Me "..." H.'s Profile

There's really no good Pho near my office, there's OK Pho, there's gross Pho and there's yucky Pho but no good Pho, it sucks I know.  So if I want Pho I take a tunnel bus to the ID and get some there or if I'm short on time I walk a few blocks and go to Julie's Garden.  I have no idea how the Chinese or Thai dishes are here because I always end up getting the Pho Ga.  It's big, it's fresh, it's flavorful and it's much better than anything near my office.

I'm not quite sure how we ended up here but we did, trying to grab a drink and bite to eat before a movie at Oaktree.  The place is some what sketchy and the bar is a bit on the dark side but we sucked it up.  Plus they had happy hour going on so we thought score!  Boy were we wrong.  :(

Two beers, some onion rings and their fire starter prawns.  The beer was a bit flat and warm; the onion rings were similar to what you get at Burger King, gross!  The prawns were meh neither one of us were impressed.  The funniest thing was everyone kept asking for Early Bird Dinner and apparently they had already run out of it and it was only 5:00 pm, this made some of the natives restless so we quickly ate what we wanted and took one more sip of our warm, flat beer left without looking back.  I won't be making any special trips to come back here anytime soon.

I took a friend here for her birthday and we both decided to do the Dine around Seattle deal taking place.  I started with the albacore tuna tataki with ponzu sauce and it was delicious and the sliced jalapeno placed on top gave each piece a nice little kick, the albacore melted in my mouth.  The birthday girl went for the Pacific oyster and maitake mushroom tempura with the seaweed salad, in her words it was delicious and I take her word for it.

For my main entree I wanted to go for the assorted sushi and roll but there was salmon and I'm odd and do not like salmon so I skipped it and went for the broiled black cod which was marinated in miso, the cod was amazing, the three pickled like salads that accompanied it were not so amazing and neither were the eight bones I pulled out of my mouth from the cod, one poked the roof of my mouth and it still itches, one bone is acceptable but eight bones in one tiny piece of fish not so acceptable to me even though the cod was amazing. The birthday girl went with the assorted sushi and roll she said she enjoyed everything but the salmon skin roll, it just wasn't to her liking but everything else was wonderful.

For dessert we both went with the sorbet of the day which was a nice refreshing ending to the meal and the server was nice enough to put a candle in the birthday girls.  Our server was actually outstanding the whole night, explaining every dish, making sure everything was fine and never letting our tea or water glasses become empty.  I will definitely be back to try their sushi because everything I saw looked fresh and tasty.

I can't believe no one's review the Franz Bakery Outlet Store yet.  Am I the only one who likes cheap bread?  

You can get all kinds of Franz products for bargain basement prices.  Breads, rolls, bagels, English muffins, DONUTS, cookies and even stuffing mix.  The people shopping and the people working here can be a little sketch but it makes for an interesting and entertaining shopping experience oh and if you see the little old lady with the cane do not take anything in front of her or she'll snap at you trust me on this one.

Around the time Solo opened I met this boy who I was on the fence about dating because I was also 'hanging out' with someone else at the time.  What would have been our 'third' date he suggested meeting at Solo for drinks, than he added it's just three blocks from his place.  Being the prudish analytical betch that I am I decided to pass on meeting him for drinks, I knew what his plan was he was hoping for it on our second date and unfortunately I respect myself too much to get drunk and screw on the third date...

Anyways after that experience I never had the desire to go check it out until a few weeks ago.  I was in the area with time to kill before seeing a show at the Rep.  And than I thought maybe I was completely wrong about the guy because this bar appears to be a bar where the gay men go to pretend they are straight it was so odd and crazy and the more sangria I drank the funnier everything got.  (I was with one of my GBFs and they confirmed this analysis of the situation with me.)  But when you look at the decor you kind of get a gay trying to be straight vibe, they have funky lamps and a disco ball and some cool couches along with some stiff uptight high tables and chair.  

Oh and the one thing I noticed is they have happy hour all night Sunday and Monday so if you need happy hour Sunday or Monday night while in Queen Anne Solo is your place.

