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Lunch at The Whale Wins

At the moment, one of my definite favorite restaurants is The Whale Wins in Wallingford/Fremont.
Chef Renee Erickson (also behind Walrus and Carpenter in Ballard) mixes her amazing talent with many European influences (England, France, Italy, and Spain). 
I went with two friends, and we shared several plates:
First, two tartines on very good bread. One with sardines, curried tomato paste, and shaved fennel and another with herring rillettes and pickled shallots.
Then we tried roasted clams with sausage, spring onion and sumac. I love sumac’s flavor.
We also had warm lentils, swiss chard, spinach, cilantro, orange and tahine.
And the desserts… oh my!
We had Peychaud Bitter frozen sabayon with citrus and meringue. And finally, something that was recommended to us by our waitress was butter roasted zucchini bread with crème fraîche. She was right, it was delightful!

They offer a long list of wines from Italy and France. Among the French ones some we usually don’t find in Seattle (Janières, Apremont, Saumur Domaine Filliatreau…).

Mkt.

Mkt. is one of the latest Ethan Stowell restaurants. Situated south of Green Lake, its name comes from the neighborhood name and streets: Meridian, Keystone & Tangletown.

We went there this week for the first time and it was a great surprise. The dishes on the menu were all very appealing and I could not decide what to order. The meats, fish and veggies were all tempting. We ended up with 4 dishes to share:

– Dungeness crab, endive, fennel, and apple salad
– Grilled rabbit & frisée bacon salad
– Vegetable tajine, dates, and preserved lemon
– Smoked mushroom, sweet potato gnocchi with crispy shallots

It was full of flavor and you could feel the attention to detail in each dish. Everything was so tasty that we had to have a look at the desserts menu and… The blood orange sorbet was amazing!

My pictures are not very good so I highly recommend you to go there and share yours!

   

— Mkt2108 N 55th Street