Sustenance >>

• Best Non-English English-Baked-Good Purveyors: Nancy McFaul
  Nancy McFaul is explaining just how a crumpet differs from other baked goods. "Bread dough is stiffest; when you form it into a ball, it holds its shape," she says, cupping her hands over the table to illustrate. "English muffin dough is more like pizza dough," she continues, turning her hands... More >>
• Best Downtown Coffee Entrepreneur/Philosopher: Ali Ghambari
  Here's a quick business quiz: What captain of industry said the following? "Don't just think outside the box, burn the box and invite everyone for the party." Was it (a) Donald Trump, (b) Jack Welch, (c) Warren Buffett, or (d) Ali Ghambari? As the latter sits in his fourth Cherry Street Coffee... More >>
• Best Importer of Incendiary Spices: East African Imports
  Perhaps the smartest decision Berhane Amanuel made in his life was leaving his mother behind in Ethiopia when he emigrated in 1987. Now Amanuel's got somebody on the inside to coordinate his import business, which last year brought $200,000 worth of Ethiopian spices and goods into... More >>
• Best German Beer Enthusiast: Chris Navarra
  Chris Navarra remembers spending summers on his grandparents' farm in Germany, just outside of Frankfurt. "My grandfather worked me like a dog," he says. He used to envy his friends back home who got to loaf around and skateboard, while he was looking after the animals and shoveling all manner... More >>
• Best Front-Lawn Pupusa Truck: Maria Lopez
  When Maria Lopez decided she wanted to own her own business, she bought a taco truck, drove it up from Los Angeles, and found a spot on First Avenue South where she could park it. But the rent she paid annihilated her profits. Back at home, Lopez faced another problem: construction. The house... More >>
• Best Carnival-esque Gelato
  There's a gelato place I pass by daily, always with a slight sense of pique: A few years back, in some "Best Of" issue of yore, someone at this paper chose it as their favorite gelato, and the clipping awarding the store this honor is displayed in its window. The gelato's scrumptious, don't get... More >>
• Best Place to Undo the Healthful Properties of Apples
  Yes, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is a chain (300 locations nationwide), but it's also an antidote to Seattle's foodie fetish for everything "artisanal." Not that their confections aren't well made—the lovely fairyland strawberries dipped in white chocolate and coconut could be set... More >>
• Best Use of Green Tea
  From the land that brought Seattle such favorites as sushi and Ichiro comes Koots Green Tea. With 12 successful locations in Japan, the Pacific Rim chain recently expanded to the U.S. with a location in Bellevue, and five months ago added its second store in South Lake Union. The simple Japanese... More >>
• Best Soup So Spicy It Inspires Hallucinations
  A few years ago, my entire spicy-food-loving family went to Typhoon for dinner, and we ordered the Tom Yung Goong soup as an appetizer, not expecting it to be the highlight of the meal. After slurping as much of the prawn- and mushroom-laden broth as possible, my brother's girlfriend looked at... More >>
• Best Decision Tully's Made in the Past Year
  I became hooked on yerba mate at last year's Fremont Solstice Parade. Guayaki, the pre-eminent yerba mate company, had a booth set up with a couple of hippies manning it to expound upon the benefits of the South American tealike drink: the antioxidants, the natural high, the clarity of mind,... More >>
• Best Gourmet Cinnamon Roll
  Belle Epicurean is an airy, open cafe, barely a year and a half old, offering a tempting array of baked goods, from ham-and-Gruyère brioches made with Mornay sauce to fanciful raspberry-coulis-swirled, meringue-topped, mini chocolate cakes touched with gold leaf. It all looks too good to... More >>
• Best Selection of Organ Meats Outside a Hospital Freezer
  Visiting 99 Ranch Market makes you realize not just how little you know about world cuisine, but how little you wanted to know. For example, I caught a glimpse of a product labeled "beef marrow guts" and now am haunted by its applications. The Internet provides little recipe assistance or even... More >>
• Best Place to Get (Not Take) a Growler
  Manny's may not come in a bottle (yet), but you don't have to settle for downing Seattle's finest at a bar. Take a short trip south to Georgetown Brewing Co. and get yourself a growler of Manny's (pale ale), or Roger's (pilsner), or Chopper's (red ale)—and it will only set you back $10 for... More >>
• Best Stinky Cheese in Washington, If Not the Entire United States
  Western Washington doesn't lack for top-drawer cheesemakers, but for years I've been hunting for an American raw milk cheese whose funk could make my eyelashes curl. I almost fainted the first time I tasted Estrella Family Farms' richly aromatic Caldwell Crik Chevrette. Kelli Estrella, aided by... More >>
• Best Deal on Eggs
  If you've spent any time looking at the torturous conditions that conventional egg producers keep their laying hens in—one photo is scarier than most J-horror flicks—you'll appreciate the value of spending a couple of extra bucks on free-range eggs. But there are limits. A few weeks... More >>
