Jun 9, 2025
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U District Cherry Blossom Festival
In 2021, I interviewed the executive director of the U District Partnership, Don Blakeney, for a story I wrote about the U District, and he shared some of his ideas for the future. One of them was to host an event that would coincide with the blooming of the cherry trees on the UW campus.
This year, for the first time in two years, the UW welcomed people back to campus to see the trees, and I was excited to see Don’s plans come to fruition with the first Cherry Blossom Festival. The event, which takes place March 25 through April 10, features drink, food and shopping specials all related to cherry blossoms. I went out to check out some of the food and drink deals.
My first stop was Kai’s Thai Street Food and Bar, which had pink cherry blossom noodle soup as its special. The soup featured tofu that looks like cherry blossoms and pink cherry blossom broth, along with wide rice noodles, chicken, fried garlic scallions and cilantro. I don’t know what type of tofu it was, but it had a texture that was more like a chewy or crunchy seaweed, with a neutral flavor. I don’t think that I’d choose to eat it - although there was nothing objectionable about it - but it was worth eating for the beautiful visual effect it had on the meal, which fit in perfectly with the cherry blossom theme.
The pink broth didn’t taste any different from the normal broth, but the real star of the meal was the heavy toasted garlic flavor. I’m someone who can’t have enough garlic, so I loved the oomph it gave to the dish, even though my co-workers and I joked that no one should get too close to us back at the office.
Overall, I really enjoyed this soup, and I’ll gladly seek this out once a year during the Cherry Blossom Festival. This soup is an experience, just like how it’s a special experience to go out to lunch with co-workers after mostly seeing them virtually for two years.
After lunch we stopped by my favorite cafe, Cafe Allegro. I haven’t posted about Cafe Allegro on this blog, because it’s a coffee place, and I post about food here. But I always think of Cafe Allegro as the quintessential college coffee spot. I’ve spent time there writing or doing other work, and a table over there might be two people arguing about existentialism and a person sketching in a book on the other side of them. It’s a little grungy and arty - a place for misfits and dreamers or maybe just students looking for a quieter place to hang out and chat with their friends. I’ve had conversations that changed my life in that little cafe. So I was glad to have an excuse to go to the Allegro to get the cherry blossom mocha, which was basically a white chocolate mocha with cherry flavor.
The next week I grabbed a friend to join me at Sweet Alchemy Ice Cream, which has become my favorite place to get ice cream. I think it’s the best place in town - it’s creamy and silky smooth without being too rich. And it offers unique varieties of ice cream, often featuring Asian flavors that reflect owner Lois Ko’s heritage. Sweet Alchemy has become popular - the line was out the door when I last went there on a Friday night - and I’m happy for them. I know Lois takes her role as a business owner in the neighborhood seriously, and she works to strengthen the neighborhood by participation on the U District Partnership board and other examples of neighborhood activism.
For the cherry blossom festival, Sweet Alchemy offered sakura ice cream, which features dried tart cherries, sake and orange blossom. When I ordered the cone, I expected an artificial cherry flavor like I’d get with some ice cream in the freezer section in my local supermarket. Instead I got the opposite experience. It was brown, not an artificial pink color. And it featured a mellow flavor with pops of acidity from the cherries and the orange blossom.
Spring represents hope and deliverance from the darkness of winter - and so do the cherry blossoms. The surprise in every lick of that ice cream matched that feeling of optimism I felt that beautiful day. My friend and I agreed that we have to make this trip for ice cream a thing we do regularly - it was such a treat!
All of my experiences weren’t positive. I went to one place and asked for the cherry blossom special, and they had no idea what I was talking about. But I forgive those bumps in the road in the first occurrence of an annual event. With the U District Partnership’s leadership, the business owners will be even more prepared next year.
For my job, I keep a watch on the news. I saw many mentions of the Cherry Blossom Festival, and the media talked about it as if it was an established event, no doubt conflating it with the blossoming of the cherry blossoms and conflating the U District with the UW. As the UW more closely coordinates with the U District Partnership and takes on a bigger role in the neighborhood - as its most substantial tenants - I hope this event will become the institution that it already is.
Cafe allegro- the coffee shop that inspired Howard Schultz to bring espresso to Starbucks- is tucked away off the street and has a fantastic hidden upstairs, perfect for a quiet cup of a coffee
Exquisite corpse created by poets at the open mic last night:
hot sweltering heat of the sun cuts my neck like a soccer ball made out of dirt and dreams that cause discomfort in the first world our solutions are always our mathematics, always right yet never seems to add up correctly cuz western science never has and eastern medicine heals a broken soul but not but at least not a broken heart
Next open mic July 7th @ the Station Cafe, feat. Ronald!