Pavel's Blog

On the way into Seattle tonight, Kathleen noted that, due to increased proximity and convenience, we've probably made more trips into Seattle in the year we've lived in Bellevue than we made to San Francisco in the previous ten years of living on the Peninsula. We certainly do go in fairly often, primarily for the theater (somehow this year, we've ended up with season tickets to three different theater companies).

Tonight, however, the excuse was an art-house movie we'd been wanting to see, a French film called "Intimate Strangers", which has been out for a while and is now only playing at this one theater in Capitol Hill.

The Harvard Exit theater is near the very top of Broadway, on E. Roy. This is a lovely, relatively quiet little neighborhood with a few eclectic shops and several restaurants that look interesting.

The Seattle Weekly gave the Harvard Exit an award for "Best Movie Theatre Lobby to Wait In", and it's easy to see why. The building was originally a clubhouse for a women's club and there are several nice living room / parlor rooms scattered about. It's a very comfortable place to see a movie (even though our show was in the "Top of the Exit" theater, upstairs on the third floor) and you can't beat their politics: the other movie showing tonight was "Uncovered: The War in Iraq" and they have other, similar films coming up. Definitely a place we'll be going back to.

(The movie itself was also pretty charming, in that classically quirkly French way. It begins with a woman mistakenly coming into a tax lawyer's office, thinking it's the office of the therapist down the hall, and pouring her heart out to the bemused lawyer. Misunderstandings, confessions, understandings, and cryptic confusions ensue.)

After the movie, we walked across the street to a nice, informal little coffee shop and crepery called "Joe Bar" with a small but interesting crepe menu including the intriguing "PB & J" (which comes with a glass of milk). To our great disappointment, though, they only serve crepes until 2pm on weekends (why?). Fortunately, Kathleen noticed a line in the newspaper review they had posted on the display case, which mentioned that Joe Bar finally gave Seattlites a choice of creperies, joining long-time standard "611 Supreme", at 611 E. Pine, only a few minutes' drive away.

We quite enjoyed the food (and the value for money) at 611. I had their Salmon Chevre crepe, with smoked salmon, chevre, and lots of scallions. The scallions really make this dish, adding a necessary edge to a very creamy filling. (In fact, they added enough cream and/or butter to the chevre that the "goaty" flavor was almost completely hidden, a bit of a disappointment to me.) Kathleen concocted her own crepe of salmon, tomatoes, and spinach and was likewise pleased; the crepes are enormous, easily the largest we'd ever been served.

The music at 611 is too loud and too hip-hop for our tastes, but not so much so as to keep us from intending to come back for tasy crepes. (Of course, we'd also like to go back to Joe Bar sometime when they're actually serving...)