• Best Caipirinha
  My choice, found at Madison Park's Cactus outpost, is one that contains a very un-caipirinha-like ingredient: candied ginger. Brazil's national cocktail is traditionally made from three elements only: cachaça (liquor made from sugar cane juice, not cane molasses, as rum is), sugar, and... More >>
• Best Caffeinated Birthday Present for a Hippie
  For those who understand that astrology is a great way to filter through the universe's complexity—i.e., there are basically 12 kinds of people in the world—Diva Espresso's Birthday Blend is your drink. It's a personalized buzz, available only while the sun traverses your specific... More >>
• Best Drinking Hall
  It's hard not to like Brouwer's big lodge in Fremont and Buckley's wide-open booze room in Lower Queen Anne. But for clatter and space, Chinook's at Salmon Bay is a great barroom. It's reminiscent of those crowded European beer halls they create out of old factories or warehouses, although this... More >>
• Best Way to Fill Your Pie With Something Purple
  Get your mind out of the gutter! We're talking about the good old-fashioned, cool-it on-the-windowsill kind. Though bags of frozen berries can be found in supermarkets year-round, there's nothing better than homemade pie produced from fresh, handpicked berries. Living in the Northwest, we're... More >>
• Best Place to Catch the Ice-Cream Man
  The cheerful jangle of music piped from old painted-over mail trucks instinctively sends kids running for their piggy banks, hustling as fast as possible to scrape together the necessary change to exchange for a cold, frosty treat. As a kid, making it before the music began to fade away was... More >>
• Best Beverage on the Ferry
  Commuters with sea legs are a peculiar, grumpy, often misunderstood bunch. Let's face it—why sacrifice perfectly good family/happy hour time on a boat with a wretched beer selection that will suck you dry should you properly indulge after a day in the hole? This is why the best beverage on... More >>
• Best Place to Wait an Hour for a Sandwich
  There's really no contest. I don't like waiting for my food, especially if I'm standing in line. But, for very good reason, I'll show up at Salumi during the lunch rush (before noon till after 1), and wait for the better part of an hour till the sandwich hits my paws. It's the cured meat. It's... More >>
• Best Place to Be an Artisanal Freegan
  As the cost of living in Seattle creeps toward the level of our more expensive coastal sisters San Francisco and N.Y.C., the income levels don't seem to rise accordingly. For those of us on the lower end of the spectrum, it's either sacrifice life's extras or get resourceful. While... More >>
• Best Breakfast Sandwich on a Bagel
  For a long time, Pettirosso's buttery bagel breakfast sandwiches were the best-kept secret in town. But that was because they had to be. Until the cafe attained the appropriate permitting, you had to be in the know to get one of the underground concoctions. There was no menu. Much like at... More >>
• Best Cold, Morning, Alcoholic, Bubbly Beverage
  The saddest thing about mimosas is that they are so small. One can barely quench one's thirst before the petite flute is drained, but not at the Hangar CafE in Georgetown. There, mimosas go to 16. That's 10 ounces louder than regulation size. Add a giant four-egg omelet or breakfast sandwich,... More >>
• Best Edible Culture Shock
  Egg nachos. An idea so simple, I can't believe I've never made it, seen it, or even dreamt of it. Smarty Pants delivers a consistently respectable and predominantly savory brunch every weekend, loaded with trusted American staples like hash, biscuits and gravy, and Benedicts, but the Huevos... More >>
• Best Use of Pork (Smoked)
  You can find grass-fed beef steaks and stuffed chicken breasts at Shawn & Ted's Meat Market, but it's the smoked-meats case that wets my whistle. Butchers who smoke their own meats are growing scarcer every year, but Shawn Beresford and Ted Coffman are still dedicated to the craft. When... More >>
• Best Use of Pork (Nonsmoked)
  Chefs in Seattle are flinging pork belly at the public like LaRouchies flagging New Solidarity. The only way to beg off eating your share is to roll over and play vegan. What makes pork belly such a favorite with the hip-kid foodies is that it sounds formidable and tastes divine. Of the many,... More >>
• Best Vietnamese Sandwich
  All you Saigon Deli fans don't know what you're missing. The xiu mai banh mi at Tony's Bakery in Rainier Valley is ever the best. Sure, it's more expensive—$2 as opposed to $1.50—but somehow, the warmed baguette is lighter and crispier, the pickled daikon and carrot stuffed into the... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  A lot of great restaurants have opened in the past year: Betty, TASTE, Bamboo Garden, Tavolata, the redone Osteria La Spiga, Pam's Kitchen. Here's why I think Steelhead Diner is the top of this year's class. Kevin and Terresa Davis have made a tourist-friendly Pike Place Market restaurant... More >>
• Best Handmade Tortillas and Stuff to Put in Them
  El Puerco Lloron has been a Hillclimb hole-in-the-wall since 1982, but people often seem unaware of this hidden gem. Steps away from the Market, it feels miles away from its madness, and from Seattle in general. Sea-green walls, coral windowpanes, and a yellow ceiling frame the metal tables and... More >>
