Kristina's birthday was earlier in the week, we decided to do a celebratory dinner tonight instead of the actual day. Our weeknight evenings are pretty full anyway, and it just makes for a more relaxing dinner and evening when we have more time.
Ethan Stowell is a popular chef in the Seattle area and all of his restaurants come highly rated by most folks. We were anxious to try one out. Since we aren't pasta lovers (don't get us wrong, we love pasta, we just shouldn't be eating a lot of it), Staple and Fancy Mercantile was the most obvious choice. It had a very energetic and industrial vibe. The food was good; however, they have an option to not choose off the menu, just let them bring you whatever the chef feels like (family-style dinner). We had not been here before, so we opted for ordered our own meals -- in the future, we would go this route. For our dinner, Jared had the striped bass and Kristina had the New York. The meals were simply prepared with quality local ingredients and it was obvious that there was a lot of care taken in preparing everything. We finished off the meal with a ricotta cheesecake. It was very good and not overly sweet at all. All in all it was a good evening!
Happy Birthday Kristina!
