Weekend Finale at Molyvos

Tonight we celebrated the end of our weekend with dinner at Molyvos on 7th Avenue. Our favorite restaurant in Seattle was a Greek-themed outfit called Lola, part of the Tom Douglas empire, and so far we have not yet found a replacement (not that we have made much of an attempt to search yet).

So, after some discussion earlier in the day we decided to see whether there was anything around that would make us forget about Lola. The one place we knew of was, Molyvos, which we came across on an earlier visit to the city but never actually tried.

We went for the prix fixe menu, which includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert. We both selected the Greek salad for the first course, which we both agreed compared very favorably with the one at Lola. The capers were a nice tough, and there was plenty of fresh mint to go with the tomatoes, cucmbers, red onions, olives, and feta.

I tried the lamb chops for the main course, while my wife sampled the cabbage rolls. Both were very good, although I think the lamb chops were a bit better. The preparation was simple grilling, but the accompanying frisee preparation and potato cake side complimented it very well. Little J had the free-range chicken, which surprisingly he seemed to like. Our normal strategy is to tell him that any chicken dish is "just like chicken nuggets," which he usually doesn't find convincing. Tonight, though, it didn't seem to matter and he accepted the admittedly un-nugget-like chicken they served on its own merits.

For dessert we tried a yogurt with strawberry-rhubarb sauce and pistachios, as well as a vanilla cake with fig topping. The yogurt (my wife's choice) was the superior of the two, with the nicely tangy, thick Greek yogurt supported by the tart-sweet rhubarb and strawberries. The cake and figs were good (I am a big fan of figs in any form), but a bit to precious for my taste. It was a tiny button of a cake with a couple of pieces of fig balanced on top; more presentation than substance.

All in all, it was a good experience, and we are likely to return to try some of the other offerings. In particular, there were at least three octopus dishes that I would like to try in the future.

Breakfast at Madison Restaurant

For breakfast this morning we moved advanced down the diner canvassing list for our neighborhood and chose Madison Restaurant. Madison offers a the typical extensive New York diner menu that makes you wonder how one kitchen can possibly churn out so many different choices and varieties of cuisine. It's certainly good to know that if ever I have my heart set on fajitas and I'm meeting friends who crave bulgogi and lasagna, there will be options available to meet that need. One would think that overall quality would suffer from this lack of focus, but I say it's a small price to pay for such flexibility.

On the general topic of breakfast/brunch on Sundays, one thing we have noticed here is that while this may be the city that never sleeps, it certainly doesn't like to get up early and make brunch. From what we have seen so far, brunch hours typically start at 11:00 or even 12:00. Before that, you get a more limited breakfast menu. If you are an early riser on Sundays (and be early I mean 9:00), you have a bit of a wait before brunch. In my book, serving a meal starting at 11:00 and later makes it lunch, and maybe even dinner seeing as how it is often served late into the afternoon.

At Madison, they offer brunch starting at 10:00. Breakfast starts at 6:00. We were there shortly before 9:00, so we were limited to the breakfast menu. It didn't appear that there was much more available for brunch (besides different combination pricing), but still it would have been nice to have brunch start earlier.

The fresh-squeezed fruit juices (orange, grapefruit) were unusually frothy. They must have been juicing to order, or else I don't know how they would get that consistency. It was pretty good, if not quite cold enough.

I tried a feta and mushroom omelet, which was pretty good. My wife had comforting eggs and corned beef hash, which got a thumbs up despite a complaint that hashbrowns were served on the side. We enjoyed a lively discussion about whether or not the potato content of the hash made the hashbrown side redundant, and in the end agreed to disagree. Little J enjoyed the Waffle with bacon, but he maintained that the waffles at nearby Moonstruck Diner were better.