JasonTrue

I don't think the cookies would interfere too much if they are a simple flavor. Some flavors are fairly compatible with matcha, including sweetened red beans, almond, pine nut, macadamia, etc. I doubt that the cookies contribute to the creaminess in any way; they must be primarily for textural contrast. Based on Paula Deen's "more is better" cooking philosophy, I would bet that the cookies aren't at all necessary. Based on your description, she's not using any milk... if that's the case it might be a lot like a molded frozen parfait. This is what I got the first time I made a chocolate ice cream using melted bitter chocolate, even though I did use an ice cream maker... it was wonderful, but easier to slice than to scoop If there is no milk in there, that will definitely be very creamy, but again, in modest portions it might not be overwhelming. I'm not sure what the freezing technique in your recipe uses, but if you do regular 20-30 minute intervals of pulling your ice cream mix out of the freezer and stirring, you can get adequate results. I always find that the crystallization is a little uneven, and it always takes more time than I'd like. You could probably do the double-ziplock back method which is usually kind of a party game: 1 cup of ice cream in a small ziplock back, placed in a large 1- or 2- quart ziplock bag full of ice and course salt, then massaged until ice cream-like. My matcha ice cream recipe, only tested with an ice cream maker: http://blog.jagaimo.com/archive/2005/06/12/695.aspx

The ironic thing is these 150-200ml salted, heavily versions aren't necessarily a lot cheaper; they just have a shelf life that's more attractive to distributors and supermarkets. However, I expect that my retail packaging will likely be a bit more expensive than those ones, because the bottles need to appeal to the supermarkets/food specialty shops whose customers are willing to pay for good yuzu juice. Also it will be cross-promoted with some other yuzu and citrus products. We're probably going to be buying some less pretty PET bottles for restaurant customers also. Amy, I'm quite fond of yuzu and sudachi mixed with shochu. I guess if you have whole sudachi and infuse it for a few months in shochu it could be very nice... I'd probably just use either sudachi or yuzu, but together should be nice also.

I've tried it at someone else's home. In Seattle it's not always that expensive but Sur La Table keystone prices most of their food products so I think it's $10-11 in most supermarkets here. It's nice enough, but considering straight yuzu juice has a similar price per bottle in the U.S., it's probably not a great value, except that it's more readily available. I don't think the yuzu is fermented into a vinegar, I think it's just an essence or small amount of juice (haven't looked carefully at the label). So you might get nicer results by just infusing a bit of yuzu peel and a splash of yuzu juice with ordinary rice vinegar in Japan.

It really depends on the quality of the yuzu juice. If you're living in the U.S. you won't have the option (of buying fresh yuzu) unless you know someone who grows it in their backyard or are willing to pay $25-50/lb. Also, supermarket yuzu in the US is probably going to be unripe, even late "in season." * added text in parentheses for clarity "RealLemon" lemon juice has added lemon oil and is extremely high heat pasteurized for an obscenely long shelf life at the expense of a clean flavor. Similarly, there are different ways of packaging yuzu juice. In the department store basements in Japan, sometimes you can find refrigeration-required low-heat pasteurized yuzu juice that is fantastic. Another notch below that, still very aromatica and clean tasting, is higher-heat pasteurized yuzu juice that is shelf stable until opened. (This is the type that I am planning to import, but I'm still working on some issues with the supplier and with customers). In Japan you can actually get unripe yuzu juice as a special product and I like it for refreshing drinks, but overall I prefer the ripe type for most applications. Finally, you have the barely-usable bottles that have about 5-10% salt content, a chemical preservative, and apparently boiled juice. The shelf life is very suitable for the needs of supermarkets, but the flavor is obscured by the salt and preservative taste. Beyond that, there's one other type of yuzu juice which isn't Japanese, which is fermented yuzu juice from Korea; this is slightly syrupy and tastes best with a lot of soju over ice, but can be mixed with water. To my knowledge this isn't sold in the U.S. or Japan.

I actually like the nearly unpopulated stretches on the I-5 corridor best, since I don't have to see the scary thought of the week from the uncle-sam-billboard RV dealer guy, or another darned casino or McDonalds, and I can just enjoy the scenery. If you're looking for more "character" you could always take the old highway 99, though it can certainly slow you down a bit. It comes out of the era of the roadside attraction. A lot of miserable stuff along there if you are turned off by kitsch, but certainly more dramatic.

