Sunday Suppers : the Corson Building (and other eating)

We’ll get back to the house stuff soon (promise) but before we do, we HAVE to share with you the all the amazing eating we did on Sunday, particularly dinner.

Breakfast

We got up reasonably early and headed to Capitol Hill have wood fired bagels at Eltana.  We’ve been on a Seattle bagel quest since we left the East coast 6 years ago.  I was optimistic we’d like this place but Micah wasn’t so sure.  I went with the wheat bagel with honey-almond cream cheese (below) and Micah had the everything bagel with plain cream cheese.

The verdict?  It was good.  Probably the best we’ve had here.  The bagels are small (which is good) but sadly NOTHING like the bagels at the Bagel Store in Williamsburg (Brooklyn).  I used to dream about the bagels while riding the Chinatown bus up from DC.  Every so often Micah whines about how he misses their bagels.  Memories…

In Between Eating

After breakfast we wandered around Capitol Hill which don’t often do unless we’re headed up there for a show or to meet up with friends.  It’s usually hard to find parking, busy and a little bit of a pain.  We basically had the neighborhood to ourselves.  Most of it’s residents don’t rise before noon.   We walked down to Taylor Shellfish in the Melrose Market and were tempted by the oysters.  So many delicious little guys calling for us to take them home.  Since we had big dinner plans, we decided instead on picking up some smoked oysters for lunch.  We headed to the farmer’s market and picked up some fresh goat cheese, a tomato, some fresh bread and some ginger beer to wash it all down.  After a few more hours of wandering, we headed home for lunch.

Lunch

This is lunch:

Fresh bread, French breakfast radishes, genoa salami, sliced white peaches, smoked oysters, pineapple tomato and fresh goat cheese.  We bought everything that morning except the French breakfast radishes (from our garden), the genoa salami and white peaches.

This stuff was GOOD.  We both really love ginger beer and was wishing we bought a few more bottles.  I ‘m even tempted to brew my own ginger beer.  Anyone have a good recipe?

Add is some sweet pea blossoms and you have the perfect lunch.

Dinner

Before dinner we did a bunch of stuff around the house which we’ll get to later this week.  Today is all about dinner.

via gourmet

We decided to invite a few people out to celebrate our birthdays together as our restaurant of choice is a little pricey.  We chose the Corson Building (read about it here) by Matt Dillon.  You can visit the links which will save me the time of telling you how amazing the place is and the chef’s skills are.  We need to move on to the food.

The Corson Building is small.  Like 30ish people (maybe) small.  We went for Sunday dinner served family style which I counted to be about 6 or 7 courses and wine for $60 per person.  It seemed like a lot at first (we didn’t know how many courses there would be) but it turned out to be a great meal that was well worth the money.

You start the evening outside wandering around the grounds of the building with a glass of bubbly in your hand.

Here they have garlic, speckle lettuce (we’re growing it too!) and onions.  They had everything you could think of.  Ok, everything you could think of that would grown in Seattle.

We mingled and took pictures with the waiter while a few people played bocce.  It was great weather and gardens were lovely. Eventually made our way inside where we shared a table with another group.  Warning, there wasn’t a written menu and it was loud so we had to piece together what we were eating when dishes didn’t start at our end of the table.

The first thing we had was a mixed nut/seed blend that was passed around.  It was good and nice way to see how family style would work.

Next we had a crudité plate filled with items from the garden (fennel, radishes, carrots, shaved potato, and celery) and accompanied by a delicious dipping sauce.

Following the crudité was a pork roulade with pickled rhubarb, golden raisins and shallots served with fresh bread.  This stuff was yummy.  I called it rich man’s Kahlua pig spread.

Next up was a scrambled eggs dish.  Yes, scrambled.  We know, we weren’t sure why we were have scrabbled eggs until we tried them.  I (Catherine) have no words.  Scrambled eggs with a soft French cheese and heavy cream mixed in over a bed sautéed greens and topped with edible flowers.  You have NEVER had eggs this good.  EVER.  Amazing.  Really. 

The eggs were just to get us warmed up for the main dish of the night, spotted prawns cooked with fresh local mussels and manila clams served with sea beans.  We had never had sea beans before but would happily have them again.  Seriously, this was good.  Good like you are not sure you’ll be able to eat any of these things again separately now that you know they can be THIS good together.

We thought we were getting dessert next and that would be it but we were wrong.  Next up was a delicately baked black cod with house cured bacon over potatoes, mushrooms and Walla Walla sweet onions.  I have never had cod this good or onions so delicious that I was trying to steal them off Micah’s plate.

Dessert was next and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat it.  I was full and deliriously happy from the food and company.  Any then this came out and nearly knocked us all out.

Some sort of creamy custard with alpine strawberries from the garden and local rainier cherries.  All conversation stopped everywhere and all you could hear were spoons scraping ceramic ramekins.

We thought this was going to be a once in a lifetime visit but we have to go back.  We have to.  We thought our meal at Ad Hoc was the best we’d ever had but this beats it by a long shot.  Actually, this might be one of the best food days we’ve ever had.  Is it too much to celebrate our birthdays here every year?  If only…

What the best meal you ever had?