Chorus:
Dig a duck, dig a duck,
Dig a gooey duck duck
Dig a duck, dig a duck
Dig a duck a day

Maybe whoever wrote this song is big in Japan, where a sashimi craze can pluck a peaceful bivalve from its repose and turn it into an obsession. Not here though. Seattleites will gleefully argue whilst sipping lattes as to which is the most authentic sushi restaurant in town, but few of this new school would make it past the first stage in Survivor if they had to catch any of it.

So! Recordparty is here to help you help yourself. Let’s start with a few juicy facts, all of which point to why our city is actually better than New York and LA and blahblahblah that others drivel about. We actually still have critters than can be collected and consumed without having to fork over a wad of cash at a swanky eatery. I digress. Largest burrowing clam in the world? The geoduck. Can live longer than you can? The geoduck. That’s pronounced “gooey-duck”, in case you plan to use it in your next game of Scrabble.

A picture is definitely worth a thousand words on this one. Insert pun that your Uncle would make (yes, that one), utilizing the words “phallic” or “size”. Think back to puberty, and chuckle.

All right here under our noses…or toes…in the lower intertidal areas of Puget Sound. Some do know this, as in perhaps you if you stem from the Evergreen State College’s dominating athletics program, where the geoduck is the mascot. Maybe you can sing us the whole song, so we know how it goes.

The important part of all of this is that the geoduck tastes good, and you can collect it yourself. There’s lots of meaty goodness that can be breaded and fried like steaks, thinly sliced for sashimi, or grounded into chowder and clam-cakes. The collecting part is a bit trickier, but we tell you this because the lowest tides of the year are this upcoming week. If you find yourself on a beach away from the I-5 corridor (think islands and peninsulas), look for someone digging within a can, cussing, bleeding, with a huge shit-eating grin on their face. I’m sure if you help them dig, they’ll tell you all their secrets.

Frankly, this isn’t the drink of the week, but the need for quick content and the ease of the internet has driven this concoction straight to the top. I’m not even positive you are supposed to drink this per se, but at least it appears sterile.

If you want to try one, visit Howl at the Moon at 315 2nd Ave. Let us know how it felt!

Next week, our industrious reporters will report back with vivid accounts of their adventures in the world of fancy cocktails, I promise! Suggestions welcomed!

2222a 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA
$, Games!, Outdoor drinking, Tattoos, DJs, Late nite eats, Veggie friendly

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Shorty’s appeals to child and punk rocker in all of us. The pinball gets a solid B+, with its mixture of vintage games and classic mid-90s Williams machines (including the ever maddening Adam’s Family). They appear to pay their maintenance bills, as games are always in good playing condition. Best of all, you can drink yourself silly while sampling all the options (note to those who like to drink alone!).The service is appropriately to the point and your fellow drinkers tend to share a love for booze more than any other characteristic, though the crowd is more middle aged punk and less Belltown big-panted.It’s hard to evaluate Shorty’s food. At the end of a night of drinking, there’s nothing more appealing than a solid veggie dog, complete with all the fixings (including an atomic green relish). The dogs go down easy, too. I’ve had three on some nights. At this point, I have nothing but enthusiastic praise to offer. It’s only later that questions arise. Perhaps it’s on the walk home, or maybe later falling asleep, but almost certainly by morning the life saving edibles will have turned into a gastro-intestinal knife fight. All in all, it might be a fair trade. It doesn’t stop me from returning, eventually.

…at least that’s what I call it. Why? Because it seems cheesy to name a Mexican place Tequilas. OK, Taqueria Tequilas to be exact. But! They didn’t even start serving Margaritas ‘till recently, so perhaps they’re warming up to the name as well.

Anyhoo, you should go there, and eat food, and enjoy a siesta. Perhaps you’ll go this weekend for one of the final World Cup soccer games, where you can relax in a tranquil atmosphere surrounded by Mexican-style black and white historical photos on one wall and warm and fuzzy art scenes on the other. And! You won’t even have to listen to the American idiot sportscasters, as of course the games will be shown on Univision (note to American idiot sportscasters: when a player’s name on the French team is Henry, it’s not pronounced the same way as your neighbor’s dog).

So when you’re watching the World Cup soccer games there this weekend, if the previous evenings activities leave you not wanting to booze it up at lunchtime…well, then you don’t have to. You could have a nice refreshing glass of Horchata. However! Maybe you do want a nice little “pello del perro” (editor’s note: record party only had 2 years of Spanish in high school. Which unfortunately means nothing). Then you could order one of their newly formulated Margaritas. It would only cost you $3.50 for a 12 oz, so why the heck not.

Yes they have beer. Beer makes you feel good. You should order something that needs washing down so as to rationalize getting a beer. I recommend the Super Quesadilla. It’s saucy, it’s cheesy, it’s real good. The prices for the entrees aren’t dirt cheap, but you get what you pay for. That quesadilla will come with enough guacamole and sour cream that you won’t need to order any sides, and there’s a salsa bar to boot. I find that if I’m by myself, I need to suggest that I want chips. But! If there’s two of us and a tip is put in the jar, then chips magically appear on their own.

