Exploring Seattle with Jade: Portage Bay Café
Jade Onnalin Kajornklam is one of this quarter's FIUTS student bloggers. Jade is from Thailand and is an international exchange student at UW. In her free time, Jade enjoys exploring different places to eat around Seattle. Her blog posts will share her favorite locations so that other international students can learn about them too! Read on to learn more about one of Jade's Seattle restaurant recommendations.
What’s up guys? So many things coming up at this time, life is so busy. Hands up if you have yourselves fooled with the exact same excuse as I do. I caught my brain telling myself I’m busy most of the time this week just to stay inside in my cozy nest which I built in my bedroom especially for Netflix time of the day, aka all day long. I see college life contains pretty much four main paths: studying, socializing, working out and traveling around the city. Last two seems to be in and out of the picture, they come on and off for me. How about you guys?
If you find yourself quite a bit of a lazy bird who likes to stay in your own nest and wonder why your life is so boring…. Well well, it is your life, you get what you do buddy. So how about going out freshly for some breakfast close by?!
I’m not going to force you out of your bed early in the morning and spend 20 minutes yawning in the bus to just get food. For lazy folks like us, I will lay out a baby step for you to try and when you get addicted, trust me, you are going to have so much fun creating some adventures of your own every single weekend!
This week is all about ‘Portage Bay Café’, the fabulously famous breakfast place in Seattle. Wowww, excited? Since this place is quite well known, I guess a lot of you might already know and have been to the place, but remember, this column is all about getting your lazy wings spread widely and fly out of your nest to someplace that is close and easy to go to. So, for those who haven’t heard of the place, buckle up and prepare to have your mind blown!
Two blocks away from our lovely west campus in the Sunday morning, there stands the extraordinarily crowded row house. You will spot the line of people standing inside and even all the way outside sometimes. It goes like that even in the afternoon. This facts truly reflects the popularity of Portage Bay Café, but it might also get you asking yourself if you want to risk spending one hour and a half just to try this place out. Yes, you do! No, let me put this together again. YES, YOU DO. The food experience you will get there is absolutely worth the wait; despite the fact how gorgeous the dishes are, you can book it online! Isn’t that service just like a life saver? I did reserve beforehand myself and I got my table impressively right on time of reservation. I can’t tell you why other people do not book it online and why there is still a waiting line. That is a total absurdity to me.
The restaurant is separated in three areas, inside, inside on the upper floor and outside. And what is beautiful about outside area are the feeling of being wrapped and hidden in the little glass house with your friends with provided cozy blankets and heater!
Once you are being taken to your table, you cannot miss the bar full with fruits, nuts, jams and big bowl of whipped cream. These are unlimited for whoever orders pancakes and French toasts. The vibe inside is extremely lively. You will find many different noises all at once. People talking, laughing, waitress walking around—fast with an arm full of plates, clinking noise when knives touch the forks, softly played music. Giant window allows you to enjoy the brightness outside, you will feel happy and awake trying to choose what you are going to order. It will take a while for your first time because everything just sounds so good. Not after you finish them though, the dish is huge. You can’t deny the fact that fat amount of happy food makes you want to nap. But people, you’re supposed to be happily napping after long hard working time on weekdays.
So what’s to order? If you ask me I’d say French toast is phenomenal. I’m saying this because it is my favorite dish from Portage Bay Café and of course, unlimited sides from the bar allows me to have mountains after mountains of whipped cream, who wouldn't love that? I guess you have to try it out yourself to be able to tell if I’m exaggerating about this or not. *evil wink* And ooh, I had sides of sausage and pepper bacon along with French toast which doesn’t sound relative or even get along. I just couldn’t really take a chance of not having those. And it turned out just beautiful, gotta get my thumb up for those pepper bacon.
One more thing I really love about Portage Bay Café is the staff, they are all smiling and trying their best to deliver a really good service to you, you will just feel it. They are fast, they are sharp and they will get you whatever you want. At least, they did that when I asked for two boxes to pack my leftover home, including my whipped cream mountain.
All I can say is that I left Portage Bay Café with good food in my belly, good friends by my side and Breezeblocks by alt-J playing in my head.
All right guys, two blocks away from west campus. You can have what I had, too. Now go make your reservation!
Love,
Jade
Here is the website: www.portagebaycafe.com
There are three branches according to the website which are Roosevelt, South Lake Union and Ballard. The one we are talking about is the first one. Down there is the website. I highly recommend you to see what they have in a menu beforehand, which helps a lot if you get indecisive when it comes to food just like me. And of course, please, reserve the table online if you do not want to wait.
For more about Jade and the other Winter 2015 student bloggers, click here.