Mistral Kitchen

We were on vacation in Seattle for about 1 week and wanted to try a fine dining restaurant.  We took a chance by just looking on open table to see what are the top restaurants with the most positive reviews.  Mistral Kitchen was one of them.  I saw mixed reviews and was a bit hesitant in trying this place.  Sometimes the bad reviews don't turn out that bad.  We had a long day hiking in Discovery park and came back to our hotel.  Did a little bit of shopping to kill some time before we walked over to Mistral Kitchen.  We came here with our 2 cousins and wanted them to try this restaurant with us.


The decor was very modern and had a trendy feel without feeling pretentious.  They have a lounge area in the back if you wanted to just have a more intimate setting and they are also known for their drinks.  Mistral serves new American cuisine and when we were there, they had a special menu for that month which had Mediterranean cuisines.


For appetizers we ordered the Big Eye Tuna Crudo and that was really good.  The sauce on the side wasn't too strong where you were not able to taste the freshness of the Tuna.  We all really liked this dish a lot.  We also ordered the stuffed zucchini served cold.  My wife really liked this dish a lot because the zucchini itself still maintained it's texture without being too mushy after being cooked and made cold.  We also ordered the clams as an appetizer.  That dish was amazing.  The clams were really BIG and fresh and the broth that it was cooked in was some great flavors..  We had to ask for extra bread to soak up this dish.

For our entrees we had the Roasted Mad Hatcher Farms Half Chicken and the halibut.  In my entire life, this is the best chicken I've had in my entire life.  The chicken was cooked to perfection while maintaining all of it's amazing flavor in every bite.  The chicken is souveed for 1 day and then once that is done, they cook the chicken in a tandoori oven giving that crispy skin on the outside and cooking the meat to perfection.  Everyone tried the chicken and agreed.  This dish really defined fine dining terms for my 2 cousins.  The halibut was also really good.  It was fresh and the fish cooked perfect.  The meat itself slides off like butter as you cut into it.  Because our appetizers and entrees were so good we also had high expectations for their desert.  The desert was okay =/    Service was really good.  The waiter was very attentive and took the time to explain every dish once it came out even after explaining it to us when we ordered.  There was nothing left on each of our plates at the end of the night not even a drop of sauce.  I would highly recommend this restaurant to locals and visitors.  I don't know if Seattle will ever get the Michelin ratings but if they do, I would hope Mistral Kitchen get 1-2 stars.

Tuna Crudo

Clams

Stuffed Zucchini

Halibut

Mad Hatcher Farms Half Chicken

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union sushi

A new sushi restaurant in the river north area and not worth going to.  The food was not good.  All of the ikayzka tasted the same mainly from the same sauce used to grill everything.  Certain dishes were extrememly salty and I The sushi rolls didn't really work out.  Our final bill was 200 bucks for 4 people and we were not satisfied with the food here.  You could spend a lot less if you go to sunda or some other place nearby.  I don't even want to waste my time typing this blog up for these guys.

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graham elliot

I decided to come here for my birthday dinner I do every year with my 2 close girl friends from college.  We've heard lots of good things and a few bad things about GE.  So I wanted to find out for myself if this was a good restaurant.  I thought the ambiance and decor was nice.  The crowd was mixed ranging from young to older people.  When you dine at Graham Elliot, you can either order the ala cart or their prefixed menus.  There isn't a ton of choices from the Ala cart but it would be less expensive if you ordered that way.  They have the 5, 10, or 15 prefix menu.  Most reviews I read said the 5 is good without being too expensive.


Menu::: 75$
Deconstructed Caesar Salad - gem lettuce + brioche twinkie + white anchovy
Sweet Corn Bisque Soup - spiny Lobster + toasted coquito + vanilla marshmallow
Seared Alaskan Halibut - leek brandade + orange gel + haricot vert
Charred Bison Loin or Pork Belly - puffed hominy + breakfast radish + farm egg
Flourless Chocolate Cake - rootbeer + port cherry + birch caramel


As we sat down we were given this popcorn appetizer that is made with truffle butter, black peeper and Parmesan fluff.   At first I thought popcorn for appetizer was not going to do it but it was actually really good and full of flavor from the truffle butter + Parmesan fluff.  The next item they gave us was the water melon amuse-bouches.  I thought it was okay.  The deconstructed caesar salad was really good!  It was a twinkie with lettuce and a piece of anchovy on top.  I really love that idea of a salad looking like a twinkie.  The twinkie was hard to cut into at first but when you tasted the dish, it tasted great and it's a fun dish to eat.


The next dish which was the corn bisque was not bad but I didn't think there was anything special about the dish itself besides the way it was presented.  The next small dish was an interesting dish but I wasn't sure why it was even put on the menu since the flavors of this 5 dishes doesn't really correspond to the calamari and brussel kimchi curry.  It was so small and I couldn't really taste much besides a few rings of calamari and the kimchi ?????  I really don't think that dish worked well with everything.  If you are a foie gras fan then you should definitely try the foie graw lollipop.  I wasn't a fan to start off with but I wanted to try it anyways because it was shaped like a lollipop with pop rocks on the outside of it giving the candy feeling for the dish.  The halibut was really yummy.  It was cooked just right where the fish melt ted in your mouth.  The flavors were good but nothing too special here.    Instead of the bison which was part of the prefix, I asked for the pork dish which I heard people talking about.  I really liked the dish a lot.  The flavors really hit your mouth and the puffed hominy and the chorizo foam sauce along with the farm egg really gave it a nice meaty flavor.  I loved the hominy ( corn that has been processed to remove the hull and germ ) they were fun to eat and the flavor from the chorizo and sauces soaked the hominy giving each one of them good flavor.


