professionalism, pt. 2

When we woke in the morning, we found out that a continental breakfast was available (take note, Portland Ace...), and while we had already been planning on two other breakfasts, how could we resist adorable little bags of granola? Consider it a warm-up, like stretching before a long run.
Across the street from the Ace, there just happened to be a nice little French country kitchen of a bakery, Macrina Cafe. A and I shared a slice of their squash harvest bread and a big onion bialy. The squash harvest bread was a really well done sweet spice bread with a perfect, dense sponginess and crisp pumpkin seeds on the crust. I wouldn't say the bialy was quite as good - the onions were mostly undercooked - but every so often their was great salty bite of the sweet dough with the poppy seeds and a bit of slightly-charred onion. Clearly we hadn't had enough for breakfast.

Which is why we dutifully walked the five blocks to Top Pot, a Seattle staple for doughnuts that neither of us had tried before. Now Top Pot is undeniably stylish. It has a sort of streamlined, American glory days aesthetic with lots of stylized diner finishes. These are the sorts of doughnuts you'd be served on a train like this one. But A and I are tough doughnut critics, mainly because we don't like doughnuts. Why did we go to a doughnut shop, you ask? Well, the way we ate in Seattle leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Point being: if I'm having a doughnut, it better be amazing. I am a strict devotee of the yeast doughnut over cake or old-fashioned varieties, which can be far too dense or sickly sweet. Like a good Southern yeast roll, they should have an almost marshmallow-like airiness. Top Pot mostly makes cake doughnuts, and the maple glazed that I had, while better than most, had an odd citrusy taste and none of that rich sugar rush of maple flavor. A's cinnamon-sugar doughnut on the other hand was pretty close to perfection. It was fluffy and subtle and didn't leave us (after two prior breakfasts) feeling leaden.

We already knew where we were headed for lunch, but it was only a little after 11 and we'd just finished a pile of pastries. After about five seconds of debate over whether we should do something non-food related, we decided to just "scope out" our lunch choice, having heard stories of epic waits. Good thing we did. We reached Salumi around 11:45, only to find a line halfway around the corner from the storefront. Apart from the two schmoes who decided to park themselves in the postage-stamp sized window to eat their sandwiches in front of a hungrily waiting crowd, the 45 minute wait wasn't unpleasant and was made palatable by plates of salami passed through the crowd. And it is some damn tasty salami.


After retiring from Boeing, Armandino Batali (Mario Batali's father) decided he'd go to Italy and apprentice himself at a master salumeria, before returning to Seattle to make some of the best dry-cured meats in the US. If you can find them where you live (Steve's Cheese, Foster & Dobbes, or City Market in PDX), you need to try the finocchiona for a classic flavor and the mole for a sense of some of the new-school cures they are using. Recently, their house porchetta sandwich was named one of the best sandwiches in the country by Esquire, so we knew we'd have to try that. Then, because we are suckers for seasonal specials, we also got a cinnamon pork butt sandwich, which was too bad because the fat was a little rubbery and we really should gone for one salami sandwich. But let's focus on the good: the porchetta was unbelievable. It was also as long as my forearm. Once we tasted the braised pork shoulder along with the stewed peppers and the sharp parsley and garlic aioli that was slathered on the bun, we knew which sandwich was the standout. For how succulent it was, I can't imagine how any one person could finish a whole one. A and I had to tackle the porchetta together, forsaking the poor pork butt, and we still felt sick. Perhaps it had something to do with the three breakfast stops?

When you are bursting at the seams from overeating, what's the best thing to do in Seattle? Food related shopping. Not able to consider another bite of food, we decided to consider some of the cookbooks at Elliott Bay, a very charming store down in the old part of town. And after that? We went shopping for seasonings. At World Spice Merchants just below the Pike Place Market, we picked up a few unusual spices (the szechuan pepper may just warrant its own post) and took in the aromas. The strong smells were doubly appealing because throughout all of these wanderings, we were staggering around the city with the remains of a sandwich the size of our head in a paper bag. We were probably attracting flies. Now, I don't know if it was just the prolonged exposure to the sandwich or if all of our meals were just finally catching up with us, but we definitely hit our low point right around the time we decided to grab some food for the road home.

Trekking up the street to Capitol Hill (damn, does Seattle put Portland's topography to shame), we very quickly felt like we'd reached our limit. So, when we reached Baguette Box, we agreed that we wouldn't eat whatever we got until we were well on our way home. We even ordered "lite" - opting for the coconut-marinated tofu bahn-mi.

And then we ordered a side of truffle fries and ate them all before we made it back to our car.

I know what you are thinking, and it is 100% true: we know how to take care of business. Seriously, though, these fries were superlatively good. They were some of the simplest fries either of us had ever had - thick-cut and hefty - and the potato, truffle, and sea salt flavors all balanced out so as to heighten each other taste. And don't worry; when we eventually had the sandwich (we did actually wait a few hours), it was as tangy, spicy, creamy and savory as a good bahn-mi should be.

All in all, it was a funny trip to Seattle. I can't remember the last time I visited and stayed in the downtown the whole time. But, for that matter, I can't remember the last time I had three breakfasts and multiple sandwich-centric meals on one day.