We took the bus with Hiroe to a shopping center in Renton, the town where the Boeing factory is, and went to a Korean all-you-can-eat buffet where you enter at a check-in desk that looks like you’re going to a hotel or a spa. From the giant cafeteria I tried selections of sushi, a mango salad, clams in bean sauce, and a pork bun. They had a barbecue station and a noodle station, and their desserts were miniature cheesecakes and yellow cakes in pink, yellow, or green to match the sushi.
For dinner, we went to Palace Kitchen, a spacious, cacophonous place near the monorail line, with an imitation 17th-century mural to illustrate gluttony. I tried a bowl of cucumbers in harissa sauce, which they combined with a foamy lemon sorbet to produce a dual taste sensation of heat and ice. It was refreshing and I’ve never tried anything quite like it. After that, the spaghetti accentuated with fire-roasted tomatoes and squash was almost a disappointment. They were out of dessert, so instead I tried the country ham. It was thin slices of pork much like the jamón platters you’d order in Spain, with a little more salt and a little less umami, I think. With the ham, they had corn churros in the shape of hash browns and a blueberry sauce.
(Photo: Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle.)
365 Days of Food 