Canlis is a nice, albeit, super expensive place. El Gaucho has great steaks and is cheaper.
Less expensive, try Ivars (seafood) down at the waterfront or Royal Grinders in Fremont if you want some awesome sandwiches.
There is also Paseo, if you want to try a Cuban sandwich.
Calozzi's is supposed to have great cheesesteaks. I'm not so sure.
For burgers, I usually just go to Dick's. It's cheap and decent.
Red Mill supposedly has good burgers, but I'm not a fan.
If you want a hot dog, Cyber Dogs serves up some nice vegetarian dogs. They're pretty good and I'm not even a vegetarian.

I've lived in this area for a long time. Before the Iron Rabbit, a Skippers incorporated that location.

Anyway, if you want Thai food, simply go to Lemon Grass or Mekong Thai in downtown Olympia.

If you want a burger, go to Eagan's in Tumwater. There's also a location in Westside Olympia and on the Eastside near Ralph's Thriftway.

If you want Mexican, try Peppers in downtown Olympia.

Or if you want a sandwich, go to Meconi's. There is an establishment in Lacey, near Saint Martin's University, and in Olympia, near the capitol...across from Subway.

-----
Lemon Grass Restaurant
212 4th Ave W, Olympia, WA

Iron Rabbit Restaurant & Bar
2103 Harrison Ave NW Ste 1, Olympia, WA 98502

I apologize for my delay in updating you all on the date.

First off, I was early and had to wait for about 30min until she arrived, but I'm not complaining. ;)
After she arrived (we both parked underneath the Viaduct) we headed up to the Market, walked around, talked, and visited a few shops. I bought a GIANT cookie, too, which totally ruined my appetite. Lesson learned. Eat cookie AFTER dinner. Actually, it would have been fine if she hadn't refused to eat any of it. As it was, I forced myself to eat the entire thing...well, it was GOOD. You would have done the same thing.

So, then we walked back down to the waterfront, looked inside the Ye Olde-whatchamacallit, a few other places, and then strolled over to Anthony's on pier-whatever. By the way, there are absolutely no restrooms available to the general public down there. I found out the hard way that my usual pissing place is now locked. Anyway...

Anthony's was fine. The food was a little on the expensive side, though. I ordered the chicken, which garnered a little verbal abuse. Personally, I don't eat seafood unless it's first deep-fried in a large vat of grease. Apparently, this was too much for my date to handle and she continued to insist that I try her disgusting Ahi Tuna nastiness. So, despite almost vomiting from trying the Tuna, everything else was fine and, get this, SHE PAID FOR EVERYTHING! Haha.

I figured that I would pay for it, or that we would at least split the bill, but she paid with her card and wouldn't take any of my money. It was a very frustrating experience and something that I would not like to repeat. Well, at least we're still talking, right?

Our next date is roughly scheduled for Oct. 12th. She'll be coming down here to Olympia and I plan on taking her to the Lemon Grass restaurant. They just finished remodeling and the place looks great.

Well, I hope that clears things up a little.

Haha.

Leave it to women to screw everything up. All of my plans have been thrown out the window. Instead we are now focusing on "casual" dining and will most likely choose something convenient, like, Ivars or Anthony's down by the water in Seattle.

I think the importance is now being placed on actually getting to know one another. We're going to wear comfortable clothing, walk around a bit, until we finally get hungry enough and settle on the nearest, most convenient restaurant in our immediate proximity.

So, does anybody know of a decent restaurant that's located on the waterfront? I'm accustomed to dining at Ivars and Anthony's, but sadly, that's the limit of my knowledge.

Thanks!

Our date is scheduled for Saturday, September 20th. I canceled my reservation with Matt's and, unfortunately, will soon be canceling my reservation with Chez Shea. The reason being: money. I have very little of it at the moment and am not very excited with the notion of spending $100 for dinner.

We have met...once. In fact, we went to college together. This will be the first time we have seen each other in over five years. I wanted this to be special and I wanted to spend a lot of money. Oh, well.

She lives in the Edmonds area and I live in the Olympia area, but I thought dinner in Seattle would be fun for the both of us. Unfortunately, the only restaurant I am familiar with is the Pink Door, which is where my ex-fiance and I had dinner once.

So, it appears as though my priorities have changed yet again. Simple, good food, romantic....cheap. *sigh* I never thought finding the perfect restaurant would be this difficult.

Well, I have a problem. I was in Seattle today and decided to visit Matt's to get a better idea of where we'd be dining. I hate to admit it, but I was not impressed. The main dining area is relatively small and the tables look, well, cramped. From what I could tell, I'd be eating elbow to elbow with other diners.

