foodies – BY's Art

Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market. Created in 1907 to connect the city’s citizens and farmers, Pike Place Market is a beloved Seattle treasure. Covering the nine-acre Market Historic District overlooking Elliott Bay, the Market remains the bustling center of farm fresh, local, and specialty foods. It’s a place where you can “Meet the Producer” (as seen on top of the building on the right…)—the farmers, butchers, fishmongers, cheesemongers, bakers, winemakers… The Market features one of the largest craft markets in the country, featuring all locally made handcrafted goods. (some very cool handmade sketch journals, too!) There’s over 200 small independent businesses and many different style restaurants, the Market offers endless opportunities to get lost in.

On just about any nationally televised sporting event taking place in Seattle, you’ll no doubt see the fish market guys throwing fish around and getting the ladies to kiss the fish… I sketched this from a photo that I had to take because for one brief moment, there were no delivery trucks in the way! This is one of my all time favorite sketches, because everything just seemed to flow the way I wanted it to, and because some of our favorite moments can be found here and around this area. I’m also working on getting some prints made of this sketch, somewhere in the 8×10 size range, the original is 10×14 and I like there to be a border for easy framing.

Each summer, my wife and I get the privilege of going to Tennessee and spending a couple weeks with some life long friends which is invaluable and eternal. The down side, is they are foodies. This means I put on 60-80 pounds in a matter of 2 weeks…As foodies, my friend likes to watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives with Guy Fieri, and then takes road trips to these places and eats there. (Well, he doesn’t watch it WITH Guy Fieri, Guy, is the host of the show…) The fun is the road trip itself, the journey, the eating is the excuse to go. So this summer we headed to Lexington, KY to Parkette’s Drive-In. Let me just start off with no misconceptions, this is man food. Fried chicken and gravy, home made rolls and gravy, butter and gravy, onion rings and gravy, french fries and gravy. Gravy by the tub that flowed like wine and our server made sure we understood clearly to dunk everything in the gravy. Everything. I’m sure the gravy is illegal in some states. For dessert, they brought out deep fried funnel-cake fries with powdered sugar on top!!! Are you kidding me?? Brilliant!!

Not only was the food an out of body experience, but the owners are amazing people as well! We needed several seats and the place was already packed out but they were building a new section for seating in an area not yet open, that they made look like a garage from the 1950’s. It had yellow caution tape around it, but they let us be the FIRST to use it!! We were the only ones in “the garage” and had it all to ourselves. They were so accommodating! I can see by the service and the food why it was featured on the show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.