Thursday marked Jasmine’s six month as a non-smoker. To celebrate (and because it was her last day in Seattle) we visited Ummelina and Carmelita. I reccomend both highly. (all three really, as quitting smoking is damn cool as well!)

Savory Vegetarian (and Vegan)

Carmelita in particular was exquisite, easily the best meal I’ve eaten out in Seattle.

The chickpea croquette with heart of palm and ginger-carrot infusion was divine, and had a texture and moisture that, I’m told, was reminiscent of crab. (I wouldn’t know) The warm frisee salad is the same salad being served everywhere this time of year, with red onions, pears, and carmelized walnuts, but the produce was much freshers (nearly as good as in California 😉 and the dish was made exciting and new with warm figs stewed with ginger, and a small “blue cheese flan”, which wasn’t in anyway flan like but sent me, as a blue cheese lover, into fits of rapture (and perhaps disproved Willam Macy’s famous aphorism).

Dinner was a potatoe and truffle pave (though in my house we call it a gratin), on a braised bed of leeks, kale, and tomatos, which in turn rested in a pool of peppery vinagrette, and crunchy lentils, garnished with pinenuts, and, oddly, a handful of spinach gnocchi. The kale threatened to overpower the truffle but each was incredibly rich and savory in its own right, and the gnocchi, while a little extraneous was excellent. Desert, the chocolate and peanut butter parafait was merely very good (but then I don’t have the same passionate love affair with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that Jasmine does), and the Equal Exchange French roast was a weak note to end on, but overall a wonderful dinner.