Seattle Food Tour, Part 2

It's time I finished posting about Seattle. It's already been a month. Man, time is fleeting. I'll make this quick-ish!

The Forge Lounge We stopped here after yelping bars in the area downtown, where we were waiting for our friend Mel to come and pick us up for dinner. It was a fun little hole-in-the-wall (my favorite type of place). I'm trying to cut down on the alcohol (my liver is not behaving), so I asked for a mocktail. The bartender was awesome. He made me a ginger beer with club soda and a squeeze of lime and lemon...delish! And the coolest part about this guy was that he was cooking up a batch of bacon jam while he ran the whole happy hour by himself. Yes, that's what I said. Bacon Jam. And, he let us taste it. You can bet you will be seeing that one on this blog sometime in the near future - combining two of my favorite things into one. Oh yeah.

Volterra We went here after a couple of drinks in the Ballard area. Cute, chic, fun part of town. Supposedly this Italian restaurant is one of Rachael Ray's faves. It was quite yumm-o. The cheese and charcuterie (meat) plates were amazing. These were our entrees. It's been so long I don't really know what they were. But they were good. :) The pea risotto at the bottom was hubby's favorite of the night, light, creamy, and topped off with some homemade sausages.

Roxy's Diner We met our friend Jillian here for breakfast before heading out of town to Yakima, WA. This place has a massive menu of Jewish deli food - bagels, lox, latkes, pastrami, bacon...you get the picture. Haha. Ok, it's Jewish deli food plus all the American goodies too, like peanut butter pancakes. This place is great for breakfast or lunch. We tried both because after taking these pictures...

Jillian, me, and hubby. I love reunions.

The Monte Cristo Breakfast Sandwich...a winner!

Potato pancakes with bacon and eggs

...I left my camera on the table, and I had to go back for it...so we ate lunch there 3 days later. Everything was really good and the service is great too. A real local hang out. It kind of screams, "Seattle!"

Bonair Winery & Silver Lake Winery Drive 2 hours outside of Seattle, and you'll find a little wine country. It's beautiful out there with crisp clean air and really nice wines. They have ice wines, which are really wonderful, sweet, light dessert wines made from grapes that are frozen while still on the vine. We picnicked on the grounds at Bonair, which reminded us of Europe. I didn't get any great photos here, unfortunately. But you can click on the names of the wineries and they will link you to their webistes for more info.

All in all, we had a fabulous time in Washington and wish it was even closer...we'd be there a lot more often if that were the case. Great friends, great food...can't get much better for this girl. :)