Cafe Flora Review

Jason here. Last week we had some family up for the week. This was a great opportunity to go out and eat at some fun restaurants. The second place we went to was, Cafe Flora. 

This restaurant caters to vegetarians, vegans, and the gluten intolerant. Everything on the menu is clearly marked as vegetarian, vegan, or gluten free. We still haven’t found too many restaurants that clearly mark on their menu, what is gluten free and what is not so this was a breath of fresh air.

The atmosphere was very nice. For some reason the paintings actually stood out in my head, because they were brightly colored, with high contrasting colors. It was quiet, which lent itself very nicely for just getting to talk with friends and family. 

Our waiter was very friendly and always made sure to check if anything I asked for which wasn’t on the menu was gluten free. 

With that said, I ordered one of the soups of the day. Embarrassingly I forget what it was called, and I could not find a list on their menu. When I first ordered it, I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy it. The problem for me is soups are fairly sizable single item meals. That means if you don’t like what you get, you’re kind of stuck. This makes a risky meal choice for me, when compared to a dish which has 3-4 items and if I don’t like one I can just eat the others. This time I definitely made the right choice. The soup was really delicious. It was creamy, almost cheesy, with a hint of a garlic. If you’ve read my other reviews, you may have got a hint that I tend to enjoy cheesy items.

We happened to go during their happy hour, which meant some appetizers were discounted. I wasn’t sure if the soup would be enough, and as already mentioned I was worried I wouldn’t like it very much. So I opted to order the quesadilla verda to come as a side with my soup. It was a pretty standard cheese quesadilla, not that there is anything wrong with that. It did have flavor as I enjoyed it, but nothing I wouldn’t expect from a cheese quesadilla.

Kayleigh here. I ended up splitting a salad and a pizza with my aunt, since neither of us could decide on any single item, either! For starters, the French Green Lentil and Beet Salad was a beautifully fresh dish, full of bright flavors and not overly filling. The naturally sweet beets and soft, creamy goat cheese in particular created a lovely contrast that made me wish there was more of them on my plate. The seasonal pizza (did I mention that they change around several items on the menu to better fit the weather outside?) was a great example of fresh, flavorful vegetables showing their dominance on a dish, rather than the usual heavy layer of cheese and sauces. I cannot speak for the gluten free crust, but the thin and crispy style of the whole-wheat crust seemed like it would translate over just fine without anything seeming missing.

Overall I totally recommend you check out this restaurant. This is especially true if you are looking for a nice classy looking restaurant where you can hear yourself when talking to your date.

The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread Cookbook Review

Kayleigh here. Seems like it's about time for another cookbook review: this time, The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread, by Bette Hagman. If you are anything like us, then you have one tried and true bread recipe, and you find yourself using it over and over again, since you do not want to go through a string of failures again finding out a new recipe. Clearly, the writer of this cookbook was cut from a different cloth, since she has made the effort to test and compile hundreds of different recipes for all sorts of bread varieties, from hearty, distinctive Rye and Sourdough recipes to inspiring and rut-breaking Irish Soda Bread and Chocolate Cherry Loaves. If you have the hankering for the vast array of varieties a gluten eater has at their disposal, then boy is this a book for you!

Hagman starts you right off with a Q+A session, covering quite many common issues with gluten free baking, from bread machine quirks to water-to-flour ratios and how to combat differences in brand behaviors. And as if this was not useful enough, she follows it up with quite a comprehensive list of flours, covering how they taste, what they are best used in, and even what other flours pair well with them! No longer does the sea of GF flours seem so daunting, with this list as your guide!

