This is always one of our more enjoyable posts to create every year. It allows us to review all the great dishes we’ve had throughout the year and debate which ones belong in our top 15. When we first started on this post, we thought we’d have a hard time finding 15 dishes considering that we haven’t been out much due to Covid-19. We were able to hit up a lot of spots early in the year, did a ton of take out and visited some places when things started opening back up in the Fall. Surprisingly, we didn’t have any problem and actually had a hard time whittling it down to 15.
Without further ado, here are our Best Seattle Dishes of 2020, 15 through 8:
15. Katsu Burger-$12.45. Ohayou Gozaimasu Burger-Local Beef katsu, fried “cage free” egg, bacon, cheddar, Japanese mayo, tonkatsu sauce.
Ohaiyou Gozaimasu means “Good Morning” in Japanese, which categorizes this as sort of a breakfast burger with egg and bacon as two of the ingredients. Messy and huge with some of our favorite simple ingredients egg, bacon, cheese, but what sets this apart is the Japanese mayo they use and the encrusted fried burger. Maybe higher than it should be, because I remember being super hungry(a bit hung over) and just inhaling this gigantic burger, thinking it was one of the best meals on earth.
14.Musang – $15.00. Adobong Pusit Pancit – hand-caught squid by Musang / bihon / tinapa.
Musang was just names Seattle Met Magazine’s Restaurant of the Year and this was our favorite from this establishment. I believe our server said this was their best selling dish. It’s a nice spin on a traditional Filipino dish. Pancit bihon is typically a translucent rice noodle, but in this case it’s squid ink black. In addition to bits of tender puncit(squid), there’s also bits of tinapa(dried fish). Citrus flavor from the vinegar in combination with the savory from the tinapa provided a nice balance to the dish.
13. Family Donut Shop – $2.50. Apple Turnover
First of all, look at the size of this thing. We took a picture of the apple turnover on a plate with a butter knife for scale. The apple turnover is a favorite of our family and due to its size, everybody gets their fare share. The turnover has a thick crust of glaze and cinnamon crumbles, which matches perfectly with the apple filling inside. Many times when getting apple turnovers from other donut shops, there is a minuscule amount of filling, but the Family Donut Shop has a massive amount of filling as you can see in the picture above. Pair this with a nice cup of coffee and it’s the perfect way to start your day.
12. Nue – $15.00(Happy Hour), $18(Regular). Chengdu Spicy Jumbo Chicken Wings, Green Szechuan peppercorn, fish sauce, lime, chili, basil, mint and Thai chili.
Nue was one of the last places we were able to visit prior to Covid-19 shutting down restaurants in Seattle. There are a lot of interesting dishes that they serve here from various cuisines from around the world, but Chengdu chicken wings was our particular favorite. Check out the presentation of this dish. The jumbo wings come piled on top of each other on a giant vertical skewer. Nice balance of sweet, spicy and savory as well as crispy and tender. Also love that they use jumbo wings instead of normal smaller wings. A layer of spices at the bottom allows you to add more to the wings to your tasting.
11. Cafe Turko – $17. Abdullah Sauteé -Tender juicy lamb cubes served as a blanket on baked eggplant moussaka
We’ve been to Cafe Turko in Fremont on many occasions and were glad when they continued with take out while we were stuck indoors. Trying to support local restaurants we’ve been doing a lot of take out and the Abdullah Sautee is a dish we order often. The Abdullah Sautee has tender gigantic chunks of lamb that’s served with a small salad and rice pilaf. Not sure what type of sauce and spice they use, but it’s damn good. There is such a wide variety of dishes at Cafe Turko and they’re all good, so it’s easy to want to try them all, but this is the one we stick to. The portion of lamb is so generous, we make rice at home and add any leftovers to create a brand new dish.
10. Bizzarro Italian Cafe -$19.25. Elk Bolognese- Wild Oregon Elk with fennel, thyme, Mama lil’s peppers and pork shoulder slowly simmered into a creamy ragu tossed with our handmade parpardelle ribbon pasta.
Excerpt from our blog post:
I’m a sucker for a ragu sauce and how often can you find elk on the menu. This is probably their most popular dish. I was expecting a bit of gamey, but there was none. One thing I loved about the dish is they are not chintzy on the meat. Normally the meat to pasta ratio is decidedly heavy on the pasta side. This dish surprisingly was heavy on the elk side. This is a comforting dish to have on a cold night.
