The Top 100 Places to Eat Near Sacro Bosco

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Christina Wood

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Kristi Brown
3. The New York Times The Restaurant List

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Quynh-Vy and Yenvy Pham
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Yenvy and Quynh Pham
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

The boat-shaped building in Little Saigon runs the whole menu on a single dish: a garlic-crusted half chicken, fried crisp and lacquered in fish sauce, served with rice or a noodle soup sidecar and a chrysanthemum greens salad that quietly steals the table. The drinks list is broader than you'd expect, with Vietnamese iced coffee, pandan iced tea, and cocktails. Save room for the pandan waffles, or come just for those.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. The Infatuation #17 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Quynh-Vy and Yenvy Pham

The pizza here is long, rectangular, and crust-heavy enough that it reads more like an open-faced sandwich than a pie, which tells you something about the kitchen's priorities. Sacro Bosco is an Italian-leaning dinner spot sharing space with Temple Pastries, and chef Christina Wood brings an almost artistic fussiness to a small, seasonal menu. The housemade ricotta alone has been called one of Seattle's best bites this year, and looking at the plate, you'd believe it.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Housemade Ricotta · The Best Things I Ate This Year
3. The Infatuation #9 · Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

A postcard mural splashes the back wall of this fast-casual Filipino spot in the International District, setting the tone for a menu that's equally unsubtle about what it loves. Bulalo, the clear beef shank soup, is the centerpiece, and Melissa Miranda's kitchen pulls it off with enough technique to make a simple bowl feel considered. The pancit, the lumpia, the sinigang wings, all travel well in the same direction. The New York Times has named it among Seattle's 25 best.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
3. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Aaron Tekulve
3. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Melissa Miranda
2. The Infatuation #3 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. The Infatuation #2 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

The whiteboard of daily specials is where regulars look first at this old-school Japanese restaurant and bar in the International District, an institution that has been around forever and shows no interest in pretending otherwise. No-nonsense aunties keep things in order, traditional cooks keep the kitchen honest, and the wait for a table is more or less constant. Come hungry and unhurried.

1. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

The hollow bread comes with honey butter, and if that sounds simple for a Capitol Hill restaurant pulling Vietnamese flavors through a global filter, the rest of the menu will readjust your expectations fast. This is a contemporary dinner spot where risotto gets a Southeast Asian pesto and carpaccio arrives bright with nuoc cham. The chef is a James Beard semifinalist, and the cocktails have their own following.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. Seattle Met Tôm Cocktail · The Best Things I Ate This Year

The chef's pastry background explains why the flan de erizo and the croissant sobrasada roll have each turned heads at Seattle Met. This tapas bar on 12th Avenue riffs on Galician cooking, leaning into the Pacific Northwest's seafood to find where Spain's northwest and Washington's coastline overlap. The menu takes liberties, in a good way, and the sherry list is longer than you'd expect. A James Beard semifinalist in 2024.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Croissant Sobrasada Roll · The Best Things I Ate This Year
3. Seattle Met Flan de Erizo · The Best Things I Ate This Year

Starry lights over soft banquettes set the mood at this fine dining room on Capitol Hill, where the kitchen turns very local ingredients into something quietly elegant. The four-course tasting menu gives you real choices at each round, which makes it unusually painless for people who normally flinch at tasting menus. The hospitality carries the same care as the food, a James Beard Semifinalist nod for Outstanding Hospitality confirms that's not accidental.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Hospitality
3. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
2. The Stranger The Lamb Mabo Pizza · The 10 Best Things I Ate in Seattle

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best Coffee Shops In Seattle
2. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

The bar is lit by a marquee sign, the wine list describes something as "the purple nurple of pet-nat," and fresh urchin sometimes arrives in the spiny shell with bread and butter. This wainscoted French bistro on Capitol Hill pairs classic technique with Northwest seafood, keeps the natural wine program largely French, and still serves pimento cheese left over from a pop-up era because the menu has a sense of humor about itself.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Urchin · The Best Things I Ate This Year
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. West

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best Coffee Shops In Seattle

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best Coffee Shops In Seattle

The wood-fired oven does the talking here, blistering crusts until they're charred and chewy in all the right spots. Bar Del Corso is a pizza shop on Beacon Avenue that keeps quietly outrunning that label, with fried risotto balls, grilled octopus, and aperitivo-forward cocktails filling out a short menu. The back patio is easy to miss, the waits are not. The New York Times has put it on their Seattle list, and the James Beard Foundation named it a hospitality semifinalist.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza USA Excellent Pizzerias
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
3. The Infatuation #11 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle

