Description
Instead of Tabasco or Sriracha, Zayda Buddy's in Ballard serves squeeze bottles of Secret Aardvark hot sauce, a Portland product with a distinct habanero tang. The menu could be classified as "enlightened cafeteria." Think of the food you associated with a day of the week in elementary school: burgers, sloppy joes, Tater Tot casseroles. Substitute real ingredients instead of glop from No. 10 cans, and you've got a lock on the chefs' style. But if the sauce on the signature thin-crust pizzas is bland and the beer cheese soup is under-seasoned, nobody at this good-natured beer joint is complaining. So long as the Twins are on the television and the Leinenkugel's flowing, it doesn't much matter whether the hot dish is short on cream of mushroom soup: After all, there's nothing Secret Aardvark can't fix.
