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Crowd-drawing restaurants in Seattle don’t tend to be eclectic these days. They’re focused, serving the best of whatever their specialty is — soul food, seafood, Nashville hot chicken — that they can.
Sustainable ocean fare abounds at this dockside home for comfort-food pleasurability with refined touches to make it far more than an old-time seafood shack.
Website: whiteswanpublichouse.com
Address: 1001 Fairview Ave N.
Phone number: 206-588-2680
Number of seats: 72
Entrée price range: $10-$20
Popular dishes: Poutine O’ the Sea with manila clams, fries, chowder, bacon and scallion; fried Brussels sprouts with Caesar dressing, torn croutons and cotija cheese; oven-roasted octopus with kimchi fried rice, kecap manis, cured egg yolk and celery leaves.
What others say: “Though White Swan has all that cozy inside, this is unequivocally a summertime hang; perhaps around South Lake Union, the summertime hang. Once you’ve found it — kind of a trick from the parking lot — you’ll see it alongside its sibling snack shack, 100 Pound Clam, which in summer services lunchgoers and alfresco diners with fish-and-chips and the like.” — Kathryn Robinson, Seattle Met
Exterior
Oysters
This home for “food with roots” — a moving description on its website charts the rise of soul food in America with the dislocation and despair caused by the slave trade — focuses on hearty but refined southern fare — ”a cuisine to be respected and celebrated.”
Website: junebabyseattle.com
Address: 2122 NE 65th St.
Phone number: 206-257-4470
Number of seats: 71
Entrée price range: $19-$22
Popular dishes: Smoked carrots with collard greens, tahini and benne seeds; Smokey Turkey Breast with cabbage, marble potatoes, lardons and carrot butter; chicken fried steak with collard raab, black pepper gravy, creamer peas and potato purée.
What others say: “What’s so hot about JuneBaby that celebrities and Seahawks are seeking it out? Darn good food that comes with a strong sense of place. Cooking with his customary rigor and attention to detail, the St. Petersburg, Florida, native [chef Edouardo Jordan] is pouring his heart and soul into defining Southern food for Seattle.” — Providence Cicero, The Seattle Times
Catfish sandwich
Fried chicken
Two houses dating back to the 1850s in Ballard were renovated to play home to this rustic, inviting Italian eatery named for a monastery where young chef Sam West stayed in the homeland.
Website: sanfermoseattle.com
Address: 5341 Ballard Ave N.W.
Phone number: 206-342-1530
Number of seats: 50 inside, 40 outside
Entrée price range: $18-$36
Popular dishes: Duck confit salad with fried leeks, market greens, preserved lemon vinaigrette, pears and pine nuts; saffron spaghetti and Bolognese sauce with pork, veal, fennel, rosemary and tomato; farinata — chickpea flatbread, olive oil and house cagliata (cheese curd); chicory salad; olive oil cake.
What others say: “Pasta dishes are especially appealing. There’s a hint of rosemary in the fennel-sweetened Bolognese sauce. Made with pork and veal, the sauce is usually served with saffron spaghetti — unless they run out. All the pasta is made in-house, and the saffron-infused noodles require a longer lead time than most.” — Providence Cicero, The Seattle Times
Interior
Saffron spaghetti bolognese
This humble eatery in Georgetown professes to have the best hot chicken west of Nashville — and many fans of the delicacy newly transplanted to the Pacific Northwest would agree.
Website: sistersandbrothersbar.com
Address: 1128 S Albro Pl.
Phone number: 206-762-3767
Number of seats: 45 inside, 25 outside
Entrée price range:
Popular dishes: Nashville hot chicken tenders, Nashville hot chicken sandwich, Nashville hot chicken dark meat.
What others say: “After living in LA and opening a bar in Nashville, [Jake] Manny wanted to come home; he and Drew Church (a partner in places like Hazlewood and Hotel Albatross) made plans to open a bar in Georgetown. Sisters and Brothers would be the sort of joint where people drank cans of Hamm’s at video game tables or shot the shit over Tecates in dark wood booths surrounded by vintage pennants and black velvet unicorn paintings. Oh, and Manny wanted to serve Nashville hot chicken, the burn-off-your-lips-hot comfort food of his former city.” — Allecia Vermillion, Seattle Met
Exterior
Hot chicken
Local food-scene luminaries Bruce and Sara Naftaly (of the decades-long legacy of Le Gourmand) opened this newer operation first with soup-focused lunch offerings and then full dinner service that made way for inventive takes on traditional French fare.
Website: marmiteseattle.com
Address: 1424 11th Ave.
Phone number: 206-755-8606
Number of seats: 30
Entrée price range: $12-$32
Popular dishes: Blintzes with Kurt’s Farmhouse cheese with chive butter sauce; grilled Norwegian mackerel with smashed potato, heirloom cabbage salad, rye crisp and horseradish sauce vin blanc; poached grass-fed beef tenderloin with Cabernet pressings sauce, poached Seckel pear, marrow, mustard and horseradish.
What others say: “GO HERE: to rediscover the hall-of-fame cooking of legendary chef Bruce Naftaly, who came out of retirement to introduce a new generation of food lovers to the pure pleasures of classic French cooking. Bruce, who resembles a stocking-cap wearing Hemingway, ran the beloved Le Gourmand from 1985 to 2012 with his wife Sara. He is a master of technique and execution. She is a master baker and runs the Spirit in the Bottle, the sibling bar within the restaurant.” — Bon Appétit
Exterior
Dungeness crab & prawn on sourdough rye toast