The pitas come out of the wood oven almost too hot to handle, still puffed from the heat, and they anchor a menu built around big Mediterranean flavors in a neighborhood restaurant that also runs a soft-serve window because why not. The chef knows the local dogs by name, which tells you something about the room. Lamb ribs and meatballs fill out the regular order for anyone who can't decide, which is most people.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Logan Cox

The Canlis salad gets made tableside, which tells you exactly the kind of place this is: old-school fine dining with a capital F, perched on a cliff above Lake Union with views that earn their keep. A five-course prix fixe leans into Northwest ingredients with a quiet nod to the restaurant's Hawaiian roots. Food & Wine named it among the top US restaurants in 2025, and the wine program has a hall of fame plaque to its name.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Food & Wine Best New Chefs · Aisha Ibrahim
3. Wine Enthusiast The Wine Restaurant Hall of Fame

A barely-there sign on Beacon Hill marks this casual Guamanian restaurant and bar, which is either accidental humility or the universe's way of filtering out TikTokers (it has not worked). The menu follows the chef's biography through Filipino chicken adobo tacos and Guam-style corn soup, but the achiote-orange empanadas, stuffed with raisined beef and served in a pool of fina'denne', are what drew a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2025.

1. Esquire Lola Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. The New York Times The Restaurant List
3. The Infatuation #10 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle

The owner built this wood-fired pizza spot himself from recycled materials, made the stools, maintains a chicken coop out back, and processes rainwater on site. If that sounds like a lot, the thin-crusted, springy pizzas are doing their part too. Mostly outdoor seating means summer is the sweet spot, but the boutique brews, rotating ciders, and the easy International District energy make a case for showing up in a jacket anyway.

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

Twelve seats, one seating, and roughly ten courses tracing the Philippines' complicated history with the Pacific Northwest. This intimate tasting room in South Seattle builds menus around heirloom grains, fermented local produce, and house-rolled miki noodles while serving up genuine cultural context alongside every plate. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Chef, the chef here makes the backstory feel inseparable from the food, which is a harder trick than it sounds.

1. The Infatuation Infatuation’s Highest-Rated Restaurants In America
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Outstanding Hospitality
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Aaron Verzosa

A tofu production company that sprouted a deli counter, Thanh Son is the rare spot where the house-made soy milk and fresh tofu, sold by the pound, upstage everything else on offer. The banh mi are built to order on house-baked bread, and the glass case of che, Vietnamese sweet dessert, stacks up a rainbow of tapioca, jellies, and beans in combinations that take a minute to decode. Bring restraint, or at least a spoon.

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met 2026 · Seattle's Best Shaved Ice and Slushies

Marble cafe tables inside a wine shop looking out at Melrose Market set the scene at Cafe Suliman, a Middle Eastern lunch spot where Pacific Northwest ingredients quietly take over the menu. The toast is famous enough to anchor a meal, and smaller bites like pickled gigante beans and carrot-lentil dip let you graze your way through without committing to a plan. The chef earned a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist nod in 2026.

1. Eater Best Counter
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Ahmed Suliman
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best Coffee Shops In Seattle

A former boat repair shop on the canal, now doing the Lord's work with cardamom croissants and Japanese melonpan. Saint Bread is a bakery with a full menu organized, with some nerve, by how many slices of bread your order contains. The "No Bread" section includes okonomiyaki, which tells you the kitchen has opinions. A James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery, and the New York Times put it on their short list of top U.S. bakeries.

1. The New York Times 22 of the Best Bakeries Across the U.S. Right Now
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bakery
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

Byrek are coils of flaky pastry from Albania, and they're the reason to find this small, stylish cafe near Seattle University. The menu covers baguette sandwiches, fries, and salads well enough, but the byrek, stuffed with leeks and feta or beef and onions, arrive with housemade yogurt for dipping and upstage everything else. Save room for baklava or a slice of cake from the counter display.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

The menu calls them "Sichuan ravioli," which tells you everything about the vibe here. This old-school International District Chinese restaurant has been serving homestyle Sichuan long before hot pot chains made the cuisine trendy in Seattle, and the approach hasn't changed much: big plates, ropy noodles, a pepper-reddened boiled fish that sounds mild and isn't, and portions sized like someone's grandmother is worried you look thin.

