Hungry for news? Welcome to our Friday Feed, where we run through all the local food and restaurant news this week—and maybe help you figure out where to eat this weekend.
It's a mousse moose, and we love it.
I Like Big (Snack) Boats and I Cannot Lie
Each season, Mariners fans await the most exciting moments of the year: the start of spring training, Opening Day, and, most importantly, the announcement of the new foods coming to T-Mobile Park. (Okay, and the debut of the funny ads). This year, the concession announcement was particularly exciting because it included FERRY FRIES. Yes, that’s right folks, you can now order many types of snacks that arrive in a souvenir Washington State Ferry boat. The team explained that it is a dual celebration of the Washington State Ferries’ 75th anniversary and the Mariners’ 50th season, but what actually matters is FERRY FRIES. The options available in a ferry boat include five different kinds of fries—regular, Old Bay, crab, garlic, and sidewinder, plus chicken tenders and fries, fish and chips, and two different setups of wonton chip crab nachos.
The desserts got an upgrade, too, with the arrival of the chocolate mousse moose at Mister Softee and Salt & Straw bringing its Taco Ball collab Choco Taco imitator, the Tacolate, into the stadium.
Moto Pizza, now at T-Mobile Park and down the street in Pioneer Square.
Now Open
- Start your ovens: Just down the street from T-Mobile Park, where it also sells, Moto Pizza has opened its seventh Washington location. Also its seventh location anywhere, though those numbers will soon stop matching as it opens three stores in Southern California starting in May.
- Start your carts: Seattle has a long tradition of coffee carts, but few to none truly serve the community on a daily basis anymore. That might be changing, reports Capitol Hill Seattle. Recently A Common Cart opened in the Capitol Hill light rail station, serving beverages made of both coffee and yaupon, the indigenous North American caffeinated plant.
- Time to chaat: Also on Capitol Hill, Bengali restaurant Kha-Bar began serving food during its soft opening this week, with regional specialties not usually seen around here, like chhana dalna, a paneer curry, and dab chingri, a mustardy prawn dish traditionally cooked inside a coconut.
- Time to wine: The former Art of the Table (and, briefly, Robin’s) space is alive again with Balandra’s soft opening. The all-day restaurant calls itself tapas, but the menu reads eclectic, with breakfast ranging from chilaquiles to filet mignon Benedict and dinner offering trumpet mushroom udon alongside Waldorf salad and paella arancini.
Open Again
- Not quite closed yet: Much-acclaimed Itsumono, which broke hearts when it closed on Valentine’s Day, has reopened as Itsumono-lite while the owners try to sell the restaurant. They’ll serve small plates and donburi from Wednesdays to Saturdays until the restaurant sells.
- Back to life: Charley Lee, the restaurateur behind departed Eastside favorites Eastern Pearl in Redmond and the previous incarnation of Hakka House in Bellevue has opened a new Hakka House in Redmond. As before, and as the name implies, the restaurant serves specialties from the Hakka people, a diasporic Chinese ethnic subgroup, but also dim sum and some Taiwanese dishes.
Opening Soon
- The wait is almost over: One of the most awaited restaurant openings of the year will happen Tuesday, when former sidewalk stand Tacos Cometa moves down the block and inside its new Broadway storefront. The Sinaloan-style taco specialists with fine-dining experience haven’t announced the menu, but based on the cart, there will be plenty of meat tacos and flour tortillas.
- The wait isn’t quite over yet: Another hotly anticipated spot, chef Emme Collins’s Pike Place Market stand Baiana, announced a grand opening date of April 30 for her Afro-Brazilian lunch counter.
- The wait is unknown: An enticing sign for Tlayudas Juquilita, though without further information, has gone up on the former teriyaki space in Aurora's Oak Tree Village.
The Somm Hotel will get some new neighbors soon.
Development Watch
- Somm-thing happening: Woodinville’s nearly 20-acre Harvest development opened with the Somm Hotel last year, but the restaurant tenants are still in flux. Ethan Stowell Restaurants, Eric Donnelly’s RockCreek, and Edmonds's Shubert Ho were all mentioned as tenants, but all three are now out, reports Puget Sound Business Journal. Instead, Cactus will open its seventh spot in a nearly 6,000-square-foot space (for reference, that’s huge), and Mercer Island’s Crawlspace Gastropub will join in a smaller spot, along with Sugo Hand Roll Bar and more still in talks.
- Nothing happening (yet): Northgate Station, the development, not the actual light rail station, will open a quartet of spots in 2027, including the rapidly expanding, no longer quite-so-local Supreme Dumpling. Joining it are national names Shake Shack, Joe & the Juice, and Mendocino Farms.
No Longer Open
Oh, BTW, here’s what you missed last time.