Yep, we went to Seattle back in June. Yep, I’m writing about it in September. Awwwwww yeah.
After our long journey across the state of Washington, we finally made it to Seattle! My first choice of a restaurant closed at 9PM and we wouldn’t make it in time. A quickie Yelp search yielded me this place: Jiaozi which was in the International District in Seattle. We snagged parking right across the street and made it inside before they closed. Phew.
Jiaozi Dumpling House
A few more diners tumbled in before closing but after a certain point, they turned people away since it would be past their closing time. I’m glad we made it in for our first meal in Seattle!
Mmmm. A menu full of dumplings and noodles. Just what I like.
Here’s a little overhead shot of our whole meal that evening.
I really wanted handmade dumplings and decided on getting the Pork Bone Soup Noodle [$11.99]. It’s literally a big ass bone swimming in some pork broth with noodles on the bottom. I feel like either our waitress told us or there’s a note somewhere on the menu that has a little warning about there being no meat. But this pork bone had plenty of meat for us to eat! Gosh, it was so flavorful too!
I scooped out a bit of the delicious handmade noodles and a bit of the pork meat from the bone and put it into a little side bowl. The noodles were DELICIOUS. Great texture and consistency. I loved them!
I knew it was too much food when I ordered but hell, I wanted some dumplings. We got the pork dumplings – or as it’s listed on the menu, Pork Jiaozi, pan fried [$11.59]. They come on a bit plate and they’re all interconnected with a lacy bottom.
The dumplings were juicy and filled with a nice mixture of pork and I believe green onions. The dumpling wrapper was perfection. Great texture, nice chew, crispy on the bottom and a wonderfully juicy pork filling on the inside. Jake and I loooooved these they were so darn good!
Jake also wanted some chicken wings [$6.50]. I don’t really remember these, honestly. I only remember the dumplings and noodles!
I totally forgot about this until I did the photos for this post but they had soy sauce with GARLIC IN IT. It was incredibly amazing and quite frankly I’m wondering why every place in the world doesn’t do this. The garlic made the soy sauce taste SO MUCH BETTER. In fact I think I need to make my own at home. Now that I’ve remembered such a thing exists again.
Care for a dumpling??
Jiaozi Dumpling House
414 8th Ave S
Seattle, WA 98104
After getting our tummies full of dumplings and noodles, we headed to our Airbnb just outside the city to settle in for the night and get ready for our next Seattle adventure.
Which happened to be…. the Pike Place Market!
Pike Place Market
I’m showing this photo first because it’s an establishing shot. And look! It’s sunny! I think we didn’t see the sun again for three days after this shot. Ha.
Here’s what we actually saw first. The elevator to the market from the parking garage! I wanted to get to the market early before it got too crazy and crowded so we arrived around 9AM.
A little rooftop view from the parking garage. Over there on the left are some sporting stadium things. I don’t remember that wheel being there on my last visit to Seattle.
Our first step into Pike Place Market! I didn’t have a real plan that morning. My only plan was to find a few spots to eat from and otherwise just wander around.
Just like a fruit roll up! But not really. Because it’s a log.
Rainer Cherries are the besssssst.
Also I totally got one of those “oh my god” peaches. The guy hawking the fruit wares told us they called them that after so many people exclaimed “oh my god!” after eating a sample of the peaches. The peaches were really, really good.
I got some salmon jerky for my dad.
One of the many fresh fish stalls at the market. Luckily Jake caught them doing the fish-throwing thing when we walked by. I didn’t see it but I’ve seen it before so I didn’t mind that I didn’t see it this time.
One of the first things I stopped for was a couple of pastries at Mee Sum Pastry.
There was a lot to choose from!
I ended up getting one BBQ Pork Crispy and one Pork and Shrimp Sui Mai. The pork crispy was eh. It was okay. A little dry. The pork and shrimp sui mai was delicious and incredibly juicy with a big old piece of shrimp hiding inside. I’d eat that again in a heartbeat.
