Ono, named for Oahu-born owner Steven Ono, is a seafood lover’s dream in Edmonds, offering possibly the highest-quality poke in the Seattle area on a menu that rotates depending on what’s fresh. (Ono sources a lot of his fish directly from the Honolulu Fish Auction.) Just as importantly, the restaurant uses a light hand with flavorings so you don’t lose the flavor of the fish itself, whether you’re eating salmon dressed with ponzu or a spicy ahi bowl.

Kirkland’s Northern Italian fine dining mainstay offers several excellent seasonal tasting menus, including pescatarian, vegetarian, and vegan options. Chef Holly Smith’s omnivorous tasting menus include dishes like duck breast with charred strawberries and English pea pignoli tartelette, while vegan and pescatarian options showcase what the talented team here can do with fish and mushrooms.

Chef Eric Donnelly’s Greenwood steakhouse is one of the best in the city, serving simple 21-day dry-aged Washington steaks that are perfectly grilled and buttered, with options for filet mignon, New York strip, Delmonico, and tomahawk. Flintcreek Cattle Co. also stands out for incorporating game meats like elk and wild boar into the menu. Don’t overlook the stunning vegetable dishes amid all this meat, though.

This casual Filipino fried chicken shop in Phinney Ridge was Eater Seattle’s pick for Best New Restaurant in 2022, and one of Eater’s favorite fried chicken restaurants in the country. The gluten-free batter on the chicken — wings, drumsticks, or 10-inch-long cylinders of white meat on sticks — crackles under the teeth and has the puffy texture of Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes. The meat is packed with flavor from soy sauce and garlic. The restaurant’s owners, Paolo Campbell and Donald Adams, had wanted to start a fried chicken restaurant for years while working in fine dining, and now serve the fried birds with Filipino sides like collard greens served with coconut milk, marinated vegetables, and garlic rice. As a bonus, this fried chicken is gluten-free and dairy-free.

Sophon is both an ode to owner Karuna Long’s Khmer roots and an accessible introduction for non-Cambodians to Khmer cuisine — which means steak with tuk prahok (a sauce containing fermented fish paste), pork belly braised in coconut milk until it’s so rich and tender it practically melts, and small plates fried chicken and mushrooms best enjoyed with sweet, spicy, salty “crack sauce.” The Phinney Ridge restaurant also doubles as an innovative cocktail bar. The drinks include Khmer ingredients like peanut fish sauce orgeat, Kampot pepper (the Cambodian version of black pepper), and clarified coconut. 

James Beard Award-winning chef Renee Erickson has had a major hand in the evolution of Seattle’s dining scene, and her Sea Creatures restaurant group owns many of Seattle’s top restaurants, from steakhouse Bateau to Westward on Lake Union. But this is still arguably the flagship of her fleet. The Walrus and the Carpenter serves several varieties of Washington oysters, seafood dishes like raw albacore tuna with Meyer lemon sauce and blood oranges, and snacks like beef tartare, beef shank terrine, and plates of sliced cheese, along with a long wine list and a thoughtful cocktail menu. The dining room is bright and airy, and the heated, covered patio sparkles with string lights. Be warned that you can’t make reservations at this perennial favorite; on the upside, this is one of the few Seattle-area date-night restaurants open on Mondays.

In 2023, Johnny and Sarah Courtney took over the Wallingford house that used to be home to feted organic restaurant Tilth and immediately started building their own legacy. The New York Times–endorsed savory rosette cookies with cheese and onion jam have become famous already, but there are so many highlights on this menu (though some of it changes with the seasons). The radish cake topped with delicate slices of geoduck is a sophisticated and unexpected way to serve the Northwest’s most famous bivalve. And for dessert, don’t miss the baked Alaska, an old-school dish that Johnny Courtney and his team somehow incorporate vegetables and herbs into. Like nearly everything at Atoma, it contains layers of flavors and nuance.

This bistro in Fremont is a miracle: It’s impossible to have a bad meal here. Sure, you can have a tasting menu with foie gras toast and rabbit confit, but you can also get a big meaty burger loaded with caramelized onions. On hot days you can cool off with some happy hour oysters; on chilly evenings you can warm yourself with a bowl of deeply savory French onion soup. Even brunch — a meal some places phone in — is loaded with delights like huckleberry clafoutis and apple fritters. And then there’s the extensive cocktail menu, which is heavy on the Chartreuse — a nod both to Le Coin’s French influences and Seattle cocktail history.

Star chef Mutsuko Soma makes soba from scratch at this petite Fremont destination, which was one of Eater’s Best New Restaurants in America in 2018. Soma serves traditional soba shop dishes like seiro soba (cold with dipping sauce) and super-crunchy tempura, but also more creative dishes like noodles topped with tri tips or oreo tempura. Make a full night of it by sampling some sake and snacks at next-door sibling bar Hannyatou.

Maybe you come here too late in the day to get the famous crab roll, which always sells out Don’t feel bad — there’s so much more to explore at Victor Steinbrueck’s seafood house. The shrimp toast is buttery and warm and decadent, the rockfish banh mi tastes like a vacation, and you can have a great meal for under $20 — or under $10 if you skip the seafood and get the smashburger.