• Best Breakfast Biscuits
  Some come to Both Ways Cafe for the cinnamon rolls. Some come for that scuffed-wood, post-hippie vibe. I go for the biscuits. As anyone from the South or Midwest will tell you, biscuit making is a simple art to master, which is why it's so shocking that no one on the West Coast can make a proper... More >>
• Best Polish Sandwich Ladies
  The sight of a refrigerator case packed with charcuterie may have first lured me into George's Sausage and Delicatessen, but Janet Lidzbarski and her assistants have made me a devotee of this 25-year-old Polish deli. Neatly stacked jars of pickles and packets of noodles with Polish labels reach... More >>
• Best Place to Parlay a $1 Polish Home Association Membership into a Meal That Will Thrill You and Repulse Everyone Else
  A word about PB Kitchen's pork hock: Not since Babe has a pig made me so happy. The atmosphere of the "restaurant"—a weekends-only dining hall in Capitol Hill's Polish Home blessed with all the charms of a nursing-home cafeteria—had me searching my memory for synonyms for "bland" and... More >>
• Best Chocolate Cookies
  Chains tend to get overlooked when compiling "Best Of" lists, the logic being that the indie mom-and-pop always beats the corporate. But I pity the fool whobypasses Specialty's while trying to satisfy a chocolate-chip-cookie craving. The cafe and bakeries offer semisweet chocolate chip, milk... More >>
• Best Pho
  Fans of the ubiquitous Vietnamese noodle soup usually break into two camps: those who think the broth is the most important part and those who think the meat is. Thankfully, the International District's Green Leaf offers a reminder that slurping pho doesn't have to be an exercise in sacrifice.... More >>
• Best Local Beer
  Of the many local beers available around town, the current best hails from a small Georgetown brewery. From tap to pint, Baron Pilsner pours pale yellow, transparent, with a bit of white foam on top, looking rather like an iconic beer. This smooth brew, with a touch of hoppy bitterness, is, as... More >>
• Best Way to Stock Your Fridge With Guilt-Inducing Vegetables
  OK, so you've decided that your vegetable-eating abilities are up to the challenge: a weekly box delivered to your door, with all sorts of strange, sometimes unidentifiable, greens that entreat you to make something delicious rather than let them languish in the bottom of your fridge. But which... More >>
• Best Free Dessert
  "Free Dessert," says a little sign hanging in the window at Saigon Deli and Restaurant's University District location. But eat your meal first. You'll munch mostly on nostalgia for things you never knew you missed: the price of lunch in your junior high's cafeteria (delicious Vietnamese baguette... More >>
• Best Deck for Sipping Champagne Cocktails
  The Capitol Club probably was the height of trendy in 1996, with Moroccan/Café del Mar sensibilities including golden walls and plush jewel-toned pillows in candlelit, communal dining areas. Upstairs, a marvelous deck ringed with tiny lanterns and flower baskets projects itself onto Pine... More >>
• Best Local, Earth-Friendly Brunch
  I am a brunch person, but not the omelet-sausage-and-bacon kind. I crave carbs and fruit smothered in sugary, buttery goodness. Naturally this can result in slight nausea. Thankfully there's the U District's Portage Bay Café, boasting nine years of breakfasts and brunches using healthy,... More >>
• Best Panini Served to You by a Genuine Italian Man
  Be sure to go in before the lunch rush if you want to snag one of the handmade daily paninis to accompany your perfectly steamed cappuccino at Caffè Senso Unico. The crispy, meaty, cheesy Italian sandwiches are molto bello, as owner Mario Gelmini will tell you. Sip from imported Italian... More >>
• Best Bar That Allows Dogs
  Some people don't like dogs. If you're one of them, I don't trust you. That's why I love watching folks get freaked out when another person lets their dog roam through a bar. This mostly happens at the Canterbury, where the clientele tends to be a bit more on edge overall. But in a joint like... More >>
• Best Soft-Serve Ice-Cream Cone
  Given a chance, this city will fancy-up anything. Take ice cream, for instance. You go into these urban ice-cream joints like Mix and Cold Stone Creamery, and it's no longer about eating ice cream, it's about the experience! You get to pick your toppings and what flavor ice cream, then you get... More >>
• Best Spin on the Traditional IPA
  This one is all about the nose. Pour a bottle of the Elysian's Avatar Jasmine IPA into a glass and just hold it right under your nostrils. It takes a bit, but buried under the mix of herbs, hops, and toasty malts is a faint whiff of jasmine flower. For me, a good IPA should have that nice aroma... More >>
• Best Place to Get Congee at 2 a.m.
  Finding late-night grub in Seattle requires serious dedication. Either you're waiting in the throng at Taco Bell for your crunch wrap (mmm) or hiring a taxi to drive you through Jack in the Box, which is going to cost more than your burger and is really stupid, so don't do it. Then there's... More >>