wineries we ended up at fruit winery Elephant Island, and were pleasantly surprised. They have a lovely patio where you can sit while they pour you almost all of their fruit wines for tasting, from the dry and crisp apple and pear wines to the intensely sweet cassis and apricot dessert wines. We thought our chunk of Poplar Grove Tiger blue would go very well with the semi-sweet crab apple wine. And it did! we stayed in Oliver, and had dinner that night at the Toasted Oak, great pubfood, and wonderful beers (we needed some beer after all that winetasting. So we did a beertasting ) In the glass: Granville Island Hefeweizen, Mount Begbie Kolsh (from Revelstoke), Cannery Brewery Naramata Nutbrown (Penticton), Crannog Ales Backhand of God Stout (Sorrento) Tin Whistle Coyote Ale (Penticton) There may be some spelling errors here as I wrote down the names of the beers in my notebook after drinking them all.. Awesome burger, with blue cheese and terrific bacon: I just learned the word awesome on this trip, and I promise not to use it too often, but I think it is really appropriate for this burger! Day 6 The next morning, Poplar Tiger Blue on crackers for breakfast: To be continued...

Dinner was the much anticipated Chinese dinner. Mooshmouse and canucklehead had pre-ordered a wonderful Szechuan feast for us! We met peppyre, Chef Metcalf and her partner, Mooshmouse, BCinBC, and *Deborah* at the Golden Szechuan. Here are some of the dishes we had: rice cakes. this was sweet and soothing, I loved it. 2 types of dumplings, which were both wonderful, the one with the dark sauce was my favorite – quite spicy! spicy pork belly. This was my favorite of the evening. The pork is succulent and sweet, the sauce really fiery, and they are great together. And is there a more fun presentation for slices of pork? spinach with garlic crab. Lovely, and wonderfully messy to eat thready bread with sweet milk. very tasty, and a great way to soothe your palate between fiery dishes. More food there were also green beans, which were great, a noodle dish that was so good I could have eaten just that for dinner, and some really spicy beef that was, actually, too spicy for me. I am sorry I can't be more specific about the dishes, i lost my notes with the names of everything. Maybe someone who was also present, and more knowledgeable about Chinese food, can chime in here? It was great fun to meet eGulleters, sit around the table, and share some delicious food. Thanks Mooshmouse and canucklehead for organizing! I can post a group picture if all attending PM me that that’s okay. After that dinner, we sure had enough salt and pepper, but it was decided we hadn’t had enough sugar so a bunch of us went to Parkside for dessert. Banoffee pie, lemon cream cannoli, and Okanagan peachtart. The banoffee pie was delicious but the cannoli were my favorite, possibly because their tangy lemon filling was just right after the Chinese dinner.

3 weeks ago, we flew to Seattle for a trip round British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. I had been planning and preparing this trip for months, I had a huge list of recommendations and info. Over on this thread and this thread, all of eGullet helped me plan this trip. My question on those threads was: help us eat well! We’re back. Did we eat well? We did. Thanks to the advice of so many eGulleters, and sometimes thanks to our good fortune which stayed with us thoughout the entire trip (except when we visited Mount Rainier and couldn’t see 2 meters because of the fog ) we ate extremely well. We had some wonderful food, a lot of good food, and very little bad food. So here’s my trip report, in installments, because it takes a lot of time to process all these pictures, and because I decided I’m going to show you almost everything we ate – the wonderful, the good, the bad. Day 1 – drive from Seattle to Vancouver. Holiday, to me, is having a light breakfast and then stopping somewhere for coffee and sweets. Fortunately there are coffeehouses and good bakeries everywhere in Canada and the US! First stop: the Old Town café in Bellingham. Peanutbuttercookie for me, something caramelly for Dennis. Upon arrival in Vancouver we were immediately whisked away by eGulleter Chef Metcalf to restaurant The Beachhouse, right by the water, with an incredible view and lovely food. We had champagne, a bottle of Burrowing Owl Pinot Gris, mussels in a spicy coconut broth and crabsalad with grapefruit vinaigrette. That night we had dinner at Guu, which is described as a Japanese tapas place. The best dishes where this tuna sashimi (which is more a pate of raw tuna than a traditional sashimi) and the dessert I had, almond tofu. I never tasted anything so silky smooth and creamy, it was lovely. Day 2 Next morning we went for an early-morning hike with Chef Metcalf. Here’s what you get for breakfast when you go for a 8 am picnic with an eGulleter: local peaches, blueberries, raspberries and cherries, and baguette with slowroasted tomatoes and goatscheese! Lunch was at the Fillipino restaurant Rekados, where I did not take a single picture, but the food was wonderful.

Did everyone only have beef in the fondue? When I was growing up my mother would organize a fondue party a couple of times each winter, and we always had a choice of meats: pork tenderloin, beef fillet, chicken breast, veal liver (which would really splatter), little meatballs, and little meatballs wrapped in bacon. For sauces, all kinds of mayonnaise-based sauces: mustardsauce, a curried mayonaise, a kind of tartar sauce with fresh herbs and garlic. Now that I think of it, it's highly improbable that there were fresh herbs in there, my mom never used those, I guess my memory (for once) is improving a childhood food memory!