Ba Sa
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Siblings Trinh and Thai Nguyen run this contemporary Vietnamese restaurant named for a kind of catfish often used within the Vietnamese dish ca kho to, a Nguyen household favourite. The 2 have been uncovered to the restaurant trade at an early age attributable to their dad and mom working the restaurant Pho T&N in Poulsbo, and later went on to pursue culinary careers—Trinh educated at New York’s Institute of Culinary Schooling, whereas Thai reduce his enamel at Daniel Boulud’s famed Restaurant Daniel and returned residence to run Pho T&N after his dad and mom retired in 2018. The institution makes a speciality of Southeast Asian-inspired delicacies with French strategies and domestically sourced elements—suppose dry-aged ribeye beef pho, scorching lemongrass lamb, and ube panna cotta.
Bainbridge Island
Hello Life
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Searching for a enjoyable day journey vacation spot? Rondo
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and Tamari Bar
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‘s sister restaurant Hello Life is situated subsequent to the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal, the place it serves up jewel-like bento containers, poké bowls, and its namesake whiskey highballs, that are carbonated in a particular Suntory Toki machine. Different choices embrace a Japanese curry with wagyu and kurobuta pork and a bowl of Pike Place Chowder
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‘s signature clam chowder topped with house-made chili oil.
Bainbridge Island
LASA Sandwiches & Pearls
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This informal family-owned restaurant in Lynnwood, specializing in bubble tea and Filipino sandwiches, is cause sufficient for a visit up north. We’re smitten over the sisig-style fries and the decadent halo-halo. Stranger contributor Meg van Huygen calls it “deliriously scrumptious” and raves in regards to the lechon kawali roll: “You’re taking a chew, and the remainder of the world falls away. The infant pork is so candy and smooth, faintly milk-flavored (therefore lechon), accented by the delicate, crackly outer crust of fats, which melts away the veryest second your tongue touches it.”
Lynnwood
Los Hernández Tamales
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Winner of a James Beard “America’s Classics” award in 2018, this mom-and-pop Union Hole spot has been round since 1990 and is known for its tamales made with hand-milled corn masa, particularly the asparagus and pepper jack selection out there within the spring and the year-round pork and hen ones.
Union Hole
Could Kitchen + Bar
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The pure, primal delight of Thai meals lies within the stability of flavors, that good concord of sweet-spicy-sour-salty-bitter lighting up the pleasure heart of your mind like a pinball machine. Could Kitchen + Bar on Vashon Island takes that magic to a different stage with a fantastic little bit of dinner theater—a tableside pad thai preparation the place a server attire your rice noodles earlier than your eyes, asks you ways you want yours, deftly flicks the corresponding quantity of cane sugar, chili flakes, and crushed peanuts proper onto your plate, and blends all of it with lime juice and banana flowers (slender white tubular blossoms that create a puckeringly astringent sensation in your mouth). The entire thing is served wrapped in a banana leaf and with the fixings on the facet, so you’ll be able to regulate your personal plate accordingly as you eat. The journey to Vashon is nicely value it for this and numerous different pleasures on the menu.
Vashon
mommafish
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Chef Joan Samson beforehand attended a Japanese culinary college in Los Angeles and fought to discover a place as a feminine chef within the male-dominated sushi world. Now, she brings a 35-year-long obsession with sushi and a long time of restaurant expertise to this pint-sized hidden gem on Whidbey Island, serving “bespoke” sushi bowls, hand rolls, and poké made with premium elements. Impressively, she additionally runs the restaurant single-handedly alongside her husband, who’s accountable for the entrance of home and engages in heat, pleasant dialog with clients. The restaurant eschews elements like imitation crab, canola oil, high-fructose corn syrup, and GMO rice in favor of natural greens, tamari, and sustainable seafood, and you may style the distinction in each chew. Take your bowl all the way down to the Adirondack chairs by the seaside and savor it amid the crashing waves.
Whidbey Island
Correct Fish
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This store (from the house owners of the erstwhile meals truck Nosh) is about as shut you will get to British-style fish and chips within the Pacific Northwest. Theirs come wrapped in newspaper for authenticity and have earned reward from the likes of J. Kenji López-Alt—they have been additionally declared one of the best fish and chips in Seattle by the Seattle Instances again within the Nosh days.
Bainbridge Island
Seabird
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Brendan McGill’s famed Bainbridge Island restaurant Hitchcock reopened as a seafood and vegetable-focused idea referred to as Seabird in 2022, and the place made the reduce for Esquire‘s listing of one of the best eating places in America not lengthy after. Government chef Grant Rico’s menu adjustments every day, however pattern dishes embrace seaweed focaccia, Dungness crab toast, panko fried scallops, poached halibut, and pan-seared marbled king salmon. Drinks vary from the “Seabird Previous Original” (rye whiskey, sorghum syrup, and wild cherry bark and kombu bitters) to the “Parabolic Martini” (shellfish-rested Highside gin, vermouth mix, and Suze).
Bainbridge Island
The Wandering Goose
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In fall 2021, Capitol Hill’s dearly departed Southern restaurant The Wandering Goose made a triumphant return on the destination-worthy Tokeland Resort
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, which was bought by chef/proprietor Heather Earnhardt
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and her husband Zac Younger in 2018. The revived location is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and serves hearty, homey fare like Dungeness crab melts and fried rockfish sandwiches along with—in fact—its well-known fried hen plate with both salt and pepper or “candy warmth dipped” hen, mashed potatoes, gravy, and collard greens. Full the meal with a facet of fluffy buttermilk biscuits.
Tokeland
