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  • Best Reason to Go to Essential Bakery Cafe (Besides the Bread)
    I've been an Essential bread buyer for years, but when I go to their airy cafe in Madison Valley (there's another Essential cafe in Wallingford), my foremost thoughts are not about the bread. Instead, I dwell on the produce. Essential makes some of the freshest salads in town, and I once had... More >>
  • Best Reason to Hit Up the ATM After 2 a.m. (1 Comment)
    There is plenty of competition springing up on the Ave these days, but I'm convinced none of them can hang with Pizza Ragazzi for post-bar grub. Employees here are not interested in chitchat, and honestly, if most of my clientele were drunk frat kids, I probably wouldn't be either. Ragazzi... More >>
  • Best Place to Talk Politics With a New Friend While You're Waiting for Bacon Jam
    The peripatetic Airstream trailer known as Skillet Street Food makes a different stop every day at lunchtime, and each stop draws a crowd. Four deep it sometimes gets, all of us hungry, eager, and unwilling to appear impatient/uncool. To pass the time while standing on the street waiting for our... More >>
  • Best Reason to Get Wed or Feted
    It takes an awful lot of flowers and sheers to shine up most function rooms. But not Herban Feast's new SODO venue. The lofty event space makes the concept of renewable and reclaimable downright regal. The old barn-shaped warehouse boasts a neck-craning ceiling and enough exposed beams to make... More >>
  • Best Tropical Starches
    Is it possible to eat a pile of luxuriously sweet and juicy plantains and still be uptight? I don't think so. It's a vacation on a plate, one you can easily enjoy by digging into the maduros of La Casa del Mojito. The plantains are served the Venezuelan way, with a dry, salty cheese on top to... More >>
  • Best Supermarket Fried Chicken (2 Comments)
    Supermarket fried chicken usually sucks, and it usually doesn't matter if it sucks, because it smells so much better than the raw stuff you'd have to cook that you're liable to buy it anyway, if only to reward yourself for actually going to the grocery store. It might be a couple of days old and... More >>
  • Best Peanut Butter & Bacon Burger
    Remember Flaky Jake's, that place where a burger bar meant more than just ketchup, mayo, and mustard? Build-your-own was the premise at Flaky Jake's, and they had some wacky-ass items to plop on your patty, although I was too young to remember exactly what (surely you could make a taco burger,... More >>
  • Best Press Buffet
    Imagine if you ate ballpark concession food every night. Imagine how bad your ass would hurt after the daily confetti commode explosion rendered by yet another three-dog night. Imagine how fat you'd be. This is the reality of all but the most disciplined modern-day sportswriters. Roughly half... More >>
  • Best (Only?) Free Happy-Hour Crockpot
    Every weeknight at Bernard's, sometime between 4:30 and 5 in the evening, a waiter wanders downstairs (Bernard's is the basement restaurant-lounge beneath the Hotel Seattle), typically armed with a crockpot. In that crockpot, you might find cocktail weenies or maybe meatballs. And alongside that... More >>
  • Best Reason for Ballardites to Reconsider Their Scandinavian Allegiances (1 Comment)
    Sometimes it seems Norwegians get all the love in our fair city. Ballard is hot, hot, hot, getting trendy new bars and writeups in airline magazines, always with references to the neighborhood's Scandinavian roots. But don't overlook those Swedes. The Swedish Cultural Center has you covered for... More >>
  • Best Non-Happy-Hour Beer Prices
    Busch on draft is $1.25 at The Locker Room, a gloriously divey watering hole on White Center's main drag full of character and drinkers of all stripes. One magical night, when the bartender ran out of proper glasses to pour that Busch in, she decided to charge me "half-price." That's right: a... More >>
  • Best Reason to Own a Driveway
    The pizza truck's here! The pizza truck's here! You will never see adults transformed so quickly into slobbering children than when the brigade from Veraci Pizza pulls up to your house to feed your partygoers. In this age of rising food costs, it's all too easy to drop a grand on a mediocre meal... More >>
  • Best Place to Sweat Out a Mariners Loss
    "You want Man sauce on that?" says the guy behind the counter as he's about to hand over an angry red, glistening barbeque sandwich. "No, he doesn't," I say with a glare. Husband looks intrigued. "You never met The Man?" goads the guy. I've met The Man, I know better. The Man is the devil. It is... More >>
