Our Top 15 Best Seattle Dishes of 2018 (Part 1)
We’re blessed to have so many great restaurants in Seattle. We’ve been able to discover a lot of new restaurants, but revisit a lot of our favorites. In reviewing our favorite dishes of the year, we originally had a top 10, but had such a difficult time deciding that we expanded it to a top 15. Truthfully, we could have expanded it to 25, but what would be so special about that many dishes? So 15 seems like a good compromise. We tried to pick a variety of dishes in price range from simple sandwiches and tacos to filet mignon and base it purely on taste. Without further ado, here at the top dishes, #15 through #8.
- Mammoth – The Hunter Sandwich -Shaved steak peppers, onions, mushrooms, salami, provolone, aioli.
Their sandwiches stand alone as a reason to visit, but add in 48 taps and you’ve got a match made in heaven. Opened for almost 4 years now, Mammoth has such an interesting variety of sandwiches that it’s difficult to choose one. Some of our favorites: Predator with a fried chicken leg, pork belly, swiss, arugula, roasted red peppers, caper aioli and the Cro-Magnon with ham, mortadella, salami, coppa, provolone, lettuce, tomato, giardiniera, Italian dressing, but our favorite is the Hunter. You can see from the picture it’s a massive sandwich and the oil and juices from all the ingredients moisten the Macrina roll that encases it, but is sturdy enough to not fall apart. Pro tip: Keep the sandwich in the paper wrapping and eat it lie a burrito.
- Toulouse Petit – Cured Pork Cheeks Confit Hash.
This dish was actually featured on Food Network’s show, The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Once we saw that on the menu, we had to order it. Along with the pork cheeks the hash is comprised of arugula, potatoes and asparagus. It’s topped off with two perfectly cooked over easy eggs. We’re suckers for yolk, so when we split open the egg and combined the yolk with the hash….. day..yumm! Pro tip: Toulouse Petit is one of the few places I know of that has a Breakfast Happy Hour from 9am to 11am.
- June Baby – Fried Catfish Sandwich with pickled onion & tartar sauce.
How can a list of top Seattle dishes not include a dish from June Baby? We’ve unfortunately only been for lunches, but man if lunch is any indication of what we can expect for dinner, we’re already drooling. There were a couple of restaurants we went to this year in which a few of the dishes could have appeared on our Top 15 of 2018. June Baby was one of them. Look at how big this piece of catfish is! Cooked perfectly-crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside. Add the pickled onion and that’s a damn good sandwich. This place really has a chance to get popular someday 😉
- Daniel’s Broiler – Streak Tartare with grilled crostini.
Steak tartare is one of our favorite dishes, so when going out to eat there’s a good chance we’ll order it. No restaurant had a better tartare than Daniel’s Broiler. The presentation of having the tartar on top, a chopped boiled egg in the middle and capers/onions on the bottom was different, but oohh so good. This was also our last meal prior to our daughter being born in October, so maybe there’s also a bit of sentimentality built in.
- Manolin – Grilled Beef with creamed yucca, chimichurri
This year we came to Manolin for an anniversary celebration and a dinner with relatives from outside the country. It seems the times we end up coming to Manolin are for special occasions. This should give you some indication of the quality of their dishes. Whether it’s Shigoku oysters, black rice with squid, chorizon and broccoli or a pink scallop pozole with beans, all taste special. But our favorite was the grilled beef with creamed yucca and chimichurri. If you’re afraid of blood, don’t order this dish. But if seeing blood on your plate, to you, means, “tender juicy yumminess” then this is the dish for you. The generous portions of quality beef mixed with the sweet yucca and then topped with the savory chimichurri provides a mixture of flavors that definitely brings back fond memories. Just reliving this dish makes me want to move it up the list.
- Chan – Kimchi Fried Rice w/Egg
One of the most underrated Happy Hours in Seattle is in the heart of the biggest tourist attraction in Seattle. Chan is hidden away from the main Pike Place Market, but this little secret place is not so secret during happy hour. It’s normally packed. The small size doesn’t help, but people are willing to wait for their caramel glazed chicken wings, spicy pork sliders, ahi tuna poke, but our favorite is the kimchi fried rice. We find that it’s common for kimchi fried rice to be too salty, but Chan’s fried rice is flavorful, but not salty and the egg on top is like the icing on the cake. It’s made in and presented in a skillet, which creates an outer crust of crunchy fried rice. We once went for happy hour and ordered this dish twice instead of ordering anything else on the menu.
- The Metropolitan Grill – Filet Mignon .
Seattleites can argue all they want about who has the best steaks in Seattle. El Gaucho, Miller’s Guild, Jak’s Grill, The Butcher’s Table, Daniel’s Broiler, etc. I’m not even going to mention the national chain steak houses. The Met wins easily for us. It’s not the easiest place to get to since you’ve got to deal with traffic to get to the middle of downtown, but when there are really special occasions that require a steak dinner, this is our first choice. And the Filet Mignon is a no brainer. We haven’t been to their new remodeled digs, but it’s just an iconic Seattle restaurant where the quality has held up for so many years. I have many memories in my younger(and dumber) days of going out for drinks after work, having too much to drink and foolishly going to The Met for steak before going home. In the moment, full of joy stuffing my face with Filet Mignon and then crying the next morning when looking at my bill. On one particular outing, I asked the server why their Filet Mignon tastes so much better than other steak house. He said that all really good steak houses have quality cuts of beef and all know how to cook it, but what differentiates the Met Grill is the special lard they slather on their Filet Mignon. Take it for what it’s worth, all I know is that “it damn good”.
8. Hokkaido Ramen Santouka – Tsukemen.
Excerpt from our Hokkaido Ramen Santouka post- I’m not a huge fan of cold soba or somen. Taking all this into consideration, the Tsukemen at Hokkaido Ramen Santouka has won my taste buds over and is my favorite and I’d say it’s one of my top 10 dishes in Seattle. For those unfamiliar with Tsukemen, it’s noodles that you dip out a soup and then eat. The soup has a very flavorful dense taste, so there’s an art to eating Tsukemen. It takes restraint to only dip 3 or 4 noodles at a time. If you try to stuff a bunch of noodles in the soup, the flavor will be too overpowering. Having the Tsukemen with the Aji-Tama(half cooked egg) takes it to another level. It’s a good dish to have in the summer for me. It’s not piping hot, but it’s not cold. The noodles are at room tempature and the dipping soup is hot.
Coming Up: Our Top 15 Best Seattle Dishes of 2018 (Part 2). Find out the top 7 Seattle dishes of 2018.
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