In principal, I agree with your thinking on this... the flavor and texture of raw late-summer heirlooms is too fantastic to obscure. However, one September a couple of years ago, I discovered I could ask vendors at the Pike Place Market for "seconds" of heirloom tomatoes and pay about half price for some bruised or otherwise unmerchandisable heirlooms. I also got some seconds of peak-season locally grown beefsteaks which are also generally excellent raw, also for half price. Once smashed, however, they are rather tough to slice elegantly. At home I made a spectacularly sweet fresh tomato sauce with the most complex aroma, accented with a little fresh basil and oregano. I have not made a tomato sauce that turned out so well since. And I made it for roughly the same price as the underripe chewy out-of-season tomatoes cost at the supermarket.

I posted about cooking with matcha in the Cooking forum earlier today. I've been doing more matcha cuisine recently, and it turned out to coincide neatly with this month's Is My Blog Burning? theme. Actually I ended up with a little more matcha salt than I really need. So I'm wondering if anyone has some other ideas on what to do with it. The obvious thing is tempura, but I've done that already. Assuming no other inspiration, I'll just use it on some fresh oborodoufu or something. (I'm vegetarian, but there's no reason to restrict your ideas to animal-free cuisine). Based on trade show experiences and dining out on trips, flavored salts seem to be slightly in trend for the last year and a half or so in Japan, and the ones I remember best, due to my own personal biases, are yuzu salt, matcha salt, and various gray, black and red salts from Vietnam, Hawaii, and so on. Of course the very fine yuki-shio was nice for tempura also. (I've also been using a truffle salt imported by another Seattle couple, which must be fun with tempura). I like the truffle salt with my eggs, but I can't see that working for the matcha-jio or yuzu-shio. So I am wondering if anyone has other interesting uses for these seasoned salts. My girlfriend suggested using on the rim of a cocktail glass for a mixed drink with my matcha gin... I'm not sure it would serve the same purpose that salt does against the grapefruit juice on a salty dog or the lime juice on a margarita, though. I also can't bring myself to mix matcha and most fruit juices yet. Below: A photo of the tempura, pasta and cheesecake I made with matcha... more photos and details on my blog.

The mirin I can get is only about 6.9% alcohol, but it makes a world of difference in kakejiru or nimono compared to the "mirin-fuu" stuff. However, I'm particularly sensitive to high-fructose corn syrup and glucose-heavy sweeteners because I primarily use minimally processed cane sugar. I suspect not everyone notices the difference as markedly. The aroma from the better mirin is also better, but there are some dishes where I don't care that much; these would be things where, if it weren't for my abundance of the fake mirin someone gave me, I would have just used sugar.

It depends on the purpose. It's considered perfectly acceptable to drink from a bowl in Japan so there's typically no spoon for miso soup or clear soup (the often metal bowls for Korean doenjang soup or or stone or other large bowls for jjigae make that impractical in Korea), and as I recall the same was true for ramen, soba, or udon. Small spoons are often used for oshiroko and similar soupy sweets, and of course for things like anmitsu and mitsumame. These might be lacquered wood spoons with fairly small scooping edge. There are scoops sometimes used for nabemono, but these usually help drain the soup. The renge or chinese spoon might be offered for some dishes. I think we had one for a custardy tofu "nabe" in a soy milk broth, for example. Western-style spoons are used for western foods and occasionally are offered in restaurants, and presented with coffee or cakes.

