Five years ago, I appeared on KCTS TV's "Check Please Northwest" as a panelist. Many months earlier, I had been watching the show, and at the end of the show, they expressed interest in having  viewers go on the show for one episode. All you had to do was suggest a restaurant for the panelists to all try , fill out some paperwork, and hope you got selected. I did! With three panelists, you had to try the other two panelists choices. And then get reimbursed for the food, which was really good at all three places. The host was Amy Pennington, who was perfect at the job. She absolutely insisted that the show would go better if we were loose, not tense, and comfortable talking. So we sat around and drank a lot of wine. Diane picked me up after the filming, and I just staggered out of there. But to make a short story long... The restaurant that I suggested was St. Dames, a vegetarian restaurant near Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood , on the light rail li