Raskin's Spendy Copperleaf Dinner; Seattle's Best Bukkake

Seattle Weekly's Hanna Raskin takes a trip to Cedarbrook Lodge for a special occasion dinner at Copperleaf, only to have her most memorable experience be sticker shock:

Not one of the 10 dishes I sampled at Copperleaf would keep me from packing a bag and counting on room service. Under executive chef Mark Bodinet, who this spring was longlisted for the James Beard Foundation's Rising Star Chef of the Year award, Copperleaf's kitchen is producing stringent, meticulous food. But, sadly, my meal was most memorable for its cost.

Raskin says "Copperleaf's dishes are just one element away from rightness," but does admit that the cooking is technically accomplished: "Few visionary chefs can can grill a lamb saddle or New York strip quite so skillfully."

The Stranger takes a stab at Wallingford's soba specialty shop Miyabi 45th:

Chef Mutsuko Soma's housemade noodles are like a Platonic—or miyabi?—ideal. They're soft but not mushy, with a little bounce in their texture and a delicate earthiness.

Special attention is paid to Miyabi's long, narrow room that "has the hybrid Euro-Japanese design you'd find at a restaurant in Kyoto or Osaka." And then there's the bukkake:

In the soba world it means lots of ingredients sprinkled on your noodles. The hiyashi tanuki bukkake soba ($13) at Miyabi is a refreshing cold noodle salad with wakame seaweed, sprouts, the gelatinous fish cake common to ramen, slices of cucumber, and the aforementioned tempura cracklings.

Tan Vinh at The Seattle Times pays a visit to The Upstairs bar in Belltown, calling it a low-key gem that offers a homey, grown-up vibe, with quality cocktails and convivial clientele. He says it's grown up quite a bit since it opened in December 2011:

It's more focused now. The cocktail menu features dry and boozy classics instead of candy cocktails. The concoctions aren't as ambitious as Rob Roy's, the gold standard for craft cocktails in Belltown. But the bar does well with the Manhattan and several variations of that classic.

· Review: Copperleaf at Cedarbrook Lodge [Seattle Weekly]
· Seattle's Best Bukkake [The Stranger]
· The Upstairs Bar in Belltown is a Low-Key Gem [Seattle Times]
· All Week in Reviews [~ESEA~]