Tour of Tsue Chong Fortune Cookie and Noodle Factory - Seattle, May 4th, 2017

(from the You Should Try The Unfortune Cookies department)

Hi everyone,

We got a chance to tour the Tsue Chong Fortune Cookie and Noodle factory in Seattle's International District.  They're family owned and have been making noodles for 100 years.

We got up nice and early and lined up outside:

Soon our tour guide arrived.  He gave us a quick history of the company, then led us inside:

He took us to the 3rd floor - apparently it's a bit quieter there.  We started at the place where they make rice noodles and fried chow mein noodles:

After trying a couple fried chow mein samples, we then moved on to the wheat noodle area.  After giving us some sample noodles to munch on, he showed us the machines that cut the noodles and the noodle drying area:

We then moved on to the fortune cookie machines!  They used to make their fortune cookies by hand.  Then - they got nine machines - four of which are working today.  The rest have been cannibalized for parts, since the company that made them is no longer in business.

One of the machines no longer folds the cookies - it just makes round discs.  They call these "unfortune cookies".  They're still quite good!

These machines make one cookie at a time.  They had a newer machine that makes 4 cookies at a time.  You can see it over there:

After trying some fortune cookie samples, our tour was over.  We wandered around the corner to the small factory store:

and bought some cookies and noodles to take home.  Then - we escaped into a beautiful sunny Seattle day!

Dana surprised at the sun, maybe?

This was a fun tour!  And - it was nice visiting a part of Seattle history!

Cheers,
Paul

Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room - Seattle Grand Opening - December 5, 2014

(from the It's better when it's freshly roasted department)

Hi everyone,

Dana, Rose & I attended the grand opening of the first Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room.  I saw the announcement that this one of a kind Roastery was opening up on Capitol Hill in Seattle today, so, with the promise of lunch, I bundled the family in the car, and we went on down.

Located in an old car dealership building, the entrance is quite impressive:

Inside, there are no green aprons to be seen.  The Roastery uses a different color scheme - more like a khaki.  The place was packed - so Dana, Rose & I sat down at the Tom Douglas "Serious Pie" restaurant inside, and watched the people mill about:

After we placed our order for lunch - pizza, of course! - I walked around the space and snapped a few photos.  First up, the merchandise - those are custom glassybabies:

Down below is a classroom area and you can also see the large batch roaster just off to the right.  The large batch roaster is the main production line for Reserve coffee.  This coffee is not sold in-store, but is vacuum sealed, boxed up and shipped around the world:

There's also an upper coffee bar with pour over stations, clover machines and all sorts of other coffee makers.  Note the pipes sending coffee beans from the small batch reserve area of the roastery to the coffee bar:

Coffee holding tanks for the upper, small batch roaster:

Another shot of the large roaster down below.  You can just see the coffee library behind it - it's the large glass-walled room with the bags of coffee lining the walls:

The upper coffee bar, including the coffee bean pipes and the baristas with the khaki aprons:

I wandered over to get a closer look at the small batch roaster:

Here's a very quick clip of the small batch roaster in action:

And the finished product - ready to buy fresh from the roaster:

NOTE:  The master roaster at the large batch roaster downstairs recommended letting the small batch roast age at least 8 days before brewing.  It allows for the beans to out-gas properly and increases the flavor.

Finally - our pizza arrived.  In a word - YUM!

And that was our coffee roasting/pizza eating adventure.  We had a great time, and it was fun to talk coffee with everyone there.

If you're into coffee, I definitely recommend stopping by!

Cheers,
Paul

Angry Birds invade Seattle!

(from the What's that on the Space Needle? department)

Hi everyone,

The latest version of Angry Birds - Angry Birds Space - launched yesterday in Seattle.

As part of the promotion, they had a special display on the Space Needle. I took a few pictures:







Finally, here's a photo taken with the Space Needle as seen through Fisher Plaza to give some sense of scale:



(Compare/Contrast with the normal view from one of my previous blog entries: Look - it's the Future! (or at least June 21, 2011)

Cheers,
Paul