Smoked tofu and grilled tofu is mostly made in the US and European markets for their own domestic consumption as it's not terribly popular in Asia, but tofu noodles, chinese-style tied yuba, and so on is mostly made in California. Frozen ones or dried yuba and noodles may be imported. Baked tofu, "dry tofu", seasoned tofu and so on are usually produced by US companies targeting either Asian or health-food consumers. It has been a while since I've seen a Washington-state based tofu maker sell smoked tofu (this may be due to the fact that I don't look for it often), but baked tofu or seasoned tofu is made by local producers. Fried tofu, onion fried tofu, and ganmodoki are all made locally by Thanh Son, Chuminh, Tacoma Tofu, and some others. Some frozen vegetarian "meats" are made in China, Taiwan or Vietnam and exported here. But only tofu products that can be frozen without ruining the texture (which is pretty much limited to meat analogs and some forms of yuba) are typically sent out of the producing country. I'm not sure what you mean by flower tofus; I remember one "tofu" made from a kind of flower in Germany, and there's dau fu fa which is very custardy soft tofu, a version of which is made by Thanh Son and Chuminh locally. I can't think of many tofu products that are imported to the US. At the last two FoodEx Japan shows the only export tofu product I even found other than traditional freeze-dried tofu or dried yuba was Japanese-style yuba manufactured and frozen in China, though the texture wasn't quite right. On Alibaba the only tofu products listed for export are fried bean curd puffs (for inari-zushi), which can be frozen or canned, fried tofu (which can be frozen with a noticeable texture change), or frozen tofu noodles. Refrigerated soy noodles and tied yuba generally have a pretty short shelf life even with good packaging. Anything you find in the refrigerated section of Uwajimaya, 99 Ranch, PCC or Whole Foods is generally made somewhere in Washington, Oregon or California, and most likely distributed by Seasia/Nishimoto, JFC, or some similar company. A few tofu makers self-distribute. Island Spring and Pacsoy sell to lots of mainstream supermarkets, and Pacsoy distributes a lot of the out-of-area-made stuff like Yves and Mori-nu. If you find non-frozen tofu products made with a Chinese label or non-English text on it, it's probably just packaged and marketed to immigrant populations, it doesn't mean it's imported. If it's imported it should have a country of origin label on it somewhere. That being said, there are a number of tofu products that don't seem to be made in Washington and are trucked up from northern California. Of course, although soybeans can theoretically be grown here in Washington, most of them are coming from midwestern and maybe southern states. WSU did publish some research on growing edamame in Washington state. As for other Asian foods... Wasabi is being grown in Oregon these days... some trials have been done in WA also. Research for bamboo for eating has been done too.

← Well, none of the tofu that you'd want to eat is imported, except the koyadoufu (freeze dried) type and sometimes the vacuum-packed type (similar to Mori-nu) or pickled ones. Tofu doesn't have much of a shelf life and is too cheap to be sent by air transport. Most of the tofu makers that produce decent tofu that hasn't soured after weeks of transport is made in Seattle (Thanh Son Tofu, for example) or Tacoma (by Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants. Even the less desirable stuff like Pacsoy is locally produced. But they aren't worried about the origins of the soybeans themselves. Most of the soybeans used in tofu production in Japan or the US are from the US, but not so many soybeans are from Washington. Better soy sauce is usually imported, but the Kikkoman family established a presence in, I believe, California a generation or two ago and most Kikkoman soy sauce in the US is made by the US company from various parts of the US, not imported. You can, however, ferment soybeans with koji (the first generation of koji you use will likely be imported, but not necessariily), a steamed rice cultured with a mold spore and fermented, much like yogurt or beer or pickled vegetables would be. Some say that soy sauce was originally a byproduct of making miso (or the other way around if you're Chinese). Some miso is produced in the US as well. Yuzu could conceivably grow in Washington because some varieties are comfortable in cooler weather, and some folks have grown meyer lemons in home gardens here, but there's no meaningful citrus production in Washington to my knowledge. Konbu if harvested and dried could probably be used for soup stocks here. Dried shiitake could be used for soup stocks here, and I suppose you could dry your own tuna or bonita and then shave it. These items and local sake (we can get some from Oregon, presumably not from Oregon rice though) would be enough to handle most Japanese cuisine. There's no locally grown sansho or sichuan peppercorns to my knowledge, and star anise is probably not grown in Washington, so these might limit some Chinese dishes. But since sichuan peppercorns in the US are here um... unofficially... maybe nobody will notice. Black beans could be fermented here if grown in Washington, then used for Chinese dishes. Lemongrass can be grown in a garden, which would be a big help with Southeast Asian foods. No coconut though.

I was quite fond of the green tea ones... but then, I'm quite familiar and comfortable with matcha. They actually ran out of a lot of things this morning, perhaps due to the good weather encouraging lots of wanderers. We were there for an hour or so, and the case was getting bare. Based on a small sample, I think they had at least 60 customers pass through in the morning, probably a bit more, which is perfect for a coffee shop/bakery. I had the kabocha muffin (pumpkin seed muffin, with some pumpkin flesh) and a matcha macaroon and was quite happy with both. It's rare to find a muffin that sparing in its use of sugar in US coffee shops anymore. My friend had their almond brioche toast, which is similar to Essential's, but looked a little nicer. We also had a matcha shortbread, which had a lighter taste of matcha than I would have expected. Keiji used to work at Essential for some time, when he first came here from New York. I'm very fond of their chocolate almond and black sesame cookies, which I got a sample of a few days ago before they opened.

