Quinn's
Hands down, Quinn's is one of my favorite Seattle restaurants. It's just not that it's located within a 15 minute walk of my house, or that the bar cranks out excellent drinks and has an impressive beer menu, or that the wait staff is friendly, cool and crush-worthy, but also, most importantly, the food is amazing. Wait, that's amazing as in a-MA-zing. As in, not one bad meal in the probably 15 times I've dined since it opened last October.
Quinn's calls itself a gastropub, which means that the traditional pub food is there, but elevated to another level. Rarebit? That's served as a warm pretzel with a complex cheese sauce. Salad, yes, but spiced up with new ingredients; my favorite is the bread salad, with fennel, radishes, olives, cucumbers, lettuce and of course, grilled bread. Hamburger...wagyu beef with a pile of delicious fries. Meat, in the form of braised oxtails with gnocchi. Foul, duck confit. Bangers and mash, elevated to a housemade sausage with lentils. Fish, in the form of scallops. Braised eel. Oh, and the list continues...
A few weeks ago, I ended up at Quinns three times in one week, once with my brother, once with Gabe, Jess, Lisa and Tracy, and once again with Lisa, plus Andy, as they helped me snap out of a blue funk with good food and drink. It was an excellent weeklong adventure...Along the way, I snapped a picture of the salad and savory cheesecake, with fresh raspberries and a raspberry dressing. Oh, delicious. The photo looks delicious, the taste is even better.
BTW, I met the head chef in the bathroom line. A Boston Southie, polite enough to want me to cut ahead of him in line. "No," I insisted. "You are feeding all of us. I can't go ahead of you."