4.1
Good
186 Reviews
3200 184th Street Southwest, Lynnwood · 7.98 miles
Customers’ favorites
- Wild Salmon with Saffron Couscous
- White Chocolate Bread Pudding
- Crab Mango and Avocado Salad
- Kung Pao Brussels Sprouts
“Lynnwood is not Bellevue, and Alderwood Mall is not Bellevue Square. The resemblance is there, but nobody is confused, least of all the mall. Still, Alderwood holds three spots dear to me. There is J. Sweets, where I can get my favorite wagashi imported straight from Japan, sweets so restrained they seem almost to apologize for being sweets. Next door is Arc Watch Works, run by a master watchsmith, if that is a word, and his charming wife; if it is not a word, he is reason enough to coin it. And on the second floor of Nordstrom there is Bazille, a veritable oasis, tucked away where oases are kept now. After yesterday's failed expedition into traditional American fare, I came to Bazille in a spirit of repair. It is one of those rare rooms that is never too busy and never too empty, as though the place itself has good manners. Today's crowd included a beautiful family of four sliding between English and what I took to be Tagalog, easy as breathing, and a lone woman at the bar who was plainly known to the bartendress. To be known by name at a bar on the second floor of a mall in Lynnwood: that is a kind of citizenship too. The menu is minimal but not too minimal, caloric but not unreasonably so, which makes it the antithesis of the Cheesecake Factory at the other end of the mall, where the operating principle is more, and then more after that. Even so, I always have trouble ordering. My standing dilemma is the chimichurri steak versus the mushroom ravioli, a question I have failed to settle across many visits. Today the steak won, with a glass of cab and the little gem Caesar. A year ago it would have been the lobster salad, but the lobster salad has gone off the menu, and I have grieved in proportion. Bread pudding after, because repair should be thorough. The food was, as always, delicious. Five out of five, and here I should explain my system: on a scale of one to five, anything other than a five is really a one. Everyone knows this; inflation has come for the stars as it came for everything else. On an honest scale of one to ten, an eight or a nine, which is to say excellent, which is to say go. The service was its usual five. The atmosphere was divine. A veritable oasis, as I said, and I will keep saying it until Nordstrom puts it on a plaque.”