Restaurant Update….

Seems like winter has arrived a tad early; actually it feels like it has been here for almost a month already. But fear not, the weather has not stopped us from heading out to spend time with folks as the holiday season continues. Some of the places on the list include:

• Matt's in the Market – checked this out for lunch with Joanna and Mary. BTW, these two ladies both have a very serious golf game that would put most people to shame – men or women. They regaled us with tales of them hanging out with Lorena Ochoa right after she won her 1^st major at St. Andrews. NICE! We also got to hear about one of Mary's more composed moments when attempting to score a picture of Annika Sorenstam. And oh yeah, the food and wine were both really good too. Not a huge space, but nice and cozy plus we had an awesome view of the Olympics and Pike Place Market from our table.
  
• Chez Shea – checked this out for dinner with Ben and Nicole to celebrate their recent marriage. Unfortunately we were unable to go to their wedding, so we got to hear all about it at dinner plus we got into the usual current events political "discussion". I loved my Pear and Fourme D'Ambert Tart…. Sal actually made something similar back when we had the JDRF dinner at the end of September. Ironically enough, Chez Shea is in the same building and on the same floor as Matt's in the Market. And to top it off, Ben and Nicole were considerate enough to bring us a gift from their recent travels to Asia!
  
• Canlis – this is pretty much one of the best restaurants in the Puget Sound area. We actually had a gift card to go there and given some recent news on my job front, we felt we should go out and celebrate. David Kim and his team took such great care of us, and Dawn, our sommelier, deserves a special mention. She walked us through the Bordeaux section of the wine list (this wine list is something like 80+ pages) because we were interested in trying something from there, and we ended up with a bottle from Pomerol from the year 2000, which was excellent. Dawn also hooked us up with something that the Aussies call "the stickies" (sp?) – a Chambers Rutherglen Muscat – to have with our dessert course. YUM! We're going to try and find some of that!
  
• Latona Pub – love the grilled cheese and tomato-basil soup combo. They also have an awesome cheese selection, as well as a nice assortment of microbrews and wines.
  
• Mona's – also very solid food and the bartenders always take such great care of us.
  

More later on this week about some of the recent experiments in the kitchen. Stay tuned.