I simply wanted a small table of my own with a nice view. Matt's, unfortunately, does not look like the restaurant that can provide this.

Does anyone know of a restaurant in the same vicinity that may have single tables with the opportunity of a nice view?

I appreciate the help. Thanks.

Ya, they were all white, but if you go down to Arizona they're all Mexican. Curious isn't it?

I was actually more concerned with the fact that my dad proceeded to tell this 16yr old kid taking our order that he wanted extra sauce, no mustard, ketchup only on the bottom, and cheese between the buns...or whatever.

My dad loses all logical sense of right and wrong when he enters a restaurant. In this case, when my dad finished with him, the kid couldn't even remember our order number or my chocolate shake. Argh. Incidentally, I also happened to receive extra mustard on my burger.

Okay, first of all, I have to say that I don't remotely understand any of these reviews or how anything good can be said about this place. Either your standards and expectations are incredibly low or you were high from the hot pot fumes.

I made an interesting observation as my family and I walked in to the Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot last week. I only noticed one party of two who happened to be caucasian, the rest were Asian. Just a curious side-note.

Granted, we were seated very quickly, but almost just as quickly it became very apparent that hardly anyone working there spoke English and the few that did spoke it very poorly. Luckily, we managed to order water, which showed up 5-10min later.

It was also fairly difficult to understand the menu, how to order, what to order, how much to order...pictures would have been a good idea here. It was also very difficult to get the attention of our waiter/waitress, whoever he/she was. We didn't know and I doubt they knew either, which only added to the frustration.

So, finally after speaking, or rather, trying to speak to a few Hot Pot employees, we figured out how to order (and what to order) and soon two large pots full of some type of smelly liquid is forced in front of our noses, which quickly begins to boil and froth. Hey, it tasted pretty good, even my "spicy" one, but be very careful and delicate when making an attempt to remove anything from said pot. There are a gazillion little weird things floating around in the "soup," most of which I doubt you'd want to eat.

This was about the time I started to get light-headed from constantly inhaling the hot pot fumes. Unfortunately, it was a bad high and didn't make the experience any better.

We were all getting fairly hungry about now - about 20-30min into the dinner - but soon had a few plates of thinly sliced, uncooked meat sitting in front of us. At this point, I came to the terrible realization that I was going to have to put some effort and work into this if I wanted to eat.

It's a very strange thing to have to cook your meal in a boiling cauldron of mysterious liquid, filled with little objects that appeared to be some type of evil looking potpourri.

Nevertheless, we cooked and we ate, and much to my dismay I remained hungry. Normally, when I order a meal I like to have options. I like to be able to eat, maybe, some chicken or noodles, with the inclusion of a spoonful of rice. At this place, we were simply given meat to eat and had to wait an additional 5-10min for the "vegetable" part of our order to be delivered. I'm hesitant to refer to them as vegetables, because where I'm from I call them "weeds." However, my saving grace was the potatoes, which happened to actually resemble sliced potatoes.

I always became confused when cooking my food. I mean, how long does one need to cook this stuff to boil away any danger of becoming violently ill? Who knows. I certainly didn't, which is probably why I didn't eat very much.

Great food? Excellent food? Hardly. It doesn't not even come close. It was borderline disgusting and such an inconvenience that I sought out an In & Out afterwards to feed my hunger and set things right.

In addition to the overall crappy feeling in my stomach, which slowly oozed it's way to incorporate my entire body, I found that the same nauseating aroma eminating from our hot pots had latched itself onto me, like some sort of alien parasite.

So, in sum, if you'd like to smell like your food, if you'd like to leave hungry and confused, if you'd like to leave feeling dirty and abused, if you'd like to leave with a knot in your stomach the the crule realization that "you will pay for this the next day," then I highly suggest trying the nearest Mongolian Hot Pot. You will not be disappointed.

But, for me, I would rather have gone to the nearby Thai buffet, Thai Cafe.

Hello, all, thank you for your advice. Just an update. I managed to make contact with Nancy Leson, food critic for the Times; what a wonderful person to take time out of her day to respond to my email(s).

Nancy suggested four restaurants:

1. Place Pigalle (www.placepigalle-seattle.com)
2. Cafe Campagne (www.campagnerestaurant.com)
3. Boat Street Cafe (www.boatstreetcafe.com)
4. Madoka (www.madokaonbainbridge.com)

This actually only complicates things, but I suppose I should be thankful that I live in an area that has so many great places to choose from.