Cassie’s Ruminations

A Night on the Town

Shaun and I rarely go out. We’re homebodies and generally prefer the comfort of our own home, but last night we headed downtown for a night out. We got tickets to the Seattle Symphony, playing Distant Worlds – Music from Final Fantasy, and since the parking garage opened two hours early with our event parking, we decided to make an evening of it and get dinner too. We settled on The Brooklyn Seafood, Steak, and Oyster House. It got good Yelp reviews and had the benefit of being just across the street from Benaroya Hall so we could easily walk there, even being dressed up for the evening. We didn’t have reservations, but even at 6 on a Saturday night they had spots open along their “Chefs’ Counter,” which was set up sort of like a bar overlooking the kitchen so you could watch and smell all the food being prepared. I’d definitely request sitting there again. It was a lot of fun to watch all of the different dishes being cooked and plated. Shaun got the salmon and I got the Steak Oscar. My steak was a little undercooked, but as I enjoy rare meat, I didn’t bother to send it back. The food was quite good, though it came with the price tag that one expects for a somewhat upscale downtown restaurant. We’d definitely consider eating there again on another symphony night sometime in the future.

After the meal, we headed back into Benaroya Hall and found our seats on the second tier. I enjoy being higher up for the symphony so I can get a good view of the entire stage, and it’s not like there’s a bad seat acoustically in the house. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the composer, Nobuo Uematsu, who was in attendance, sat right out with the rest of the audience. There was a reception after the concert with him, but we decided against the extra $200 it would have been to attend. The music was accompanied by some well done clips of the video games that added a nice extra touch. It was clear that a good portion of the audience had never been to the symphony before. There were many jeans, t-shirts, shorts, and the annoying tendency of people to whoop and yell in addition to applause, as well as the tendency to applaud during the performance of pieces. Other than the audience, who I can only hope may have learned something from the experience of the symphony, the evening was a wonderful success, and we decided that we’d like to do a nice night out a couple times a year to treat ourselves and do something a little different. All in all, a triumph 🙂