Lunch is sometimes the ignored stepchild of the meal family. Not as hyped as dinner, not as luxurious as brunch, sometimes a lunch is just a sandwich or a wrap eaten thoughtlessly on the go. Not at Made in House! This Fremont Korean deli and cafe — from the team behind Bopbox — serves a pared-down menu of bento and bibimbop; either way you get a joyous assembly of crunch and pickled treats and marinated meats or tofu. The seaweed tastes oceanic, the japchae noodles provide a umami note, and the bulgogi ribeye will have you looking forward to the middle part of your day. (Oh, and they do dinner on the weekends too.)

Chefs Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi offer simple, refined dishes at their Korean-influenced Fremont restaurant, from smoked mackerel kedgeree and succulent kalbi short rib over grilled kimchi to smoked tofu with mushrooms and geoduck black rice modeled after paella. With easygoing service and an inviting, open space as well as a patio, the restaurant provides a special night out sans pretension. Sit at the bar and watch chefs plating dishes while you sip on one of Joule’s creative cocktails, like the Jalisco Campfire, which blends a lapsang souchong-infused tequila with lime and Thai chile agave.

Of all the sushi chefs in Seattle, Taichi Kitamura may know the most about local fish, and at his Eastlake destination, Sushi Kappo Tamura, he provides an experience you couldn’t replicate in any other part of the country. He sources seafood, sometimes exclusive items like bairdi (a.k.a. tanner) crab, from Pacific Northwest producers like Taylor Shellfish and Skagit River Ranch as well as individual fishers, and grows some of the restaurant’s produce in a garden on the roof. You can taste the results by way of a full a la carte menu featuring sushi and hot dishes as well omakase showcasing seasonal specialties, perfect with a seasonal sake flight.

The cuisine of Laos takes center stage at Capitol Hill’s Taurus Ox thanks to three chefs, Sydney Clark, Khampaeng Panyathong, and Jenessa Sneva, with strong Seattle dining pedigrees. The tiny counter-service shop recently upgraded to this full-service home, where dishes such as thom khem and chicken laap continue to benefit from local produce and a whole-animal approach to butchery. Don’t miss the Lao pork sausage, fragrant with lemongrass and lime leaf, or one of the city’s best patties, a smash burger made with pork jowl bacon and jaew tomato sauce. (This burger became so popular the team opened a burger-only place, Ox Burger.) For another rare treat, pair it with a locally made sato, or Laotian rice wine, from Village Ghost.

Eric and Sophie Banh’s Vietnamese restaurants — Monsoon, the original, and Ba Bar, the hip younger sibling — are some of Seattle’s best in part because they prioritize local ingredients. Though you can find casual favorites like imperial rolls with vermicelli on the menu, Monsoon focuses on dishes with Chinese influences served family-style. Highlights include the wok-cooked Anderson Ranch lamb with chile and cumin, the catfish steamed in a clay pot with coconut juice, and a perfectly balanced green papaya salad with charred prawns. In addition to the Capitol Hill restaurant with its rooftop patio, Monsoon has a Bellevue location.

Spice Waala, which has opened three locations since starting as a pop-up in 2018, deserves to be in the pantheon of affordable Seattle takeout options alongside Dick’s and teriyaki. The chutneys are sweet and spicy and bursting with life — you can dip fries in them, get them alongside an aloo tikki (a potato patty) or papdi (crackers). The kathi rolls are similarly excellent whether you’re getting one with paneer (a cottage cheese–like cheese), lamb, or chicken tikka. At this point we’ve just like, listed the entire menu and told you it’s good? But it is incredible. The seasonal soft serve — with rotating flavors inspired by Indian cuisine — deserves a shout-out too. This is street food done exactly right.

This tiny omakase place on Capitol Hill first achieved fame for being so good it made the Seattle Times restaurant critic tear up. But you’re more likely to be laughing than crying at Keiji Tsukasaki’s counter. The former DJ cheerfully ditches the air of mystique some highly skilled sushi chefs seem to cultivate. He’ll drink a beer while he’s working, tell you which sake to drink with which course (and refill your glass with a heavy hand), all while abso-fucking-lutely wowing you with his food. The menu changes with the seasons but past highlights include sea snails served in their shells, toro topped with mushrooms for added depth of flavor, and a monkfish liver so rich and velvety it’s literally a dessert course.

More than 10 years in, this romantic trattoria on Capitol Hill continues to entrance diners with food from Italy’s Piedmont region. The nest of delicate tajarin pasta with butter and sage sauce is a Seattle mainstay, but every dish from chef Stuart Lane is memorable. After a satisfying dinner at Spinasse, head to next-door sibling bar Artusi for a digestif and dessert, or stop by the bar another night for snacks like beef tongue with salsa tonnata (tuna sauce) and burrata with pomegranate seeds and toasted pistachios.

