My First Seattle Birthday

Zoe is such an amazing animal that she flew all the way from St. Louis just for my birthday party. What a trooper.

We headed to the International District for what I think was an unseasonable Lunar New Year celebration. I think I heard it was postponed from its original date for covid reasons.

You can see a little lion dance parade thing happening back there. The goodest of luck was befalling us today.

I couldn't resist this gigantic bowl of grass jelly with taro balls.

There was a McDonald's food truck on hand passing out free french fries. Yes please!

Messy

We had some boba tea at TP Tea. This turned out to be a mistaken life choice, as I had already eaten about ten pounds of a weird jelly and balls mixture.

We did a fun tour at Theo Chocolate. We learned that the name "Theo" comes from the plant species they use to make the chocolate: Theobroma cacao.

We ate a lot of chocolate in this room overlooking the factory.

Our guide showed us that this chocolate had been made incorrectly. Chocolate is a mixture of a few ingredients, including sugar and fat, that can separate if the humidity or temperature isn't correct during production.

The giant Statue of Lenin in Fremont was all decked out in Ukraine colors today. Very fashionable of him.

We had some Dumpling Tzar nearby to round out our ruskie experience.

I laughed out loud when I saw this sign advertising the wonders of Northwest Arkansas. Fool me once, shame on you!

We had a pretty good turn out at my birthday party. The first stop was Unicorn.

They had a ridiculous hat for birthday boys to wear. I also dusted off my sparkly jacket from New Year's Eve right before the end of the world.

It was definitely a unicorn horn and not shaped like any other thing.

Unicorn was featured in Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" music video.

Seattle's Best Karaoke is questionably named, to start with. The rooms were like office meeting rooms, and the sound system was janky as well: pretty much a computer from someone's dorm room. The one large plus in its favor was that the place was BYOB.

There was show tunes singing

Afterwards most of our guests went home, we hit a couple more bars, then we went home.

Seattle Flavors of the Orient

Who knows what sort of wonders one will find across the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge.

I love the view from this crossing. There's water on either side and mountains ahead.

Today we used a Lunar New Year celebration as an excuse to visit Lucky Envelope Brewing.

These guys seem to be down with exploring crazy flavors, which I am all about.

They also had friggin' fish jerky. Yes please. I tried as many excitingly weird beers that they would offer.

Water Tiger Cold IPA (6.7% ABV): collab with Highland Brewing. Happy Year of the Water Tiger from Highland Brewing and Lucky Envelope Brewing! This Cold IPA brewed with Seattle's Marketspice Berry Bush tea marks the third annual Seattle-Asheville zodiac collaboration. Late and dry hop additions of juicy El Dorado hops accentuate the honeybush tea with raspberry, strawberry, and lemongrass.

Peanut Butter Cream Stout (6.0% ABV): Real peanut butter infused with cocoa, coffee, and light roast flavors of our cream stout. Lactose and flaked oats add a smooth creaminess to balance out bold dark malts creating a perfect beer to enjoy year-round.

Hawaiian Honey Lager (5.6% ABV): collab with Halcyon Brewing. This Lunar New Year lager blends orange blossom honey from Hawaii's Wao Kele Honey and a hint of orange zest into our American-style lager to create a deliciously crispy, crushable beer with notes of floral honey sweetness, juicy citrus, and toasted corn cereal.

Mijiaya Historic Chinese Beer (5.6% ABV): Named after the 5,000 year old Mijiaya archaeological site in Shaanxi, Northern China. We brewed this special Lunar New Year release based on the starch and grains found in various brewing vessels excavated from the dig site. Brewed with barley, Job's tears, millet, Chinese squash, lily flowers, and yam, the resulting beer is flowery, light, and clean.

The Job's tears reference from this one jumped out at me because I recently heard of this.. seed for the first time when I obtained a bracelet for Lydia made out of them in Guyana. I think that the native dancers I saw were wearing a lot of them as well.

2022 Double Happiness: Five-Spice Vanilla Imperial Stout (12% ABV): Our 2022 Double Happiness blends double barrel-aged Imperial Stout from Copperworks Whiskey and Westland Whiskey barrels with real vanilla bean and five-spice powder. Traditional Chinese five-spice represents the five elements and brings a soul-warming spiciness to complement our Imperial Stout's deep notes of caramel, cocoa powder, and boozy toasted oak.

Seattle's International District is pretty sketchy at night, which is too bad because the place is teeming with awesome restaurants. I read good things about Szechuan Noodle Bowl.

These people were serious about checking your vaccination papers before allowing you to dine in. They had a friggin' door barricade that brought to mind a zombie apocalypse. 

For a started I ordered a green onion pancake. This was much better than the time I picked a bunch of wild green onions and then tried to cook with them.

I think this was Szechuan Beef Noodle with soup, and we got an order of their dumplings as well. When she wasn't helping us, our server was sitting at another table cranking out hundreds of these babies by hand.

We like boba yes we do.

Lydia ordered some wild off-menu secret drink named Lydia with a lot of weird stuff in it.

I emailed my mom asking why she sometimes calls me Lumpy and she replied with a cryptic answer:

"John (Lumpy),

In the movie Scrooged Bill Murray got hit in the head by a door by Karen Allen & she started calling him Lumpy. Not sure if that has anything to do w/you. 

Just a nickname for you."