Are whiskey sampling and breakfast for dinner a match made in heaven? Flight Night at the Burgundian Tavern in Greenlake would like to convince you that they are. They offer a variety of flights including, on a recent night, two options each for whiskey, tequila, and beer. A flight is basically a sample platter for beverages, a curated tasting, with three similar options for you to try, side by side. For example, 'The Derby Winner' offered up three Kentucky whiskeys for comparison. There's no better way to try new things and educate yourself on what you like than to try slightly different versions of the same drink. That's especially true when you wash it down with a variety of menu choices, from the south (chicken-fried steak) to the north (poutine).

The Burgundian toes the line of being a gastro-pub, staying just to the pub side of the line with reasonably priced meals, and to the gastro side by making them darn good. It lives up to the pub side by honoring beverages as they should be, with an extensive tap list (it is the sibling of Fremont's venerated beer bar, Brouwer's, after all), a few good cocktails, a great spirits selection, and of course, flight night.

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Slims Last Chance Saloon kicks off its 2 Wheeler Dealer -- taking place every Thursday -- this summer starting tonight. But even if you aren't a biker, you should check out the kick off party. Slims will be slinging free (!) carnitas tacos and $2 PBRs starting at 5 p.m, plus hosting live performances by Black Top Demon and Burlesque. If you want those tacos (or perhaps, a bowl of Slims' beloved chili), keep in mind Slims stops serving food at 10 p.m.

At the crossroads of gourmet food, Japanese pop culture, and Georgetown grittiness, lies Hajime Sato's Katsu Burger. Sato has turned a 180 from his sustainable sushi practice at West Seattle's Mashiko, and is serving deep-fried burgers from a strip mall in Georgetown. On any given Monday night there's no better way to attack the week than with the indomitable Godzilla Attack Burger on the menu there, except perhaps by supplementing it with some nori fries and a kinako shake. Regardless of side dishes, it's a burger with strength, size, and a little of Godzilla's fiery touch.

The menu at Katsu Burger is riddled with gluttonous options, ranging from adding a fried egg to your fried burger patty to adding a fried patty to your stack of fried patties. Located on a Georgetown corner where there are still plenty of reminders of the neighborhood's industrial roots, it's fitting that there are few 'lighter' side options here (save for the minuscule, but worthwhile, side order of wasabi coleslaw). But you don't come to Katsu Burger to save on calories. You come to bulk up to Godzilla size, and you do that with the beef patty that has been panko breaded and deep-fried to a texture and flavor more like medium rare than extra crispy.

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Ballard Pizza Company, the latest from soon-to-be-if-not-already celebrity chef Ethan Stowell may have an identity crisis. Sure, it's only been open for a few weeks, but while the pizza is big, cheap, and good, the rest of the menu is what sets the shop apart. And why wouldn't it? The pastas, salads, and dessert are simply stars from his other restaurants, pared down to the casual-chic, counter-order style of the latest creation.

If the Romaine lettuce were left whole (rather than chopped), the Caesar salad would be at home on the menu at the late Union, Stowell's first Seattle restaurant. The whole anchovies, crisp croutons, and rich dressing take this dish away from the land of sorry Caesars. The oversized serving bowls harbor enough Parmesan-showered salad to split among the table for $8, making it an affordable side when you figure your slices are only $3 each.

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To paraphrase a parable, when chef's away, sous will play. Sous Chef Keegan's Monday night Americana menu at Hitchcock on Bainbridge Island embodies that playfulness with precision. A whimsically creative and well-imagined menu waits for anyone willing to pretend Monday is the third day of the weekend and grab a ferry across the water for a mini-vacation. The workday can be left behind on the mainland, along with the car, and the quick walk to the restaurant works up an appetite for the regional American favorites fashioned with local foods and international techniques.

A quick read of the menu shows childhood favorites, including fish and chips, spaghetti and meatballs, and tomato soup with grilled cheese. Adult favorites from all aspects of Americana fill out the rest of the menu: a version of 'shit on a shingle' that uses house-cured breseola, chicken and waffles that finally answer my plea, and a $75, over two-pound piece of prime rib. The best value and the best way to take a tour of the menu is to pick your price and let the chef do the choosing. For $40 the courses started with multiple styles of oysters and kept coming through the Reese's peanut butter cup cake and ice cream sundae.

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La Bête has found a unique way to sidestep the Monday night lull: by taking their show on the road. The same staff cooks in the same kitchen of the same restaurant, even including pieces of the same menu (their famous pork rinds and pickled shallots make an appearance), but diners go on a whirlwind culinary tour. Perhaps not something to call a pop-up restaurant, but a pop-out. The kitchen goes out of their normal menu, out of their comfort zone, into a new part of the food world.

