The Alcoholian

Posted by johngl

There is really nothing I like better than traveling for business and spending four hours with a hundred people I don’t know, shoulder to shoulder, in a flying sardine can.  My 6’6″ 225 lb body just doesn’t deal with it well; it takes me hours to loosen up my lower back once I get to where I am going.

The worst part of travel is the travel. Once I get to my destination, have an adult beverage or two, I tend to make the best of it.

And so it happens that, after a long, arduous day of meetings, a group of us new-age, soundly Dilbertized working stiffs wandered a few blocks from the office tower and wound up at Dahlia Lounge, 2001 4th Ave., Seattle.

Dahlia Lounge, which opened in 1989, is the eldest of the Tom Douglas family of restaurants in Seattle: Etta’s, Lola, Dahlia Bakery, Dahlia Lounge, Palace Kitchen, and Serious Pie. Douglas has made quite a name for himself and has even done a stint on Iron Chef America and beat Masaharu Morimoto. That takes some serious chops.

So, lucky for us, about half of our party of eight got to Dahlia on time. By the time the last four of us arrived, the tables were ready and we were immediately escorted to our dining spots. Our timing was impeccable and we couldn’t have planned it any better. The only thing we missed was the cocktail the others already had in hand.

This isn’t all bad. We had an excuse to play catch up.

It came time to order some wine, so I asked the rest of my table what they were having for dinner.  One was thinking pork, another duck, still another, crab cakes.  Ugh.  It seemed like a by-the-glass kind of night. Then crab-cake girl bowed out of red wine saying that she had red the previous night and tonight was a white night. Failing to follow that line of wine logic, I simply said, “OK.”

I asked about the 2007 Patricia Green Pinot Noir, a selection from Oregon’s Willamette Valley of which I am quite fond. Street price for this is about $25; the restaurant had it set at $45, which isn’t really too bad.

Since the wine was quite young and had a distinctive Burgundian funk upon it, we decided to give it some much-needed air.

For an appetizer, I ordered the Pan Seared Scallops served with Chinese black beans, sweet peppers, and scallion. My friend and co-worker Charlie, who insists he doesn’t like seafood much, liked the scallop. I’ll bring him around yet. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture (of the scallop or Charlie eating it) even though I had my camera right there in my jacket pocket. Seared to perfection, the texture of the scallop was great, though I did think it was a bit too salty. I tend to be salt-sensitive and use it sparingly; normal people probably wouldn’t notice.

Due to the helpful nature of our waiter, I discovered the evening special was King Salmon, one of my perennial favs, especially when in Seattle. I ordered it cooked medium rare. It was going to be a near-perfect match with the Pinot.

Nicely cooked veggies accompanied my salmon, the skin was crisp, and it all tasted pretty good.  The only negative was that the salmon was cooked to medium and not the medium rare that I ordered. I ate it anyway. Oh woe is me.

I got a sample of the crab cake, too.

According to our waiter, these crab cakes have been on the menu for 20 years. That is like a millennium in restaurant years. These must be good. I mooched some. They were.

For dessert I enjoyed some Warre’s Otima 10 year Tawny Port with a really tasty dark chocolate something or another (again, no photo). You would think I would learn to write things down, but when you are with coworkers and talking about work, it’s tough to keep one’s mind on how you’re going to do a blog post.

This is my third trip to Seattle this year so I suppose I’d better get used to sardine-can travel arrangements. Then again, Seattle has a lot of good restaurants; it might make it all worthwhile.

The best things in life should be shared!

Tags: reviews

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Restaurants, Seattle, WA, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.