Cascadia

We went to Cascadia last week. Cascadia is located on 1st Ave. in Belltown. Cascadia's physical space is lovely. It's open and airy, with large windows through which one can see slivers of Puget Sound. Our table, however, was kind of dark, which turns out to have been because there was a light bulb out way up in the ceiling.

We both had the three course "set menu." I started with a mozzarella and tomato salad, which was pretty good, and then I had seared scallops with lotus root, corn, and a ginger broth. The scallops themselves were tasty enough, but there were only two of them. I thought the thinly-sliced lotus root was extraneous, and the broth was almost without flavor. Debbie started with a melon soup, which was pretty good, and a proscuitto, rice and melon "sushi," which was extremely odd. For a second course she had thyme-smoked squab, which was OK. It was on a strange tasting sauce, with some nondescript polenta. For dessert, I had poached peaches with vanilla ice cream and rasperry sauce. The ice cream was fine, the peaches were somewhat better than what you get out of a can, and then there was a little dollop of raspberry sauce with a single raspberry on top of it. I didn't see the point of it. Debbie's dessert was lemon sugar beignets with I guess was supposed to be a perfect half peach. The beignets were OK, could have been hotter, and the peach was watery and flavorless. If you're going to put out a naked piece of fruit at a higher-end restaurant, it had better be spectacular.

After the main course was cleared, I realized that the somewhat sparse breadbasket had never been refilled. I was still kind of hungry, and so was Debbie. Dessert was puny and disappointing. We ended up having a snack elsewhere later.