More koa than you can shake a stick at

Not completely off topic, but close…
I had dinner at Palisade last night with my mother-in-law. For those not in the know, Palisade is *the* place to take your out-of-town tourist guests when they’re visiting Seattle. Great seafood, good everything else, with a vague allusion to an island theme present in the pu-pu platter naming scheme and guava wood-fired smokers. Mostly, though, it’s just good, fresh, expensive seafood.
It earns its chops as a tourist’s delight because of the panoramic view of the boats and the sound, plus a giant saltwater pond/stream running through the restaurant featuring live salmon, rockfish, wolf eels, and more. Unfortunately, they do not serve the residents. That’s what I want, a fish-it-yourself restaurant. In any case, enough restaurant reviews–there’s plenty of those elsewhere in blogland. Back to my point.
The restaurant is very beautifully decorated. I was trying to guess the wood and my closest guess was Koa, but since it’s $30/bf, I discounted it and settled on some unusual type of mahogany. I was wrong.
The place is Koa. Everywhere. Tables, paneling, giant double doors, waitstands, everything. According to our server, the Maitre d’ stand alone is $10k worth of lumber. He informed me that they found a private landowner on Hawaii (the only place Koa grows) who hooked them up with lumber for the whole place. Coincidentally, I’d just read an article about koa that day, so it was a real treat to see so much of it up close.
Check out Palisade–you’ll thank me for it.


(Great seafood, but not quite perfect–a tiny bit dumbed-down for the masses. Perfect for tourists.)
(I’ve got a 2 bf bit of koa in my garage just waiting for a project…)
(my mother-in-law is a delightful person who I enjoy spending time with. No, I am not being sarcastic. No, she does not read this weblog. Yes, I am very, very lucky)

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