Seattle Saturday Night

Seattlites know how to hit the town.

A typical Saturday night for these swanky foodies involves cocktails at one location followed by dinner at another and then a night cap. And who can blame them, with so many places to choose from, it's hard to be limited to just one.

It seems that the selection of restaurants is ever expanding..as is our waist line! Below are a few of note which we've enjoyed most recently.

A few Saturday night's ago , we visited BalMar for cocktails, pre-dinner, with a couple of friends. Sidecars are the drink in vogue for the Emerald City, and we enjoyed sipping ours while sitting on the leather ottomans at this dimly lit, mohagany carved bar . The crowd was quite and conversation was easily heard. We then headed to La Carta De Oaxaca for a spicy authentic Oaxaca, Mexican dinner. The atmosphere here is extremely casual and loud. There are no reservations and it's standing room only until you get a table (hence the reason for the pre-dinner cocktails).

After dinner we went back to BalMar, where the crowd had turned over to a much younger, louder bunch and the music changed from jazz to club.

Most recently, we joined freinds for drinks at Union, a modern but smaller restaurant, before heading to dinner. Kudos to the bartender to made our martinis!!!! One of the best I've had since my days in Charlottesville dining at OXO and the Downtown Grille.

We enjoyed dinner that night at Boka Kitchen inside Hotel 1000, a swanky, ultra modern, high-tech boutique stye hotel. Boka's contemporary interior was designed by Mesher Shing of Seattle. Hand-sculpted glass art installations from local treasure J.P. Canlis visually anchor the dining room. Original paintings by Spanish gesture painter Gonzalo Martín-Calero add an abstract element. Additionally, an ever-changing pallette of digitzed images of the world’s great art on two plasma screens underscore an eclectic and refined character, well worth the visit. The Asian-fusion menu was quite yummy and was as creative as the atmosphere. The only dissapoinment was dessert. After the innovative dinner menu and wine list, we might have set our expectations too high.