Road Trip!

We began our Portland road trip just after 10am, we had big plans to grab a pastry at Café Besalu, get on the road and be there by 2:00pm. I'm sure you guessed by the way I started this post that things did not go as planned. We got to Café Besalu only to find a huge line out the door. We waited for about 1/2 hour, moved 2 feet and decided it wasn't worth it. We had places to be! So we got back in the car without breakfast and drove, drove, drove. Things were going great (except my stomach was a little hungry), no traffic even as we entered Tacoma and minimal through Olympia. Just out of Olympia there was major traffic, road construction everywhere and bumper to bumper stop and go. It was AWFUL! Dan road raged, and I was starving. To solve both our problems, we stopped off in Centrailia to eat and deciding we didn't want to eat in chain-fast-food-hell, we chose to eat at Country Cousins. The place was packed so they accommodated us in the lounge. We sat down at a table, Dan up against the wall, me in the chair, I look up and I see this just above Dan's left shoulder.



Basically my jaw hit the table, as soon as I recovered I pointed it out to Dan and we had a pretty good laugh. The food was marginal at best and the decor...



Well, you get the idea.

So, finally back in the car, more traffic, more road raging. We finally got to our Hotel. We checked in at the Heathman dumped our bags off, got directions and headed out to see Linda and her band (Mollybolt) perform. We got there just in time I could hear Linda's voice carrying across the street as we approached. It was great! She did such an awesome job and has a great voice. Check her out.




We spent the rest of our visit shopping and eating. Oh did we eat! We at at a great place called Clyde Common in the Ace Hotel. Thanks to Noelle who gave glowing reports based on our friend Steve's recommendation. Here is our meal.



Yummy focaccia bread with olive oil, salt and pepper.



Dan enjoying lavender lemonade.




Starters. I enjoyed the arugula salad with crushed olives, cheese and croutons. Dan had a roasted beet salad with potatoes, carrots, beans and other yummy stuff.




Main course. I enjoyed lamb shoulder (my first) with a corona bean puré. Dan had lamb tagliatelle. Both dishes were really good. My only gripe was there was too much fat on my lamb. Not being a lamb connoisseur I'm not sure if that was typical or not.



Waiting for dessert...




Dan had a crazy roasted tomato caramel tart with pine nuts. It sounded so gross to me, but I did try it and it wasn't half bad. Dan loved it. I had a blueberry lemon white chocolate trifle with lemon buttermilk sorbet and a shortbread cookie. I didn't even miss that there wasn't any real chocolate in it!

We loved the place, all farm fresh and local produce.



They even can their own food. It was great.

Sunday we had an excellent brunch with Linda at Meriwether's Restaurant. The food was really good, service however was super slow. But it gave us a lot of good time to catch up with Linda. When we were done Dan and I went to Powell's books and Jone's cupcake. The books were way better than the cupcakes, Dan of course picked up some good culinary references. I look forward to whatever it is he cooks out of them!