Bar del Corso is not only an intoxicating place to be, it’s a dazzling place to eat, off a seasonal menu of buoyant salads, Euro antipasti, Italian desserts, and simply exquisite pizza. Read more.
Artfully composed plates hold small bites, but since nothing tops $12 you still feel like you’re getting away with murder. Cocktails are sophisticated to match. Read more.
Owner and chef Renee Erickson marries French technique with Northwest seasonal ingredients in a menu that pays about equal homage to meat and seafood, with plenty of vegetables. Read more.
It’s actually comfort food—unrecognizable as such thanks to sophisticating grace notes: an amuse bouche, McCrain’s frequent forays into molecular gastronomy, and an uncommonly artful eye for plating. Read more.
The brilliance of Canlis is that it isn’t content to let mythic be enough. Jason Franey is an extraordinary chef: nudging the old girl into the new century without back-burnering classics. Read more.
The hearty cuisine of Italy’s Piedmont region—the marinated rabbit, the truffles, the big butter sauces—is impeccably, consistently thrilling at this rustic wood-hewn ristorante in Pike/Pine. Read more.
Precious methods, yes, but applied to such down-to-earth dishes—a rib eye with onion rings, buttermilk fried chicken, mac and cheese with duck ham—it just registers as really, really good cooking. Read more.
Seven years in, Jason Wilson has proved himself incapable of resting on his formidable laurels (James Beard, Food and Wine)—and diners will taste it in the form of a thousand perfect surprises. Read more.
Your old Iberian favorite is enjoying a performance renaissance, in tiny quarters as thick with old-country mood as any place in Seattle. And these days, there’s simply no going wrong with any of it. Read more.
For those who worship at the altar of Northwest microseasonal dining, the Herbfarm in Woodinville remains the Holy of Holies. Prix-fixe dinner themes change often; check the website for the schedule. Read more.
The changing menu is dependably shot through with a strong Mediterranean streak. If you’re a pork rind person, these ones are housemade, fun with cocktails, and locally famous. Read more.
It does affordable, accessible lunches of wood-oven pizzas and halibut and pork belly buns, hipster happy hours, sophisticated multicourse affairs, or a la carte dinners for drop-in shoppers. Read more.
Adventurous dining meets good eatin’ at this stunner in North Capitol Hill, brought to you by the culinary genius and Herbfarm alum Jerry Traunfeld. Read more.
The single best thing to happen to Seattle dining in the last year was the launch of this stark, lively shot of Korean-Asian street food in Fremont: brainchild of chefs Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi. Read more.
From chef Thierry Rautureau, it’s simply the finest French cuisine in Seattle, served in a pretty Madison Valley house with creamy walls, polite pastel paintings, and reverent service. Read more.
A line snakes out from this Pioneer Square salumeria every day at lunchtime—so long on summer days, Salumi chefs have been known to walk out to the tail of the line to talk folks out of waiting. Read more.
Tom Douglas is at his best in these casual joints that let his trademark creativity flourish. His pie crust is a masterpiece, his toppings brilliantly combined. All within two cozy, communal spots. Read more.
Tom Douglas is at his best in these casual joints that let his trademark creativity flourish. His pie crust is a masterpiece, his toppings brilliantly combined. All within two cozy, communal spots. Read more.
Nobody comes to Shiro’s for wacky rolls or fusion, or even atmosphere. Shiro Kashiba’s namesake restaurant remains true to his vision of a traditional Japanese sushi house. Read more.
Matt Dillon obeys the muse—and more often than not the muse has one heck of a palate. His free-flowing style brings diners home-kitchen-esque combinations that make eating at Sitka wicked good fun. Read more.
Chef Mark Fuller reveres modern techniques and busy concepts, but builds them into dinners where good old-fashioned flavor is paramount. His is one of the great something-for-everyone menus Read more.
The best way to enjoy chef Ethan Stowell's minimalist take on rustic Italian fare is to spring for the four-course prix-fixe chef’s sampling: a combo of noshy starters, pasta, entree, and dessert. Read more.
Taichi Kitamura is the terrific sushi chef who gave us Chiso and Chiso Kappo (now closed). If those were good restaurants, his Eastlake sushi bar and omakase house is a great one. Read more.
How Seattle is this: a restaurant serving four-course, communal-table, vegetarian dinners, run by a yogi who rings a gong before service for a reverent moment of silence in gratitude to the earth? Read more.
Maria Hines is a culinary intuitive, with an innate sense of what flavors and textures belong together, and as ironclad a commitment to organic ingredients as any chef working in Seattle today. Read more.
With seven oyster varieties daily, W&C is a nosher’s paradise, not a dinner house, so plan accordingly. Then plan to wait, as dozens crowd the line ahead of you, and reservations aren’t accepted. Read more.
Read Kathryn Robinson's 25 best Seattle restaurants, our favorite cheap eats, a menu guide to the 50 top restaurants, and more, in our November 2011 issue.