I posted about Fresh Flours planned opening (61st & Phinney)... They finished the final city fire inspection and are finally opening on Sunday morning. I ate at Sapphire in Madrona tonight and found it a very pleasant experience. A lot of beautifully presented simple foods; generally seasonally appropriate; clever pairings of condiments for their cheese plate; a lot of dishes that I certainly could make at home, but most people wouldn't. Nice vibe, enthusiastic waitstaff. Nothing was a religious experience for me, but it was definitely a good "whole package" restaurant: good decor, good vibe, good service, pleasant staff, good food. They seem to be adopting the trend of using Ritrovo truffle salt in at least one thing on the menu; in this case it was dessert, which was a dense chocolate torte. On savory dishes, they tended to be fairly sparing with salt, so one of our companions was salting everything. I was on the fence; on some dishes I appreciated really tasting the food, but sometimes I wanted a few more grains of salt.

5 miles from Blue Onion would preclude almost anything on the north end save maybe Shoreline, which is a shame considering Ballard's low rents and ability to pack people in, and Phinney's character. Most of Queen Anne would still be ok, and Columbia City, Georgetown, Beacon Hill, and presumably the Central Area, so there's a fair range of possibilities there. Personally, given that list, I'd put my money on Columbia City, where people are primed for interesting food already. On the other hand, Queen Anne has a lot of captive audience restaurants so if you even went a smidge higher quality than what most of the restaurants there you'd probably get pretty reliable traffic. The rents or real estate costs might be prohibitive... but being on Queen Anne means very small promotional expenses would be required to build an audience. In Columbia City you could get good publicity by working with their local community organizations; they have the cozy "common donation" music events shared between several restaurants and the gallery, and so on. Beacon Hill is still missing community support to build a vibrant restaurant scene, so someone with a lot of community ties or a long-range timeframe (and suitably deep pockets) would have to do it. I still think that if someone did something just a little exciting there, it would get all of the Amazon.com crowd and then build from there. Beacon Hill needs the kind of approach that Ballard had: Try something a little interesting like a upgraded pastry shop, kitschy but edgy attitude pizza place, then move into Thai noodles with better than average decor, add a quirky bar or two with a more lounge-like feel than the indigenous pubs, then do some better-than-average Mexican. Eventually the high end Italian or French will fit right in. For Beacon Hill, the ideal path would probably be: do a Hong Kong-style or Japanese-style bakery with a nice interior and better-than-average coffee and tea, add a place that does take-out and eat-in Chinese dumplings and baozi for a moderate price but better than average ingredients and no fluorescent lighting or vinyl booths, throw in a hip Thai or Vietnamese place, add a cozy after-work lounge for Amazon-land employees, experiment with a casual Italian place with someone who got really obsessed with making handmade noodles and spent a year or two apprenticing with someone in Italy, create a place for "New American Tapas" or somesuch. That would be about serving the younger generations of the built-in demographic and appealing to the new residents. After a base of such restaurants established themselves, anything could happen.