Diners raved about their recent Indian menu, but now La Bête has moved on to Eastern Europe. Nestled in amongst the heaps of meat, a whole fish and an array of other options are the pierogi. Potato-based and often potato-stuffed, pierogi are no culinary innovation. There are good piergoi and bad pierogi, meat pierogi and cheese pierogi, but rarely truly innovative pierogi. They're what grandmothers make, not what restaurants serve. Except at La Bête, where pierogi are a plate to be proud of.

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There's something childish and fun about playing with your food, whether it's dipping into fondue, eating Ethiopian injera with your hands, or grilling your own meat over an open flame inside a restaurant. That last experience was exactly what I had in mind when I headed north on a recent Monday night. If there's another Korean BBQ place in the Seattle area serving charcoal tabletop BBQ besides Old Village Korean on Aurora, I haven't found it yet.

Sure, there are plenty of places that do a top-notch job with the electric or gas grills. They've got fancy set ups and high quality meat and a service staff that treats you like a princess. Old Village lacks these amenities. While the most recent remodel has left it much nicer than the ramshackle strip-mall hole-in-the-wall that it still seems to be from the outside, it's still not the most pleasant space in which to spend an evening. Unless your main goal is charcoal-grilled meat. Then it's the perfect place.

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Ray's Cafe is packed on a Monday night, a mix of families with kids, older folk celebrating birthdays, and tourists wielding cameras like they are the Puget Sound paparazzi. There's a noise level and general acceptance of romper-room behavior that loans a bit of an Applebee's atmosphere to the crowded cafe room. Service is at or below that same chain-joint feel, with the waiter telling tables his name when he finally drops by to take a drink order ten minutes after diners sit down. Casual feel, poor service, and pretty good seafood: Ray's is a shining example of Seattle's skewed standards.

Beers are slow to arrive, but the menu offers a complete selection of local microbrews, as is Northwest appropriate. The menu seems to be filled with boring seafood basics, but other than too-cold bread and butter, the food is executed perfectly: fish and chips are flavorful and crisp, a seared lingcod with mushroom ragout offers flaky texture and rich sauce, and a classic Caesar salad with shrimp is just that: classic. If nothing else, Ray's Cafe nails what every tourist to Seattle dreams of: a seafood-centric menu with familiar items and even a burger, in case the seafood gets scary, a view that makes sloppy service seem a non-issue, and a reasonable price.

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The Wedgwood Broiler excels at simple classics produced in simply classic fashion. That means that while your dinner salad will have Cheez-Its sprinkled on top of the salami slices, your burger will be ground in-house. It means that on weekends, when you're feeling fancy, you can order a prime rib like your grandmother would make for Christmas. In fact, is that her over there? It's hard to tell the little old ladies apart through the smoke. Wait, the smoking ban's been in place for years! It just seems like a place where smoke still hangs low. But that prime rib, while fabulous on Friday, hits its stride on Monday as a part of one of the city's finest french dip sandwiches.

The french dip they serve every day at the Broiler exemplifies the qualities I learned to look for while spending time researching french dips with the city's biggest fan of the dunked sandwich variety, @FrenchDipSEA. I've learned what goes wrong with bland jus, overly-thick bun, or too thinly-sliced meat. The Wedgwood Broiler commits none of those mistakes, delivering the right combination of heft in the bun to hold up to the jus without overpowering the meat. Then, on Mondays (or until the prime rib runs out) they step up the game, using the juicy roast.

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Since I've never been to Malaysia, it was an odd sensation to feel like I was at home at an auntie's house, slurping housemade laksa noodles out of the murky orange broth. Equally disorienting was doing so while surrounded by the faux-talian décor of Perche No, which, aside from one Monday a month, is not a Malaysian restaurant, but rather an Italian one. From the friendly greeting, shouted from four feet away, to the constant checks if things were going well, the experience was loud and comforting at the same time, like dinner with extended family.

We watched least one confused couple get seated in the restaurant and then leave before ordering, upon learning that their usual tortellini wasn't on the menu. I, on the other hand, was pleasantly surprised by the options listed on the menu, reading it between discussions with the owner, the chef, and various members of the waitstaff. At any given moment an order suggestion or a comment was as likely to fly out of the open kitchen as an actual dish. A wide array of Malaysian favorites like hokkien mee, nasi lemang, and laksa mixed into a menu with rarer finds like rabbit curry and stewed baby back ribs.

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