Another interesting quirk to this cookbook is that nearly every recipe has multiple versions for different sized loaves. Built as a guide for the oven baker as well as the bread machine user, each yeast bread contains instructions for both, noting the differences in cook times and behaviors quite thoroughly. I think it is fabulous, since it opens me up to baking at a friend’s house that may not have the same fancy kitchen setup as we do. It also makes recipe swapping easier, for the same reason!
Out of all the recipes we've dog-eared in this cookbook, our favorite so far is the cinnamon swirl bread. We added a cup of raisins to the cinnamon ribbons in the loaf, and baked a beautiful, fragrant loaf of bread worthy of toasting, spreading with Nutella or butter, and enjoying in your pajamas on a cold winter morning. In fact, this is the first gluten-free bread we've been able successfully make french toast with, as most other attempts have yielded crumbly, wet piles of disappointment. Not this cinnamon bread- it held up to the battering, gained a lovely crust and moist interior, and stayed in one piece when taken from pan to plate- fabulous!

Jason here. This cinnamon bread was absolutely delicious. Kayleigh has been the one who has persevered and made bread after bread, trying to find recipes which are enjoyable. Each time I feel the bread gets slightly better. What started as dry, dense, and bland, as slowly become flavorful, light, and fluffy. I know for sure that the various bread making books which we have picked up, or had gifted to us, have done wonders. I for one really enjoy the desert breads like the cinnamon bread we made from Hagman’s book.

Unfortunately, we cannot link to a blog or website for the author, as she has since passed away, but she does have several more cookbooks available for purchase, covering everything from comfort foods and desserts to more healthy dishes and baking tips- all lovingly researched and written long before gluten-free lifestyles entered the public spotlight. We cannot speak for the other books yet, but we highly doubt you can go wrong with Hagman's creative culinary concoctions!

Tamarind Tree Restaurant Review

Jason here. Last week we had some family up for the week. This was a great opportunity to go out and eat at some fun restaurants. The first place we decided to go is Tamarind Tree, the sister restaurant to Long which you may remember from our previous review.

The restaurant is situated in the international district in Seattle, and a little hard to find parking for. It does have a parking lot, but be warned it fills up fast.

The restaurant itself has a very nice atmosphere, but one that is a little hard to describe. We were seated outside, but under enclosed canopy. It has torchlights and heat lamps to provide warmth. I found it to still be a little cold, which unfortunately also led to my food getting cold faster than usual.

This time I got lucky and could order the Kumquat Crush drink. It was much less sour then I was expecting. The taste was more dominated by the kumquat rind than anything else. If you have never eaten a kumquat, the inside is very sour and sweet, but the rind is almost sugary with the same texture as an orange rind.

I ordered the same thing as I did at Long, which was the Co Ngu crispy shrimp. The shrimp was just as delicious as before. The salad it came with I still didn’t enjoy but I expected that.

Once again we got stuck, with no clue how to actually eat our salads. The problem is they are full leafs of basil and lettuce, there is some light dressing, and all you have are chopsticks. I loved the looks of confusion and deep contemplation as each person attempted to discern how to not look foolish while eating their salad. I just know someone somewhere must have been looking at us and thinking, “What are those fools doing?”

The crispy fried sweet potato, was less than crispy. Last time it was finely made almost like deep fried noodles, and very crunch. This time is like soggy French fries. A little disappointing.

Luckily the shrimp, and house sauce was still very much delicious. The house sauce has a sweet and salty taste to it. It is very watery so it is hard to get much on any particular bite, but it is so full of flavor it only takes a bit.

Kayleigh here. After visiting Long, I was excited to see much of the same menu, and eagerly ordered the Tamarind Tree Crepe off their Specials section. What I received did exactly match the menu description, but it looked and tasted…rushed. The crepe was crispy on the outside, but soft and soggy on the inside, as if it had been cooked too quickly at too high a heat. The house sauce on the side was excellent, and the shrimp inside were cooked perfectly, but the dish overall was unfortunately a bit lacking compared to our Long experience. Since we have only gone once to each location, I cannot definitively say Long is the better choice, but it will be the one we will return to next time.

As a closing note, we later looked up what the side greens were for. Apparently, we were to wrap our food up in them, then dip it all in the sauce to eat. Well, mark us for double fools, then!