Well Done You!!!

Just a quick note to say a heart felt Congratulations to my long time friends Majorie & Claude on the occasion of their 50th (yes that's FIVE ZERO) wedding anniversary!! And here's to many more to come. Cheers, -S

Fun & Food in Seattle

It was a great day in Seattle today! I started off my afternoon by going up to Jack's Cellar at the south end of Lake City way to meld two of my favorite activities (photography & wine tasting) together. My long time friend, Seattle Photographer Steve Schneider was having the reception for his show "The First Three Songs". It's a selection of some of his shots from 25 years of shooting Rock & Roll concerts, including some great classic Grateful Dead images. The show runs thru the end of September so if your in the Seattle area you should definitely stop by and check it out!

And the Barberas wines were pretty good too!

After the tasting I met up with my long time friends Shirley & Dan and we went to check out a very new and much anticipated addition to the "Ballard Dining Scene". It's called Delancey. In fact it's so new it didn't even have a name anywhere on the building ("it's a work in progress")...

Delancey is the child of Molly Wizenberg of the "Orangette" Blog and her husband Brandon. I'm a fan of both her writing and her photography so when I got to Seattle it was definitely high on the list! The "3 of us" arrived about 6:30 and were told it would be about an hour, bummer. But we drank adult beverages in the entry area and a table opened up in about 30 minutes...

As to the ambiance, I'd just say simple and clean. With nice details like the salt/pepper flake bowls on the tables.

We ordered a couple more "adult hop based beverages" along with a "Billy's Tomatos" Salad that we split between the 3 of us and everyone really enjoyed. Then for the main event the "New York Style" wood fired oven baked pizzas!!! We split 2 pizzas between us, a strait up pepperoni and for number 2 the "Padron" with roasted padron peppers. Simple review, both pizzas WERE EXCELLENT!

And for desert, well we tried two options off the menu. Shirley chose the fresh fruit popsicle in a tall shot glass, I of course went with the Chocolate Chip Cookie with gray salt. Let me just say that while there was some pizza taken with us and enjoyed later... I don't believe there was any evidence that we even ordered desert!! I'll definitely return as often as I can! Thanks Molly & Brandon and your excellent staff for an excellent experience. Cheers, S

An afternoon at the beach...

I had a lovely afternoon with Stu Mineta. Stu is a an experienced airline pilot who grew up commuting between Virginia during the school year and the flying back to the family home in San Jose California for the summers. Those flights back to California are where he first got the flying bug. But while we chatted about his youth and life flying airplanes for a living what we were really there for was to talk about what he remembered growing up about his dad.

You see his dad is former Congressman & Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta. Stu's dad has had quite a career and life so far... from being interned at Heart Mountain as a youth to serving as Mayor of San Jose, a member of the US House of Representatives for 20 years and the positions as both Secretary of Commerce & Transportation as well as a recipient of the Presidential Metal of Freedom. But with all his accomplishments one of the best quotes from Stu was that "with all that my father has done in his professional life... to me he's always just been dad."

Thanks again to the Mineta family for a great afternoon!

Cheers,

-s