seattle eating and drinking: where to go

This got rather long: in case you hadn't guessed, I love food. And Seattle. My roommate R. is headed there for her first visit next week, so I've been motivated to put together a good list of places to eat and drink. Nothing very fancy here; I was a broke-ass teenager and college student when I was living in the city, and it shows. But this is delicious food, on a reasonable budget, with a few opportunities to splurge. While my photos yesterday weren't especially vegetarian friendly, market produce aside (I eat mad amounts of seafood whenever I'm home, and that trip was no exception) this list should be good for veg and non-veg alike. And all the farmer's markets are miraculous this time of year; I recommend the U-District and Columbia City ones in particular.

First, a few places I have not dined myself, but keep hearing excellent reports about: renowed vegetarian restaurant Carmelita; Tilth, a local-seasonal organic Northwest cuisine place in Wallingford that Frank Bruni recently named one of the US's "ten most intriguing new restaurants outside of NY"; Salumi, a hole-in-the-wall cured meats paradise whose lunchtime sandwich queues stretch around the street; and Hidmo, an Eritrean cafe/community space that's a hangout for the international hiphop community in Seattle, esp the Mass Line crews (one of the sisters who runs Hidmo contributed vocals to a track on Bayani). I hope to check them all out the next few times I'm home.

Coffee and tea:
Don't go to Starbucks, for chrissakes. You can visit the original one down at Pike Place Market if you want to see what spawned the empire, but there's much better coffee all around you. Favorites include Cafe Allegro (my no. 1 college hangout) and Cafe Solstice in the University District; Victrola Coffee, Espresso Vivace, and bauhaus books & coffee on Capitol Hill; Zoka in Wallingford (study-group central for my Jackson School posse); Caffe Ladro in Fremont; and Zeitgeist in Pioneer Square. Pegasus Coffee on Bainbridge Island is great (and now has a downtown Seattle location as well). Teahouse Kuan Yin in Wallingford is the place that got me addicted to Kashmiri-style chai (their version is a little idiosyncratic, but delicious) and they have a wonderful range of green, black, oolong, and herbal brews. The tea house at the Panama Hotel is a great place to spend a few hours--not only for the tea, but because it is also an unusual and complicated memorial to the 'Japantown' that was ravaged by internment in the 1940s.

Seattle fast-food institutions:
The last meal I want to eat before I die is a bowl of pho tai (beef noodle soup with thin-sliced raw eye-round steak) from Than Brothers, a local chain of dirt-cheap and delicious Vietnamese joints, each of which serves basically just 16 varieties of pho (veg, chicken, and beef with 14 different assortments of cuts) and cream puffs. I love my banh mi, but French colonialism never produced so happy a culinary marriage as the pho and cream puffs at Than Bros. A standard size bowl, which is a filling meal, is $4.25 (cream puff and garnishes inclusive).

Ivar's, down on the waterfront, was founded by a Scandiavian folksinger turned aquarium-entrepreneur in 1938. There's an indoor restaurant with oyster bar et cetera, but the thing to do is go to the open-air Fish Bar counter and eat on the outdoor tables along the pier, while fending off greedy seagulls. They have the best clam chowder ever, and the fish and chips (assorted varieties; try the salmon and chips for something different) are delicious.

Dick's Drive-in (several locations) has been feeding delicious burgers, fries, and milkshakes to the people of Seattle since 1954. I've never been to a White Castle, so during all heavenly-burger scenes in Harold & Kumar, it was a Dick's Deluxe that I was dreaming about. Dick's also rocks because they pay their employees well above minimum wage, and provide them with health insurance, paid vacation, and childcare support. Moreover, high-school graduates who work there in the summers and then part-time while attending local colleges can get up to $15,000 in college scholarships; a lot of kids have graduated from my alma mater over the years thanks to Dick's.

Uwajimaya Food Court: Uwajimaya is a monster-sized pan-Asian grocery store in the International District, with a Japanese bookstore and food court attached. The latter has stalls for sushi, teriyaki, Korean barbecue, Filipino food (oh lumpia!), Hawaiian, Chinese bakery, tapioca pearl-tea and ice-cream, etc. All very tasty.

Pagliacci's Pizza (many branches): I know, I know--I live in NYC, and I'm complaining about missing the pizza somewhere else? Pagliacci's sells thin-crust pizzas with delightful toppings, some traditional, some anything but. I love the AGOG, which features goat cheese, kalamata olives, whole cloves of roasted garlic (this is not date food) and fresh chopped tomatoes. They have seasonal offerings, like smoked salmon with ricotta and red onion, or heirloom tomato, as well.