For me, all of the excitement is in Ballard (accidentally hip) and Columbia City (trying a little hard to shake its image, but often succeeding). Most overrated: Belltown; I've never been to a restaurant that was about the food there (yeah, I'm sure there are two exceptions.) They all focus on getting people drunk so they don't notice how mediocre the food is, which has always been the same strategy the chains employ, so why bother?. Capitol Hill; If it weren't The Stranger's outpost and heavily populated by aging hipsters, I'm not sure why most of these places would survive. Exceptions are mostly around 15th and 19th. Things that are missing: clever, interesting, breakfast spots that move beyond the diner modality, especially in downtown Bellevue, Phinney Ridge, and, damn it, most of Seattle, for that matter. I never want to go out to breakfast because it's all so disappointing. I stick with Cafe Besalu or Essential because I can get decent pastry or bread, at least. Sometimes I'd like a truffled egg omelet that isn't overcooked, maybe. Or maybe something simple but unfamiliar, like Japanese-style or Chinese-style breakfasts, or something pushing the envelope. Oh, and lunch. I like good sandwiches. I like a good Thai noodle dish. I like a little taco or burrito now and then. But can we do anything else? I know portability or slurpability is desirable, but I can't think of many Ladies Who Lunch venues around town. And there are more options for slurpability. I can't think of a soba shop or udon shop that just does that one thing very well. Neither can I think of anything that's in the $6-12 range comfort zone but not incredibly familiar as a "restaurant concept." Yawn. Underserved generally, except by chains, no-budget teriyaki joints, and bland corporate concepts: Northgate, Shoreline, Magnolia, Beacon Hill, Georgetown, White Center. Beacon Hill has some serious average household income, in spite of low housing costs, so this continues to surprise me. The Central Area has some room for creative restauranting, and it's only inches from Madison Park. Georgetown is where all the artists are that haven't moved out of Capitol Hill or Fremont, but didn't want to go as far as White Center are; usually artist colonization is a precursor to better restaurant markets. Wait until a few moderately successful galleries open, maybe. Room for more: As much as I like them, it seems to me if traffic at Cafe Lago is as steady as it seems, something else should open next door to them in Montlake. Why isn't there more nearby? And speaking of accidentally hip, Ballard needs at least one more decent dinner and drinks spot, because La Carta, Volterra, Thaiku, Sambar, and even Matador have no trouble packing people in, and I don't want to keep waiting in line. There are plenty of old-school diners that could be redecorated. Phinney Ridge: There's low-brow bar food, basic Chinese, upscale vegetarian, and one grazing spot. I think there's more room for tapas/small plates there, and maybe something with owner eccentricities that keep people guessing what will be there the next time they come. Please, something else, please: Fremont. Something that's not a Thai restaurant. Please. Pioneer Square: Something that's not hamburgers and beer, pizza and beer, or gyros and beer, please. And something that's not just for tourists. Oh, that one may be too much to ask.

Kaitenzushi wasn't exactly meant as a gimmick in Japan (although the elaborate conveyor belt systems have made it seem so), according to my understanding. I read that the kaitenzushi service model basically made it possible to reduce labor costs and therefore serve adequate sushi at incredibly low prices. With the sushi molding machines for both nigiri and makimono, the cost has been pushed down even further. Of course, no small amount of art is gone at such places.

- Fresh Flours, the Japanese fusion-ish bakery recently built at 61st & Phinney, will finally open its doors on Wednesday if all goes according to plan. Expected initial hours are roughly 9am to 6pm. - In Ballard, the successor to Masalisa , Floating Leaves Tea, owned by a Taiwanese woman and her husband, opened just about a week ago, and their grand opening was yesterday. It has a nice mellow atmosphere. They don't do any of their own cooking, though, so this is really more of a tea place. Pastries are mostly from Macrina. Full disclosure: both of these companies are customers of mine.

They tasted pretty close to what I had hoped for. I think they would taste fine without the anko, but chestnut paste would probably match well. If I wanted to use chestnut paste, I'd probably start with a sweet potato muffin base. I haven't used pistachios or pistachio paste in wafuu pastries, but it might work. If pressed for an alternative to anko, I'd be inclined to try using pine nuts (whole) or walnuts (chopped, or a sweetened paste), or whole sesame seeds. The sesame seeds or chopped walnuts could simply be mixed into the batter. The texture was just about right the day-of, but I've never made a muffin that kept well. Of course, I've rarely tasted coffee shop muffins that tasted good, so maybe that's just the way they work. Before I made the muffin, I was concerned it might be too much sugar, but my Japanese guests disagreed when tasting, so I don't think you'll need to change anything to get a good result. I'm just a tinkerer.

Yes, I think so. Hiromi and also my Japanese roommate considered the sweetness and matcha-level just about right (choudo ii). You could certainly taste the matcha. It wouldn't hurt to add a bit more matcha but an American palate might want more "stamina" and expect a stronger taste; on the other hand, it was a suitable amount for my Japanese guests. I think you could use a full 3 teaspoons (1 tablespoon) without it being overwhelming, though. Actually they were far more green in reality than the photo reveals; as I noted in the blog, my illumination was a little bit aggressive. The light sources included available sunlight from the window, an overhead incandescent array, and two 300w halogen lights... that's what I usually use for product photography on YuzuMura.com but it occasionally washes out food photos a little too much. I had this same problem when shooting some product samples made with green tea (can't reveal much yet, sorry) and had to play with tinting the image to bring the true-life color back.