  • Best Place for Tourist-Free Drinking in the Market
    Pike Place Market during tourist season can sometimes feel like a bad dream, a frantic and claustrophobic jumble of shuffling people and their giant bouquets of dead flowers asking for directions to Starbucks and cackling on about cheese curds. There are few respites from the out-of-town horde,... More >>
  • Best Tempura Fruit
    Slipped into every order of fried fish at Michael Hebb's stylish fry house are delicately batter-fried lemon slices. Crisped and beautifully lacy, these thin rounds provide tart counterpoint to Pike Street Fish Fry's head-on fried smelt dunked in rich house-made tartar sauce. Looking out the... More >>
  • Best Mustard Pot for the Style-Conscious
    Diminutive 10-sided orange plastic-topped containers decorate every table with a design-conscious sense of condiment self-sufficiency and, decidedly, the feel of a very French cafe. With matching orange-lidded salt and pepper shakers keeping company with them, the three-ring condiment caddy is... More >>
  • Best New Local Frozen Dairy Indulgence, Ice Cream Division
    Dustin, Aaron, and Tom—whom you'll soon be on a first-name basis with—have got the competition beat. Sourcing local milk and produce and making their frozen concoctions entirely from scratch (no prefab mixes tolerated here), Empire Ice Cream's flavors are simply—as they should... More >>
  • Best New Local Frozen Dairy Indulgence, Gelato Division
    In a category by itself, Poco CArretto gelato comes bearing the pedigree of chef Holly Smith, recently named Best Chef Northwest by the James Beard Foundation. And though this dessert has been served for years at her Kirkland restaurant, Cafe Juanita, you can now find it at farmers markets... More >>
  • Best Restaurant Trend in Seattle
    New restaurant trends in Seattle: plywood furniture, gastropubs, stone-bricked accent walls, bone marrow. But the one that promises to endure: smaller is better. We're talking tiny restaurants like How to Cook a Wolf and The Art of the Table—where the ratio of customers per staff member is... More >>
  • Best Gothic Pasta Dish
    Ah, a romantic evening out with your lover of all things deathly. A little Marilyn Manson on the stereo as you dress, an extra tug on your corset strings for a paler, more emaciated appeal. Perhaps you can drain off a vial of your blood, mixed with Spanish fly, to whet your beloved's appetite.... More >>
  • Best Pretzel Outside Pennsylvania
    You know those soft pretzels you get at movie theaters and Target stores, the ones that come with your choice of toppings, each more disgusting than the last? Anyone with a drop of Pennsylvania Dutch blood will tell you: Despite its shape, that doughy mush is not a pretzel. True pretzel... More >>
  • Best Reason to Get Out of Bed in Ravenna (1 Comment)
    Fall, to the cynical Seattleite, is a mash-up of dying leaves, dreary rain, and rapidly darkening days. The only thing worth getting out of bed for is the arrival of pumpkin muffins in coffee shops and bakeries across the city. Why the delicacy has become an exclusively fall thing I've never... More >>
  • Best Deep-Fried Pickle
    The first time someone told me a life lived without People's Pub fried pickles was no life at all, I sneered. Pickles? Fried? Ew. How right they were. The batter is something between tempura and the overly spiced and breaded versions at other pubs. It allows the flavor of the pickles to come... More >>
  • Best Bloody Mary
    Like politics or religion, Bloody Marys are a divisive subject among drinkers. Either you feel they're the most disgusting cocktail in the history of boozing, or you drink them all the time, at all hours, on all occasions (it's not just a morning hangover fix, folks!). And within the pro-Mary... More >>
  • Best Way to Battle the Sunday Blues
    The Capitol Club is my house of worship. Its Sunday all-day happy hour offers $3 well drinks and $4 sangria and house wines that can be enjoyed at a balcony table or, when the sun fails to prevail, indoors on a comfy velvet chair. More welcoming than the generous supply of throw pillows are the... More >>
  • Best Reason to Hit Safeco after a Mariners Game
    "A hot dog at the ballpark is better than steak at the Ritz," Humphrey Bogart once said. And boy, was he right. The smell of a beer brat sizzling on a greasy grill outside Safeco is absolutely tantalizing. Loaded with obscene amounts of sauerkraut, relish, and mustard, it can seduce and satiate... More >>
