Outside the Kitchen: Birthday Celebrations at Pike Place Market

Greetings from Seattle!! I had the best day ever today! Toby, Renee, Liza and I went to Pike Place Market where I had a very merry, foodie birthday. TI turned 27 today, which is pretty insane to me. Oh so close to the big 3-0. There was a steady rain all day, but i didn't care. I had lots of foodie ground to cover.

Yummy fish.fresh local produce.pasta goodness. Huge Crab

We started our day at Papardelle's which is this giant pasta emporium inside Pike Place. There are insane kinds of pasta like cilantro and jalapeno, chocolate, lemon orzo and sweet potato orzo. I mean I wanted to get a pound of every kind. We settled on rosemary garlic fettuccine, roasted garlic linguine and porchini linguine. I literally can't wait to get home to make it.

We then went for a birthday lunch at Matt's in the Market. It was such an amazing restaurant. I got to sit front row center to the kitchen, which was amazing. I had a fried oyster po boy, Toby had a lamb and goat cheese burger, and Renee had posole. My Po Boy was amazing. It had shaved fennel salad and was on the most amazing bread. I remember exclaiming when it came to the table, if I eat this whole thing that is bad because it was THAT big. And I ate it all.  Man, this place we truly amazing. It is above Pike Place, so make sure you stop by. You will not be disappointed!

As if lunch was not enough, we stopped for the best donuts I have ever had. We got a mix or powdered and plain, and the guy even threw in some extra to be nice. It is called Daily Dozen. Make sure you get there early or they will sell out! They did the first time we came to Seattle. Totally worth coming back again!Crunchy on the outside and super chewy on the inside. Delicious!

Our last stop was World Spice. This place was unbelievable! They had so many spices and they were all around the store. You could walk around and smell everything then write down what and how much you wanted of each spice. They had some spices I have never even heard of. We ended up settling for: Truffle Salt ( salt with flecks of black truffle ), Alderwood Smoked Salt ( the most amazing smoked salt that smells like burning fire) and Mayan Cocoa ( a spicy chocolatey coffee goodness rub.) Again, I cannot wait to use all these. We should have brought a separate luggage for food.

This was only one wall of the entire store!

Check out the rest of my foodie adventures in the next few posts. Anyone ever been to Seattle? Where are your favorite places to go?