9. Bok A Bok – $8. Yuzu Green Chili Chicken Sandwich – Charred pasilla peppers, dill pickles, pea sprouts, yuzu aioli-
Excerpt from our blog post:
Both the Umami BBQ and Yuzu Green Chile Chicken Sandwiches will be repeat orders for our family on future visits to Bok a Bok. I have no idea where they get these chickens from but they are so big that they dwarf the buns they come on. We especially enjoyed the Yuzu Green Chile Sandwich. It’s spicy, sweet and the slight tart from yuzu all blends very well with the chicken.
8. El Camion -$11.85. Conchinita Pibil Sopes -Three thick handmade tortillas topped with your choice of meat or veggies, grilled onions, salsa avocado slices, and cotija cheese.
Pretty much anything you order at El Camion is damn good-burritos, quesadilla, gorditas, mulitas, tortas. They also have 9 types of meat to choose from. We’ve been going to El Camion for years and now that a new location opened up in our neighborhood we visit on average at least once a week, but we only discovered this combination of Conchinita Pibil + Sopes this year. These are little slices of heaven and can truthfully be split up into three separate meals. The sopes is dense enough to carry the weight of generous portions of pork and toppings of avocado, grilled onions and cotija cheese. To top it off we normally request the guacamole salsa. It’s a perfect combination of flavors.
Stay tuned for our top dishes of 2020
Related:
- Our 15 Best Seattle Dishes of 2018 (Part 1)
- Our 15 Best Seattle Dishes of 2018 (Part 2)
- Our 15 Best Seattle Dishes of 2019 (Part 1)
- Our 15 Best Seattle Dishes of 2019 (Part 2)
Our Seattle Doughnut Awards
You already know Seattle is the coffee capital of the world. We have close to 100 coffee shop reviews on our website and 6 separate posts about our Seattle Coffee Awards. And we believe there is nothing that goes better with a coffee than a doughnut. Doughnuts and coffee make one of the tastiest and formidable combinations on the face of the planet.
If there is a food that all four members of our family clamour for, its doughnuts. When we make at the spontaneous decision to get doughnuts, you can hear cheers along with feet jumping up and down echoing through the house. And as parents, we’ve discovered the extreme power of doughnuts that can be used to bribe our daughters to do their chores, eat their vegetables and to get dressed quickly or else, “no doughnuts”.
Doughnuts are an affordable luxury where each member of the family can window shop and choose their own. We’ve pretty much visited every single doughnut shop in Seattle multiple times, so I guess you can say we are a family of authorized Seattle doughnut connoisseurs
Best Variety – The Donut Factory
Look at the picture above. That says it all. I never thought I’d say it, but they have more choices than Top Pot. From what I can tell the doughnuts on the right side of their display case are your standards like your old fashioned, raised glazed, sprinkle, etc and the doughnuts on the left are your fancy doughnuts. If the Donut Factory doesn’t have the donut you’re looking for then it probably doesn’t exist. As you can tell from the various pictures in our Donut Factory blog post, we go there quite often.
Best One of a Kind Doughnuts- Half N Half Doughnut Co
Get a load of these doughnuts — Banana Foster Filled, Pineapple Fritter, Apple Caramel Fritter, Georgette Cinnamon Twist, Sweet Potato Casserole Filled, Cherry Cola Old Fashioned, Mexican Hot Chocolate, Almond Joy Old Fashioned. You will not find these types of doughnuts anywhere else. These doughnuts have “special treat” written all over them. They have so many one-of-a-kind doughnuts and interesting combination of flavors that it’s difficult to choose. But damn, they good.
Best Mochi Doughnuts – Dochi
Located in the Uwajimaya food court, Dochi specializes in mochi doughnuts. The main differences between the dochi and your regular doughnut is the texture and its unique shape. It’s crispy on the outside and very chewy like mochi on the inside. We really love the shape of the dochi. It’s like 8 doughnut balls that are connected together. You can either eat it as a regular doughnut or tear it apart and divide the 8 little doughnut balls to share. The Strawberry Shortcake is our favorite.
Best Cream Filled Doughnuts – General Porpoise Doughnuts
General Porpoise Doughnuts is the overlord of Seattle cream filled doughnuts. They don’t have much variety at any one time, but they are very well executed. Here are some of the current fillings -Vanilla Custard, Chocolate Marshmallow, Lemon Curd, Raspberry Jam, Gingerbread Cream. They also have seasonal fillings like Rainier Cherry Jam and Peaches and Cream. It’s part of James Beard Award Winner Renee Erickson’s restaurant empire, so you know you’re in for a quality treat.