I made a nice breakfast on Monday morning, which happened to include these Matcha Anko muffins, some of which were experimentally made with shiratama. The complete recipe is on my blog, though I'm inclined to do a bit more tweaking. The taste was about what I was after, but I might make some adjustments on the texture by altering the flour, butter or sugar content.

Ah, yes, that's right. Thanks for the correction... my memory is fuzzy about that place, since I've only been there once. I'm usually impressed by very simple/simply done. Diva and Herkimer are fairly decent as a coffee shop options... and Chocolati is actually soon to be producing products on behalf of one of my clients, so I should have thought to mention them as well. They all serve that morning-boost function for me.

I always felt that Phinney/Greenwood was one of the better places in town to eat... Carmelita (usually very nice, occasionally uneven) was long the first place I thought of for a nice meal in Seattle, though I am now tempted by other things, Gorditos on 85th is one of my standbys for a $3-6 lunch/dinner, Red Mill has that roasted anaheim thing going on and decent milkshakes, there's an interesting but perhaps too "southern German" for my taste German pub called Barking Dog, across from Carmelita. I liked Szechuan Bistro on 85th, but I've only had a shaved noodle dish. In spite of the popularity of doing takeout/delivery Chinese food, it's an impossibly cruel thing to do to a fresh noodle soup and not very good to do to stir-fried dishes either, so I would recommend having either their signature hot pot or shaved noodles in the restaurant before writing it off. For other lo-fi food, Mr. Gyro was decent enough, and there's a passable but not quite as exciting Mexican place a bit west of Gorditos; another convenience-store-looking place on Greenwood next to Olive You is supposed to have some good tortas, though I keep missing it. There are some communication barriers, but acceptable but not stellar Ethiopian food was available across the street from Greenwood Market in a nondescript building. Green Bean cafe (nonprofit cafe) just opened on 85th. Were it not for a bunch of nondescript 70s-style "Chinese-American" places, I think Phinney/Greenwood would get a lot more culinary respect. If you're willing to head north a bit you can always get some decent Korean food on 99 (Hosoonyi, for example). You're also a short hop to Greenlake, which has various options, and not at all far from the accidentally hip center of Ballard, where you could find yourself at La Carta de Oaxaca, as I did last night, for example.

I think that page says the same thing I did here: Kinugoshi-doufu is made from coagulated soymilk, placed into a mold and drained. The Mori-nu stuff is one-step coagulation because of the extra additive. (I only perpetuated the myth in the Japan forum, when I was relying on my folklore-heavy Japanese Country Cooking book )

Fresh tofu is almost never exported because of the short shelf life. Dried tofu products such as koyadoufu, dried yuba, and so on can be exported. The stinky tofu from Taiwan is sometimes exported in jars. Frozen yuba products are exported from China to Japan, but I don't think that much actual tofu is exported even within Asia. It can't be frozen without changing the texture dramatically, and it doesn't like to be stored for more than a few weeks in the best case without turning sour. Because of this, I don't even really want to eat tofu exported from California, much less another country. Like tomatoes, the best tofu is local. I get the ideal results when I buy from a little Vietnamese tofu manufacturer in Seattle where the tofu comes still hot from the machine. A huge percentage of the soybeans used in making tofu come from the US. Some shelf-stable tofu like that made by Mori-nu, which has a modified starch additive used as a coagulant in addition to traditional coagulants, and is not drained like traditional tofu, can be exported because it keeps about a year, unlike regular tofu. Silken tofu other than this type is still placed in a mold and drained, but has a higher water content than momen-doufu, which is pressed against a coarse-textured cotton cloth. And the Koreans just eat it. ← heheh well we all eat our own country's produce, right? but having said i wonder which country exports the most amount of tofu? ←

I think Pioneer Square is always getting worse, the further one gets away from being a 21 year old college student. There are gems, but they are small in number. It's not that Pioneer Square is changing; it's been miserable, according to Tom Robbins anyway, since the 80s, when all of the federal funding for mental hospitals disappeared. My favorite breakfast is fairly minimalist... quiche and some sort of laminated pastry or brioche with coffee or orange juice, Cafe Besalu, Ballard. Occasionally I might go out for a warm breakfast, but since every omelet seems to be overcooked these days, I'm usually happier at a good bakery. Another fair option for me was Au Bouchon in Fremont, a creperie. I haven't done it yet, but a coule of the many Thai restaurants in Fremont have been promising Thai-style breakfast/brunch on weekends for the last 6 months or so.