Archive | July, 2013

Honeymoon: Seattle – Radiator Whiskey

8 Jul

After a day spent exploring the Pike Place Market as well as the Seattle Space Needle and the (very cool) Chihuly Glass Museum, we were ready for our first Seattle dinner.  My new husband (!) had done a lot of research on where to eat, and when he read me the menu at Radiator Whiskey, I was in.  Mike found them on the Eater Heat Map for Seattle (one of my favorite resources for New York City) and the description really got us: “Snout-to-tail cookery and lots and lots of brown liquors…”  There was also mention of eating a pig face (something I very much enjoyed in the past at both Cannibal in NYC and Girl and the Goat in Chicago) though we came to find out you had to call ahead to enjoy such crazy deliciousness.  Either way, we were sold.

They had their house whiskey and some specialities in a very awesome tap behind the bar.

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The space was casual and felt like the exact type of place you would enjoy pig face and brown liquor in Seattle.  I don’t know exactly what that means, but if you go, it will all make sense.

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The kitchen is pretty open in the center, so you can watch the magic happen.

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And just in case you aren’t satisfied by gluttony, there are other attractions right outside the window.

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We started with some cocktails.  We ordered the Frisch and the King’s Calling. Sadly, the menu isn’t online so I can’t recall their exact combinations, but I can tell you that they were mixed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and had a fine appreciation for whiskey.

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One item that just looked too tempting was the tater tots with a fried egg on top.  The flavors here were good, but the wetness of the egg took away from the crispness of the tater tots.  Fortunately, the flavors were good enough that this mattered a whole lot less than I would have thought.

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Mike got the turkey leg confit which came with some great roasted potatoes.  (Stay tuned… confit will be a very reoccurring event throughout the honeymoon).  This was very, very good.  Rich in flavor and lots of great textures. Even under that sauce, the skin was crispy.

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And then I got the fried pork chop which came with chicarrónes. I loved this dish.  The pork was so flavorful and the crispy outside was perfect. Looking at it, you would expect it to be dry and lacking in flavor, but it was just the opposite.  I was pretty infatuated with this dish in fact (though I think the whiskey could have made me even sweeter on it).

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I really, really loved our meal at Radiator Whiskey. I thought it was especially well cooked and well conceptualized.  The cocktails were perfectly balanced.  I like whiskey but I find it a bit “much” on many occasions, but this made it totally drinkable and enjoyable.  And perhaps we’re just totally Manhattan-ized, however, I thought the total bill of $62, including tax, for the 2 drinks, 2 entrees, and 1 side was a steal.  Highly recommended.

Total Nom Points: 8 out of 10

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Honeymoon: Seattle- Pike Place Market

7 Jul

After an amazing week in Maine getting married, we spent one night back at our apartment in Manhattan before jetting off to the other coast.  We spent much of our first day in Seattle exploring the Pike Place Market, which may have been one of my favorite places ever.

I have a soft spot for markets in general, but the Pike Place Market is just a huge treasure trove of all sorts of goodies.  They have a lot of nicknack stores and some oddities, but my favorite parts of the market were 2 things.

1- The flowers:

The likes of which I had not seen before and were just show stopping.

 

 

2- Tons of fresh food:

The fish tossers are famous

And the same market had some of the biggest lobster tails we’ve ever seen

We got some great fresh made donuts for breakfast one morning and I took a video of the cool mini donut maker they had:

And we picked up some great things to bring home, including gooseberry jam and chocolate pasta. But the fresh Washington cherries were perfect snacks for the road trip.

It made me really wish we had a kitchen so we could sweep up all those amazing ingredients and make meals from them.

 

But the market itself was very cool to walk through.

There were some cool big sculptures, including this huge squid…

And a few pigs…

Right outside the market is a huge gum wall, which is surprisingly cool to see (and Mike made a contribution)

 

The Pike Place Market is also across from the original Starbucks (which had too long a line for us to bother with, but was cool to see).

 

If you are going to Seattle, I highly recommend setting aside a good amount of time for exploring the nooks and crannies of the Pike Place market.

 

Mrs. Nom Nom

1 Jul

Well… we did it!

We got married!

On June 15th, I officially became a Mrs.

The wedding took a ton of planning and we did a lot of DIY over the last year. The last few months were so crazy with planning/DIYing and tons of work at my job that I haven’t had as much time to blog here as I would like. (Which makes me feel crazy guilty!)

I hope to return soon to regale all of you lovely readers with pictures and reviews of the wonderful restaurants we have been to recently as well as from our amazing foodie road trip we just took for our Honeymoon! (We went to The French Laundry afterall!)

I’ll also be writing about the wedding and our (amazing) vendors on my wedding blog once we get the professional pictures.

In the meantime, if you want a preview, a friend and fellow blogger who came all the way from Omaha for our wedding wrote about some of our DIY and the fun in Maine. (Thanks again PJ!!!)

We also nerded out all over social media and hash tagged our wedding and honeymoon, so if you’re on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you can check out #theaxelbaums for all the fun pictures our friends and family took.  (And while you’re there, follow NYCNomNom!)

I will also leave you with one of my favorite pictures from the wedding, a selfie that my husband expertly took right as we joined our reception.

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