We ate out a lot on our NW trip this year which is not always the case; we usually do a lot more cooking. Don’t know why it was different this time around, but since I’ve received emails from readers in the past asking about places to go in Seattle, I thought I would put together a list of places we ate. I’m not listing all the places we grabbed food at Pike Place Market or any of the other food trucks and farmer’s markets because I just can’t remember them all, but the joy in that is really just walking around and discovering what grabs you anyway.

Oh, and coffee. Yes, lots and lots of coffee. Not surprisingly being from the NW, Mark is really particular about his coffee and we horde bags of coffee beans to bring back home with us in our suitcases. We don’t ever really buy coffee when we’re out back home, but we were constantly running in to get coffee everywhere we were. Hey, it’s vacation.
 
Seattle
 

Mashiko – 4725 California Ave SW., West Seattle
I’ve mentioned this sushi restaurant in a prior post. Worth dealing with the traffic to West Seattle. Seriously.
 
Lighthouse Coffee Roasters – 400 North 43rd St., Phinney Ridge
We’d walk over here in the mornings from Mark’s sister’s apartment and get a cup. Without the kids. How civilized (excellent coffee btw. But man, they need a new website. Call me!)
 
Top Pot Doughnuts – various locations around Seattle
I’ll admit it, I’m not much of a doughnut fan, but Mark is, so of course he had to try the doughnuts at Top Pot. It was good, but really, the only doughnuts I ever got excited about was Dynamo in San Francisco. Sure, it’s owned by a friend of ours, but it really is the best in my humble doughnut opinion.
 
Local 360 – 1st Ave and Bell St., Belltown
Food was really great, but my dinner company was better. Just don’t buy into the hype of these PB&J Bon Bons. If you don’t believe me, just ask Uncle Beefy.
 
Thai Tom – 4543 University Way NE., U District
If there are 2 cuisines that are just better in the NW than in NY, it just might be Thai and Vietnamese (although SriPraPhai in Queens and Long Island is truly outstanding and might very well be the best Thai I’ve ever had). Thai Tom is a tiny, hole in the wall restaurant in the U District. We got there super early before they opened so we can get a seat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mia enjoy Thai food so much (Miss C, on the other hand as you can see, was not interested in the food one bit and read her book all through lunch).
 
Oddfellows Cafe – 1525 10th Ave., Capitol Hill
Oddfellows was already mentioned in a post about Capitol Hill – I just love the interior of this place so much.
 

Jules Mae Tavern – 5919 Airport Way S., Georgetown
Georgetown is one of those neighborhoods that seemed to just suddenly appear one day, but has really been around forever. It’s kind of out of the way and still really industrial looking, being surrounded by Boeing and Rainier Brewing Company. I guess back in the turn of the century it was a saloon town and Jules Mae is kind of like stepping back in time to that era. Perfect place to hang out with old high school friends and catch up. Also, I have never been to Georgetown except late at night so I imagine that it’s always this dark, gritty, industrial night time place.

 
Caffe Vita – various locations in Seattle, Portland, Olympia and even one on the Lower East Side, Manhattan.
Some of the best coffee in Seattle, I think. But I’m not a picky coffee drinker like Mark so what do I know.
 
Theo Chocolate – 3400 Phinney Ave., N Seattle.
Theo Chocolate is right by the Fremont Sunday Market, where we grabbed lunch one Sunday from booths and food trucks. Even if we don’t intend to buy any chocolate (you can now find Theo at many retail locations around the country) we always go in because um, free “almost all you can eat” chocolate samples! So uh, yeah.
 
* A few places worth noting from prior visits, but not this year are Delancey for really good pizza in Ballard and Cafe Besalu for really good pastries, also in Ballard. And ok, if you’re from Seattle you’ll probably laugh, but I can’t help but love 13 Coins. Other than the fact that there aren’t that many 24 hour restaurants in Seattle let alone any restaurant kitchen open past 10pm (this is true of most anywhere outside of NY I guess), I love the cocktail lounge cheesiness, the dark interior, all the leather and brass, and the super high leather back booths that make you feel like you’re in your own private room. The food is meh but there’s dancing! People actually dancing.

 
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Portland
 

Luc Lac Vietnamese Kitchen – 835 SW 2nd Ave.
When my friend Jen started tweeting about the food at Luc Lac, I knew that this was at the top of our list of places to go in Portland. The pho is huge. I think we spent less than $30 total for our family of 4 and we still had leftovers.
 

