Food News: U-District Mee Sum now open!

Just got an email from William Fong of Mee Sum Pastry and...drum roll... the U-District Mee Sum is open (!!) serving a limited menu. That means yes on the baked and steamed hombows, no on the moon cakes. And bonus: they'll be serving soups, "popcorn chicken" and bubble tea too!

Fong says they're aiming for a real-deal grand opening early next week.

image via Seattle Times
I doubt I'll be able to keep my curiosity in check until then, though, so check back for a report.

In the mean time, qing! (that's celebrate in Chinese)

PS--Don't know the exact address quite yet, but it's right next to the American Apparel on the Ave.

RELATED: Food News: New Mee Sum coming soon!
[where: 98105]

Food News: new Mee Sum coming soon, plus trivia

Just back from the U-District, where I saw a sign in the space just south of the American Apparel store (southwest corner of University and 45th) that said:
Coming Soon
Mee Sum Pastry

!!!Yay!!!
Man, college students at the U just got seriously lucky. I've been eating hom bows (aka char siu bao) from Mee Sum since I was 10 years old, when my mom would drive us up to Seattle to have a "city experience." I love the baked bbq pork and the curry beef, but I won't turn down a steamed bbq pork. Oh, who am I kidding? I'm not turning down anything from Mee Sum.



And now for the trivia:
I stopped into Allegro for old-times-sake. I hadn't been there in probably a dozen years, but when I was in college at UW I would go to Allegro almost every day for an Americano, enjoyed while sitting up on the deck, smoking cigarettes. If, by chance, you happen to have similar memories of the place, I think you'll be happy to hear that Allegro's still home to people who look like they're trying to look like professors, (mostly men) with hair so un-washed you can smell it. Twenty-first century hippies, keeping the dream alive.


Anyhoo, I explain my wistful smoking-upstairs memories (for the record, I quit years ago) to the barista who said, in a bummed-out tone, that they had to stop the smoking two years ago. We chat for a few minutes more and I find out that (and here's the trivia part): Allegro was Starbucks' first corporate customer, way back in 1975!

Unbelievable. If you're hungry for a taste of what Seattle coffee bars were like before the Starbucks-on-every-corner phenom, Allegro'd be a good place to start.

[where: 98105]

Eating Seattle: Agua Verde

I had dinner with Clare, Courtney, Whitney (and Whitney's darling 6 month old baby Lauren), and Lauren, Whitney's brother's girlfriend, last night at Agua Verde. I hadn't been there for probably 10 years, so I'd forgotten how crazy busy the place is. Of course, it's the U-District, and it's on the water, and the weather was beautiful, so that's a recipe for crowds. Everyone in Seattle wanted to eat outside last night.


I was really looking forward to dinner with the girls and taking in the gorgeous evening sunshine. So it was a bummer when we ended up having to wait for a table, and then we got seated inside. Not a huge bummer, but when you only get to go out with friends for dinner once every couple of months, the stakes are way higher for where you go. A jail analogy: When you get out of the county lockup, you don't want your first encounter to be with some old wrinkly cottage cheesey woman, you want to have sex with a real va-va-voom, Hotty McHotterson, am I right guys? This is what I'm saying.

So I had some camarones tacos and a rum drink with tamarindo. It was fine. My camarones were overcooked but I wasn't expecting miracles. The best thing on the table was the salsa: two versions, one tomatillo and the other chipotle. And the bill, which was in the low $20s per person, and since three out of five of us at dinner had lived in NYC, where group meals usually range from $60 to $90 per person, this was an awesome surprise.

But it's always fun having dinner with girlfriends. Courtney just bought a house! I'm so excited to see it. And Clare's building a house so she was in town from NY to meet with an architect. Whitney's got a three year old son and the baby and she somehow keeps it all together and has a great sense of humor. And Lauren, who I'd just met, is training for an Iron Man. No, REALLY! Let me just lay that out for you: 2.5 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a full friggin' marathon. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? As Courtney said (she was near Couer D'Alene during the Iron Man this past year), when you wake up at, say, 9am, the athletes have been exercising for four hours already. And when you go to bed, they're STILL exercising. I asked Lauren how long she thought the bike portion would take and she said six or seven HOURS!. Everyone kept moving on to other topics and all I could think about was SEVEN HOURS on a bike. And then dragging your sorry ass another 26+ miles on foot. Do people die during these things? They must.

So, Agua Verde: The company was great. The food, decent. The experience was not what I was hoping for last night. If you only eat out one or two times a month, this isn't a place I'd put into one of those slots.