  • Best $3 Non-Alcoholic Beverage
    The earliest record of chocolate consumption dates back to the Mayans. They churned cocoa seeds into a frothy substance, added chili peppers, then consumed the spicy, bittersweet drink to increase their libido. Chocolati Café pays homage to this ancient tradition with its Cayenne-Pepper... More >>
  • Best Way to Feed Octopus to First-Timers
    The Japanese are masters of turning creepy sea creatures into succulent dishes. Octopus is no exception. Takoyaki (literally, fried octopus) consists of diced baby octopus sizzled in tempura batter, green onions, and bonito flakes. Wann Izakaya serves piping-hot takoyaki that tastes like it's... More >>
  • Best Remodel
    When the Virginia Inn closed this winter for a major makeover, it made a few of us diehard fans more than a little nervous. The classic First Avenue watering hole was expanding into the neighboring space to make room for more seating and a larger kitchen. Considering it's one of the few bars in... More >>
  • Best Place to Get Drunk on Election Night
    You're not going to find TVs strung above the bar with talking heads blaring all night long, but what you'll likely find at the Two Bells Tavern on election night is somebody who either holds office, is running for office, or is helping somebody else campaign. This old-school haunt is part... More >>
  • Best Good-Time All-Day Happy Hour
    Like the name suggests, Hooverville keeps it simple: free peanuts, shells on the floor, cheap beer, and friendly bartenders. In fact, the bartenders are so friendly that you actually feel like you're somewhere else (sorry, rest of Seattle), or maybe in a simpler era. Named after a shantytown... More >>
  • Best Liquor Still Purchasable in the CD
    Three words killed malt liquor in much of Seattle: Alcohol Impact Area. But somehow—by some miracle—the party poopers who drafted the list of 23 beer and malt-liquor products banned in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and the Central District missed adding Big Bear. Maybe it was the... More >>
  • Best-Smelling Food on the Street as You Pass By
    Huffing and puffing up Pike Street, I'm always caught short by the delectable odor wafting from the kitchen of the Honey Hole, that awesome Capitol Hill sandwich joint. During ideal downwind conditions, you can smell the ingredients of classics like the Bandit and Gooch from blocks away. Even if... More >>
  • Best Planet-Friendly Place to Answer Nature's Call
    Chaco Canyon, the U District cafe specializing in organic, raw, and vegan fare, has a great bathroom. No, really, think about it: How many times do you go into a restaurant's bathroom and say "Wow, this john's fantastic!" And not only does it look nice inside—all dimly lit and... More >>
  • Best College Bar
    Those people who claim the University of Washington lacks a consistently great bar within walking distance of campus—and there are many—have never been to Dante's. For one, Ted Bundy used to party here, a fact that the bar celebrates with a wall full of clippings near its entrance.... More >>
  • Best Unvarnished Sports Bar
    What's in a name? At Rocksport, everything. First, "rock": classic rocky bands grace the stage of the cavernous Alaska Junction bar several nights a week. (On occasions when Hell's Belles is the featured act, the place goes buck wild.) Next, "sport": this is a sports bar, and it's built for... More >>
  • Best Northwest Seattle Viking Bar
    The Viking on 24th Avenue Northwest is a fantastic bar, Old Ballard to the core. If the Baranof didn't exist, we'd have no trouble naming the Viking the Best Northwest Seattle Viking Bar, but the Baranof does exist, and, well, there's no place quite like the Baranof. When I think of the two... More >>
  • Best Tavern Name
    On appearances alone, The Hobnobber in downtown Burien is nothing to write home about. It's a scruffy, ultra-basic tavern that only serves beer, mainly keeps its TVs tuned to network news, and boasts a roster of regulars whose median age is well north of 40. But, oh, what a name. According to... More >>
  • Best Irresistible Outdoor Seating
    Martha Belaez Morrow's parents opened the Copacabana Cafe in 1964. She took it over some years later and moved it to its current digs overlooking Pike Place Market, where it's been for three decades. The food is of the South American variety, with a focus on Bolivia, where Belaez Morrow is from.... More >>
