Monthly Archives: February 2014

Duke’s

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Woodford Reserve Distillery

Woodford Reserve Distillery

Woodford Reserve is a brand of premium small batch Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. The logo on this whiskey barrel shows three of the older long neck pot stills. Woodford uses this distillation method rather than more modern column still technology, for their best whiskeys. They use the three pot stills to successively distill their finest whiskeys. My colleague, Jack Bauer knew all about this stuff. I guess when you only have 24 hours to save the world; you have no time for beer or wine, but have to go straight to the hard stuff. Alas this particular barrel was empty. It had been repurposed as an end table in the waiting room of Duke’s, a restaurant here in Seattle. This had been the second time that we had gone to Duke’s and we were arguably drawn back there, because of their award winning clam chowder. This time I had a flight of their five different chowders, but I can save you the trouble of doing that, because the award winning one was easily the best one. At Duke’s everything is duke related. For example the men’s restroom is labeled the Duke of Earl, while the woman’s is called The Duke’s Girls.

Ray’s Boat House

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Ray's Boat House

Ray’s Boat House

Lara Croft left today; she probably had another tomb to raid or something. This has left just Jack Bauer, Mister Hanky and I. We took Lara to Ray’s for her birthday. We had built this place up to her so much that it failed to live up to expectations, both heir’s and ours. When Hanky, Bauer and I were first tipped off to this place by tall Ted, we were giddy with the foodie experience. That was high summer though, Ray’s prime season. With eight o’clock sunsets behind the Olympic peninsula and plenty of colorful boating traffic on the canal that was a magical dining experience. We hoped to recapture that experience again last night, but it was not to be. There was no sunset, because it was already dark when we got there and it still being winter in Seattle there was little boat traffic too. The main problem though was the inexplicable slow service. We showed up early by 15 minutes, but they would not seat us until our appointed time, even though there were plenty of empty tables and no one else was waiting. Once seated, it took 45 minutes to be served, even our appetizers. It was three hours at the table by the time we were done, which was too long. Even the food wasn’t as amazing as remembered, maybe we have become foodie snobs?

City Slickers

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City Sticker

City Sticker

A woman moved from Saint Louis County to Saint Louis City and found herself defending to her eyebrow-raising friends and family. “I felt this stereotype from others that didn’t already know what a gem it was,” she said, “like it was full of murders and people begging for money… like they needed a bulletproof vest to cross the city limits line.” She however saw history, architecture, diversity and a rich lifestyle. She heard that in years past city resident’s cars were issued a special licensing sticker, and in 2003 she used that idea to create a Saint Louis City sticker designed after the popular three-letter country code stickers first seen in Europe. “I wanted people who were proud of their city to know that they weren’t alone and that they were part of a club… and of course to tell county residents that membership in this club abounds.” These stickers became a grassroots expression of city pride and can now be seen in cars across the area. And while the word CITY is the most visible, it is the words around the sticker that speakmost directly to the original idea, “Proud to Live in St. Louis”.