Dead Restaurant Dining: Madame K's

When rumors indicated that the clock might be ticking on a personal favorite pizza spot--Madame K's in Ballard--Seattlest rushed to organize a final dinner with some friends for the weekend. The pizza is good-ish and the whorehouse kitsch decor engenders a surprisingly comfortable environment; there are few rooms in the city that wrap a party in as warm a womb as the back of Madame K's. The smell of pizza intermingles with the must of retro thrift lingerie and it's cramped and weird and we love it. They actually cut their pizza into squares, Chicago style. If you think that's not a big deal try to get a random pizza delivery place to cut a pie into squares instead of slices sometime. What ends up arriving at your door is interesting, to say the least.

We finished our squares on Sunday and as our waitress was clearing away the bill and the remnants of the Chocolate Orgasm--a cookie baked in a pan with ice cream on top--we popped the question, "Confirm or deny: Madame K's is closing." Confirmed, unfortunately (unlike the subject of Part II of the "Dead Restaurant Dining" series--stay tuned later this week). Madame K's is being sold, and a buyer exists. The restaurant was to change hands at the end of the month, but the new owner is having a little trouble working things out with the landlord. Madame K's could be around through April, our waitress said. What is the new owner going to do? The waitress responded "vegetarian Thai." Seattlest, the other three people in our party, and the waitress all made a face to indicate "Ew." It's not that we dislike vegetarian Thai, necessarily, but in place of Madame K's on Ballard Ave, in New Ballard...yeah, we do dislike it. Ew.