Best Fuel

Best nachos

ALICE WHEELER

"That's a small plate?" our dinner companions exclaim the first time we take them to La Cocina & Cantina (432 Broadway E, 323-1675) on Capitol Hill and order a regular-sized nachos frijoles for an appetizer. Yes, indeedy. La Cocina's nachos are something else: volume-wise, nobody else comes near 'em. The chips are light and slightly salty, and taste fine with the red and green salsas you're served upon seating. But hold onto them, because you'll need them to rescue all the toppings from a frijoles plate: If you don't eat the whole thing in 15 minutes (and we've yet to meet the person who can), the chips at the bottom turn to mud underneath the endless layers of cheese, beans (black or refried), and diced tomatoes. Who said dot-com mania was the city's only excess?

Best fast food

Why order a Big Mac when you can have a Vietnamese sandwich, or banh mi, for no more than $1.50? These fresh-tasting sandwiches start with crusty, fresh bread, often made on the premises in a tradition left over from French colonialism. In the middle is your choice of pork or chicken, with pickled vegetables and cilantro. What's more, they usually take about two minutes to prepare. You can get them in joints all over the Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill. We like a particular little hole in the wall called Eden Bakery and Deli (4860 Beacon S, 725-4263), where we have our sandwiches (a whopping $1.35 each) with guava juice and homemade French pastries, and where we usually buy a baguette to go.

Best way with fish

RICK DAHMS

How does Monsoon (615 19th E, 325-2111) do it? It's not just the unlikely combinations of spices that somehow always work or the pristine ingredients. It's the perfection of the cooking, not just sometimes, not just most of the time—but always. How does baking halibut in a clay pot give it that phenomenally delicate crust? How does a banana-leaf wrapping transform salmon into maritime manna? Other people make spring rolls out of fresh crab and shrimp: How come only Monsoon's are nuggets of ambrosia? Who thought up combining scallops with yam crisps, and why does such an off-the-wall pairing work? The staff seem easygoing, neither obsessive nor secretive about the miracles emerging from the kitchen, one after another. Black magic seems the only explanation. Which is fine with us, so long as we can go on ordering that Chilean sea bass with 16 spices.

Best cold/flu cure

The thing you want most in the cold-and-flu season is the thing you can't have: soothing, throat-coating, creamy soup. Chicken noodle is fine (at least the first few dozen times you see it), but it doesn't feel as good as the cow-positive sort. Avgolemono ("egg-and-lemon") soup is to Greek comfort cuisine what chicken broth is to American. The trick is in the egg handling: Done right, a hearty avgolemono is less egg-flower and more cream-of, without that troublesome dairy. Better than your average Greek restaurant at providing ricey-eggy-lemony goodness is Fremont stalwart Costas Opa (3400 Fremont N, 633-4141), which makes a light, tangy version. (The very best bowl, of course, is the one you convince your significant other to drive forth and fetch for you, you being too sick to travel and all.)

Best tartar sauce

Smear it over yer chips, yer fishes, and anything else handy on yer plate at the Elysian Brewery (1221 E Pike, 860-1920) and... mmmm. Oh, boy. Sakes alive, this is some good, good shit. This is no milquetoast offering from a Heinz bottle, no pedestrian coupling of Miracle Whip and pickle relish. What can you say about perfection? First of all, it's white, which is a good color for tartar sauce. It's spicy, with lots of nice horseradish. It's rich, robust, and exploding. Other than that, holy moly! Order it for your French fries, on your salad, for your soup, and then dump it in your beer. Do they bottle this stuff? Can I buy it by the gallon? Does it double for skin cream? Will a dab behind the ear drive the ladies crazy? Would I ever leave the apartment had I access to a stash of such tartar goodness?

Best corned beef hash

ALICE WHEELER

Hash browns and toast, while tolerable, don't have much taste. Which leaves us with the perfect breakfast item: corned beef hash. All right, so a lot of people might want to play the "but I don't like corned beef" card. But it doesn't matter what you think, because if you're truly Irish, you like corned beef. So for all you corned beef nonconverts, let me point you in the direction of the hash emporium this side of County Cork: Glo's on Capitol Hill (1621 E Olive Wy, 324-2577), where it ain't dumped out of a can. Glo's takes the time to chop up meaty cubes of the spicy, red carnivore's delight into a fresh bed of potato shreds, sending you off on your journeys with a green-kilted spring in your step.

Best roast turkey sandwich

In the past, we've gone on about the Seinfeldian virtues of the Classic Deli (822 First, 622-7102) and their giant chef's salad. But this unassuming, cafeteria-style lunch spot is also home to the best roast turkey sandwich around. For $4.99, they'll pile your choice of bread high with gobs of turkey meat, just like you'd picked it off the bone after Thanksgiving. It's not pressed, smoked, or cured; it's not the kind of limp, pallid, bleached fowl you often find nestled between two slices of Wonder Bread at other joints. This is the real, fresh, juicy stuff. Ask for whatever mixture you like: white, dark, cranberry sauce optional. We prefer two slices of sourdough, mayo, a hint of lettuce, and nothing but dark. Bring it on.

Best funky roadside espresso stand