Smallwares – 4605 NE Fremont St.
Smallwares is a new place up in NE Fremont which I think still has yet to catch its groove. They serve small plates of “inauthentic Asian” (their words, haha) that are meant to be shared. For the most part, our dinner was really good (I think my favorite of everything was the fried kale), but it can quickly get pricey (ok, it didn’t help that we kept adding dishes as the meal went on). The kids’ dinner, however, only ended up being a few dollars which is just crazy cheap these days. The thing that I’ll remember about this place other than the fact that we had a nice meal with our old roommate, is that the Pee Wee Herman movie was playing on a wall (we sat in the back bar room area) and we didn’t hear a peep out of the kids for 2 hours. Eventually they wandered over to the couch in front of the movie after they finished eating, where they plopped themselves for the rest of the evening.
 
Screen Door – 2337 East Burnside St.
Another place where we had to line up half an hour early just to make sure we got seated for dinner. It’s Southern cuisine in Portland. HUGE portions! Good old comfort food in the way of Mac and Cheese, fried chicken, excellent salads and hushpuppies (which I still don’t really know what they are).
 
Woodsman Tavern – 4537 SE Division St.
We didn’t eat dinner here, but I did go out for a ladies night at this place. I don’t usually drink, but the cocktails sounded too good to pass up and my friends and I shared a dessert. The restaurant has a big bar/ tavern scene, though loud, and the interior is dark walls, tea lights, rustic hipster blah blah with many of the waitstaff in long, full beards a la Mast Brothers Chocolate. Oh, Brooklyn Portland.
 
Random Order Coffeehouse & Bakery – 1800 NE Alberta St.
What is up with the lines out the door for ice cream on the West Coast? Well, after a late night ice cream run where we decided to skip the ridiculous line down the block at 10pm, we opted for pies instead at Random Order. I got the Oregon Cherry. This was good pie.
 
Stumptown at Ace Hotel – 1022 SW Stark Ave.
Mark’s not a huge Stumptown fan (I told you, the guy is picky!). Stumptown is all over NYC now, but we made our way over to the Ace Hotel while we were briefly in downtown Portland only because we had never been.
 
Petite Provence – 1824 NE Alberta St.
We hit Petite Provence on the way out to our drive back up to Washington on our last day in Portland. As soon as we walked in, the girls went nuts. The pastries were so pretty and baked in flower and pinwheel shapes I had never seen before.
 
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Olympia
 
The Bread Peddler – 222 N. Capitol Way.
Ok, so most of you will probably never find yourselves in Olympia, Wa., but if you do (for example, as a pit stop on your drive between Portland and Seattle), make sure you stop by the Bread Peddler for breakfast and fantastic pastries. Also, do the Farmer’s Market. And for being a small town, Olympia always had it’s decent share of good restaurants, even way back when I first moved there in ’91.
 
Olympia Coffee Roasters – 108 Cherry St.
So what coffee does a discerning coffee drinker like Mark drink? Our favorite roasters are these guys. We bring back bags when we leave the NW and we have family bring bags too when they come visit. They’re small and we like to support them any chance we can.
 
Ramirez Mexican Store & Tortilla Factory – 5105 Capitol Boulevard Southeast.
Ok, so this is technically in nearby Tumwater and not Olympia, and this combination grocery store/restaurant really does make you feel like you’re eating in a grocery store so it’s seriously no frills, but geez, the food is really good. I got the “wet burrito” and it’s the single most biggest (or as Claudine likes to call things that are big “hughnormous”) burrito I have ever laid eyes on in my life, like seriously twice the normal size burrito you’d get at any other place and I ATE THE WHOLE FREAKING THING.

Hard to believe, but there are less than 4 months left in the year.

When I look back at this year so far, 2012, I think of it as a lost year. It wasn’t exactly a bad year, but there’s been something off about it like it just never got going. I don’t feel like I accomplished much, or grew, or learned. I didn’t go in any one direction. I didn’t go backwards or forwards. It’s been… fine, but if you are even remotely like me, you’ll understand that fine is not fine.
 
In my efforts to create as much of a stable life for our family as I could over the last 5 or so years, I think I’ve recently come to realize that the stability that I craved might also ironically be the thing that is keeping me in the same place. Things are chugging along, not always smoothly, but life is happening, no doubt. But we’re also in that space where things have been status quo for the last few years. And this is my struggle. There has always been some major life change in the last 24 years – moving from apartment to apartment, from state to state, from school to school. Traveling, jobs, careers, back to grad school, marriage, a new baby, our first mortgage, a second baby, a new business. You know how it is when you’re young. It’s all big and scary life changing stuff, but it’s also really exciting. We’re at an age, however, when the big stuff is settling down. The kids are getting older, we’re settled into our apartment and refinancing. Like I said, life is happening, but sometimes I can’t help but think, what’s the next big thing? Where is the excitement?
 
