Columbia City's finest

I love small neighborhoods with good restaurants. That's why I had to dedicate this post to Columbia City. One 1 block you have what I am starting to call one of my top 3 favorite Italian restaurants, a bar with tastey snacks and intimate atmosphere, a traditional wood fire pizzaria w/ good salads too, and some more ethnic cuisines that are tastey too.

Every time I go to La Medusa the food simply knocks it out of the park. A big reason why is because everything they use is very very local like farmer fresh local or imported from Sicily. That is the region their inspiration seems to derive from -- Sicily. So, we opened w/ 2 cheeses from the Olympic Peninsula region ($6 each), had the worlds greatest salad as a 2nd (I think it was $9) -- it had 2 different types of beets, arugala, roasted coconut tossed w/ corriander & cumin, finished w/ olive oil & balsalmic. Main courses were the market fish - monk fish that was just alright it didn't hit the rich flavor that fish carries, and duck that I still taste in my mind. F'ing awesome. Finished the meal sharing a canolo that seemed homemade which I say cause the shell was different than others I've had. Get a reservation and hold yourself to it cause it's some of the best food in Seattle and it will take you a year to share it w/ anyone else.

Kalaloos is very new and quite good. It's located just off of Rainier Ave South and just past Jones BBQ. My memory is a little "hazy" on what I ate since it was a little different cuisine for me and I had happy hour at Lotti's prior to. But it's a carribean cuisine using a lot of root vegetables I'm not familiar with, but were pan fried, sweet to the taste, and on the yummy side. We had a papaya salad topped w/ spicey shrimp. Hell Yeah! My main dish was Ox Tail braised in a curry sauce. Fuck yeah, and cooked perfectly. My gal ate the garlic halibut. I think her dish beat mine, but they both were awesome. The halibut was a nice and rich just the way that fish should be served. Don't pass up on their specialty cocktails either!!

Lotti's we are talking an intimate atmosphere and casual affair food. Sit at the bar and get some carbonara or anything from a list of pastas. I also love their breakfast burrito. It's fucking huge and only $4.50. Plus, they got a decent happy hour. What can I say I'm getting tired of typing...

Tutta Bella is the most well known restaurant in this block and they do a good job. Their job their is to serve smaller pizzas for $20/+ and they are wood fired. They are one of the few pizzaria that are Neapolitan certified pizzaria and they charge you for it. Yeah, it's a good pizza, but for value I'll go elsewhere. There salads are really good too.

Enjoy,
CrumbYum