The Best Restaurants in Seattle

The pho broth here simmers for a full day on marrow bones, and you can taste the patience in it. Ba Bar is a Vietnamese restaurant and bar where the cocktail menu leans into tamarind and orgeat without taking itself too seriously, which matters when you're also ordering chicken wings. The New York Times named it one of Seattle's 25 best restaurants. The South Lake Union location keeps reasonable hours; the original Capitol Hill spot runs until midnight.

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

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

1. The Infatuation #12 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Seattle

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

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. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

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

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

The chef sources so locally he's reportedly knocked on strangers' doors to ask about their gardens, and his mom's plot is in regular rotation. The result is a Northwest New American restaurant on Alki Beach where essentially everything on the plate comes from Washington state, no California citrus allowed. The bar runs the same way and is worth the trip on its own, and the desserts have drawn their own devoted following.

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

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

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

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

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

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

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. The Infatuation The Most Fun Seattle Bars

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

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

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

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

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s 50 Best Restaurants

The triangular, window-lined room on Capitol Hill was Tamara Murphy's project from the start, built around a devotion to Pacific Northwest ingredients before that was a given on every Seattle menu. The restaurant organizes its global, seasonal cooking into Land, Earth, and Sea, and the roast pig, stewed with Manila clams and chorizo in a smoked paprika broth, has become a fixture worth planning around. The New York Times named it among Seattle's 25 best.

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

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

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

Two Italian men, both named Gabriele, run this Italian deli on Yesler Way, and the staff communicate in rapid, gesticulate Italian that could be an argument or a recipe debate or just Tuesday. The focaccia sandwiches are stacked with imported prosciutto and mortadella, and the 'nduja is made next door. Shop shelves hold Sardinian cheese, Calabrian honey, and bottarga for browsing. Vegetarians exist here, but they have to ask nicely.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

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3. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Eater Best Comeback · The 2025 Eater Seattle Award Winners

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

1. Eater Best Pizza · The 2025 Eater Seattle Award Winners

Bún bò Huế arrives as tacos here, which tells you everything about the approach. This Vietnamese cafe in South Seattle pairs deep-cut dishes like stir-fried snails in coconut sauce with banana cookie crumble matcha lattes, and somehow neither feels out of place. The bánh xèo comes gasp-inducingly large on a woven basket ringed with herbs. Seattle Met named it one of Seattle's best new restaurants in 2025.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

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

An old stone cottage in Georgetown with a garden patio that reads more like a faded Italian estate than a Seattle restaurant. The Corson Building runs mostly prix fixe, with a seasonal menu that shifts constantly and leans heavily on vegetables without forgetting the carnivores. Thursday nights open things up to a la carte if commitment feels like a lot. The room is spare and candlelit, the kind of place where dinner takes the whole evening and nobody seems to mind.

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

A sandwich shop named for the round painted lucky dolls that fill the room, this sibling to ramen spot Menya Musashi does Japanese katsu sandwiches and a few things that upstage them. The nori-dusted fries are the thing people keep mentioning. The katsu curry plate, technically a detour from the menu's thesis, is what the regulars seem to order instead.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

The mole coloradito here comes from a recipe the chef started learning from her grandmother in Oaxaca at age five, and that kind of timeline tends to show. This is a small Oaxacan restaurant in Burien, colorful ceramics on every table, a handful of seats inside and a covered patio out back. The molotes, fried masa dumplings buried under smoky morita and avocado salsa, are a good reason to arrive hungry.

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

A katsu shop born from the owners' off-hours obsession with Japanese cutlets, this Redmond spot keeps things focused: pork, chicken, cheese, all fried to a crunch you can hear across the room. The chef pulls from Tokyo tradition and Vancouver's izakaya scene, so the cutlets land in dark chocolate curry, bubbling nabe, or buried under enough grated Parmesan to require a snow shovel. A focused, casual lunch counter doing one thing with real conviction.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

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

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

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

A poke bowl shop in Edmonds where the fish rotates based on what's actually fresh, because the team sources some of it directly from the Honolulu Fish Auction. Seasonings are kept deliberately light so the fish does the talking, which is either obvious or radical depending on where you've been eating poke lately. Hawaiian sides like mac salad round things out, but this is unapologetically a fish place.

