Uwajimaya

We made our first tourist-trip (i.e. not a shopping trip) to Uwajimaya, across the street from King St. station, last night. It's a large asian supermarket with an amazing selection. Sometimes asian supermarkets can be a little, er, untidy, but everything at Uwajimaya looked pristine. My son and his friend visiting from San Diego had a great time wandering around. They bought a bag of dried anchovies (they like to snack on dried fish--go figure), but ended up leaving it somewhere later in the evening.

We had dinner at the Vietnamese stall at the food court. I think I'd skip the food court next time and go down the street for restaurant food. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good either, and none of the other stalls looked like they were much better. The deli counter with the sushi was pretty much closed by 7:45pm. Maybe we should try it at lunchtime instead.

We had "dessert" at the cafe in the basement of Elliot Bay Book Co.. I put it in quotes because it's all vegan, wheat-free, gluten-free, and truly awful. My son's chocolate cupcake tasted like a mixture of sawdust and Crisco. Bleah--there's no excuse for pastries like that. It is possible to make good wheat-free cake, but this wasn't it. Fortunately we were able to forget about our dessert and go upstairs to browse in a great bookstore.