Seattle Restaurant Week: Six Days in Heaven

It was late March when Allie and I heard about Seattle Restaurant Week, a 9-day event in which over 100 restaurants in Seattle would offer a 3-course prix fixe meal for $25. Allie and I immediately started planning how we would take advantage of some great food for an even better price. We looked at the menus for the stand-out restaurants on the list (both places we’d been and placed we’d been dying to try), and both rated each of them from 1 to 10, splitting the difference when our scores differed. After reading through more than 30 menus, we ranked them, picked our top six, and immediately made reservations.

We knew that this was one of the best ways that we could sample some of the pricier places that Seattle has to offer, and that we would eat like kings for a week. On the other hand, we spent the rest of the month eating leftovers to ensure that our wallets would be able to compensate for Restaurant Week. (Six restaurants at $50 a pop without tax, tip or beverage(s) can still add up, you know!)

Here’s a recap of the amazing restaurants we visited, and our favorite dishes we had at each of them. (And yes, we were the dorks taking pictures of everything that was put down in front of us. But, sometimes being a dork pays off…)

Crush (2319 East Madison Street)

Grilled pork belly served atop stone-ground grits*

Palisade (2601 West Marina Place)

Wagyu Sirloin with fingerling potatoes and grilled asparagus (this was seriously melt-in –your-mouth incredible)

Spring Hill (4437 California Avenue Southwest)

Perfect vanilla pudding with root beer Madeline’s and toffee crumble

Joule (1913 North 45th Street)

Korean-influenced Alaskan black cod*

Nell’s (6804 East Greenlake Way North)

Pork Tenderloin with cauliflower and pea tendrils

Dahlia Lounge (2001 4th Avenue)

Made-to-order doughnuts with rhubarb jam and vanilla mascarpone cream. Yes, they live up to the hype.

Dahlia coconut cream pie with white chocolate and toasted coconut.

*These photos were two of the three winners of the Seattle Restaurant Week photo contest. Yep… we’re award-winning photographers! Plus, we ended up winning gift certificates to two of the restaurants that barely missed the cut when we decided when we’d go during Restaurant Week itself! Plus the budgeting continues, so we’ll take all the help we can get in supporting our dining habit.