Beyond world-class coffee and acclaimed beer, Seattle’s dining scene is a culinary crucible of global flavors, recipes and techniques—formed, in large part, by its immigration history. But where should you eat when you’re in town? Local food writer, Naomi Tomky, chats to local food tour guide, Tod Harrick, to compare favorite dining spots, swap recommendations and share their expert intel.
Seattle’s downtown looks out over the saltwater of Elliott Bay, where the iconic green and white ferries crisscross and the occasional orca swims by—though you’re much more likely to see a seal or bald eagle. In a more figurative sense, the Washington State city in the upper left corner of the US looks west, toward the Pacific Ocean and to Asia beyond, for much of its culinary inspiration.
Take Pike Place Market, for example. Though visitors rightly know our celebrated market for its seafood (and the guys that throw fish!), I grew up tramping along the endless stalls of stoplight-shades of produce to get to my favorite curry beef-stuffed hom bow (our local name for Chinese buns) from Mee Sum Pastry.
Hidden behind the sparkling displays of briny oysters and fresh Yakima asparagus is a food community that’s welcomed Seattle’s new arrivals with every passing decade. Where Greek fishermen greeted Sephardic Jewish shopkeepers, and Hmong florists sell where Japanese farmers once traded; where a four-decade-old, James Beard award-winning Filipino lunch counter—Oriental Mart—now sits across the street from a Brazilian counterpart—Baiana—that opened earlier this year.
It is a microcosm of Seattle’s food scene as a whole: Each new immigrant group adapted its cuisine to the local ingredients, resulting in a multitude of feasts that truly reflect the city. “A bouquet of different cultural elements,” as Tod Harrick, a local guide for day tour operator, Intrepid Urban Adventures, calls it. “We strive as a city to make them harmonious and have a full expression of all of them,” he says. And that, according to Harrick, is a lot of what makes Seattle such a vibrant and colorful city.
So sure, the state’s marquee wild salmon deserves its fame, but on a daily basis any of Seattle’s million-ish residents are more likely found slurping noodles from a phở shop than ordering fish and chips. Restaurateur Yenvy Pham’s parents opened Pho Bac, the city’s first phở shop in 1982, and she now runs the Vietnamese restaurant group with her sister. “I just want to create spaces where people want to be,” she says.
“You can get a lot of great food in Seattle. But there’s just something special about going into a place where you feel like they’re welcoming you into their restaurant, like they’ve welcomed you into their home.”
- Tod Harrick, Intrepid Urban Adventures Seattle guide
Upstairs at their downtown location, bar Phởcific Standard Time (PST) serves up the absurd—and absurdly fun: Crab nachos with a white queso caramelized fish sauce and artistically marbled Jello shots in flavors like pandan old fashioned. “It’s the small moments,” Pham says. “Like, how can we create that moment of joy?”
One way is to eat through the city, starting with these essential local restaurants—the dining spots that represent the true flavor of Seattle’s diverse communities and share their stories through uniquely Pacific Northwest dishes.
A mom and pop shop cooking up traditional Turkish eats in Pike Place
Though I am of the generation that grew up on the Narnia books, I never had to wonder about the mysterious snacks that Edmund loved so much because I frequented the restaurant named for them in the Pike Place Market.
Semla and Ahmet Yavuz opened their shop in 1982, choosing the location for its expansive view out over the Puget Sound which reminded them of their family restaurant back in Istanbul, which looked across the Bosphorus strait. The couple—and their daughter Denise, who joined the family business—are still in the shop daily, making old world recipes from scratch.
“People who work in the market—that’s where they go eat,” says Harrick, who loves to share the market’s delicious diversity with travelers on his tours. “They can get a big old chicken shawarma plate for really cheap, and it’s super good.” But he frequents Turkish Delight for the thick lentil soup, which he says is the best soup he’s ever had in his life (and offers the perfect way to warm up on a drizzly Seattle afternoon).
An award-winning, fine dining Filipino restaurant in Beacon Hill
Seattle is home to a well-established Filipino community which means lumpia (Filipino crispy fried spring roll) has long been a staple of community potlucks. But only in the last decade has the cuisine ventured into the city’s higher-end restaurant scene—led, in large part, by Filipino American chef Melissa Miranda.
Professionally trained in Italian cuisine, raised with the bounty of Pacific Northwest ingredients, and steeped in her own culinary heritage, Miranda tells the story of Filipino food using elegant presentations and refined techniques. Her team reshapes and reinterprets, using king salmon in the crudo-esque kinilaw, subbing oxtails for rich short ribs in the peanut-y kare kare (peanut-based stew), and transforming the fried turon (a sweet fried banana roll) into banana pudding, making each dish look like fine dining and taste like comfort.
That Musang is housed in an old lavender Craftsman—historic homes built in Seattle in the early 1900s—feels like the final wink at the transformation of a community’s home-cooking into a world-class restaurant.
Seriously good East African coffee with a social impact element
Efrem Fesaha, founder of Boon Boona, sources their coffee beans exclusively from Africa, prioritizing women-owned growers and underserved African coffee-growing regions. This means your daily cup from Boon Boona might be from Ethiopia or Burundi, Kenya or Rwanda.
Hailing from an Eritrean family, Fesaha was inspired to bring the slower paced coffee culture of Eritrean cafes back to Seattle. And thus, Boon Boona was born. Today, the coffee house has four different locations across the city, each one a warm, welcoming, intentional coffee experience.
