Seattle Day 2: Pike's Market, Palace Kitchen, Pioneer Park

This is the second of four installments about my recent trip to Seattle.

Friday morning started bright and early in with a 6:15 breakfast with co-workers. The business agenda called for meetings from 7a-6p. The plan was for NL to sleep in and enjoy a few Seattle sites on her own.

The morning session of meetings ended around 11:30a. At this point I called NL to see where she was and perhaps meet for lunch. When I got in touch with her she was on the way back to the hotel after a morning of exploring. I met her in the lobby and we headed over to Pike Place Market, famous for the flying fish market.

This place was really cool. There were hundreds of vendors with fresh seafood, meat, fruits, vegetables, baked goods, flowers and pretty much anything you can think of. We walked around sampling whatever we could. We purchased some fresh peaches and a few packages of jerky from a vendor. Other nearby vendors included restaurants, wine shops and the original Starbucks.

After roaming around the market, we found Kells Irish Pub tucked in an alley. Since I had to go back to the meetings, I had a Pepsi and some Dungeness crab cakes. They were light and crispy with a lemon caper sauce. A perfect lunch for a warm and busy day. NL had the crab sandwich, a crab salad served open face with melted cheese. It looked very good.

After lunch, I headed back to the business portion of the trip for a few more hours. After the meeting, NL and I walked down to the Palace Kitchen for dinner. I visited this restaurant on my last visit and I was looking forward to enjoying it again. The restaurant was kind of busy, but we were immediately seated at a cozy table near the window.

We started our dinner with cocktails and a couple of appetizers - fried corn on the cob and bacon wrapped quail. The quail was okay, it was very flavorful and melted in your mouth. The corn was everything I remember from the year before. 2-3 inch wide pieces of corn on the cob were seasoned and deep fried and served with honey butter and a chipotle style butter. I recommend this to anyone.

For the main course I had the Washington chicken and NL enjoyed the salmon. Both were well-received and were complimented nicely with a bottle of 2004 A to Z Pinot Noir.

After dinner we walked to the Pioneer Park area of Downtown and stopped at a local bar for cocktails. They had a great Cult coverband playing and strong drinks. Not a bad combination.

It was getting late, so we made our way back to the hotel for a full day of Saturday fun.