The Laboratorium : Bite of Seattle

It bit. It was like going to an enormous food court, but where each of the individual restaurants has a much smaller selection. I have much better memories of the experience from the last time I went, four years ago. I guess in the intervening years I've passed some kind of inflection point on the curve of new food experiences, so that now I actually know what to expect from most of the sorts of places that showed up to the Bite, and the thrill of discovering genuinely new kinds of food has gone away as my wordliness in the ways of eating has grown. The eight-dollar "critic's choice alley" was mostly seafood, so I gave it a pass, and wound up having a fairly awful blue cheese salad, some just barely okay chicken skewers, some decent garlic fries, and a disappointing chocolate fondue. The only really good thing was a Hawaiian shaved ice, which was basically a Sno Cone with higher-quality ingredients. On the positive side, the company was good, and the day was cloudy so the crowds were bearable.