Features Jan 28, 2010 at 4:00 am

What happens when you spend a day consuming breakfast, coffee, lunch, dinner, and drinks based solely on the recommendations of random people on the street? Lindy West, David Schmader, and Bethany Jean Clement put their stomachs' fate in strangers' hands.

photo, lower right, of Zig Zag's Murray Stenson by Eliza Truitt

Comments

1
Excellent experiment. I'm really tempted to try it myself, but I'm afraid of what I'd be forced to eat and spend.
2
I still like the Honey Hole.
3
worst article ever.
4
Exactly how stoned was everyone when this food journey went down?
5
The hunt for the perfect 75.00 dinner, you are so out of touch.

No jobs, less money, unemployed, hours cut, tips way down. Do those concepts mean any thing at the Danger?

How about the REAL truth, the best for the Cheapest?
7
@1: I'm tempted to try it too. Finding something new I like would be worth enduring a couple of duds.
8
We've done something like this but instead asked the wait staff in each place where we should go next. That's an interesting way to find some extremely tasty(and reasonably priced) food, if you start at the right place.

Both Easy Street and Alki are very good for what they are. Personally, I don't see a lot to choose when it comes to food. Just depends on whether you want beach or music. Although Easy Street would have been a lot closer considering where she was, I'm not surprised that woman picked Alki.
9
I love how the Ballard folks never suggested anything outside of Ballard. That is so typical.
10
Oh Lindy, I love your silly posts about your eye infections and the different kinds of people that there are... I like looking into your twisted little brain. It's fun. I like you.

But please don't try any actual reporting again, even on soft articles like food reviews. It's not okay to say "I have no idea what I drank... it was the best cocktail in town." David and Bethany blew you out of the water here.
12
Too bad no one was able to direct Lindy to Fresh Bistro which is excellent and about two seconds from California and Alaska.
13
The correct way to order coffee at McDonalds is "coffee large". No syrup, no latte, no anything. Certainly not a pound of whipped cream on top. Barf.

Best breakfast AND best coffee can be found in the same place: Voula's.
14
For Dave, the vegetarian (or anyone really!) I can't recommend In The Bowl Bistro enough.
http://inthebowlbistro.com/
Delicious Thai fair made completely vegan w/ protein substitutes of beef, chicken, duck, prawns... they are remarkably similar to the real thing, in mind-blowing, "oh my god, what is reality when this is not meat?" kind of way.

My fave is the Garlic Mania Chow Mien w/ either beef or duck. Haven't yet had anything there I did not enjoy, though.
15
Also nobody directed Lindy to the Easy Street Records cafe in West Seattle's Alaska junction for their good breakfast place selection.
16
@14: Dave Schmader loves In the Bowl too—he wrote about it this past summer.
17
I noticed how David asked sharp-looking, clearly-white-collar people of his own generation, and got a set of good, if predictable, recommendations.

But I loved how Lindy asked a lady in pajamas and some geriatrics and a stoned kid and got a MUCH more interesting narrative, if not such a delicious one. Pick. Your. Syrup. Lindy, you keep doing what you're doing!
18
La Carta has a decent michelada.
19
Lindy, are you SURE you ate at Honeyhole? Everyone I've ever talked to loved the barbeque at Honeyhole. Kinda sounds like you took the suggestion and laughed it off.
Sort of like your half-assed movie reviews.
21
too bad you didn't get some better recomendations for west seattle. lunch at Buddha Ruksa (try the crispy garlic chicken!). dinner at Jak's (great steak, much less $$ than the Met). nove of our coffee places are as good as Vivaca but Deva is pretty good.

and David, if you want better tasting food. PUT SOME MEAT ON IT! it's your choice to eat vegatarian but then don't lust over you dining companions pork, fish, chicken, beef, mussles, etc....
26
This was a clever idea, editor in charge. However, I'd go with (duh) the recommendations of your restaurant reviewers over people on the street. If only I had Bethany in my pocketbook on such occasions.
27
"some idiot ate bizarre foods and talked about how bizarre they were"

Clearly Bethany has never actually watched Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. He's cool, intelligent, incredibly curious and respectful of cultures and foods foreign to him, and the show's really entertaining.

I thought the rest of her review was great, but why take a cheap shot like that?
28
"how can something so white have so much flavor?"

I ask myself the same question all the time.
29
@27: You're right, I've never seen it except for what I watched at Sam's—it must've been a bad episode, because he really seemed to be doing Guy Fieri–style "YOWZA THIS IS CA-RAZY" contentless commentary. I'll give it another try when I get the chance. Thanks for the tip!
30
I'm staying in a making macaroni and cheese. $1.29. Yum!
31
I <3 Honey Hole.
32
great idea, terrible execution
33
Another cool (?) useful (?) funny (?) entry by Lindy West. *clap...clap*. I did like that part about making fun of 100 year old ladies, or whatever.
34
wow, you're lazy! this falls right in line with the seattle personality: follower, unoriginal, willing to eat anything, and lazy. did you eat out of the garbage, too, when nobody was looking? then you could shit out the worms and make a worm compost for your ever so green moldy kitchens.
35
eeeewww the greasy hair on the guy pouring the drink says it all - i hope there was plenty of alcohol in that drink to kill the microbials he left on your glass.

"I vetoed several potential candidates for being too boring". compared to what? ROFL if that's your criteria, you know you have to leave seattle, right?

"Oh, oh, excuse me mr. bum, where can i eat?" oh fuck! i can just imagine where he should have pointed.

Lemme ask you, are you so unoriginal and untalented, people, because you smoke shitty weed all the time, or are you just stupid? I know, I know, the Seattle school system is a joke, they don't even teach you how to spell. But come on.

For your next feature of brilliance, you should go around showing your genital piercings and asking people on the street "Does this look infected? Does this look infected? Well what about this nipple ring? It's oozing, that means something, right?"
36
tamarind tree is a f**king joke. I was there with some friends a few years ago and we saw mice crawling on the hood in their open kitchen. I felt bad for the servers who looked just as horrified as we were. My Vietnamese boyfriend translated some of the things the owners were saying to their employees there and I cannot support a place like that. Dirty kitchen and negative, micromanaging owners who treat their staff like thieves? No thanks, I'll go to Green Leaf instead.

Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

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