Matador

Tonight we headed out to Ballard to meet our friend Ruth and Dan's sister Lisa for dinner and drinks at Matador - an upscale Tex-Mex place with locations both in Ballard and West Seattle. The last time I was there, I had an amazing octopus dish, though it wasn't on the menu tonight. Instead, Lisa, Ruth & I all chose the shrimp fajitas, while Dan went with his staple, the tomatillo shrimp enchiladas. The place was packed, but service was quite prompt (considering), and we had drinks while we waited by the big fire pit for our table. Our food came fairly quickly, though the triple order of fajitas caused some confusion, and my order got lost in the shuffle. But I wasn't worried, since fajitas take so little time to prepare - a fact proven by my food coming within about 5 minutes. Hardly enough time for anyone else to dig in to their dinners.

And speaking of digging into our dinners - I dug in so quickly that I forgot to snap a photo first. Thankfully, Ruth (a pro photographer) stepped in with a spear of her fajita shrimp to stand in for the one I devoured already, allowing us to stage an untouched plate for the photo.



After dinner, we headed over to a little dive bar called 'The Bit', and had a round of beers courtesy of Ruth. I ran into my old college buddy, Dillon, who just moved to the Ballard area. That was a great surprise. We met my sophomore year of college up in Bellingham, and became good friends. We ran in the same crowd that year (in particular), and had a lot of good times. He now works just down the street from me, since he's a lawyer now and I work right by the courthouse. So I see him in a suit and tie fairly often, which is a bit disconcerting for someone I was so used to seeing riding around on a skateboard.