If I knew the answer, you can bet that I would be making a plan to get us there. But I don’t. I haven’t known for years. And I’m not really used to that. I’m lost, and yesterday I actually felt angry about it for the first time. This directionless feeling has taken away any motivation to want to actually do something about it because I don’t know where to go. As a result, life and business and my career is just moving laterally and not up.
 
Ok, you are thinking MID LIFE CRISES. Maybe you are right (I have actually been wanting a small tattoo, hahahaha!). Hormonal changes which I guess is normal for someone my age is not helping things either and I suppose that will get worse (sorry, family). I’m neither sad, nor happy, but I am working hard to push the equilibrium towards happy. So, we make the few trips that we take every year a priority in how we spend our money so that we can break out of our everyday world. I make sure to meet new people and see friends because they mean the world to me and keep me sane. I keep the house nice and tidy so that we have a nice home to live in (though I’m beginning to think that this particular OCD is just a distraction to create this illusion that I have my life together).
 
And then there is this space which I have kept up for 4 and a half years. It’s also directionless at this point. What is it for? I don’t really know anymore! Sometimes I feel like it’s predictable and every year we have the same pattern: freakout during the holidays! Another birthday, another anniversary! Here we are in Seattle again in August, just like every year! Why in the hell am I sharing all this with strangers? I love getting emails from readers who have expressed that I have helped them achieve clarity in their lives in some way. That is amazing. But it’s also funny because I don’t feel like I have anything figured out in my life right now, less so than when I first started writing here.
 
I’ve had a few friends this year end businesses, closed chapters in their lives and moved on to different things. I’ve been keenly interested in their stories. I also found a small little book on my mother’s bookshelf, The Dip, by Seth Goldin. I started reading it. In a really quick nutshell it’s about winners who know how to quit things at the right time. It’s not that I want to quit anything right now, but I am in a dip and I do need a change, preferably a big one.

 
I’ve also come to realize that this is why I have such a deep connection with the NW. It represents a time when I made a big change. It represents a blank slate, new experiences, and the feeling that something was going to happen even though I didn’t know what. It’s also about youth and music and all that other stuff steeped in early 90s nostalgia, but it’s that feeling that I miss. It’s an interesting realization when I think I might have this connection with any other city had I chosen to move to, Boston let’s say, or Boise, Idaho. Who knows. Maybe NYC represents that for some of you out there too.
 
It’s definitely a myth that people should have their lives figured out by the time they’re an adult in their 40s. Maybe some people do, but I don’t. I may not have the guts anymore to facilitate change like I did when I was young, but I have to believe that I can’t be that scared of it even though the responsibilities make the risk greater. I just have to laugh sometimes that the things we spent so long building in our lives to create this stable life for ourselves and our family can be the very things that make you feel trapped sometimes. We’ve arrived! But where are we? That’s classic mid-life crises fodder right there. So I don’t know what’s going to happen, if anything is going to happen, but I will spend a lot of time trying to figure stuff out. And if I don’t, I’ll see you back here, I’m sure.

Sauvie Island is a small island on the Columbia River just 10 miles from downtown Portland, but with all the farmland and a view of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens on clear days, it can feel like you’re a million miles away from any urban city. It was one of our favorite places to go when we lived in Portland and it’s still one of our favorite places to go when we’re in town. Blueberry picking season was just about over, but Mark and the girls managed to pick enough berries to make the blueberry lavender cake that he baked that night at Jen’s. Blackberries, on the other hand, were abundant and ripe for picking, but I gotta say that the best blackberry picking we’ve ever found is right in Mark’s mom’s backyard. I’m not sure I’ve had sweeter blackberries than hers and we don’t even bother buying them here in New York.

And maybe you’ve noticed all the dahlias throughout our all our photos of the Norwthwest? Dahlias are super abundant here, but you don’t see them as much back East. There are a ton of different varieties with some as big as dinner plates and they’re really inexpensive to pick at farms or buy at farmer’s markets. It’s not often that the girls get to run around in flower fields with blooms almost as tall as they are. They’re really super conscious about not picking flowers in public places like parks, gardens and people’s front yards here at home so they thought is was the best thing in the world to be able to pick any flower that they wanted.

