Lupe’s Situ Tacos goes exhausting on crunch.
Opening a brand new restaurant in Seattle’s present local weather of rising rents and a diminishing labor pool requires ardour, perseverance, and a humorousness. Solely laughter can carry restaurateurs by way of their third break-in or seventh dishwasher (who may simply be themselves, anyway). That’s, maybe, why this yr’s class of eating places is way simpler to sum up in a single sentence than most: These spots are enjoyable.
Crunchy tacos, spicy Ghanaian soups, and clarified piña coladas remind diners that the purpose of consuming out is to have time. Whether or not that comes within the type of a fine-dining restaurant serving housemade Cheez-It crackers and comically miniature martinis or a superb rainbow of dumplings served from an Aurora motel is as much as you.
Vibrant colours cowl the partitions and the tables at Lupe’s Situ Tacos.
Lupe’s Situ Tacos
Ballard
Lupe Flores serves up her signature Lebanese-spiced beef, creamy garlic mashed potatoes, and herby cauliflower in crunchy tacos with the identical aptitude with which she performed drums—her pre-Covid profession. The tacos are pinned along with toothpicks and dunked within the fryer to a crispy and delightfully greasy finish. Flores’s rotating solid of comforting soups, comparable to spicy hen tortilla or vegan seven-spice Lebanese lentil, spherical out the brief menu. After a yr as a popup, then three extra working from of Jupiter Bar, the pale pink shade of the constructing, the restaurant lets its hand-painted indicators inside, and floral oilcloths on the tables make an announcement that this place belongs to Flores and the Lebanese taco custom handed down from her situ (grandmother).
Sophon’s nhoam salad—fats prawns, a tangle of herbs and greens, toasted peanuts, and coconut atop rice vermicelli.
Sophon
Phinney Ridge
By way of woven kantael mats on the wall and loads of the fermented fish paste known as prahok, Sophon explodes with satisfaction in founder Karuna Lengthy’s heritage and the flavors of Cambodia. Lemongrassy kroeung spice paste marinates fried oyster mushrooms and aromatic tuk trey clothes crunchy, punchy shredded salads because the meals incorporates the flavors and strategies of conventional Khmer delicacies with out getting slowed down in arguments over authenticity. The result’s playful, intriguing, and distinctive, and units the desk for a greater understanding of Khmer meals and tradition. The cocktails, impressively, comply with swimsuit with loads of coconut and creativity, and just a bit much less fish sauce.
A chic serving of fried fish matches the trendy setting of Gold Coast Ghal.
Gold Coast Ghal Kitchen
First Hill
Opening one of many solely eating places within the space serving meals from Ghana and Liberia meant that first-time restaurateur Tina Fahnbulleh began an already troublesome job by taking part in in exhausting mode. She struggled to search out the potato greens and jute leaves that soften into her stews and wanted to take further time to coach her cooks within the artwork of creating fufu—the thick starch used to scoop up her goat peanut soup. However she missed the flavors of West Africa—of palm oil and the shrimp pepper sauce known as shito—and appropriately assumed others did, too. Her elegant First Hill house, with minimalist decor and vibrant white partitions, rapidly full of a gentle stream of regulars diving into her grilled branzino on a mattress of grated cassava and newcomers sitting down for plates of fried plantains, veggie handpies, and peri peri wings.
Tivoli has time taking part in with the traditional American pizzeria style.
Tivoli
Fremont
Tivoli is as a lot a pizzeria as Yasuaki Saito’s earlier opening, Saint Bread, is a bakery. Which is to say, it offers diners a basic framework. However Saito makes a speciality of threading collectively eclectic inspirations and innovating away from categorization. In Tivoli’s roomy and vibrant Fremont house, chef Jim McGurk’s caesar salad attracts devotees for its bathe of cheese and pankogratto rather than croutons, drawn from Saito’s Japanese heritage. The pizza (by the slice at lunch, or a 16-inch pie anytime) sits someplace between New York and Naples model, whereas the black garlic knots come out of McGurk and Saito’s shared midwestern roots. And it doesn’t matter the place the pistachio-slathered mortadella sandwich with whipped ricotta on sesame focaccia got here from, so long as it’s going into your mouth, ASAP.
Bulalo, a Filipino beef soup, takes a star flip at Kilig.