More inexpensive deliciousness:
Agua Verde Cafe & Paddle Club down on Boat Street along Portage Bay was a college favorite, and remains one now--their speciality is seafood tacos, Baja-style. The bagre (spicy catfish) is especially good. They also make delicious margaritas (now served in biodegradable 'plastic' cups that say "Made of Corn"! Ah, Seattle). In addition to selling tasty food, Agua Verde also rents kayaks, which I recommend, though not post-margarita. Also, for good American-ish healthy burritos, try Gordito's in Greenwood or Bimbo's Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen on First Hill (I hear the quality of the latter has declined since my college days, though).

Cafe Septième: red walls, lattes in bowls, European/American comfort food, a glass display case full of cakes and pies, and butcher-paper to top the tables, with crayons to draw while you wait for your order. Dan Savage and the Stranger folks used to hang out here all the time; AR and I used to pitch up here late nights in college when we failed to sneak our underaged selves into a bar.

I complain all the damn time about the lack of decent, cheap Thai food in Brooklyn, having been spoiled in my Seattle youth. There are certainly duds, but a few reliables are: Thai Tom in the U-District, tiny and cheap with surly service but wonderful food that is actually spicy; Kwanjai in Fremont is good too. Sawatdy on Bainbridge Island is out of the way, but is one of the best Thai restaurants I've ever been to outside of Thailand (and also, the first.) And in a strip mall near the foot of Beacon Hill, there's a wonderful Laotian/Isaan Thai place called Viengthong, which makes excellent som tam, larb and a roasted whole fish with ginger. My favorite non-pho Vietnamese restaurant is the adorable Green Leaf in the International District.

Cafe Paloma, Pioneer Square. There isn't much in the way of good Turkish food in Seattle, but this pan-Mediterranean joint is owned by Sedat, Turkish guy, and thus a number of lovely things (havuç salatasi, mücver, stuffed peppers, grilled lamb, etc) have made their way into the evening menu (at lunchtime, it's more of a panini place). And they make lovely fırın sutlaç, the baked rice pudding that might just be my favorite Turkish foodstuff ever. But watch out, they have an odd schedule and only serve dinner Th-Sat nights.

And while specific names are eluding me, there's also lots of good sushi, Ethiopian/Eritrean (especially on Capitol Hill and in the Central District), and Chinese--some of big dim sum joints in the heart of the ID stand up well to their San Francisco and Vancouver counterparts. I've had mixed luck with South Asian food in much of Seattle proper, but there's good stuff available on the Eastside--stripmalls full of dosa restaurants all over Bellevue and Redmond, catering to the booming desi population in the tech sector there.

A splurge:
Boat Street Cafe: a French Provençal bistro that makes marvelous dishes with local, seasonal ingredients. Gorgeous, unfussy, satisfying food. My other roommate is actually friends with the owner, so we have a Boat Street Cafe apron hanging in our kitchen here in Brooklyn. That roomie also has a Dick's Drive-In teeshirt, and occasionally manages to make me hungry and homesick through sartorial means alone.

Bakeries:
Top Pot Doughnuts, Le Panier for excellent croissants and patisseries, Essential Baking Company (the walnut bread, yum), Grand Central Baking Company (all the sandwiches). Bainbridge Bakers makes these incredible wholegrain pullaparts that I love so much, and there is nothing like them in New York at all.

Desserts:
Dilettante Mocha Cafe on Broadway, Mora Ice Creamery on Bainbridge, B&O Espresso on Capitol Hill, and the Dahlia Bakery. And the above mentioned cakes at Septième.

Drinking:
The Collins Pub downtown has an amazing list of brews, Big Time Brewery in the U-District brews their own, Brouwer's in Fremont is a massive Flemish palace, and the College Inn Pub is still my favorite student dive bar. The Tractor Tavern has good beer and nice music, and I love them so much I have a t-shirt to proclaim it. Suggested regional microbrews (none of which are available out East) include Mac and Jack's, Fat Tire, Alaskan Amber, Pyramid Apricot Weizen, Pike Place Kilt Lifter, and Big Time's Atlas Amber. I didn't become much of a wine drinker until grad school, and when home I'm usually too busy revisiting above microbrews--but some Washington wines I like are Pitch Cabernet Sauvignon from Walla Walla, Tamarack Cellars' Firehouse Red, and Bainbridge Island Vineyard's Madeleine Angevine, along with their raspberry and strawberry dessert wines--I spent the first half of my childhood running wild on the land adjacent to the field that produces those berries.

And now I'm really hungry.