Oh F*&K it let's just go to Phuket for dinner.  So we did and we ate, we did the combo meal for $17.99 and it was more then enough food for two and gave us a variety of food unfortunately the food was too sweet for my liking.  Now I don't mind sweet food but when it comes to Thai food there needs to be a nice balance between the sweet and spicy and salty and Phuket failed in balancing their flavors.  I guess I should have figured things would be super sweet when I saw they had Kool Aid listed on their menu, who the hell servers Kool Aid oh Phuket does that's who.  I won't be going out of my way for super sweet Thai food here.  But if you like you're Thai food on the sweet non-spicy side you'll probably enjoy good old Phuket.

I'm not sure what they are going for in here, some Hawaiian cheesy tiki retro vibe but it works. It was like an upscale version of a Brady Bunch Hawaiian vacation at dinner.

They have three flat screen TVs above the bar not showing sports or news or TV but movies, old movies which I think is cool.  The bar is a nice size with lots of seating for you to sit at the bar or one of the tables, it does fill up rather quickly so get there early if you want to enjoy their happy hour.

They have interesting sounding cocktails but I don't think they realize that $10 for a cocktail in the Junction just sounds wrong to me I expect that from Belltown or downtown but not the Junction, is somebody kidding me?  

At happy hour they have $5.00 cosmos and it's not bad a little on the lite side if you ask me but at least it wasn't just lime juice like I had somewhere else recently.  They have a few food items for happy hour but this is yet another West Seattle place that places items on the happy hour menu yet the prices are the same as they are on the dinner menu, the Dungeness crab mac and cheese and the salad were two dishes I noticed where there was no happy hour savings by ordering them, though the pork belly sliders on the happy hour menu was cheaper along with a few other items, plus they have oysters for $0.75 each during happy hour.

Besides my cosmo I decided on the pork belly slider and of course the Dungeness crab mac and cheese.  The pork belly slider smelled amazing and than I took a bite it was messy but boy was it delicious!  It was so good that a few days later I wanted that taste in my mouth all over again.

The Dungeness crab mac and cheese also smelled amazing thankfully it wasn't messy. Made with shells not elbows and a white cheese sauce I couldn't compare it to Belltown Bistros, my favorite Dungeness crab mac and cheese, because it's different and scrumptious in its own right but Ama Ama don't go listing something on your happy hour menu with the same price as your dinner menu that's deceiving.  It did however have big chunks of crab in the dish which made it easier to pay the $10.00 price for.  But I'm over bars and restaurants creating happy hour food menus and keeping the prices the same!

I've also had brunch here and it was good and actually pretty inexpensive, everything was nice and fresh but I have to admit I did not like the two salsas with the huevos rancheros I ordered, one was too sweet and one was too smoky for me but the rest of the dish was fine once I got over the Doritos like tortilla chip all over the place, though the huge chunks of avocado made up for the unlikeable salsas.

I might be a bit price bitchy because I could be losing my jay-oh-bee soon I don't know but the happy hour prices didn't make me too happy thankfully the food and cocktails did. Though the brunch prices and dishes where regular Seattle brunch prices. But $20.00 pre tax/tip for three things at happy hour isn't that cheap.  We'll see how long Ama Ama lasts here in the ten plus years I've lived in West Seattle this place has been many things, a Godfathers Pizza, Guppies (a gay bar), Ovio Bistro and now Ama Ama.

It's been a while since I've seen a show at the SecondStory Rep; Redmond is just not a place I get to very often.  But Bat Boy: The Musical was playing there and I had to see their production of it since I loved ArtsWest's production of it last year.  The outside of the theatre looks like a Duran Duran video very 80's and made me want to break out in song:
"You gone too far this time
But I'm dancing on the valentine
I tell you somebody's fooling around -
With my chances on the danger line
I'll cross that bridge when I find it
Another day to make my stand, oh...
High time is no time for deciding
If I should find a helping hand, oh...
So why don't you use it
Try not to bruise it
Buy time don't lose it"
Oh sorry about that...
Anyways, the inside I'm told was recently remodeled but I wasn't a fan of the yellow lobby but that's because I don't like the color yellow I was traumatized by it as a child.

