I was in Seattle for business, but decided to visit a friend and combine work and pleasure. Arriving by Amtrak by noon, we then walked from the West Lake area to the Capital Hill neighborhood, the neighborhood that sort of became our neighborhood theme for this trip.
By accident, we ended up on that Sunday at Skillet Diner. We arrived towards the end of the Brunch rush around 2pmish, and we were only two people and willing to sit at the counter, reducing our wait to perhaps only 10 minutes or so, though the mid-70s sunny weather and the seats and benches outside made the waiting quite tolerable. We ordered a liquid libation (even though we had “rested” after our walk up the hill with a sangria margarita at Bimbos Cantina just before- we think that drink made us realize how much we needed food).
Also, we each ordered our own entree, and I ordered poutine to share on top… even though we also had dinner plans at 6pm. Will we be smarter next time? Maybe, not sure. I do want to go back- I had a hard time selecting from the menu, and that was just the brunch menu, not the dinner diner one. Why didn’t they tell me I can buy the bacon jam to take home on that brunch menu!
The poutine – hand-cut fries,gravy, cheddar, herbs – was serviceable but a little too soggy, and after being spoiled by the curds of cheese in the crisper fries of the poutine of Potato Champion here in Portland, Skillet Diner’s version didn’t shine. It does absorb alcohol though. She had the “the ultimate grilled cheese” with brie, cheddar and american cheeses on brioche toast with the addition of bacon jam, which was delicious. I had been eyeing it too… in retrospect we should have shared it.
But I greedily ordered another entree based on the raves on Foodspotting, a pork belly & cornmeal maple braised waffle with 2 eggs (I chose sunny side up for the runny yolk). Individually, the pieces were ok, but carefuly composed on a fork together, they were a combination of yolky richness and salty fatty porkyness and sweet and mealy with slight crispy softness waffle.
We should have stopped there. But we were feeling adventurous, and so we stopped at the Unicorn. Animals looked down from the walls of the first floor (we didn’t know there was a second floor that included videogames until later) including the bar side where the bar is colorfully painted with rainbow of colors and a water buffalo had a cigarette dangling from its lip. We sat in the booth with zebra pattern back and an aqua and black striped window outlined with a fancy valentine heart of red glitter as a unicorn in a shampoo commercial looked down upon us.
The drink we shared, Unicorn Jizz, of Three Olives Mango Vodka, triple sec, OJ, sweet ‘n’ sour, grenadine, Sprite, hurt our digestive system for the rest of the night. It also brought up memories and conversations of what you drink when you are in young and in college and the college Greek system. We were amused as we also read the menu and shuddered at other mixed drinks with Bubblegum Vodka, shots of cotton candy or cupcake vodka dropped into energy drinks, other beverage names such as Morning Wood and Thug Passion, and a food menu that offered no less than 10 versions of corndogs and a sweet section that included deep frying with Hershey’s kiss battered objects like Twinkies, Oreos and Reeses Pieces. It definitely seems like the kind of place that can f you up. When we told one of our younger designer friends of it, I would say he was “impressed” we visited.
