The Greasy Flower - A Restaurant Review

I am quite naturally the last person any sensible syndicate would ever commission to review food and/or restaurants, and thus do not frequent the boards of yelp, urban spoon, etc. in a contributory capacity. Honestly I'm rarely the kind of person a sensible person would even *take* to a restaurants.

Among my limitations in the good-diner experience:

1. I'm a - shudder - vegetarian. No longer the dining kiss of death, but still surprisingly complicated to order on-menu in many venues and combines poorly with the fact that...

2. I don't much like refined carbohydrates

4. I'm incredibly sensitive to added fats and oils - a small pool of olive oil (I don't care how "healthy" it is) or a blimp of butter ... I will be miserable for the rest of the night

5. Just for good measure, I have now eaten a low sodium diet for long enough that your regular restaurant meal tastes excruciatingly salty and causes me to bloat up like the Goodyear blimp at Superbowl time.

Oh and lest we forget, I eat exactly like a bird - which is to say, very messily and often punctuated by random pecking at the eyes of others who have touched *my crumbs*... wait, no, I eat small portions of food about once every couple of hours.

All that is to say: I am a waiter's worst nightmare. I will order entirely from the sides menus and order everything "on the side" with substitutions.

And yet, I actually really enjoy eating out. There's something intrinsically homey about restaurants... the kind of dream-tiger ideal of home that adult reality will always fail to live up to. And it is one of the basic social rituals, breaking bread together. Also, truth be told, I'm not the greatest chef, so while I make food decently enough for myself, this is where the talent ends.

Anyways, my criteria for a good dining experience are essentially the following:

1. Ambience. I can eat better food at home for cheaper. What I can't do is eat better food at home that somebody else prepared for me while surrounded by friends and/or "friends" in a comfy dining area that looks a little more official than the coffee table in front of the sofa or the kitchen where I may just finish my meal before ever making it as far as that sofa. I go to a restaurant for a pleasant atmosphere and the various illusions that restaurants sell, so I expect those illusions up the wazzoo (delivered hopefully with a gentle applicator).

2. An item on the menu that I *can* order without either feeling sick after eating and/or without many complicated substitutions that will inevitably be confused in the game of menu-telephone that is inevitably involved  in getting my embarrasingly complicated simple meal to the table. The ultimate goal is something that I can order that is neither embarrassing to myself and the rest of the table, nor apt to make me feel sick later in the evening! My gold standard is generally a house salad with the dressing on the side.

3. Pricing. Even when I'm not paying, I feel morally offended to see price markups of what feels like 200,000 % for a bag full of greens and some crutons. Yes, presentation gives a lot of wiggle room, but there are limits to how much one can paint and sculpt food while leaving it edible. To those trying to artify their food, I just want to point out that art gallery openings are the poor grad student's favorite meal... so let's cut the pretension. And if it's the nifty plates you're charging me for, I'd better get to bring them home with me!

4. As a distant but present fourth, left-over-ability... namely how well the extra heapings keep for second day food. This will definitely ameliorate a greater than average price...

And for my first How's Salad? - review for nobody but me: FLOWERS!

The ubiquitous bar/restaurant on the ave by my bus stop

I had gotten it in my head that Flowers was a vegan restaurant. To me, the decor screams VEGAN ALCOHOLIC WEARING CLOTHES MADE OF CRUELTY-FREE DUCT TAPE!!! No, I have no idea what that means, but it both fits and suggests the kind of light substance abuse that may be more appropriate for late state cancer patients... Alternately I remembered seeing advertisements for a vegetarian lunch buffet at Flowers, cross-wired the name with the somewhat similar sounding Cafe Flora (reputedly one of the best veg- places in Seattle, although a place I once spent three hours attempting to find when a "friend" insisted she knew which neighborhood it was in, but I think just really wanted to spend some more time hanging out with me in the car, because I am that cool... I blacked out far before the dining experience, but I'm sure it was very nice). The take away from that very winding trail of text is simply this: Flowers is not a vegetarian place by a long shot.

So, not a huge problem. I actually enjoy the simplification that a non-vegetarian menu can offer. I go to Araya's and suffer options-overload, which inevitably ends with me ordering the roast dish rag and a sponge on the side.

My vegetarian options included some kind of falafel thing, that same falafel thing minus the bread and shredded into a salad, a greek salad, a house salad and polenta. Ok, so falafel is fantastic, but tends to be greasy and far greasier when made by restaurants like this. The house salad was looking like the smart choice, except for reasons unknown to me, it cost MORE than the polenta and grilled vegetables dish. And it was not a special salad. I don't even think the walnuts were candied, as seems to be the stereotypical treatment to make a salad fancy. Nor were there seasonal fruits involved. It was altogether a sad sounding salad, raising the bar slightly above your average Denny's side salad, but at a price that assured you of a far inferior value. So Polenta With Grilled Vegetables(!) it was. Minus the "smothering" (or was it "heaped on" - something intimidatingly aggressive) gorgonzola. Andrew went with the steak with fancy green sauce. I'm sure the fancy green sauce had a name, but I was so distracted aurally navigating the excruciating cacophony that reverberated around the hollow hipster digs, I didn't really take note of that item on the menu...

Speaking of that cacophony, a word about the ambience, since it is in fact my most important criteria. The majority of other patrons were drinking exclusively and the main feature of the restaurant - aside from the enormous windows, creepy vintage touches, aimlessly painted tables and mirrored ceilings (because the diners like to get busy on the tables while drinking and waiting the eternity it takes to be served there??) - was an enormous bar. My guess is that it is generally intended as a bar, with fancy food to be served after you've gotten a bit sloppy and need to sober up. It was also full of hard, echoey edges, so even at 5 with barely anyone else in the restaurant, it sounded PACKED and buzzing. Anyways, I have nothing against this ilk of pubbish bar per se, but they are not my thing. Andrew had to sit next to me to hear *anything* and even that was spotty unless I was actually yelling into his ear.

Back to the polenta and vegetables: They were well-made in that restauranty kind of way, but it did highlight a (tofurkey) beef i have with restaurants. Why is it that restuarants will list their vegetables as "steamed" or "grilled" and yet when they come out they look far more "shellacked" and/or "sauteed within an inch of their shiny little lives"? I guess the simplicity of the meal otherwise required a little extra kick in the form of vats of oil and some fancy pepper. Anyways, I did enjoy it, but the meal left my stomach feeling heavy and my mouth feeling greasy. I can't imagine what it would have been like WITH the suffocating gorgonzola included.

As for leftover quality, actually once I took the vegetables and remaining polenta home and rinsed them thoroughly, they seem to be pretty decent. Today, I've mixed them with some lentils, tvp, tofu, and my own spices and it's quite nummy. Ultimately, I give decent props on this ground. Still the grease inside my take home box was less than appetizing.

SO basically:

1. ambience: stressful, echoey and unsettling

2. menu item I can order: eh, alright.

3. prices: high for the U district and the less than polished look of the place, although about what you'd expect if the restaurant were on Cap Hill, so not horrifying.

4. leftoverability: as long as you have some time and a colandar.