The Best Places to Eat Near La Tarasca, by the Record

A sign on the door reads "We don't serve chips," which tells you plenty about La Tarasca before you sit down. This family-run Mexican restaurant in Centralia draws its recipes from Michoacán, where the signature move is carnitas, and the mole runs peppery and peanut-forward rather than Oaxacan-sweet. Every tortilla is made from scratch, and the extended family behind the counter treats the room with the kind of warmth that keeps regulars quiet about the place.

1. Seattle Met The Best Restaurants in Washington State

1. US Coffee Championships #2 · U.S. Coffee in Good Spirits Championship · Richelle Taylor

1. US Coffee Championships #2 · U.S. Coffee in Good Spirits Championship · Richelle Taylor

1. US Coffee Championships #2 · U.S. Coffee in Good Spirits Championship · Richelle Taylor

Assyrian food is one of the rarer cuisines you'll encounter in the country, and this downtown Olympia restaurant may be among a handful of places serving it anywhere. The siblings behind it dug into their ancestral table, where Persian, Iraqi, and Israeli flavors converge in the same bowl. The brick-and-mortar space runs bright blue and gold, hung with family photos. A food truck handles takeout nearby.

1. Seattle Met The Best Restaurants in Washington State

1. US Coffee Championships #2 · U.S. Coffee in Good Spirits Championship · Richelle Taylor

Deep-fried puri shells arrive golf-ball-size and hollow, packed with cool pimento cheese softened by sweet onion jam, and that alone explains why Tacoma's Grann has Seattle making the drive south. The restaurant calls itself Southern BBQ, Creole, and Indian fusion, but the food lands somewhere past hyphenation, like a cuisine that simply grew up that way. Dramatic green walls and a tiger photograph that somehow matches the room give the dining room real personality.

1. Seattle Met The Best Restaurants in Washington State
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
3. Seattle Met Puri Pimento Bites · The Best Things I Ate This Year

A firepit on the patio and shared tables set the tone at this lively Asian street-food spot in Tacoma, where the menu pulls from Thai curries to Korean kimchi barbecue without planting a flag in any single tradition. The crispy rice salad with sausage has a following. Cocktails get serious attention, which separates it from the quieter sit-down sibling it spun off from. New owners took over in 2025, and the regulars, having briefly panicked, have since relaxed.

1. Seattle Met The Best Restaurants in Washington State