Kilig
Chinatown-Worldwide District
Like most youthful siblings, chef Melissa Miranda’s follow-up to Musang is a bit of bolder and a bit of extra prone to shade exterior the traces. The meals on the extra informal Kilig stays steadfastly tied to Filipino delicacies, with Miranda’s cheffy concepts pushing highly effective flavors. Salted duck egg counters the sweetness of summer season tomatoes in a salad, and chile crisp meets calamansi to sauce the noodles in one of many pancit dishes, which, together with bulalo—beef soup—type the guts of the menu. Although conceived as a QR code–kind lunch spot, like most little siblings finally do, Kilig grew up. It advanced right into a sit-down spot, however stays quick, informal, and intensely cute, with a postcard-style mural that dominates the again wall, splashing the room with shade and matching the inexperienced chairs.
With the meals at Familyfriend, Elmer Dulla nods to his Filipino heritage and childhood on Guam.
Familyfriend
Beacon Hill
There’s solely a single, barely seen signal marking this Beacon Hill restaurant and bar specializing in Guamanian meals, a part of proprietor Elmer Dulla’s effort to construct a low-key neighborhood spot. When the pickle-packed smashburger and crisp, skinny french fries went viral earlier in 2024, visiting vacationers and camera-toting TikTokkers trampled throughout that concept. However issues have calmed down, making room on the shady again patio and within the pale pistachio cubicles of the small eating room, and giving regulars house to department out to the meals that observe Dulla’s private historical past. The menu nods to his Filipino heritage with hen adobo tacos, his childhood on Guam with the thick, silky corn soup, and into life as a Seattle service business stalwart at locations comparable to Bar Sajor and Musang. Which is nice, as a result of the flaky orange empanada filled with potatoes and beef deserves a viral second not less than as huge because the burger.
Sit right down to a rainbow of dumplings at Indian-Nepali Kitchen.
Indian-Nepali Kitchen
Greenwood
The small orange constructing affixed to the facet of the Crown Inn on Aurora fills up rapidly, particularly on weekends, when co-owner Baburam Panday estimates the kitchen makes and serves someplace between seven and eight hundred momos. The six-page menu lists vegetarian and hen variations of the dumplings in 10 completely different types (order the combo plate to attempt a couple of), plus a full slate of vegetarian choices, and a subcontinent’s price of bread. The Nepali Dal Bhaat makes beginning place: the thali serves as a sampler plate of conventional meals, and Panday says it’s the closest factor to what you’d get for dinner at somebody’s dwelling in Nepal.
At Ramie, siblings Trinh and Thai Nguyen carry a Viet love for herbs and nuoc cham to dishes like Wagyu carpaccio.
Ramie
Capitol Hill
At Ba Sa on Bainbridge Island, siblings Trinh and Thai Nguyen make upscale renditions of Vietnamese favorites. Their new spot on Capitol Hill takes an inverse strategy: Ramie channels acquainted Viet flavors into up to date dishes that take notes from across the globe. Wagyu carpaccio and hamachi crudo burst with herbs and nuoc cham; risotto is wearing a pesto that summons Southeast Asia reasonably than Italy, and trotters arrive with a ssam-like bevy of herbs and greens for wrapping. The cocktails alone are price a visit, as is the banh tieu, or hole bread with honey butter.
Lenox serves an formidable tackle Nuyorican delicacies.
Lenox
Belltown
With its progressive takes on Nuyorican delicacies and laid-back seaside vibes, Lenox brings Seattle’s restaurant scene an exhilarating breath of contemporary sea air and a free hand in pouring samples of the clarified piña colada. The palm-print wallpaper, rattan lighting fixtures, and rum-soaked cocktail record transport diners straight to La Placita, the party-hardy Puerto Rico neighborhood for which one drink is known as. The delicacies honors the diaspora that introduced Caribbean delicacies to Harlem, the place Lenox, the avenue, brims with adobo and sazón. At Lenox, the restaurant, those self same spice mixes (made in-house, naturally) season the lechon, the undisputed star of the menu, and its shatteringly crisp pores and skin defending the tender meat rolled inside.
At Atoma, Johnny and Sarah Courtney carry Seattle luxurious delight and strong finger meals.
Atoma
Wallingford
Can meals be this gorgeous—and this a lot enjoyable? Chef Johnny Courtney walks this high quality line within the transformed Craftsman dwelling that was as soon as housed Tilth. Practically each desk orders a spherical of savory rosette cookies, one in all a handful of fancy starters supposed as particular person servings. However thrills lurk in every single place on the hyperseasonal menu, from the crumpets to the dungeness crab and caramel on toast, even an entree of salmon or pork collar. Courtney’s cooked in Denver, Melbourne, and Mexico, however lately spent 4 years at Canlis. Atoma is far smaller, and far more bootstrapped, however shows the same consideration to element.
