Guest Date Night Blog: The Eastside's Best Steakhouse!

October 27th, 2009
Melrose Grill in Renton

She Said:

My husband and I have been dating now for 22 years! At times that takes quite a bit of creativity and planning. However, in the last year or so we have become one of a loyal following of people who have come to love the Melrose Grill in Renton as our own date night spot.

Fairwood is our little corner of suburbia in Renton. So, we travel down the hill in search of what's happening closer to town frequently. After many of our neighbors up here in the burbs had been raving about the Melrose Grill we had a chance to try it out last year and we have been going back as frequently as possible ever since.



When asked the other day to compare the Melrose Grill to another local spot in Renton, this was my response:

"In contrast to (unmentioned restaurant), the Melrose Grill has wisely learned that to offer a fantastic value in the experience of going out to eat, you don't have to offer a giant menu of options. Creating a smaller menu where everything you try is excellent will keep me coming back every time."
The Melrose Grill is small, cozy, and exceedingly friendly. They have a bartender who is witty and keeps us entertained if we have to wait a few minutes for a table. The wait staff is charming as are the owner and manager.

An excellent steak or seafood choice at the Melrose Grill, pre-dinner cocktail, and wine with dinner has consistently run a bill of about $130 for the two of us. Truly, a value when you consider the leftovers are to die for!

Having been in retail for over 25 years, I know and practice good "Nordstromesque" service and this place does it so nicely. Melrose Grill has successfully stolen our hearts away from a VERY high-end steak house with the value of the very best Rib Eye we have found nowhere else!

Come on down to Renton and have a fun Date Night!

xo,
Christina

Melrose Grill
www.melrosegrill.com

819 Houser Way S
Renton, WA 98057-2784
(425) 254-0759

About David and Christina:

David is project manager for a local software company by day but, is actually a rock star Bassist for a number of local area bands, such as www.TheAboutFaceBand.com,
Twitter: @Dave_Bassist

Christina is The Personal Garden Coach, a Horticultural Cheerleader, Designer, and Teacher. In her spare time, she is in the garden, at the nursery selling great plants or designing combo planters.
Twitter: @Arcadia1

Guest Date Night Blog Post! Halloween Date Ideas!

Hola Seattle Date Night! readers – my name is Jeanna (otherwise known as Je). I’m a Seattle city resident and face behind two blogs, a date blog I write with my boyfriend, Mike, called Caviar & Campfires (we focus on camping, wine and restaurants reviews) and my personal blog, That’s What Je Said.

I stumbled across Seattle Date Night! many months ago and realized Mandy and I have a lot in common –not only do we both write blogs around dates with our honey, but we both live in Queen Anne! So, I was honored when Mandy asked me to write a guest post while her honey was away.

Just like Brett, Mike and I are HUGE fans of ghosts – we rent every haunted house movie out there and regularly watch Paranormal State. (OMG. Have you seen that show. So spooky!). So I'm here to bring you Seattle's Spooky Halloween Date Nights... du, du, du, dum.

Brett and Mandy wrote about the Pike Place Market Ghost Tour they went on at the end of September. Mike and I were stoked to check it out! But the night we wanted to go last week was sold out (it’s super popular near Halloween, so buy your tickets early), so we researched and discovered there are three ghost tours in Seattle!

1. The Market ghost tours
2. Spooked in Seattle tours
3. Private Eye tours

After quick research, we decided to buy tickets to the three-hour Private Eye Tour, which is a tour of a lot of Seattle's ghostly hauntings in a big white rapist ghost van. Jake, the ghostly tour guide, is a Seattle native and lover of all things ghost. She's researched and visited a lot of the haunted places in Seattle herself and gives a most excellent tour. Worth every bit of the $25! You can see details of the ghost tour in a Whrrl story I did... FYI: I give some of the details of the tour away, but not all:

Powered by Whrrl

If you're not scared stiff after the ghost tour, you can plan a trip to see Paranormal State - one of the spookiest movies I've seen in a long time! Sorta along the lines of The Blair Witch Project, it's a series of homemade movies from a couple whose home is haunted. They set a camera up in their home at night to catch activity while they were asleep, and it's so scary, we both were covering our eyes by the end of the movie! (Don't tell Mike I told you that. I don't want to compromise his manliness on the entire Worldwide Interwebs). We both left the theater and agreed we needed to watch a cartoon or something!