Chef Kristi Brown — who made her name running the catering operation That Brown Girl Cooks — calls the food at her Central District restaurant “Seattle Soul.” At Communion, fusions like the Hood Sushi Bowl featuring fried catfish and seaweed salad come from Brown’s memories of shopping at Asian markets in the neighboring Chinatown-International District. But the dishes that shine brightest are her more traditional Southern ones, like a pork neck bone stew, with smoky meat simmered in umami-packed broth with lima beans. It’s hard to get a seat at this Eater Award-winner in the renovated Liberty Bank Building. Make reservations weeks ahead, or show up right when the restaurant opens on a weekday to vie for a spot.

If you want to impress the tourists you (inevitably) have to take to Pike Place Market, skip pass the fish-throwers and overcrowded waterfront view joints, cross the street, and take them to this restaurant inside a grocery store. The salmon collar sinigang and succulent longanisa have made this place into an American classic. Literally, the James Beard Foundation gave Oriental Mart an America’s Classics award in 2020, and you can see why — sitting here eating adobo dishes makes you part of a long lineage of people of all classes, creeds, and colors who have eaten adobo dishes at this stainless steel lunch counter. While you ponder this, you can look at the handwritten signs cluttering the kitchen. One of them reads, “WIFI PASSWORD: TALK TO EACH OTHER” 

The Pham sisters behind the Pho Bac family of restaurants don’t overcomplicate things, so when they opened this place across the parking lot from the original Pho Bac Sup Shop, they kept the menu minimalist. It features fried chicken with broth, rice, or dry egg noodles and pandan and banana waffles. Trust us, you don’t need anything else, not when the chicken is this aromatic from garlic and fish sauce or when the waffles come with a fluffy, coconut-and-egg-whites dipping sauce. Combine it with cocktails, and there’s no better brunch in Seattle.

Since opening in early 2020, Beacon Hill’s innovative Filipino restaurant from star chef Melissa Miranda has developed a dynamic menu with items such as succulent short rib kare kare, smoked oysters, and mussels cooked with moringa. The homey space makes diners feel like they’re eating in a beloved family member’s living room, albeit one with killer cocktails, world-class food, and reservations that fill up quickly. Musang also gives back with charitable endeavors like a community kitchen and youth program Little Wildcats, which provides education about Filipino recipes and culture.

Owner Jerry Corso’s expert Neapolitan-style pizzas are the primary draw for this Beacon Hill hideaway; simple toppings like spicy salami harmonize with light, airy, and slightly salty crusts. The garlic mussels, baccala fritters, and grilled octopus with corona beans are also exceptional, and reservations tend to go fast.

Seattle doesn’t have its own “style” of barbecue, and this famed takeout spot from Erasto “Red” Jackson mixes up all kinds of regional influences. The ribs here are cooked with a Carolina-style vinegar sauce and can be topped with a tomato-based barbecue sauce, a la Kansas City, or jerk sauce. The sides are mostly soul food standards but notably include the kind of sweet, melt-in-your-mouth plantains that are annoyingly hard to find in Seattle and a mac and cheese that is unexpectedly smoky and peppery. Thank Red’s wife, Lelieth Jackson, for putting all the Jamaican notes on the menu. We’re not sure who to thank for the lumpia, but who says no to lumpia?

No single restaurant can please everyone; at Off Alley, a 14-seat brick-walled restaurant in Columbia City, chef Evan Leichtling and partner Meghna Prakash embrace that truth. You don’t always find a meticulously seasonal chef’s-choice cooking style and a hand-written list of cool natural wines paired with punk music and attitude, but that approach is working here. The menu changes daily, so check the website to see what you might encounter, from juicy smoked mussels with celery on sourdough and whole quail with nettles in a cream sauce to salt cod with squid ink rice and a burning-hot Scotch bonnet ice cream.

Hillman City’s nationally acclaimed Filipino American fine dining restaurant hosts intimate tasting-menu experiences that showcase the ingenuity, storytelling ability, and passion of husband-and-wife team Aaron Verzosa and Amber Manuguid. Inventive takes on anything from pandesal to sinigang and banana ketchup weave local ingredients together with the duo’s personal journeys in the area as well as those of Filipino immigrants to the Pacific Northwest, creating a unique history lesson with each dinner. The tiny restaurant’s 12 seats are normally booked out months ahead, but you can sign up for a waiting list on the website.

A relative newcomer to the vibrant Hillman City Ethiopian scene, Delish Ethiopian Cuisine has a bar area and a comfortable atmosphere in which husband and wife Delish Lemma and Amy Abera of Addis Ababa share recipes passed down from Abera’s mother and grandmother. Run the meat-free section of the menu with the 10-item veggie combo or try succulent beef tibs pan-fried in garlic, butter, onion, and berbere spice. Delish also offers an Ethiopian coffee ceremony for five or more diners.

The name Tomo means “friend” in Japanese and pays homage to Tomoko Ishiwata Bristol, the grandmother of former Canlis chef Brady Williams. Book a seat inside the lauded chef’s intimate White Center restaurant for coursed dinners of hyper-seasonal Pacific Northwest cuisine like pork collar with squash, fermented radish chawanmushi, and sweet potato with miso caramel. In 2023, Tomo launched an a la carte menu for diners who wanted a slightly more casual experience.