The service was very good and attentive.  Our waitress was super nice and I have heard of a wait staff who is not friendly and thank god I didn't get them for my birthday meal.  I would come back but I wouldn't do the prefix menus.

truffle butter + black pepper + parmesan fluff

compressed watermelon + mint leaf + jalapeno oil

foie gras lollipop with pop rocks candy on outside

deconstructed cesar salad

corn soup

halibut with leek brandade + orange gel + haricot vert

Bison

Pork Belly with puffed hominy + breakfast radish + farm egg

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Frontera Grill part II - Redemption ??? or disappointment??

I was hesitant about coming back to rick bayless's restaurants especially when i was disappointed during the restaurant week menu.  My friend wanted to go there and try a dish that was on the bets thing I ever ate website / show that he follows and he was able to get reservations for lunch so I decided to give the Chef another chance.  So I asked the waiter what are the 3 best items on this menu that he loves and of the 3 he named we were eating 2 of the 3 he suggested.  I ordered the Puerco Oaxaqueno which was a Grill-roasted Gunthorp pork loin, smoky black bean "enchilada" (homemade chorizo, queso anejo mashed potatoes), limey grilled knob onions & guero chiles, cilantro.  This dish looked very similar to the dish I had back at restaurant week.  This time it was on the dot!  The flavor was really hit the spot and each bite was juicy.  The mash potatoes was also amazing.  At first I wasn't sure what it was until I asked the waiter and I thought that was a great idea to put the mash potatoes inside some tortilla.  All the bold flavors came together for me and I was extremely satisfied.  I also tried the rib eye dish my buddy ordered and that was really good too.  I would say Rickbayless has redeemed himself for Frontera grill and Topolobampo.  Excluding XOCO

Puerco Oaxaqueno
Grill-roasted Gunthorp pork loin, smoky black bean
"enchilada" (homemade chorizo, queso anejo mashed potatoes), limey
grilled knob onions & guero chiles, cilantro

Carne Asada a la Oaxaquena
Creekstone Natural Black Angus rib steak (marinated in spicy
red chile & wood-grilled), black beans, sweet plantains with
sour cream, guacamole

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Lure - IZAKAYA PUB (Chinatown)

So we decided to head to Chinatown and try Lure an "Izakaya Pub" since we had purchased a groupon for this restaurant.  The decor felt very much like a night club and it was pretty dark while the music was very loud outside as you walk in so if you didn't know about Lure being a restaurant you would think it was a night club as you walk by.


We ordered some of their drinks and they were very good and refreshing.  I would suggest getting their mixed cocktails here.  For those who have not been to a style of Izakaya Pub it's pretty casual after work dinning in Japan and lots of small dishes which includes yakitori (skewers) and other fish dishes to share with your group.  This restaurant is fairly new with the menus still on clip boards which I found comical.  They told us they were in the process of getting the menus finished which was fine with us.  The waitress we had serving us was very new.  We could tell but she was very accommodating and trying hard to make things right for us so I give her kudos for that.


We ordered the summer salad, potato croquette, shims hokke, lamb chops, yellowtail, braised pork belly, lobster spaghetti and some chicken wings.  Well started off with the salad and I thought the flavor was good but it's very hard to eat the salad with chopsticks especially if you are trying taste all the ingredients together into one bite.  Maybe because it was cumbersome to eat so I didn't like the dish but my wife liked it and my friend felt the same way as I did.  The potato croquette was our next dish that came out and when we went to bite into the croquette it was cold on the inside.  Now usually when something gets deep fried, you would think it would be warm/hot on the inside but that was not the case.  The waitress kindly took it back and went to get another one for us.  Our guess on this dish was the chefs probably weren't use to the deep fryer and wasn't able to gauge the temperature on the different foods that are being cooked in the fryer.  The croquettes were okay nothing to rave about but I would not order it if I come back.


They are supposedly known for their fish dishes so we had the Shims hokke and Yellow-tail coming.  Both of the fishes were really good.  The flavor was there and it the texture was great.  They did a good job cooking both fishes and I really wished we ordered more of the fish dishes.  The lamb chops were good but nothing spectacular about them.  They were cooked well but it was off by a little on the flavor.  The lobster spaghetti was good although I wished that dish had more lobster in it because we can barely taste the favor of the lobster or see much of it.  Both the braised pork belly and chicken wings were really good.  I would suggest ordering the braised pork belly.  It's full of yummy flavor and melts in your mouth.  We also ordered the Yuzo Black Cod and that was also a great dish.  Only thing I didn't like about the dish was the proportions of the asparagus to the fish.  They were so SKINNY!  Anyways, my buddy who is a fries fan decided to order the tiger fries.  That was one of my favorite dishes here!  Truffle oil flavor fries.  If you are a truffle oil fan try these fries.


The prices were very reasonable and food was good.  I would say try more of the fish dishes here since they fly the different types of fishes you wouldn't normally see at a sushi restaurant.  Drinks are cheap and good.  I would come back again and maybe their menus have been completed and they have their music turned down a notch so it doesn't feel like a night club.

Summer Salad - watermelon, grape, feta cheese, pear cactus dressing

Potato Croquette

Shims hokke

Lamb Chops

Yellow Tail

Braised Pork Belly

Lobster Spaghetti

Yuzu Black Cod

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