To help celebrate our anniversary, a couple good friends treated me and my wife to a surprise dinner at Shea's Lounge [0], a fantastic little hideaway above Chez Shea in Pike Place Market [0]. I'd never been to either establishment; the main restaurant offers an elaborate prix fixe menu, while Shea's Lounge is an intimate and apparently less formal environment. The Lounge offers an amazing array of small plates and appetizers, which we sampled heavily: a perfect seared foie gras; a wonderful, rich chanterelle mushroom tart; ahi tartare that rivaled any fish I've ever had at Nishino [0] (my favorite restaurant in Seattle); delectable scallops; and carne manchego, which consists of "pan-seared beef tips, caramelized onions, red wine, manchego and garlic crouton." The plates were passed around the table with increasing speed, as were the wonderful cocktails; our first round of drinks was so tasty that for our second round, all four of us ordered something someone else had already had. We tried each of the house special cocktails: a pear brandy sidecar, a Lounge Slacha (vodka and lillet, with a mint sprig) and a Suite 34 (champagne with a splash of cherry liqeur), as well as that old standby, the manhattan.
You'd think after all that, main courses would have been an afterthought, but we were intrepid. The tenderloin entrée was proclaimed by one of our companions to be "the best beef I've ever tasted," and our "spicy chorizo and chicken stew with tomatoes, cilantro, polenta, creme fraiche and avocado" was a wealth of flavor. For dessert, we couldn't help ourselves; we ignored the actual dessert menu and ordered two more of the seared fois gras from the appetizer menu. We also tried one of the most unique dishes I've ever encountered — "Foie Gras Crème Brûlée." It was sugary, creamy goodness intended as an appetizer, not a dessert, and I can say without exaggeration it must be tasted to be believed.
Dinner here is on the spendy side: Our appetizers all landed in the $7-15 range, and our entrées were $14 and $29. That's more than reasonable considering the outstanding quality; this is a fine "special occasion" destination.
The service was understated and excellent, and perhaps most surprisingly, we were treated to Radiohead's "Amnesiac" and Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" as our soundtrack — not at all what I would have expected from such an upscale restaurant. It was the perfect finishing touch to a superlative dining experience.
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