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

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. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

Korean-style shaved ice, known as bingsu, is the whole point here, served in bowls almost too pretty to disturb. Snowy Village is a casual international chain with a University District outpost where the milk-ice shavings come out feather-light and piled with toppings. The classic order leans into sweet red beans, chewy injeolmi rice cakes, and a dusting of soybean powder, though mango and Oreo versions exist for the less traditional.

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

Each basket of xiao long bao arrives with bamboo tongs and a card explaining exactly how to pinch and transfer without losing the broth, which tells you something about how seriously this soup dumpling shop takes its product. The room is neutral-toned and quietly polished. Six styles of xiao long bao, plus pan-fried buns and wontons that get the same careful treatment. Seattle Met named it one of Seattle's best lunch spots, and the expansion to multiple cities suggests agreement was widespread.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Seattle

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 bagel shop in University Village that refuses to slice, toast, or schmear anything, full stop. The chef rolls and bakes throughout the day, so there's almost always something warm coming out, crackly on the outside and just chewy enough inside. Cream cheese arrives on the side for ripping and dipping. If you want a sandwich, three other bagel spots are nearby, and Hey Bagel seems fine letting you go find one.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
2. The Infatuation #3 · Seattle’s Best New 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 2026 · The Best Restaurants in the Chinatown–International District Right Now

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

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 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

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

The kitchen operates out of Copperworks Distilling in Kenmore, which means you order at a counter in a sprawling taproom full of kids and dogs, then sit down to charred cabbage with miso buttermilk and baby carrots cooked in beef fat with black garlic yogurt. The seasonal menu leans on produce from a nearby farm, and the team, veterans of the Seattle dining scene, lands dishes that feel genuinely original while nodding at comfort food. The kids' menu is nearly as long as the main one.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Baker · Pamela Vuong

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific · Liz Kenyon

Fufu made from scratch and shito, the shrimp pepper sauce that shows up on nearly every table, are the signals that this is something Seattle doesn't have much of: a proper West African restaurant serving Ghanaian and Liberian cooking. The minimalist First Hill room fills fast with regulars who already know the goat peanut soup and newcomers working their way through peri peri wings and fried plantains for the first time.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants
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1. The Infatuation #11 · Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

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1. The Infatuation #5 · Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

1. The Infatuation #7 · Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

Pork belly sisig arrives still sizzling on a cast-iron plate, which tells you most of what you need to know about the room. This Filipino restaurant near the Beacon Hill light rail grew out of a food truck the family started after redevelopment shuttered their first spot, and the new stationary digs feel more like a return than a debut. The menu runs to lumpia, bistec, and adobo, with flavors on the gentler, pull-you-in end of the spectrum.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

An Italian cafe tucked inside a streetwear and sneaker shop, which is either a strange choice or the most Pioneer Square thing imaginable. Counter-service focaccia sandwiches and housemade pasta land in that comfortable zone between careful and fussy, and happy hour swings toward spritzes and antipasti without much ceremony. The kind of spot that handles a pre-game and a leisurely lunch date with equal ease.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

The patio hangs so close to Lake Washington you could lose a chip in it. El Encanto is an upscale Mexican restaurant where the room is very white, the crowd is very photogenic, and the chef quietly runs circles around the decor. The chile en nogada, made daily with help from his mom, is the kind of detail that earns its reputation. The cocktail list takes the tequila selection seriously, which helps when the selfie-to-taco ratio tips the wrong way.

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

1. Seattle Met Seattle’s Best New Restaurants

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A live-coal grill, the kind you'd see on a street corner in Xinjiang, sits in the kitchen of this Uyghur restaurant tucked into a Kent strip mall. The lamb skewers come off it cumin-crusted and properly smoky, the sort of thing that makes a food writer ask to see the back of the house. The menu covers the northwest Chinese canon: hand-pulled noodles, flatbreads, big plates of spiced meat.

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1. Seattle Met Broccoli Taco · The Best Things I Ate This Year

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1. The Stranger The Flan de Vainilla · The 10 Best Things I Ate in Seattle

1. The Stranger The Inimitable Porchetta Sandwich · The 10 Best Things I Ate in Seattle

1. Seattle Met Oklahoma Smash · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year

1. Seattle Met Churro · The Best Things I Ate This Year