July 12, 2009

Tango Restaurant in Downtown Seattle

My friend and I are currently on the hunt for the best dessert (coupled with a great dinner) in Seattle, inspired by a Seattle Magazine article from last year. Currently she and I have visited the Cheesecake Factory located across from the convention center and Tango, which is on the corner of Pike and Borne.

Since the Cheesecake Factory is a chain restaurant, I thought I'd share some thoughts about Tango instead.

One of the best things about Tango is on Tuesdays happy hour lasts all day, and the happy hour food is delicious (all their menus are listed on their website). Since Tuesday is coming up here shortly, I highly recommend you grab a friend (or more) and go. My friend and I met up after work at 6pm, and it was fairly quite, which was nice.

We went there primarily for the desert El Diablo, which is a large cube of dark chocolate rub in cayenne pepper floating on a pile of burnt meringue and topped with almonds and cocoa bean chunks. And when I say a cube of dark chocolate, I seriously mean a cube. But the chocolate is really fluffy, like it has been whipped and reshaped into a cube. Regardless, the desert is incredibly rich and we believe is meant to be share between several. We brought home the remains of the cube to my roommate, and even she couldn't finish off the rest. I think it may be a four person undertaking.

Anyway, from the happy hour menu we had the muscles, fundido, gachas de ajo, and the pulled pork. The fundido is absolutely delicious, it's basically toasted bread that you top with melted cheese, sausage, and a slice of apple. Highly recommended. My friend adored the muscles and ate nearly all of them. The pulled pork is paired up with a rather mild salsa that is meant to be wrapped inside of a tortilla, and rather good, too. The gachas de ajo, however, is basically spicy humus. I like humus well enough, but compared to the other three items we ordered, it wasn't good enough.

My friend ordered the house sangria, which we wouldn't really classify as a sangria. I ordered the Tango Colada and was quite pleased. Overall she and I spent roughly $24 per person. We included a larger tip because we gave our good humored waiter some guff, and any wait person willing to put up with us and our weird conversations is deserving of our money.

Great food, delicious desert, good drinks, and great staff. I'd love to go again.

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