Dahlia Lounge

I always enjoy dining at Dahlia Lounge. It's upscale but not stuffy, and the food is great. A friend and I had dinner there last night (as part of Seattle's Restaurant Week), and it was great, even if it wasn't one of my favorite meals that I've had there.

I don't always take a picture of a restaurant's bread selection, but this one turned out well so here it is. We both went for the plain sourdough first, but it turned out that the walnut and olive (?) bread was excellent.


Here's the appetizer "salad" I started out with. Shrimp and octopus, mmm. I don't remember what the "sauce" was.


My entree: Pan seared Alaskan halibut, la ratte fingerling potato, ham hock, collard blossoms, with ramp vinaigrette. Very good, but if I could go back in time I might not have selected it. It's halibut season now, so every restaurant's serving it, and it's just not that interesting. Still, the server recommended it so I felt that I would regret it if I didn't order it.


J.'s dessert, Tom's World Famous Creme Caramel. I've never understood why this dessert has this name. I suppose it must have some culinary history I'm ignorant of, because as far as I've seen, when people talk about a Tom Douglas restaurant's dessert, it's always the triple coconut cream pie. Plus, I like custard and this is good, but it's basically flan and flan isn't my favorite dessert.


And here's the star of the show, the triple coconut cream pie. I love the flavor of coconut, but I'm not a fan whatsoever of the shavings. I happily put up with them in this pie, however. It's wonderful. The recipe for it is in one of the Tom Douglas cookbooks that I actually own, but I haven't gotten around to making it myself yet.