is this irresponsible?

 I know we're past the 2-4 week span where everyone's small talk involves talking about vaccine symptoms. But with the way things are going, maybe we'll have another half year of Covid related small talk. Oh man this Delta variant is crazy huh? Yeah so crazy.

Anyways, I was slightly terrified of vaccine side effects. I had only been hearing it was knocking everyone out. And yet...

I hopped on a plane to Seattle the morning after my second shot.

The first stop after washing my face was to walk to brunch at Sabine.

Am I feeling vax side effects or am I just drained from waking up at 5am or am I just light headed and starving?

This breakfast sammich with seven day pastrami, pickled mustard seed aioli, fried egg, and argula on brioche fixed almost everything. Please put pastrami on all my breakfast sammies from now on.

Picked up a bevy because I love bevvies, and I love bevvies that feel like they could heal me, and because dandelion is so ~in~ right now.

The second stop was my bed for a week for a long nap.

But first...shame to Ian and all his ancestors for committing the eighth cardinal sin of leaving a whole ass runny egg on his plate to be recklessly scraped into the trash before the plate goes into the dishwasher with the other plates.

And then I definitely reversed any all progress by going brewery hopping because the sun was out and there are no less than 23479283742734 breweries in Ian's vicinity.

Am I feeling vax side effects or am I just drained from waking up at 5am or is it the several beers I've had on a toasty day?

We may never know.

Special mention for our last stop Fair Isle for this delicately calming glass design. And their refreshing beer cocktail thing. I don't remember exactly what was in it but I do remember the flavor profile was ~Asian~. Ask him about his glass collection if you're ever in Ian's kitchen.

This 75% capacity indoor dining experience at Rockcreek was mostly a progression of oysters.

But first this grilled mackerel salad with mint, basil, nuoc cham, crispies, and a dollop of roasted eggplant that I could've drowned myself in. Not pictured cauliflower that was shaved paper thin with farro, pine nuts, celery, calabrian chili, white balsamic, and pecorino. 

I didn't even realize we basically had an oyster buffet until looking through my pictures again.

Highly highly recommend this oyster shooter. Roe, cucumber, shiso with sake. It's as delicately refreshing as it looks.

Very much do not skip the oysters 'brock-a-fella' with bacon, shallot, thyme, and tamarind butter (yuuummmm). Awkward that there were four oysters for the three of us, so we did the adult thing... and played a game for the last one. It wasn't rock-paper-scissors, but it was akin to that. All I remember is Ian won, and I was bitter about it.

And then definitely decide that was not enough oysters and get a half dozen of one of the varieties on the half shell. All from WA. I don't know, I think we asked the waiter for a recommendation. Doesn't really matter. I was semi-anxiously dining in a full-ish restaurant, and they were still yum.