The theatre area itself needs some help.  The seats are really uncomfortable and provide little room for moving around plus there isn't enough slant to the rows.  Quite a bit of Bat Boy was performed on the floor of the stage and I had a person with a big head sitting in front of me so I couldn't see what Bat Boy was doing for most of the first act and for my favorite scene in the second act.  Granted the tickets were only $27.00 but still for $27.00 I would have liked to see the whole production.  Also the rows have a 'step' to them and for someone clumsy like me this was not good because I can trip over my shadow, each row should be a solid floor not a half floor.

As for the production itself I'm not sure what they were doing, it must have been a different Bat Boy than the one I saw because I did not like it, it was like they were trying to make it campy but not at the campy parts and I'll be nice and not talk about the actors but applaud the musicians the music was the best part of the show.

I won't be heading back to SecondStory Rep anytime soon the theatre closer to me are much better and plus I'm not a big fan of trekking all the way out to Redmond.

Instead of going to my usual location in Burien I decided to stop in here on my way home from Southcenter the other night. I wanted Mexican and knew the chain had a location in Tukwila so I figured what the hell.

Its looks like a Taqueria that belonged in the ghettos of south San Diego I was pleased. I walked in and it had this odd yet disgusting smell, urine and bleach I wasn't pleased. But I sucked it up because they had a huge sign hanging in the window that said TACOS $0.69! Yes people tacos for only sixty-nine cents that's cheaper than Taco Bell! So to the counter I went and got four tacos two adobada and two carnitas, the adobada were much better than the carnitas but the carnitas were still good just a little too dry for my liking. The salsa bar was full and had the typical Taqueria El Rinconsito selections but the carrots were sliced too thick for my liking and they didn't have many onions mixed in with the carrots..

I won't go out of my way to come here again but I will go out of my way to hit up the Burien location, the adobada tacos were delicious but I can get those at the Burien location along with tastier carnitas tacos there as well.

I was invited to an afternoon party at a friend's house out in Snoqualmie Ridge this past weekend.  Since I was already out there I decided to meet up with some other friends and check out the new casino.  We arrived between 5:30 and 6:00 pm and there was no traffic, I came in from Snoqualmie they came in from I-90 and neither one of us had to deal with any traffic at that time.

I valet parked, signed up for their club card and dropped my coat off at coat check all within 15 minutes of pulling up.  Everyone I dealt with was nice, friendly and courteous to me.  Once we all had our cards we walked around to check out the place, it's beautiful inside with plenty of tables and lots of slots.  Too bad the dealers aren't fully trained yet.  Twice in less than sixty minutes I saw dealers screw up, where they took someone's chips not realizing that they won and they needed to pay them, so the pit boss gets called over so they can pay them out.  This annoys me to no end for some reason.

And don't get me started on the bar, holy shit batman I had to stand in line thirty minutes to get a drink at the bar behind someone smoking a nasty cigar it wasn't fun.  It gets better I ordered a Ketel One and tonic, I was told it would be coming from the gun and I said no it won't, it will be coming from the bottle up on the shelf over there NOT the gun, Mitzie does NOT do gun vodka she's a picky betch.  So finally she pours me my Ketel One and tonic from the bottle than has no freaking clue how to ring it in.  So it took another five minutes for me to pay for my Ketel One and tonic from the shelf such a cluster fuck I tell you.  The line to get into the club was longer than the bar line so after about two and half hours we decided to leave.  I lost money, couldn't win to save my life, makes me not want to go back anytime soon.  I will give them a few months than go back and check it out when things calm down a bit.

On our way out we finally saw the traffic it was backed up to the freeway and it appeared to be backed up on the freeway as well.  So I guess the trick is to get there before 6:00 pm to avoid traffic.