One of my favorite rituals is to sit at the counter and watch the chef, Matt, arrange food on plates. It’s an art in and of itself. Each masterpiece is assorted and perfected before being sent out to the appropriate table. Often watching him make desserts throughout our meal makes our choice of which dessert to try. Each of the entrées and appetizers is meant to be served family style, which means each person is able to try a variety of items. Some people loathe this manner of serving food, yet I love it for its adventurous nature.

Their menu is a seasonal one, meaning that it changes quite regularly. Yet our favorite item is the anchovy spaghetti and is always available, even if not listed on the menu. What’s funny is that I don’t even like anchovies, but this pasta dish is amazing. The anchovies are chopped small and the red pepper flakes give it a kick.

But back to Sunday, going there just before closing on a Sunday evening was fantastic. The crew was finishing up for the night, and turned up the music pretty high — we were the only ones left by the end of the meal — and they were dancing and singing to the music. Billy Ocean, “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car”… so great.

Image from How to Cook a Wolf.

The month of December began with talk of snow, and all of the seasoned Seattleites warned me not to take the talk seriously. Coming from the South, my first inclination was to stock the house with food in case of being stranded. In the southern states, the mere mention of snowflakes garners swarms of people to the nearest grocer to buy bread and milk. Why bread and milk? Who knows. I lived there twenty-seven years, and I have no idea.

Yet still, I was told snow would be a few flurries – surely nothing would stick – and no white Christmas. I was sad, as I’ve always dreamed of having a white Christmas, and I was spending my first Christmas “away from home”, i.e. away from my family. The thought of a white Christmas delighted me.

Then it happened – so much snow Seattle ceased to function for two whole weeks! I found it fascinating to run around in the snow and didn’t care (much) that my fingers and toes were mostly frozen. I was seeing Seattle from a new (and very white) perspective.

I loved it, despite the extreme havoc it caused. Because this had not happened in downtown Seattle before, the city was ill-prepared. Metro buses were stuck in the snow and abandoned throughout the city, as most of Seattle is hills – very large hills. No one could safely drive or ride, and walking was hazardous, as there were blankets of ice covering the sidewalks. It was hit or miss if buildings would clear their sidewalks, so walking was pretty dangerous too.

With the focus on environmental sustainability, salting the roads was frowned upon. So the city decided to sand the roads instead. (I was puzzled too). So they’d sand the roads, then during the day it would melt a bit, then refreeze over night, which wasn’t very conducive to creating conducive transit. Comically (at least to some) was that once all of the snow inevitably melted, they had a bunch of sand to clean up. Amazing.

All of this to explain that there was a lot of drama surrounding the Snowpocalypse. So today as I ate my hot onion soup and gazed out the front windows of Le Pichet, part of me hoped (and continues to hope) for just a bit of the malarkey and community we Seattleites enjoyed two years ago.

Photos from the Seattle Snowpocalypse 2008 »

Sidenote: I just looked up how to spell “Seattleite” properly – and yes, I realize it’s not actually a word – and this is one of the definitions I found: “Is easily agitated when tourist asks to see the original Starbucks, Microsoft or Kurt Cobain’s house. True Seattleites do not care for these things” (Source). Ha. True that.

Ryan took this photo from the top of a building on the corner of 14th and Pine the first night it snowed.

I first heard about Canlis from some friends who lived in Queen Anne that love the food. Then I happened across an old recipe book in Fremont Market containing one of Peter Canlis’ recipes from long ago — butterfly shrimp. Mmm.

Looking forward to discovering some new restaurants. Any suggestions?

It has all of the wonder and amusement of Oz to me, as there are every day new opportunities for venturing into the unknown. I begin writing this blog mostly out of a selfish need to chronicle these discoveries, while offering an avenue for loved ones far from here to peer into this new place in which I’ve immersed myself.

With that said, I feel it is important to note that I have no affiliation with the namesake of this blog. He is yet one more discovery and fascination of mine, a person about whom the more I learn, the more I understand the very soul of this city. As Bill Speidel so eloquently put it, The Man Who Invented Seattle.

This photo was taken over two years ago during my first week in Seattle. Bumbershoot was in full swing, with one of the sunniest days I’ve experienced in Seattle. I visited the Seattle Center, saw corn cobs (grilled in the husk) sold, and learned about “beer gardens” for the first time. I also heard some pretty awesome music – a fabulous welcome to the city.