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

The smash burger with house-cured pork jowl and jeaw condiment is either a flex or a provocation, possibly both. Taurus Ox is a casual Laotian restaurant that moved out of its original counter spot into a proper dining room, and the menu came with it. Khao poon and a family sausage recipe built around lemongrass anchor the Lao side of things, while that burger quietly complicates any notion of what the restaurant is supposed to be. The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

A hand-carved wooden angel watches from an overhead alcove while chef Nathan Lockwood plates Northwest ingredients on moss and stones below, which pretty much sets the tone. Altura is a fixed tasting menu restaurant on Capitol Hill, the kind of place where the cooking is polished but the service stays warm enough that you don't feel like you're being graded. A good call when the occasion demands it.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
3. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Quynh-Vy and Yenvy Pham
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Yenvy and Quynh Pham
3. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

Twelve seats in a brick corridor, a chalkboard that changes daily, and a chef who treats gooseneck barnacles as a reasonable Tuesday ingredient. Off Alley is an intimate Pacific Northwest tasting spot where foie gras might end up as ice cream and snails arrive on sourdough with bone marrow butter, though the stranger touches tend to punctuate dishes that are, underneath it all, quietly seasonal and elegant. The New York Times put it on their restaurant list, and the staff describe every plate like they can't quite believe it either.

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle

Claypot dishes and lacquered roasted meats are the draw at this polished but casual Cantonese spot, where most of the menu stays under $15 and the lunch crowd moves fast. It shares a building with the much larger Diamond Bay, which means dim sum from that sprawling menu is also on offer, a dangerous development for anyone who came in planning to keep it simple. New York restaurant group, Seattle address, Chinatown, International District building with history.

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. The Infatuation #25 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

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

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

Savory rosette cookies arrive first at most tables, which tells you something about the chef's sense of humor and ambition. Atoma is a fine dining spot tucked into a converted Craftsman home in Wallingford, running a hyperseasonal Pacific Northwestern menu that's formal enough to take seriously and loose enough to actually enjoy. A James Beard nominee, it draws the kind of crowd that knows exactly where Canlis is, which is where the chef came from.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best New Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Johnny Courtney
3. Eater Best New Restaurant

1. The Infatuation #19 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle
2. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots
2. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Chef · Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
3. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots
2. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

The kitchen grinds and nixtamalizes heirloom corn daily, which means every tortilla at this innovative Mexican restaurant starts from scratch in a way that most places quietly gave up on long ago. Chef Janet Becerra, a James Beard Emerging Chef nominee, brings European fine-dining technique to cauliflower al pastor tacos and tuna tostadas with morita Kewpie mayo. The room is cozy and the crowd is lucky to have found it.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Emerging Chef · Janet Becerra
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met Khao Soi Chiang Mai · The Best Things I Ate This Year
2. Seattle Met Pak Mor Yuan · The Best Things I Ate This Year
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

The long counter at this old-school Chinese restaurant in the Chinatown-International District has been accumulating scuffs, celebrity photos, and regulars for decades. The menu has been this way forever, and that's the point: beef in oyster sauce, chop suey built on sautéed vegetables, nothing experimental. The owner waves you out the door himself, which is a touch you don't get everywhere.

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

The bingsu at this Capitol Hill sweet shop arrives on an unlit portable burner, which is more of a theatrical prop than anything functional, and you will make a mess. Each composed dessert stacks fresh fruit, cheesecake or brownie chunks, and a scoop of ice cream over milk shaved into long, coconut-like flakes. A sidecar of condensed milk covers for the housemade fruit sauce, which runs out of momentum before it reaches the bottom.

1. Seattle Met 2026 · Seattle's Best Shaved Ice and Slushies

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Mutsuko Soma
2. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
3. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants

The hojicha canelé, flavored with roasted green tea and whiskey, tells you everything you need to know before you've found a seat. The Wayland Mill is an all-day café on the ground floor of a Wallingford office building, where the chef's Japanese heritage, Midwest upbringing, and years running Seattle restaurants converge on one menu. The Saint Paul Sando alone, a riff on St. Louis Chinese-American egg foo young pressed into precise tamago on shokupan, has made it a James Beard semifinalist.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. Eater Best All-Day Cafe · The 2025 Eater Seattle Award Winners
3. The Infatuation #2 · Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

Counter-service seafood in Fremont, where the chef sources directly from local fisheries, a supply-chain headache most spots at this price point don't bother with. The menu reads like Pacific Northwest bar food done with actual conviction: rockfish banh mi, salmon teriyaki, home fries tangled with smoked cod. The crab roll on a split-top bun comes out only on weekends, so plan accordingly. The New York Times put it on their Seattle list, which tracks.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now
2. The Infatuation #20 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

The lechon arrives as a pinwheel of pork with skin so shatteringly crisp it sounds like a problem. Lenox is a Caribbean restaurant in Belltown doing Nuyorican cooking with palm-print wallpaper, rattan fixtures, and a rum-heavy cocktail list that leans hard into the beach-bar premise. The spice mixes are made in-house, the piña coladas get poured generously, and Bon Appétit named it one of America's Best New Restaurants in 2025.

1. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
3. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

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

1. US Coffee Championships #4 · U.S. Barista Championship · Noel Goodwin

1. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle

1. Seattle Met 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

A cocktail bar beside the oven is the first signal that PizzBurgh is doing something a bit different. This Messina pizzeria runs through the full format card, red, white, fried, pala, padellino, and the big wheel-shaped ruota di carro, all built on high-hydration doughs with long fermentation times that keep things soft without going slack. The outdoor terrace fills up quickly, and 50 Top Pizza lists it among Italy's excellent pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Detroit-style pizza with a self-described tagline of "pretty good pizza," which is either very honest or very good marketing. The ultra-thick, crispy-edged pies come from a pandemic pop-up that grew into a permanent spot, and the narrow space flows out to a sidewalk parklet. The drinks menu is almost entirely under ten dollars, with wine notes like "kissing a guy with a mustache." The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best restaurants right now.

1. The Infatuation #11 · The Top-Rated New Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best Coffee Shops In Seattle

Heather Earnhardt's Southern-inflected restaurant now lives inside a historic coastal hotel in Tokeland, having migrated from its Capitol Hill origins. Cozy breakfast anchors the day, surrounded by farmhouse antiques and tchotchkes that feel genuinely accumulated rather than styled. Big buttery biscuits and fried chicken carried over from the original, joined by fried oysters from nearby Willapa Bay and local fish gone cornmeal-and-grits.

1. Seattle Met The Best Restaurants in Washington State

1. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle

1. The Infatuation #24 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Seattle Right Now

The cinnamon rolls are vegan, which almost feels like a dare. This Madison Valley vegetarian restaurant has been the city's plant-based anchor for what feels like forever, drawing brunch crowds for veg scrambles and rosemary biscuits drowned in savory gravy alongside dinner plates that tend to quiet the table no matter who ordered the steak down the street. A plant-filled atrium and a year-round patio make the room easy to linger in.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 21 Best Coffee Shops In Seattle

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

The chandelier alone is worth pausing on, a sprawling coral-reef of a thing hanging over one of Seattle's most coveted oyster bar stools. This lively Ballard neighborhood spot runs on meticulously sourced oysters and a short, focused seafood menu, and the wait for a table is long enough that the tile-clad bar next door exists partly as a waiting room. A James Beard nominee for Outstanding Restaurant, it's the place locals bring visitors who ask where to eat in Seattle.

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Renee Erickson

Wooden lanterns and colorful cocktails set the tone at this upscale Chinese bistro inside the Sheraton, where the chef takes Cantonese as a starting point and then wanders pleasantly off-script. Surf-and-turf kung pao and lobster rangoon signal the playful agenda, though the Forbidden Roast Duck, a five-spiced bird with crackling skin served alongside monogrammed bao buns, is the dish the table will still be talking about on the way home.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

The caesar comes buried under a snowfall of cheese and pankogratto instead of croutons, which tells you everything about how Tivoli works. It's a slice shop and full-pie pizzeria in Fremont that wanders comfortably between New York and Naples without apologizing to either. The pies skew classic-ish, the sandwiches on sesame focaccia could pass at a proper bistro, and the black garlic knots are just there being excellent about it. Ranked #10 on 50 Top Pizza Slice USA.

1. 50 Top Pizza #12 · 50 Top Pizza Slice USA
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
3. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

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

A no-frills counter in the ground floor of the Central Building that's been scooping rice bowls since before poke was a personality type. Red Bowls runs nearly 50 variations, from eight styles of bibimbap to bulgogi, fish, tempura, and vegetarian options, all piled high and served fast. No website, no fuss, and a line that moves. Seattle Met named it one of the city's top lunch spots, which tracks.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. The Infatuation #16 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle

1. The Infatuation #21 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle
2. The Infatuation The 21 Most Fun Dinner Spots In Seattle