*scottstuff*

I finally made it down to Salumi for lunch today. I’ve been meaning to drop by for most of the past year, ever since I saw it plugged it on Food TV.

Salumi is an interesting little shop–it’s small and crowded, and even at 11:30 there was a 15 minute wait to get food. There are only a couple tables, so you’re best off getting things to go. The salami looked very authentic–nothing in the entire place looked packaged, processed (cured–yes. processed–no), or refined. There wasn’t even a hint of marketing or franchising. They crawled through sandwich orders; the programmer in me kept looking for ways to speed up the line and eliminate redundancy, but that doesn’t quite seem to be the goal here. Everything I saw looked delicious, and in the end, the experience of waiting in line just made me want to order more food.

I had the lamb sausage sandwich, which was good, but fairly subtle, and not exactly what I was looking for today, but I’m a sucker for lamb. I also grabbed some gnocchi, raw sausage, and salami for dinner tonight. I have high expectations.

We went out to Canlis with some friends on Friday. For those who aren’t familiar with Canlis, it’s one of the few dressy restaurants in Seattle. They’re more of a Special Occasion place then a Good Food place, but that’s not to say that the food is bad. It’s just that other places have better food for less money. They don’t have Canlis’s view or atmosphere, though.

I don’t really know what happened this time, but everything was just a bit off. They felt really crowded, their valets were behind picking up and dropping off cars, and the waiter wasn’t quite right. My wife ordered the chicken, which arrived half-raw (the center half inch was still translucent pink), and my Wasyugyu steak had 2-3 chunks of gristle. They tried to compensate for the chicken by bringing my wife a complementary desert, which would have worked, except she’d already ordered the apple pie. So, they brought her the pumpkin custard (which was decent), but not the pie that she’d ordered and wanted to try.

I’ve been meaning to put restaurant mini-reviews here for a while, but it’s been a few weeks since I’ve eaten at anyplace worthy of mention. I had lunch today at The Buffalo Deli in Belltown. I had a roast beef sub with everything, and it was probably the best sandwich I’ve had in years. Pretty much everything was perfect, except the price ($8.50 or so). The beef was great, the bread was great, the flavoring was was subtler then you’d expect on a sub sandwich, but it all just worked. Highly recommended.