The Vegetarian Gods saw fit to bestow upon this weekend a veritable hailstorm of opportunities for me to stuff my very happy little face. Naturally, in order to properly honor my new role as blogger it was incumbent upon me to stuff that face valiantly - something for which my taste-buds are still thanking me while my stomach remains content to remind me of its limits. Dear readers (however many or few you may be): please know that no matter how great this sacrifice may seem it is one that I took on lovingly...and with embarrassing gusto.
Where else to start but that first meal of the day? In search of a good breakfast joint one weekend morning about a year ago I pulled the name "Marcia's Silver Spoon" out of a round of Google Roulette and dragged an unwitting Derek out to an industrial area near south Tacoma. If "industrial area" sounds like a place for nuts and bolts and not one's eggs and hash-browns I must admit that at first glance we, too, were not quite sure what we were signing up for. Marcia's is one of those places that has earned the title of a "hole in the wall" joint. There are roughly 10 tables, limited bar seating and always, always a line if you arrive later than 8am on a weekend. If you are all about aesthetics come prepared to find beauty not in the decor but in the food.
Right off the bat one thing that I love about Marcia's is that I have options both as a vegetarian and as a picky eater (and I am notoriously picky about breakfast!). This particular Saturday, accompanied by two "partners in eating" (aka Mom and Dad), I dug into the Veggie Omelette and Pancakes. And yes, eating "partners" are required at Marcia's considering that your small hill of an omelette comes accompanied by not one, but two pancakes bigger than your head and your eating partner's head combined. At the risk of repeating sentiments similar to those expressed against tofu last week I still have to say that the Marcia's Veggie Omelette is all the more impressive for the fact that I hate eggs. Unlike tofu, however, omelettes are something that I have always wanted to like - having all the best veggie and cheesy goodies stuffed into my very own yellowy, spongy, kryptonite has always seemed vastly unfair and generated severely misplaced jealousy against those who actually like eggs. All this is no more at Marcia's. The egg is light, fluffy and moist instead of heavy or greasy as with other omelettes I have tried and the proportions of filling to egg are perfect. The veggies (bell pepper, onion, green onion, mushrooms, etc) are cooked perfectly so that there is just a little bit of crispness left in them to compliment the softness of the egg. Also, since I am one who enjoys eating even raw onion (much to the displeasure of anyone who happens to be nearby), I like that the onion is allowed to have a little stronger presence. Those of you who like your onion more on the cooked side, though, never fear! Mom, who split the omelette with me, generally prefers this, too, but remarked on how well done she thought the veggie mixture was.
The real star of the show, though, was the pancakes. And really, when you get sight of them it's hard not to admit that they eclipse everything around them; the omelette, the hash-browns, the plate they reside on, your mouth, your face, your stomach...they're the black hole of pancakes. And you want to be absorbed by them. They are served right off the griddle with an obscene amount of butter sliding into the cavernous imprint of the syrup cup. Though they are exquisitely fluffy, do not be fooled! These pancakes have serious presence as Mom and I proved by the fact that we could barely even make it 3/4's of the way through one. And don't forget - they come in twos. So when you're realizing that there is no way you'll ever finish the first one the second one is peeking out from underneath the wreckage, taunting you.
This was also the weekend of
VegFest in Seattle - the largest Vegetarian Festival in the country. I think this event could aptly be renamed SampleFest. Just like the site boasts, there are over 500 samples available; Derek and I tried roughly 40-50 of them. Any place that offers this many meat-free options feels like a little slice of Vegetarian Heaven and the sheer volume of people in attendance would seem to indicate that the doors to the exhibition hall were looking more and more like pearly gates to us Veg's. While I walked in with the silly fantasy that I would be able to snap a few photos in between samples it became abundantly clear very quickly that one cannot juggle 3, 4, or 5 samples, eat, take pictures (let alone hold a camera) and defend one's place in the sample line all at once. Thus, a list of my top three samples are as follows: #3
Lemon-Ginger Capsaicin Water, #2
Sunbutter, and #1 a
Corn & Lemongrass Soup that I have been dreaming about. Honorable mention goes to a bruschetta that was surprisingly good considering it started with canned tomatoes.
Other notable veggie exploits of the weekend include an attempt at making garlic carrot fries - very tasty but too limp to be called fries... and a Southwest Red Bean Burger with chipotle aioli on a panino bun at the
Grill on Broadway on Capitol Hill. The burger and bun were an incredible combination even though the aioli and greens were a little scarce. The sweet potato fries that came with it were absolutely scrumptious!
And with that, a very (very) full Veggie Monster bids you adieu!
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