How does a friendly Northwest neighborhood business street look like?
One can experience that when you step on the Upper Queen Anne stretch of Queen Anne Avenue North.
Quiet, friendly, prosperous with many eateries and shops.
Starts off with southern-most Cederberg Tea House to Chocolopolis, I found myself at Susahi Samurai next.
Happy Hour starts at 4pm, with sushi set at great price, small varieties of rolls, and discounted drinks.
The 12-piece sushi set was only $12, and came with the salmon, smoked salmon, tuna, escolar, shrimp and albacore.
Fish slices were on the thin end with ok freshness.
I wanted to try the Samurai roll even though it was not on the Happy Hour menu.
Flavor was good overall with baked seafood on top of salmon roll, unfortunately the top baked seafood was burnt.
The seafood poke had good chili sauce/soy/sesame flavor, tossed with salad greens, seafood was mostly tuna and squid.
Tuna was very sloppily chopped and tendinous.
The tendon was very hard to chew; it looked like there was an attempt to cut them but it was not successful at the end.
I liked the crunchy salmon rolls.
Chopped salmon roll with tempura bits on the outside, topped with spicy mayo.
Perfect amount of mayo, fish and crunch.
The negitan roll looked interesting on paper.
A yellow tail and green onion roll, fried, and topped with eel sauce.
Unfortunately, I could not say I was a fan of it.
The rolls were soggy and not crunchy, and the fish flavor was drowned by rice.
I would much rather go back to my usual spot, Ginza, for sushi.
Continue North on Queen Anne Avenue North, there is Trader Joe’s, Cupcake Royale, Menchie’s and my favorite coffee place, Storyville.
Right besides Storyville, is Bounty Kitchen.
A simple, airy restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, with simple, healthy, local and organic food.
Bounty Kitchen offers toasts, soups, salads, sandwiches, and “great bowl of goodness”!!
We had a soba bowl and their Havana Libre bowl, both were delicious, and truly lived up to the name of “great bowl of goodness”.
Bounty kitchen did a fantastic job with textures: the raw vegetables, such as spinach and arugula gave the crunchy texture in my Libre bowl while the sweet potatoes and avocado were soft, and black rice provided the chewiness.
Full of flavors such as citrus and cilantro, garlic, onion, tomatoes from the sofrito, each bite was packed with texture and strong addictive flavors.
Soba noodle in the soba bowl was cooked perfected, tossed with carrot, napa cabbage, lettuce, bean sprouts, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, finished off with a miso dressing.
The chicken was Draper Valley’s all natural salt and pepper roasted chicken, tender and tasty.
Their menu consists of plenty vegan/vegetarian options as well.
There are still so many places I want to check out around the neighborhood — Grappa, a Mediterranean restaurant, and Eden Hill, a fancy set course dinner spot, to name a few.
More trips to Queen Anne to come!