Kingfish Cafe & Steelhead Diner

Two late posts. Apologies, apologies. Life is crazy as always.

Kingfish. Where to start... I'm going to start with dessert because that was truly the most remarkable part of dinner... which isn't to say the rest of dinner was bad -- everything was fantastic, but dessert was unforgettable! We had a party of 8 people (no Tia this month) and yet when we ordered 4 desserts to share, the waitress looked at us and said, "Y'all are crazy."

I beg to differ. I think it's the cake cutting person at the Kingfish who is C-razy with a capital C. The dessert portions are obscene. I don't think we even ate 1/3 of the total mass of dessert that they delivered to our table. If I recall, we had chocolate cake, red velvet cake, white cake, and pineapple upside down cake... each served with a giant mound of whipped cream on the side. The cake slices probably weighed 5 pounds apiece, and probably resulted in each of us gaining 10 pounds within 20 minutes. Sigh, the pineapple upside down cake was the bomb. This wasn't no box cake mix. The fresh pineapple slices were coated in delicious, gooey caramel. Heaven!

For dinner I had the vegetarian griddlecakes and a side of cornbread (the best!). The griddlecakes are tasty, but not necessarily my favorite item on the menu. I really love the rice & beans, chicken salad, and mac & cheese. (Actually, after visiting the Kingfish for dining club and then raving about the desserts to my family, I took them to the Kingfish twice when they visited in May.)

Yay, good pick, Jerrod! Definitely a Seattle classic!



Re: the Steelhead Diner.

This was my pick. And I blew it. And I HATE to blow a pick!!! (That sounds weird, doesn't it?)

OK, so I had heard rave reviews about this restaurant from at least one of the Seattle papers as well as from ex-Bachelor #2. Since he turned out to be crazy, I guess I shouldn't have put so much stock in his opinion, although he was right on about Palace Kitchen.

In any case, this is a restaurant definitely geared towards the tourists. My first pet peeve: even if you tell the server, "No, were not out-of-towners, we're all locals," they still launch into the same totally canned, overly detailed spiel about getting their ingredients fresh that day from the fish vendors, and Uli's sausage, and Beecher's cheese, etc. For the love of God, I know many of the PPM vendors on a first name basis, I don't need a map and menu for every freakin' stall!

Second pet peeve: Our server was conspicuously absent for long stretches. OK, so in every meal, there's a basic order of events. You are seated. Then the busboy brings you water. Then 5-10 minutes later the server comes and takes your drink and/or appetizer order. Then he comes back another 5-10 minutes later with your drinks and takes your meal order, duly noting any special requests. Eventually (ideally within, say, 20-30 minutes) he brings you your food. Then he comes back in about 5-10 minutes to check in and make sure you're happy since he wants a big tip. Then when everyone's given signs that they're done with their meals (i.e., people are no longer eating or are pushing their plates away), he comes back and asks how the meal was and if you want to see a dessert menu.

OK, so my pet peeve is that we had to wait like 20-30 minutes between each visit by our waiter. And I don't think he ever checked in with us after we got our food... Otherwise he would have found out that Lenny's burger, which was ordered "medium well" actually had bits of red, raw ground beef falling out of it because it was so rare. (It actually looked more or less like how I like to eat my burgers - raw meat! Yum!!)

My food (halibut) was actually delicious, though ridiculously tiny... as far as portion size goes, it was a serious contrast to the generous, oversized portions of delectable goodness served at the Kingfish.

My third pet peeve: Instead of comping Lenny's burger, the guy offered to comp us a dessert and said his manager wouldn't let him comp the burger... Which basically meant that instead of all of us going down the street to get gelato (as we decided to do during one of the many lengthy lapses between visits from the waiter) we basically all had to order dessert and fork over more bucks at the Craphole Diner. Dessert was good, though I can't even remember what I ordered, so it couldn't have been outstanding.

My fourth pet peeve: After making a big deal about comping the dessert and Jerrod's glass of wine (which was a $1.25 upgrade and probably just a mispour), he brought the bill and had added a Pilsner to our tab. This was a phantom beer that no one at our table had ordered. Then he did not seem surprised and had the nerve to even seem a little peeved when we brought it to his attention! In other words, I think he tried to pull a fast one on us.

UGH!!!!!!! I'm never going back!!