Will be staying in downtown Seattle for one night with a free afternoon, before boarding a cruise ship the next day. Kind of a last minute booking.
We’ve been once a long time ago, and Kevin fondly remembers a Chinese place with fresh dungeness crab in a spicy black bean sauce. But I think that was in the International district. Staying at W Hotel, so I think our best bet will be Wild Ginger. Any other suggestions?
Our cruise is on HAL to Alaska, and we can take wine. Don’t particularly want to take it on the plane, so the plan is to buy a six pack before the cruise. The options I have come up with are Wine Outlet, Pike & Western, DeLaurentis, and Essence. Any others?
The first one is on the way to the port, so would require a taxi stop, the last one delivers but we have no idea what they have. The middle two require hauling wine around downtown unless we get a taxi. We would prefer to to pick our wines, and to expedite matters would want a selection of California wines since we are most familiar with those. OR and WA wines are an option, of course, and we would go French with some expert guidance.
Any Seattle-ites here that are familiar with the wine selections at these places? None have inventory online. Thanks!
Wine Outlet is basically a discount clearance type operation. Think upscale Trader Joe’s without the food. Pike and Western is a good shop, focused mostly on PNW wines, due to their tourist oriented location in Pike Place Market. DeLaurentis, also in the market, has a good selection of Italian wines, as well as others. I would guess that by Essence you mean Esquin, which has a very broad selection, one of the largest in town. Their inventory is online.
What type of food are you looking for? if you want Chinese food, do yourself a favor and cab over to the International district… Wild Ginger is not Chinese food… not even really Asian of any sorts…
If you want just ‘good’ food, tons of places near your hotel…
Wild Ginger is not Thai… it’s like Asian [con]fusion… it’s really not that good of anything (pretty good wine list tho)… so if you want Thai, i’d recommend a real thai place…
If you want fresh crab - prepared in “Chinese” ways. i’d go here: New Star Seafood: 516 S Jackson St, Seattle, WA
(no interest or connection other than we go there for seafood)…
When we crave crab or lobster (or geoduck) and we’re too lazy to drive 2 hours to Vancouver (let’s face it nothing in Seattle comes close to Vancouver), we go there… I’d caution that we are Chinese, so we seek pretty authentic Chinese flavors… if u want a more gentle/americanized flavors (or Thai ), u might not like it… but yah that place has live seafood, cooked in 4-5 traditional methods - Fresh (live), delish, not overly expensive…
Now, that said u won’t get a wine cellar at all… so it’s just food.
Sorry, I had never heard of Essence, but yes, it exists here as well. Esquin used to have the inventory online, but not now. However they have an internet only branch called madwine.com that shows their inventory, at least to give you an idea of what they have, as I think this is an internet only order, and ship to you operation. I don’t think you can order and pick up, but just browse thru it and then call Esquin to order. I have no idea why this is done that way, or why you don’t see the two operations linked to each other, but assume this is due to idiotic liquor laws.
They probably have corkage? but honestly the stems might be comically bad
we go when we want to stuff ourselves with reasonably priced live lobster… so we kinda just ditch the wine aspect… order a beer (which they won’t have a huge selection of)…
it’s kinda hole in the wall chinese joint… not a fancy “made for culinary main stream” place. they just have good live seafood…
), u might not like it… but yah that place has live seafood, cooked in 4-5 traditional methods - Fresh (live), delish, not overly expensive…![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
they just have good live seafood…