Last month Frantic Foodie, http://franticfoodie.wordpress.com sent an email out about 3 dinners Tom Douglas was doing at Palace Kitchen to see what people thought of his new restaurants opening in South Lake Union (SLU). I already knew that Serious Pie had opened and had been reading for a long time that he would have an additional restaurant in SLU but had know idea it would be three!
After seeing a few reviews and updates on Facebook regarding people checking out Cuaco, Tom's new Italian restaurant I decided my friends and I should go check it out. When we got to the building we decided to check out Brave Horse Tavern upstairs first.
The place was packed at 9pm on a Friday night which is awesome since most people I know don't even know it's open. We decided to have a couple pretzels with dipping sauces, cheese curds and some snack mix. I won't lie I loved the space, the oxtail jam ( which was really a side for the burgers I think) was awesome, the peanut butter with bacon was not. The cheese curds were yummy but I like the cheese curds at Pearl in Bellevue just as well.
One thing that was random was our whole group got carded ( no one was under 25) my friend Lincoln's birthday was Wednesday and our servers was last night when we were there. The boys tried to make a joke about it being her sweet sixteen which she totally didn't pick up on and Lincoln debated on weather or not to buy her a birthday shot. Also important were the strangers sitting to our right. We asked how they knew about Brave Horse and it sounded like mostly from Urban Spoon which I thought was random. We played six degrees of separation and I knew one of the coworkers of the girl we were talking too. Why is all this small talk relevant you ask? Well I have been urged to make a blog for months if not years and couldn't come up with a name I liked. So random strangers boyfriend came up with Take a Bite Out of Jew and I loved it. So there you have it.
After Brave Horse we went downstairs to Cuaco http://cuoco-seattle.com/ for dinner. OMG it was amazing. I saw Herschell Taghap http://twitter.com/#!/SpecialDark who is a cook for Tom Douglas. I asked him what to try. His suggestions were spot on. We started with the duck gizzards and sweet breads and piln, lasagna and gnocchi for our entrees. They were all amazing. The piln was filled with rabbit, pork and veal and each little pasta had an amazing flavor. I don't even know where to begin with the gnocchi they were soft and fluffy and basically melted in your mouth. They had a nettle pesto on them which was great. I never had tried gizzards of any sorts before. They were great. We went with the hazelnut torte for dessert which was also out of this world. I am so excited I tried both of these places last night.
On a side note after Cuaco we went up to Capitol Hill we had great drinks at Liberty followed by one of the most awkward experiences ever. We stopped into the first night at Varro up on 12th. It was really strange. Weird crowd, DJ playing ( which on occasion is okay), and crazy mural on one wall. My friends thought the space was best suited for an eclectic burger joint. They weren't serving food any more even though people seemed to be getting food after we arrived. We had 5 different drinks, a Hemingway, a spin on a French 75 called the Ital 75, The Hill and a few others. I applaud them for having a ton of amaros and having a variety of drinks however out of the 5 we had only one or two were particularly good.
To finish the night we went to an old friend, Tavern Law. Brian made me a drink called a Bobby Burns, an out of this world scotch drink and I sipped on it until we got kicked out at 2. It was great trying Tom Douglas' new places I highly recommend Cuaco don't however no rush to get to Varro.
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