Seattle for foodies

Best restaurants

Seattle eats like a port city that learned to cook from everyone who ever stepped off a ferry. The twelve rooms below sit, almost without exception, inside the rectangle bounded by Pike Place, Pioneer Square, and the financial spine of University Street: a downtown grid where a Brazilian churrascaria at 400 University Street shares a block with an oyster bar at 411 University Street, and a Georgian bakery at 77 Spring Street keeps the same opening hour as the Taiwanese dessert counter four avenues east at 223 5th Avenue South. This is not a fine-dining list and it is not a cheap-eats list; it is a working downtown list, organised by how a curious eater walks the city: from the Pike Place rail down through the Market, up the hill to 8th Avenue, and south into the Chinatown-International District. The locals eat here on weeknights, not just on anniversaries. Read the hours before you go: half of these kitchens close by 22:00 and three of them are dark on Sunday or Monday.