  • Best New Neighborhood Mural
    The mural on the northern side of the Kusina Filipina restaurant is best in all categories. It's new, it's big, it's painted by neighborhood artists, and it's beautiful—a monument to Beacon Hill's multiethnic population and an extension of the decoration inside June Vicencio's restaurant:... More >>
  • Best Cheese Shop Worth Seeking Out (2 Comments)
    Somehow, Fisher Plaza seems like an odd location for a great cheese-and-wine shop. Visitors to the Space Needle, just across the way, aren't particularly in the market for Irish blues, and the below-ground-level store is a few long blocks from the supermarkets where the locals buy their produce.... More >>
  • Best Grilled Cheese Sandwich
    American cheese on white bread has its time and place (2 a.m.; any diner in town), but no self-respecting adult orders off the kid's menu for dinner. For a grown-up alternative, consider the grilled feta sandwich at The Continental Restaurant and Pastry Shop, a homey facsimile of a Greek taverna... More >>
  • Best Meal in a Bathrobe
    At the Korean women-only Olympus Spa, everyone is naked. Naked and taking turns soaking in pools ranging from boiling to frigid, cleansing themselves with strategically placed buckets of mugwort tea, and literally being rubbed like pieces of meat by no-nonsense, swimsuit-clad Korean masseuses.... More >>
  • Best Place to Stock a Green Lake Picnic
    I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I spent 25 years on this good earth without hearing about the torta. A specialty of Mexico City, these fully loaded sandwiches make panini look like child's play. Barriga Llena is the place to try them in Seattle, and if you go, you must be brave... More >>
  • Best Cure-All for What Ails You
    I've never understood why people seek out chicken noodle soup in times of trouble when they could have wonton instead. The simple broth is comparable, and if I'm having a bad day, juicy little packets of pork, ginger, and other assorted goodness are way more likely to cheer me up than strands of... More >>
  • Best Place to Escape Overlake for India
    In a forgotten corner of Bellevue, near a desolate Sears that seems open only because someone forgot to close it and next to a Chuck E. Cheese that's seen better days, sits a little oasis of India, populated with women in bright, beautiful saris and their husbands. Exhibit A: Apna Bazar, stocked... More >>
  • Best Alternative to Diet Coke
    My addiction to Diet Coke is killing me. At least I'm pretty sure it is; all those chemicals can't be doing the body any good. It's taken me years to find a suitable replacement—the necessary criteria include effervescence, light caffeination, not too much sugar, and the ability to be... More >>
  • Best Sweet-Potato Fries
    To state it in the language of the SAT, sweet potatoes are to regular potatoes as that cool European exchange student is to the popular kids in your high school. No matter how great regular fries seemed before, one bite of the exciting new tuber's sweet taste and firmer texture makes old spuds... More >>
  • Best Place to Shamelessly Pig Out on Free Food
    It's not that they don't feed me at home, or that I'm some sort of glamorous starving artist. But my addiction to free samples at Trader Joe's is based on the roulette wheel of potential tastes; the uncertainty keeps me hooked. On the best days, the sample is something I would never buy, make,... More >>
  • Best Reason to Fall in Love at Lunchtime
    Oh, daily lunch special at Le Fournil, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. (1) You're different every day. Sometimes I'm in the mood for grilled veggies on a perfect baguette; some days I crave quiche; occasionally I'm watching my figure and want a salad. You give me all of these and... More >>
  • Best $3 Mussels with a Million-Dollar View
    There's no salve for a long day quite like watching the sunset over Elliott Bay while being doted on by a congenial waiter, especially if that waiter is speaking French and serving you a mound of mussels simmering in a buttery-herbed broth—for only $2.95! That's right, hop on over to... More >>
  • Best Reason to Eat Alone
    Only order #18 on the Korean menu (jamppong, spicy seafood soup) at University Teriyaki if you're with someone you love—or better yet, if you're by yourself. When you order, the people behind the counter will ask if you know what you're getting into. Assure them you do. Take your red... More >>