Our trips down to Portland while we’re out in the Northwest are usually limited to day trips to meet up with friends, but this year we stayed for 3 days at my friend Jen’s house in our old neighborhood close to where we used to live when we were there in the mid 90s. Jen’s another friend who I met on the internet through various blogging/twitter circles and we hung out when she was in town earlier this year in NY. She’s been wanting to meet the girls for awhile and when we arrived, she put together the best welcoming care package full of notebooks, crayons, lip balm, colored pencils and mini slinkies. Jen’s the sweetest!

I’ve mentioned my neutral feelings towards the city of Portland before and I may very well be the only person in the world who feels meh about it, but we make the drive down to Portland because some of our oldest friends still live there, including one of my oldest childhood friends from my East Village days. And now, we’ll be putting Jen and her husband Jim on our list of must visits every time we’re in town. So even though the city doesn’t pull at my heart strings like I feel like it should, our visits to Portland are full of friends and fun times hanging out, reminiscing, and food of course! Lots and lots of food. Mark baked everyone a cake at Jen’s house – a light cake with lavender buttercream and blueberries that we picked that day. Jen and I got to lounge around at night on her couch after the kids and boys went to bed, staying up way to late eating cake while watching the Gilmore Girls reruns like we’ve been talking about doing for months.
 
But I think the most surprising thing about our trip to Portland is how Mia bonded with Jen’s dog, Zelda. We’ve always been more “cat people”, the girls included, and I don’t think the girls really ever played with dogs before even though my parents have a dog. But man, did Mia ever play with Zelda. She’d chase and toss toys with her for hours every day and took her for walks to the park down the street. I think Zelda was in heaven. I hear she slept solid for 2 straight days after we left.

Capitol Hill is a neighborhood in Seattle that I used to hang out in all the time during the early 90s, but for some reason never went back to since. I don’t really shop much when I go on vacation and I never rarely seek out stores when I visit other cities, but this year stopping by Totokaelo was at the top of my list. If there was ever one store that described my aesthetic and housed all the things that I loved, this store would probably be it. Now mind you, I’ve never actually bought anything from their website (most things are out of my price range, sadly) and I walked out of the store on our visit empty handed, but I loved everything there – from all the clothes to the textiles, to the shoes (!!) and even seeing the bubble chandeliers of my friend, Lindsey Adelman, hanging from their ceiling. It’s a stunning store.

Next to Totokaelo is Oddfellows Cafe located in the 100 year old Oddfellows Building. Comfort food is served in this beautiful, spacious space with soaring ceilings, and the interior, which includes an awesomely vintage American flag right in the entryway, is pretty much perfect. Our next stop after lunch was Elliot Bay Books right down the street on the same block. Maybe some of you might be familiar with the book store in the olden days when they were located in Pioneer Square, but Elliot Bay Books was always a destination stop when we would come up to Seattle, you know, in the days when bookstores were the only place to buy books (remember that?). They have since relocated to Capitol Hill in 2010.
 
With a park and playground nearby and other shops like Everyday Music across the street, this little strip of Capitol Hill is a great place to spend the day. What’s interesting about this neighborhood is that it has a slightly different feel than other Seattle neighborhoods. I don’t know if it’s because it seems more gritty or more urban, but it feels more like…NY than any other neighborhood in the city.

 
PS. Here’s an interesting article about the history of the Oddfellows Building.

Are you having a nice Labor Day Weekend? Ours has been relatively low-key. Mark went back to the Brooklyn Flea on Saturday and the girls and I tried to re-establish our routine back home. What we didn’t anticipate was being jet-lagged because that’s never really been an issue in past years, but it’s taken us quite a few days to readjust to being back on East Coast time. I’m still going to bed late so I can’t really tell if I’m still jet lagged or not. Maybe I’m always on West Coast time.

Years ago when I was younger, I’d come home from a vacation and get really bad post-vacation blues. Seems like that doesn’t happen much anymore and I think the kids have a lot to do with it. They don’t dwell on what we’ve done the last 2 weeks; they’re always looking ahead to what’s next. It’s not that they don’t miss the family, but I don’t think the concept of “vacation” is quite the same to them as it is for us adults – you know…escapism, a recharge – and they readjust to being back like it’s just another day. I’m sort of grateful for that. Mia was anxious to sleep in her own bed (as was all of us, to be honest) and Claudine declared that she liked being back home because she missed all her stuff. 2 weeks is a long time to be away; it must feel like forever to a little kid.
 

These photos were taken at Gas Works Park in Seattle. It’s a pretty great place to watch seaplanes land on Lake Union and it used to be the old site for the Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant. Oddly enough, it was our first time there. It won’t be our last though. I’m a sucker for these views.