back to seattle

This was a hard city to leave the first time around: where we courted, raised a family, made lifelong friends and dived headfirst into the outdoors together.  Back again for the first real wave of summer.  The sun and breezes are perfect, the beaches lovely, the traffic and drivers suck, but paradise can't be all perfection, yummy food in the unlikeliest of places.  

If you go to Pike Place Market, walk in front of the original Starbucks coffee shop (where the line will be immense), now look to the first store front to the left.  A small Mexican grocery store.  

Here is your assignment:  spend $2.25 on a bean tostada and they might offer you extra, fresh pico de gallo.  It's messy as hell, but so delicious.  You could have spent that $2.25 on a medium sized drip coffee at the aforementioned Starbucks.  But you could do that on any corner of any city in any Starbucks.  No, this tostado will knock your socks off and you will quickly realize it was the finest $2.25 ever spent.

Lesson learned: skip the lines, they don't always lead to the finest fare.  There are too many lemmings out there looking for, well I don't know what they're looking for, but they sure didn't find a culinary treasure.

P.S. Surf Ballard.  Because the people there are super nice and their logo features a giant octopus.