The U District Food Walk Is Back With a New Name but the Same Affordable Vibes

The University District is home to a lot of Seattle’s best affordable restaurants, so when they all get together and throw a party, even stereotypically broke college students can attend. And this Saturday, September 28, the neighborhood is putting on a shindig called the U District Chow Down & Street Party from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. with cheap food at its center.

This event used to be called the U District Food Walk but the basic premise is the same — a lot of restaurants and cafes and bars offer $5 “bites” during the party hours. This can mean anything from chicken teriyaki at BB’s Teriyaki Grill to a pear cinnamon open-faced bagel sandwich at Toasted. And since the Ave and the surrounding area is ground zero for boba tea, there’s no fewer than nine different $5 boba deals on offer.

In addition to the food, there will be music on the Chow Down Main Stage, including the Garfield High School and Rainbow City jazz bands, according to a press release; there will also be an afterparty on Northeast 42nd Street featuring the “tequila funk” band Reposado. Note that parking during the event is very difficult, but the light rail is like, right there.

Now for more news of the week:

Moto heads to the Eastside

Last year when Eater Seattle profiled Lee Kindell, the guy behind Moto Pizza — then so in demand there was a months-long waiting list to order it — he talked like someone trying to build an empire; he had secured some seed funding via venture capital and was planning on making Moto into a bona fide chain, where maybe robots made the pizza? Well, Moto is expanding at a pretty fast clip: It opened a Belltown location last summer (with a robot), and on October 4 will be opening a pizzeria inside the Bellevue Square mall (on the first floor, next to Nordstrom). Oh, and Moto is now offering delivery as well.

Familyfriend gets a ‘New York Times’ nod

The New York Times dropped its list of the 50 best restaurants in America this week, and one Seattle place got high praise: Familyfriend, the Guamanian restaurant in Beacon Hill that has become famous for its smash burgers. The Times singled out the burgers but also the cocktails, the doughnuts, and the batchoy, “an envelopingly unctuous noodle soup of pig offal and fermented shrimp broth.” Familyfriend doesn’t take reservations, so the line to get in — already long during peak hours — is about to get longer.

Bagel-makers settle lawsuit

Earlier this month the news came out that Andrew Rubinstein was suing his former business partner, Ethan Stowell Restaurants, for thousands of dollars he said he was owed. That dispute appears to have been quashed, and the two parties have settled, according to Puget Sound Business Journal. Rubinstein sold his stake in his namesake business, Rubinstein Bagels, last year and plans on opening a new bagel shop in University Village called Hey Bagel this winter.