Voula's Offshore Cafe

Before the January 1 diet begins, it's time to eat at Voula's Offshore Cafe, a breakfast and lunch joint on the Lake Union waterfront. This place was featured on Guy Fieri's Food Network show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," and the restaurant now has the Food Network logo on its awning, a big photo of Guy in the dining room, and a box highlighting Guy's picks on the menu. Voula's is so proud of Guy's visit to the restaurant that you can even watch the episode on their website. Check it out!

You can get typical omelettes, pancakes, and sandwiches at Voula's, but Guy evidently preferred the more offbeat house specialties like the hobos, which are mixes of scrambled eggs, mushrooms, onions, hash browns and other ingredients. (I tried the naked hobo, which includes green peppers and is topped with feta or Cheddar and tomatoes, and it was delicious.) He also likes the Chinese pancake, which has minced ham and an egg inside a pancake. Weird.

The portions at Voula's are ginormous; one order of the naked hobo provided three meals for us last weekend. Today I ordered two eggs with toast and hash browns and it came with enough hash browns for the whole table of five. I ate the eggs and part of the toast and maybe 1/3 of the hash browns and I've been full all day. Oscar loved his French dip, but not the French fries (they're crispy). Chris's lunch is pictured below; he says it was delicious. He also says it ranks highly compared to other places he's seen on food shows that he's tried.

Also, Voula's supposedly has great pie, which I haven't tried yet. And since I'm going on a diet, I won't be eating it anytime soon. Please let me know how you like it if you go!