  • Best Vestige of Old Ballard
    I've never been to Scandinavia, but I have it on good authority from folks who have that lots of people in Scandinavia have heard of Ballard. This does not surprise me, because I remember what Ballard was like before all the tapas bars and girls in party tops—deeply Nordic and comfortable... More >>
  • Best (Carbonated) Trip Down Memory Lane/Best Reason to Ditch the Espresso
    Chris Webb is a man on a mission. The co-owner of Fremont Coffee brews his own ginger beer in the coffee shop's basement and sells it in cool-looking recycled bottles with the labels torn off. You feel like you're drinking contraband, as though the government had suddenly outlawed soda pop and... More >>
  • Best Place to Enjoy International Understanding
    It's hard for me to understand a culture until I've tried its food, which is why a trip to the Persian Pacific Market in Lake City seemed necessary in these troubled political times. The market itself is a jumble of imported goods with inscrutable labels, but the attached deli is a delight. You... More >>
  • Best Lesser-Known Eco-Conscious Chocolatier
    There's a certain chocolate factory in Fremont (we won't name names, but it rhymes with "brio") that gets all the press—it wholly deserves it, but that doesn't mean smaller-scale chocolatiers like Lee Johnson at Fiori Chocolates shouldn't get their moment in the sun. Johnson spent time in... More >>
  • Best New Restaurant
    OK, I thought the year before was a great period for new restaurants in Seattle, but this past 12 months has been spectacular. Trying to pick the "best," which do you choose: Quinn's Pub's urban-rustic meat love? The small plates and fresh pastas at cigar-box How to Cook a Wolf? Tiny, artery-red... More >>
  • Best Non-Yuppie Grocery
    Sure, the Hilltop Red Apple on Beacon Hill has recently undergone a remodel, adding items like fresh pasta to its spruced-up aisles. Even so, it remains a low-key, neighborhood kind of place, serving immigrants from all over the world, including refugees from Seattle's pricey North End. Unlike... More >>
  • Best Hidden Gem Off Lake Washington Boulevard
    It looks more like an oversized mini-mart than a shop you'd go out of your way to visit for a bottle of Grand Cru Bordeaux and a roast leg of lamb. But venture inside this unprepossessing, multi-generation, family-owned market along Lake Washington, and you'll find a fantastic meat counter and... More >>
  • Best Place to Wake and Bake
    We suffer in Seattle from a general lack of vitamin-D-bequeathing warmth. A minuscule complaint for such a mild climate as ours, but boy, does it ever take its time warming up around here. Boost your temperature inside and out in the glass- and brick-lined courtyard of Stickman Coffee in... More >>
  • Best Bartender
    If part of what makes a great bartender is flash and charisma, Don Bogie won't be anyone's jar of olives. A normal-looking middle-aged gentleman who's manned the guns in the Maharaja's rear lounge, one of the Junction's great hidden gems, for a decade or so, Bogie (he introduces himself by his... More >>
  • Best Method of Preventing Alcohol Poisoning
    You know a pizza parlor specializes in feeding drunken masses when it switches from plastic to paper plates daily at 5 p.m. Hot Mama's Pizza has served up New York–style slices to inebriated Seattleites since opening across the street from Linda's Tavern in 1995. The tiny hole in the wall... More >>
  • Best Mashup of Two Fad-Foods
    Watching chefs pile fad-food on fad-food can lead to some amusing results. I admit, a pig's-head terrine with duck egg–yuzu emulsion and smoked-apple powder would certainly be au courant, but would you want to eat more than an oyster fork's worth of it? But some trend-foods do pair in... More >>
  • Best Luxury Version of a Childhood Fave
    There was a moment, back in 1998, when I realized that if I ever had to taste another spoonful of flavored mashed potatoes (lemon–creme fraiche mash, roasted-garlic mash, the dreaded wasabi mash), I was going to hurl. A decade later, I'm having the same oh-no-not-again nausea regarding... More >>
  • Best New Species
    I first heard of the dork (Uarrsuccia duibius) in elementary school. This mythical creature seemed to be everywhere and nowhere—every day, students on the playground would point and scream its name, yet no "sighting" could be confirmed, since anything so identified would deny the... More >>

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