It’s never crowded here. Perhaps it’s dominated in the Crown Hill scene by Gordito’s on one side (over-rated) and Burrito Loco on the other (muy bien, but more of a family atmosphere). Normally I don’t tell people about places I like that aren’t crowded, because really I don’t want to see you there. I like you though. So! When you order the Tequila Burrito and are happy it’s not overly filled with rice and lettuce, you’ll understand.

By the way, I know you were wondering this, so yes, one of their meat options is lengua (tonque). Ole! If you try it, let me know how it is.

Let me begin by saying, I don’t consider myself to be a cheap person. That said, I came across a place this weekend that left me with an overpriced sense of disappointment.
Zak’s in Ballard appears to be a neighborhood burger joint, much in the spirit of A&W, except created in the visions of someone’s 14 year old son and mid-western aunt. In the window hangs a “Sorry, we’re open” sign while inside licenses plates from across the states are splattered all over the walls. (Whoever is responsible for starting this obnoxious decorating trend needs to die a torturous and aesthetically displeasing death.) And was I supposed to be observing a surfing/beach theme? But to be honest, I didn’t really care about the décor as it was so cliché it’s almost not worth mentioning- and I would be eating outside.
(Photo diclaimer: not an actual Zak’s burger.)

My friend and I ordered our food and our bill came to 25 dollars. 25 dollars! Our lunch included the following: one bacon cheeseburger with fries and a shake, and one salmon burger with fries and a pop. It was by no means horrible. In the same breath, it was by no means incredible. My salmon tasted slightly like beef, which I understood considering it was the primary attraction, (but I wondered if/how they managed to please a vegan crowd with beef-tainted Boca.) They only do one thing, but I didn’t see any real effort to hone in on that specialty. I certainly didn’t see their food backing up their prices.

Perhaps I’m deluding myself with “back in my day” notions of how things were and should continue to be. The problem is, I’m only 23 and fairly certain I have much time left before I’ve completely lost touch. I remember this café in Chicago that made the best grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. It was as expensive as the heftier sandwiches on the menu, but worth its price as this was the most perfect grilled cheese and tomato sandwich I’ve experienced to this day. Chicago is better place because of the Pick Me Up Café.

When deciding where to find standard American fare in Ballard, there seem to be plenty of cozy cafes that will grill the board shorts off Zak’s and leave more than bus fare in your pocket.

I’m writing this from memory – I don’t have any notes from when we stopped in for dim sum at this unassuming Jackson Street establishment a week ago – but the gist of the experience is this: two people stuffed themselves silly and happy for a grand total of $12. I had been meaning to try out the restaurant for a year now – it’s a block from my house and on my walk to work – but somehow hadn’t, perhaps in part due to it’s breakfast and lunch hours and in part due to its uninviting facade (rather typical for the area).

It’s not incredibly hard to find serviceable if not inspiring dim sum in this town, but these places usually follow the “law of dim sum” – namely, everyone coughs up $10 at the end of the meal, unless you are a party of two, in which case each coughs up $12. I’m not clear on exactly how this law is enforced, but I had never been able to break it until this past weekend.

There are other not-the-norm elements of the dining experience – you have to order the food instead of having it carted to you in waves of steamed goods, fried goods, and sweets. Some might find this disappointing – there is definitely something great about being plied with food the minute you sit down. This restaurant is small and volume of customers is low, so I understand the reasoning behind the approach. Plus, I’ll wait five minutes for freshly fried dumplings over instantly delivered stale ones any day.

But back to the food. We had five or six dishes, which included han bows, dumplings, leek pancakes, sweet sticky rice and most importantly, salty soy milk (dou jiang).
While I’m sure it’s easy enough to find this stuff around town, I hadn’t had any since I lived in Taipei for a year and it was what I had for breakfast almost every day. Delicious!

photo by chaoym

For the uninitiated, see what our friends at wikipedia have to say:

“Salty” soy milk is made with a combination of chopped pickled mustard greens (搾菜), dried shrimp and, for curdling, vinegar, garnished with youtiao croutons, chopped scallion (spring onions), cilantro (coriander), meat floss (肉鬆; ròu sōng), or shallot as well as sesame oil, soy sauce, chili oil or salt to taste.

As I said, delicious! Some might be thrown by the purposeful curdling, but once you get by that, it’s easy to see why it’s a breakfast staple. They also have sweet soy milk, which is simply warm soy milk with sweetener. It’s pretty great as well, especially when served with the above mentioned you tiao (for dipping).

So there you go – a really good dim sum option at the corner of Jackson and 20th – a corner that is a fast becoming a prime eating destination with neighbors Hidmo Eritrean and Moonlight Cafe.