The Sad State of Seattle Food
What is going wrong with Seattle
Restaurants?
Hey a new
Category!
Seattle is known as a fairly
snobby place when it comes to food. We introduced expensive gourmet coffees and
weird sounding microbrews to the world. For most of Seattle's history it was a
fairly blue-collar kind of town. With restaurants focusing on quantity as well
as quality. That all changed during the go-go nineties with the influx of dot
com and Microsoft millionaires. We now have all sorts of gourmet food around
here and for a while it was excellent. Now it seems we are in a bit of a
decline. Formerly excellent places like Cafe Campagne are no longer worth a
visit while new places like Dandelion and the 35th St Bistro try to make up in
high prices and presentation what they lack in ambience and food
quality.
What amazes me these days is
how some of these places are surviving. My wife and I recently had to walk out
on a meal at the 35th street Bistro because we couldn't hear each other and
because we had waited 45 minutes for our entrees. If we had stayed we would have
ended up paying more than $30/person for the privilege. You read the reviews on
these places and they sound amazing, but they are horrific. I'm hoping to write
as many good reviews as bad ones, but this weekend we tried two new places and
both frankly sucked so there won't be too much positive to say. To avoid being
too negative, I'm going to list a few of my favorite places
now.
Non Gourmet
Food
The Other
Coast - this is an amazing sandwich shop on
Ballard Ave. The quality and staff have gotten a bit less consistent since it
changed hands last year, but when they do it right, it is
awesome.
India
Bistro - Hands down the best Indian food in
the city, no questions.
Bento
Sushi - my neighborhood Sushi place is also
one of the best in the city. Some seriously high quality food for not so much
cash.
Delfinos
- I'm from Chicago, that means I like my pizza very thick and this University
Village place does it
right.
On the Gourmet
Side
Chiso
- Higher end Japanese cuisine in Fremont, very
excellent
The Queen City
Grill - if you can get there before the crowds
you can eat very well in a great environment. When it gets crowded though, it is
a lot harder to
enjoy
Brasa
- Excellent Portuguese-Fusion
cuisine
There are many more good places
that I'll try to get to, but I'll mostly be concentrating on new places here, I
think.
Posted: Mon - May 16, 2005 at 02:16 PM
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