“Sudanese by way of Abu Dhabi, chef Ahmed Suliman brings together food elements from around the Arabic world, using the flavors and techniques as a jumping-off point for his own dishes, like the thick-sliced toast with tuna butter and lime oil or ling cod with fermented green garlic.”
- Naomi Tomky, Seattle-based food writer
A pop-up Mexican marisqueria turned permanent fixture in Ballard
La Marea started as a temporary pop-up inside Fair Isle Brewing, one of the many breweries that have established themselves in Ballard, a northwest neighborhood. Ballard’s breweries, which you can explore with a Brewed Pass, are a staple of the Seattle social scene, their spacious and welcoming taprooms serving as a third place for everything from singles mixers to toddler birthday parties. They also play a vital role as a first place for many food businesses, a proving ground and launch pad for pop-ups and experiments.
But La Marea was too successful to stop, and went on to become a permanent fixture inside the wild yeast beer specialist. While the beers lean sour, La Marea leans spicy, pairing the jewel-toned seafood of the Pacific with the boldest flavors of Mexico in the form of dry-aged blue fin tuna tostadas, Baja-style tacos with fish fried in a squid ink beer batter, and smoked rockfish quesabirria.
In a city that often sees its seafood as delicate and in need of no adornment, La Marea swims in a different direction, punching up flavors and getting aggressive with heat levels—and it’s changing the tides.
Arabic coffee and cheese treats at this Capitol Hill café
Even after leading the Intrepid Urban Adventures coffee tour that visits Thai specialty shop Nudibranch and the sophisticated Ghost Note, Harrick often stops to order an Arabic coffee at Cafe Suliman, the sweet café that spills onto the main corridor of Capitol Hill’s Melrose Market.
Sudanese by way of Abu Dhabi, chef Ahmed Suliman brings together food elements from around the Arabic world, using the flavors and techniques as a jumping-off point for his own dishes, like the thick-sliced toast with tuna butter and lime oil or ling cod with fermented green garlic.
Harrick describes the coffee itself as “spicy… and kind of light”. “But what I am absolutely bonkers for at Suliman is the halloumi,” Harrick admits, describing the cheese prepared with quince vinegar and topped with crunchy dukkah—a nut, seed, and spice (often ground cumin and dried cilantro) mix.
An Italian lunch counter that favors Torino specialties in Pike Place
A sabbatical in Seattle persuaded Michela Tartaglia to abandon academia in her home country of Italy in favor of the Emerald City (named for its year-round greenery). The Pacific Northwest region’s acclaimed seafood and produce—and the Pike Place Market where she first explored it—also heavily influenced that decision.
At her lunch counter, tucked into an upper corner of the market’s atrium, Tartaglia combines those local, seasonal ingredients with the traditional pastas from her hometown of Torino.
The charm of Pasta Casalinga’s menu comes from its simplicity: Just five items, all using the housemade pasta, and rotating every few weeks. The dishes themselves, however, are anything but simple, reflecting that precise moment of the season, like Fall’s chanterelle mushroom pappardelle with Calabrian sausage, halibut and asparagus tagliolini in the Spring, or wintery gigli with radicchio, gorgonzola dolce, and toasted walnuts.
Turkish fine-dining inspired by the chef’s grandfather
Chef Burk Guldal moved to Seattle from Istanbul by way of New York City. Having worked in some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the US, Guldal joined forces with Katrina Schult to open Hamdi, an ode to traditional Turkish and Anatolian cuisine in the Fremont neighborhood.
The star of the kitchen is undoubtedly Hamdi’s open flame, which sears steaks to perfection and grills butterflied dorado fish over glowing coals. The menu combines seasonal Pacific Northwest ingredients with quintessential Turkish produce, such as the freekeh salad with pistachios, pomegranate and local stone fruits.
“Seattle doesn’t necessarily have its own defined cuisine—growing up here, I assumed pad Thai was as standard as spaghetti everywhere, and that dim sum rivaled any other brunch in popularity.”
- Naomi Tomky, Seattle-based food writer
An Ethiopian favorite with a homey welcome in north Seattle
I first zeroed in on Jebena among the city’s many excellent Ethiopian restaurants because of the kitfo. Here, the chopped raw beef, bathed in cardamom, mitmita, and warm clarified butter, comes with the restaurant’s housemade cheese. Harrick meanwhile zeroed in on the vegetables, praising the foul—fava beans—and turmeric-tinged cabbage.
But, like everyone who enters the green room in the low-slung building, we both return for the hospitality—promises of familial welcomes with platters of tangy injera (Ethiopian fermented flatbread) and long conversations over an artist’s palette of stews.
“You can get a lot of great food in Seattle,” says Harrick. “But there’s just something special about going into a place where you feel like they’re welcoming you into their restaurant, like they’ve welcomed you into their home.”
Seattle doesn’t necessarily have its own defined cuisine—growing up here, I assumed pad Thai was as standard as spaghetti everywhere, and that dim sum rivaled any other brunch in popularity. But, as this list shows, it welcomes all, flinging open its doors, its waters, and its farms, and encouraging everyone to make what they can of the local ingredients; we’ll be here to eat and celebrate it.
For more Seattle travel inspiration, see Visit Seattle
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Award-winning culinary travel writer and author of The Pacific Northwest Cookbook, Naomi Tomky, uses her unrelenting enthusiasm for food to propel herself around the world. From trailing a street food hawker in Singapore to navigating the ancient roads of the Mayan jungle, she explores the world with a hungry eye—and mouth.
