Restaurants

Looking as if suburbia had finally colonized the bamboo-forested rebel camp in House of Flying Daggers, Bamboo Garden does Szechuan food the right way, bringing out its intricate spiciness. Chengdu hand-shaved noodles float in a tingly sesame-paste-thickened broth redolent of Szechuan... More >>

Turkuaz is a funny little restaurant, owned by a mother-daughter team, with a French-boudoir decor, a bare-bones wine list, and the best Turkish food in town. If the different combinations of eggplant, peppers, mint, and, above all, yogurt—tart, unctuous, and dolloped on every... More >>

Branzino's made for Belltown, with its approachable, affordable Italian food; umber walls and high-backed booths perfect for couples and winter nesting; and service so good it makes waiters all around town look like lazy, overly casual cows. (Let's just leave it at that.) The kitchen stays... More >>

Brasa’s ocher dining room, with its curves and mezzanines and showcase bar, may get you in the mood to spend money. Chef Tamara Murphy cooks as epically as her surroundings, imbuing her meats with the smoke of her wood-fired oven and celebrating the marvelous powers of olive oil. If you're... More >>

Café Campagne is devoted to French bistro cooking the way Amy Winehouse is devoted to eyeliner: visibly, avidly, with shades of the ridiculous. Yet the cafe is more than a studious recreation of a Parisian resto. It's a warm, echt-Seattle restaurant that holds its own in the romance department ... More >>

Stop by this market stall during a slow moment and you'll spot the women who run it nimbly folding trays' worth of pelmeni (tiny meat-stuffed dumplings). The baked piroshki get rewarmed in the microwave, so pass them over in favor of dumplings or stuffed cabbages like that woman in your... More >>

Although it's hard to remember a time when "vegetarian food" was code for brown rice, beans, and blandly seasoned tofu, Carmelita'a gourmet fare—cauliflower crepes smothered in parsnip cream, pizzas with red-onion marmalade, fontina, and chile oil—is still a reminder of how far... More >>

Spinasse casts the glamour of a period drama. It's not just the wood-plank tables bordered by high-backed chairs, and not just the bar, which doubles as a pasta-making station, complete with antique pasta-making tools. Even the menu evokes a traditional way of life ‹in the Piedmont region... More >>

Seeing as it's about the only restaurant in Seattle that specializes in catfish, and seeing how catfish is an item of far more succulence than, say, tofu, Catfish Corner has developed a loyal following since it first opened in 1985. Thankfully it doesn't skate by on its rep, as a buttery, moist... More >>

Tiny, bare-bones Chang Ahn Jung's reputation has barely spread beyond Korean foodies, but its food is good enough to warrant a peak-oil trek to Federal Way and back. (One critical warning: The restaurant's sign is mistransliterated "Jang An.") What makes this place so much better than Korean... More >>

It's standing room only at West Seattle's favorite miniature alehouse; this place is almost always packed, whether you go on Friday night for the fabulous French fries or for a Sunday brunch of Hawaiian sweet-bread French toast. It's the kind of place where if you ask the bartender for a food... More >>

Over the course of 18 months, Sitka & Spruce founder Matt Dillon and Wylie Bush gutted a gorgeous Spanish revival building under a highway overpass to create a urban-rustic restaurant that aspires to be a center for Seattle's food community. The communal dinners that fund their enterprise range... More >>

Whether because of good planning or good luck, co-chefs Jesse Thomas and Craig Serbousek opened Crow in a corner of Lower Queen Anne that might’ve been considered out of the way three years ago, but is now rising to meet their culinary standards. Condo developers and the Gates Foundation ar... More >>

Jason and Nicole Wilson's Madison Valley restaurant is like the high-school beauty queen you wanted to hate but couldn't, because she was too genuinely nice. The renovated 1903 house, done up in white-on-white modernity, is beautiful; the restaurant itself is wildly popular. Chef Wilson's food... More >>

You can get channa masala and Kashmiri naan at 20 places in Seattle, but for a rare taste of Keralan dishes like fried cassava with fish in a coconut-milk curry, you'll have to drive to this all-pink strip-mall restaurant in Bellevue. Look over the "specialties" and "combos" sections of the... More >>

A reconfigured strip joint (no joke), Dahlak exudes the air of a private club: a bit cliquey, a bit hidden, set back from the street. The perfumed room, often hazy with the smell of frankincense burned during the traditional Eritrean coffee ceremony, is awash in spice. So are dishes like zegni... More >>

Not surprisingly, Rosticeria y Cocina El Paisano, which is owned by the butcher shop two doors down, specializes in meat. Its Mexican-style roast chickens vary from crackling-skinned to dry, depending on how long they've spent out of the oven and under the heat lights. Uniformly fantastic: tacos... More >>

Now in bigger, fancier digs, FareStart serves tasty lunches cooked by rigorously trained homeless or formerly homeless chefs. The lunch menu has the basics—turkey sandwiches, burgers, and fish and chips—but also ranges upscale with entrees like seared scallops over beluga lentils. Its... More >>

Musician Bill Coury quit his day job to focus on his family-friendly pizza joint, which looks like it was lifted straight from the Ave, with walls painted harlot red, thrift-store abstracts, and a guitar-heavy soundtrack. Coury's 15-inch pies—from the simple pepperoni to more froufrou ones... More >>

Gabriel Slimp serves his barbecued meats just as God and man intended: naked (with sauce on the side). You want to pay attention to how his brisket and ribs turn out, with their shiny black crust, red smoke ring just underneath, and tender but not mushy flesh, with all the fat and collagen... More >>

When searching for pho, it often seems like you're forced to choose: flavor or looks? This sleek, intimate restaurant has both—if they didn't print the ridiculously low prices on the menu, you could take any champagne-tastes date there. Vegetables are cut into crinkled batons, soups come in... More >>

Whippersnappers dealing in small plates dot the Seattle landscape like chicken pox, but Joseba Jimenez de Jimenez, a native of Spain's Basque country, has been at it his entire culinary life. Dishes like the confit-stuffed squid with apple and black rice defy a point of reference while echoing... More >>

Ethan Stowell's third restaurant looks like a cross between a cigar box and a sauna, and not much bigger than either. It's a casual neighborhood joint for people who enjoy hanging out in tiny, refined spaces and are comfortable ordering off a menu that refuses to define itself in courses. A meal... More >>

If you can stand the body crush in the lobby, this Hong Kong-style restaurant is the place to go for dim sum. Dozens of delights, a good mix of tradition and novelty, circle the room: The pastry around the shrimp-and-onion balls crumples at the touch; the barbecued pork buns have the texture of... More >>

You have probably never tasted anything like what Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi are cooking at Joule, their Wallingford restaurant: Black beans and pulled pork stewed together with ginger and miso. A fist-sized grilled poussin (basically a tween chicken) brushed with sweet chili sauce and served... More >>