Livin' the High Life

Oh, come on, I had to go with that title.

You'll read about the origins of the Hi-Life everywhere, so I might as well repeat it to help make the connection. There's a new restaurant in the old firehouse in Ballard, called the Hi-Life. It's part of the Chow Foods chain of "neighborhood restaurants"--which I do think is a cool idea--distinct restaurants for different neighborhoods. The P-I recently covered the owners and this concept around the time Hi-Life launched. These are the guys behind Coastal Kitchen on Cap Hill, the Jitterbug in Wallingford, Atlas in the UVillage, and the 5-Spot on Queen Anne. All good places to go and almost all are guaranteed to be packed on Sunday mornings. Out of all of them (tested on various Sunday outings), the Hi-Life has quickly become one of my favorite places to eat.

I made my first visit last month. Several days before my roommate left for his wanderings around the western hemisphere, we had a houseguest that we'd planned to take to Crave on Capitol Hill with some other friends, where I was to continue the mac 'n cheese quest. For a variety of reasons, these plans changed and I took it as my opportunity to head to Hi-Life for the first time after reading so many reviews. Besides--the original drive to go to Crave was for the mac 'n Cheese, and I was coming down with a cold--so my judging of their rendition wasn't going to be as trustworthy as I wanted.

So, we went one neighborhood over to Ballard for Friday lunch with my roommate and our friend from Atlanta. Ironically enough, the special that day was mac 'n cheese, but I passed and ordered one of the sandwiches with prosciutto, manchego cheese, and carmelized onions (let it be known that I am a total sucker for carmelized onions). My two dining companions went with the Special, and the twist in this case was the addition of a tomato sauce (encmonkey later said it was like a pizza macaroni and cheese). My sandwich was huge, on large slices of the standard Essential Bakery bread. I think I ate the leftovers for the next two lunches, but the enjoyment was overshadowed by a recent visit to the Rocksport and that delish grilled cheese.

A couple of days later, I found myself in the market for Sunday morning brunch. The Hi-Life was suggested and I agreed to this, without letting on that it had only been about 48 hours since my last visit because I wanted to check out other menu items. There was a supposed 20-minute wait, but I swear it was only 5 minutes since we were seated in the large over-21 section. My dining companion ordered the Biscuits and Gravy, which appeared to be a winner. This go-round, I went with breakfast too--the Vanilla French Toast. This French Toast is the best damn French Toast I have have experienced in my life. The best. Oh my god, it was so good. And the portions were HUGE. Bigger than my head. We didn't get more than a quarter of the way through our meals, but you can blame that on the previous evening's intake. We both agreed later that these were some of the best leftovers we'd ever had.

Here's the thing: the bread on this french toast is soaked in a vanilla custard before it's cooked. It's french toast, but the taste was completely unexpected. It wasn't too sweet, and the flavors...oh, the flavor. It's topped with whole hazelnuts and mascarpone cheese, which makes an excellent sub for butter. I went home soon after, napped through my carb coma, and ate the leftovers upon waking up. Inhaled would be a more accurate term, I couldn't eat fast enough.

For weeks, I've been saying I wanted to try it again--to see if it was as good on the second try. Yesterday, after the St. Patrick's Day Dash, sprizee and her Dude, and Toad and I headed over for our post-Dash meal. The Dude ordered pizza (excellent!) but 3 of us ordered the French Toast with extra sides of bacon. From my observations, my cohorts enjoyed this French Toast as much as I did. Even the Dude tried some after having a salad, his whole pizza, and two cokes, and he was all about The Toast, too.



For each visit, the entrées didn't cost much more than 8. On Sunday, our tab for 4 came to about $70, after you added on the Mimosa, cokes, sides, and tip.

The service is great, the atmosphere is great. The waiting time when you've just done nearly four miles on a mostly empty stomach was not so great. But if you're more patient than we were or you don't take any minors with you (you'll be seated sooner), you'll be just fine.

I give it 4.5 umbrellas out of 5. In all of Seattle, only La Carta de Oaxaca, a few streets over, has delighted me more.

Love that Ballard.