Gastrolust

Since today is International Hot and Spicy Food Day, my thoughts turn to the Eastside, home of some of the spiciest food in the area.
So, what better place to try than Bellevue’s Boiling Point? The clientele is almost exclusively Chinese, and the menu is simply a selection of hot pots – along with some bubble [...]

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Still catching up on all my pre-December restaurant reports. Consider these quick bites of the Asian variety:

Buddha Ruksa serves up some beautiful plates, placing it in the upper echelon of Thai restaurants in the Seattle area. Not as high as Noodle Boat in Issaquah, which might be the best around, but certainly a solid choice [...]

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Spiced, the new restaurant across (somewhat) from Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, is further evidence that most of the good Chinese food is across the water from Seattle – and not in Seattle itself.
But how good is Spiced? Worth the recent wait for it to reopen after being shut down for weeks by the Health Department? [...]

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“Yeah, right.”
That’s what I said when I heard that Dahlia Lounge was cooking up congee for brunch.
Monkey bread? Makes sense. Eggs Benedict? Elegant. But congee? Can it be any good?
In a word: Yes. I often complain about the quality of Chinese food in Seattle, so it’s sort of strange that Chef Tom Douglas is the [...]

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This Seattlest writer knows this site is about appreciation of Seattle. We love it here, for sure.
But part of what we love is its proximity to Vancouver, as we’ve discussed before. And to that we must add its proximity to Portland.
Dishin’ disappeared for a week because we were on a feeding frenzy down south. In [...]

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I posted this on Examiner earlier today, as I prepare to transition from their Asian Eats Examiner to their more general Restaurant Examiner. Thought it might be an interesting recap to share here…
It’s been about five months since I wrote up my top five Asian restaurants in Seattle. Since I’ll soon be changing my writing [...]

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We’ve been through this before.
With the ever-present smile still stretched across her face, our favorite waitress at Hing Loon asked, “Are you sure you can eat the organs?”
Well, c’mon, that’s why we ordered the “Lo Mein with Assorted Beef Organs” in the first place. We knew we wanted noodles (ignoring the zillions of specials handwritten [...]

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The old cliché is that if you eat Chinese food, you’ll be hungry again one hour later. We’re not sure of that, but in reviewing restaurants, we surely want to know what’s enduring one hour, one day, even one week later. Delicious when dining, perhaps, but ultimately fantastic… or forgettable?
We’ve been bemoaning the lack of [...]

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Blogging about food should be beautifully descriptive, but as my time in Taiwan has been full of frantic feasting, there’s been little opportunity to tell all about it. It’s now 5am my final morning here, and I’m sitting in room at the Grand Hyatt (feeling like I can reach out the window and touch the [...]

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Look up the definition of “hot-to-trot” and you’ll find two sets of meanings: (1) willing and eager and (2) sexually exciting.
To us, hot pot is both.
All the recent hot pot talk on food message boards and in the local and national newspapers tempted us to do a turkey trot to Seven Stars Pepper (at 12th [...]

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