Next food stop was at Beecher’s Handmade Cheese.
They had a few samples out!
Plus you can watch them make cheese.
Usually there’s a line to try the World’s Best Macaroni and Cheese but since it was well before noon we got in right away and were able to try it out.
And… well… it wasn’t really the world’s best in my opinion. It was good. It was cheesy. But it didn’t quite have that something-something that made me swoon over it. I like it a little creamier than this and with a mix of cheeses.
Final food stop at Pike Place Market in Seattle was at Piroshky Piroshky. There was definitely a line for this place, even in the early morning. It was a little later in the morning by the time we wandered over here. If I had known there would be a line, I would have tried to find this place first!
On their window outside the bakery, there’s a menu with drawings of the pastries they have. These are the savory ones.
And these are the sweet ones.
There was a lady working on making these pastries filled with sausages.
The line is out in the street and it took probably 20-25 minutes to get through the line. Once you’re up on the sidewalk, it’s not long. That’s your first chance to look at everything in the case before it’s your turn to order.
I wish we could have tried everything!! But we limited ourselves to three items.
We took our items to a little back alley spot that I found while seeking out the bathroom.
I saw this pastry with the swirl of cream cheese and the marrionberries and I thought HELL YEAH I need that in my life! It’s called a Cream Cheese Vatrushka. It’s a flat pastry with the cream cheese and berries and powdered sugar. The cream cheese is NOT sweetened – it’s just regular plain old tangy cream cheese with the berries on top. I wanted the cream cheese to be sweeter but as it was it was a little heavy. The marrionberries were tasty though but overall I felt this was prettier than it actually tasted. I wouldn’t get this again.
Jake picked out this Lemon Roll (I think that’s what it’s called anyway) and I’m glad he did because DAMN it was TASTY. There’s a bit of streusel stuff on top and the lemon filling was really nice – zesty and zingy with just the right amount of sweetness with the yummy sweet roll.
My hands down #1 OMG favorite thing was the BEEF AND ONION. On the menu this is marked as “traditional” which is why I wanted to try it – I figured I should try something old school. It doesn’t even look like much. It’s not pretty like the marrionberry thing. But don’t let that deter you!
On the inside of the flaky crusty pastry is a simple filling of beef and onion with probably magical Piroshky spices in it. It was SO FREAKING GOOD. Incredibly simple but also incredibly delightful. The beef and onion just work with the crispy, flaky pastry. I would eat this every day if I could. Holy hell. YUM.
We walked around a bit and then I discovered we ended up above where we enjoyed our breakfast pastries. This was a stairway heading down into that area.
It started to rain not long after. I was glad we had already eaten before the rain began.
We wandered around some more and then asked someone where the Gum Wall was.
It’s kind of… right below Pike Place Market.
And yup… it’s exactly what you think it is.
It’s an alley full of gum.
Some people got creature with their gum additions. In a few of the shops in Pike Place, they sell gum for $3 a package so you can add to the Gum Wall. We opted to not to.
A few interesting things I saw wandering around the market.
And here’s the other kooky thing I wanted to see at Pike Place. This Giant Shoe Museum!
It’s located on one of the lower levels of Pike Place. It’s pretty much just a wall with shoes inside of it.
Hello creepy clown.
Fifty cents basically turns on the light for you so you can gander at the giant shoes in the Giant Shoe museum. There were some damn big shoes in there. And yes, it was totally worth the fifty cents I put in there for the amount of entertainment I got out of it. Heh heh.
I have more Seattle stuff to share! At another time! Stay tuned.
That’s good that the restaurant was still open! That bone soup looked pretty good and actually with meat too.
Haven’t been to Seattle in 10+ years. Would love to go again, now that I like coffee, ha ha. There are so many great shops up there. At Pike Market, I remember we went to that Russian food stall. We had some sort of meat pastry which we liked. YESSS, giant shoe museum! Worth .50! There’s a gum wall in San Luis Obispo as well. It was kind of gross.