Or - if Paranormal State isn't your cup of tea, how about viewing a movie in one of Seattle's oldest and most haunted theaters - The Harvard Exit Theatre?! But be careful ladies - rumor has it there's been sightings of a woman, hanging from a rope in the upstairs bathroom!

All very spoooky options! Happy Dating (and Halloween) Seattlelites!

And the Winner Is...

Congratulations, Susan, and thanks for entering our contest! Below is Susan's fabulous She Said account of Kirkland's famous Juanita Cafe! Enjoy!
** Runner-up was Ed O., and you can read his post here!

She Said:

My husband, Todd and I don't have much in common. He's an engineer that loves math and science. I mean, the man brought Advanced Trig books on our honeymoon. He built a robot... For fun.

I love decorating. And reality shows in poor taste. So what's the glue that keeps us together? Our love of food. And we're not talking hamburger helper and stove top. (Although Todd loves both and I've been known to crave a can of SpaghettiOs.) We're talking sweetbreads and foie gras. Which until recently, we didn't have a clue about. I think we both were under the impression that Sweetbreads were a delicious french bakery good. We soon found out that Sweetbreads were neither sweet nor bread....

So for our two year anniversary we celebrated not only our love for each other, but our love for all things culinary, by going to Cafe Juanita in Kirkland. We certainly were not disappointed.

Cafe Juanita has a lot of things going for it. Their exterior is not one of them. However, they have done what they can with the 1970's rambler. The inside is much more charming and it's whats on the inside that counts, right?

We began with two starters. Don't judge. We were celebrating, remember?

And nothing says celebratory like Seared Foie Gras with Nectarine, Huckleberries, Candied Ginger and Cocoa nibs AND Veal Sweetbreads with Fried Capers and Parsley, in a Ligurian Olive Oil.

I'm pretty sure I had an out of body experience with the former. The Foie was seared perfectly and the sweetness of the nectarines was perfection. Seriously. I wanted to bathe in it. Gross? Kinda . But only if you think about it. Which I don't. I just eat it! :)

The sweetbreads were equally good but it was the fried capers that had me. I was seriously considering about replacing my theatre popcorn with fried capers during my next visit to the movies. I'm sure that will catch on.

On to the main dishes. Without fail, I always want what Todd orders. I always end up eating most of what's on HIS plate. Not so this time. And I wasn't about to share. I ordered the rabbit--a dish they are well known for. To be specific--Rabbit Braised in Arneis with Ligurian Chickpea Crepe, Pancetta and Porcini. Ummmm, delightful to say the least. In fact, in the deserted island game that Todd and I like to play, (okay, the game I like to play) if I had to chose one dish to eat on a deserted island...for the rest of my life...this would be it.


[images via Cafe Juanita's website]

The pancetta, the Porcini--it was all a giant YES. Todd ordered the Sweet Grass Farms Wagyu Beef Bolognese with Tagliatelle and while it too was quite good, it paled in comparison. I love it when I pick the winning dish of the night. When he begs me for scraps. :) And although we had planned on getting dessert--we skipped it as we were so full we were about to pop. And with the hefty price tag that was attached to the entire evening, we felt like we got our money's worth.

And there you have it. A memorable meal with a memorable man. :)

Todd and Susan met under the most romantic of circumstances--at a bar.

The kind of bar where the floor is perpetually sticky and it's in your best interest to hover over the toilet seat.

None the less, it was love at first sight. Or perhaps after the first shot.

Anyway, they have been enjoying marital bliss for 2 years now in Bothell.

(They are slowly learning to claim their new city with pride. And resist calling it the Brothel.)

They live with their two cats, Copper and Lilly and have recently added Dr. Newton, a three pound chihuahua, into the family dynamic.