Best Small Batch Doughnuts – Raised Doughnuts
Best Local Chain- Mighty O
Most Popular Doughnut Shop – Top Pot
These two Seattle doughnut chains are the most well known in Seattle by far. They are joined at the hip when comparing Seattle doughnuts, so much so that we had a Food War blog post comparing their doughnuts one by one, side by side. We agreed that the vegan doughnuts of Mighty O were the better doughnuts, but not by much. The most popular chain is Top Pot which was visited by President Obama on a Seattle visit and also is known for former Seattle Seahawk Golden Tate breaking into a branch because he couldn’t control his urge for a Top Pot doughnut. Top Pot has 18 locations around Seattle compared to Mighty O’s five locations.
Biggest Loss in 2020 – Tempesta Coffee
What a blow to find out that Tempesta Coffee is closing permanently. When I first stumbled upon this coffee shop, I was presently surprised that they also sold doughnuts. And these doughnuts were not your standard doughnuts. It was one of the best kept secrets in Seattle. I never heard anybody ever mention Tempesta for their doughnuts though. I remember bringing a batch into work and people absolutely raved about them. Damn you, Covid 19!!!
Best Overall – Family Donut Shop
When you talk about solid, cost efficient and consistent doughnuts, Family Donut Shop is the standard. As their name states, they are family owned and you can feel it in their customer service. Their apple turnover made it into our Top 2020 Seattle Dishes of the Year. It is that damn good. They have a few out of the ordinary doughnuts, but they really excel in your standard doughnuts- old fashioned, cinnamon rolls, vanilla sprinkle, maple bars, Bavarian cream, apple fritter, chocolate glazed, jelly filled, etc. They have a wide variety and their popularity is evidenced by normally having a line out the door. This is our favorite doughnut shop in Seattle.
Thanks for reading Our Seattle Doughnut blog post.
Related:
Chi Mac – Korean Fried Chicken
Recommended by: We talked about The Ave(University Ave) in the University District becoming a Korean Fried Chicken epicenter with the opening of Bok A Bok and bb.q Chicken. We review another such spot, Chi Mac.
Description on the Chi Mac’s website: Inspired by this national dining culture and pastime, we created “Chi Mac”—“Chi”—short for Chicken in English; and “Mac” short for Beer, or “maekju” in Korean; as a way to bring this uniquely Korean-American experience and delicacy to Seattle—where East and West go together like chicken and beer.
Neighborhood/Type: University District
Address: 4525 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105
What we ate/drank: See Below
Comments: We visited Chi Mac at the brick and mortar location prior to Covid-19 and have ordered take out a few times after that.
Their physical location has a massive Banksy-Inspired mural, which is cool, but we’d say the cleanliness of the place is on par with normal restaurants on The Ave. Take that for what you will. It’s definitely more of a “shoot the shit” with your boys type of place having some wings and beer versus an “impress-your-date” or “bring the parents” type of place. Nothing wrong with that. Just letting you know what to expect.
Their chicken sandwich was just okay. The flavors were there, but as you can see from the picture below, the cheese was cold and not close to being melted. We also had some wings and fries and while the wings were good the fries were pretty sad. So this made our decision for future orders to be strictly chicken and mainly wings only.
So our normal take out dishes from Chi Mac are as follows:
We’ve gotta say the Popcorn Chicken is better than what we’d expected. We typically get these for our girls because it’s easy to eat with no bones. Normally when we get this from other places, they can be rock hard small pieces of chicken. These were much bigger pieces and are quite tender, so this dish is definitely one of our regulars.
My favorite is the snow wings that has parmesan and onion powder. It has a bit of sweetness to it and the right amount of powder that’s not overpowering.
This ain’t fried chicken. This is Pride Chicken. I believe this is their standard base fried chicken and you can get either a 5 pc or 10 pc chicken. It’s not earth shattering, but it’s decent. Nice and crispy on the outside and super tender on the inside.
This is my wife’s favorite. Again perfectly crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. This is a bit spicy, but not mouth-on-fire spicy. Definitely flavorful and another regular dish we order.
Our suggestion is to stick with the wings and popcorn chicken. This is where they really shine. We’d put Chi Mac ahead of b.q Chicken and slight being Bok A Bok. If The Ave ain’t your style, they have another location in Bellevue.
Ratings:
Atmosphere: 3.75
Service: 4.50
Food/Drinks: 4.25
Bang for the Buck: 4.25
Overall: 4.25
Locals Only Factor: “Locals Only” grading-We’ll assign a grading as to how “local” a place is.
-
- Well known or Touristy. Most locals don’t go there unless they have business dinners or visitors in town.
- Most locals know about it
- Locals “in the know” know about it
- Only those who live close by know about it.
- You’re in on the secret. Don’t tell anybody!
Servers recommendations to visit in the future: Staying with our theme of ethnic foods found on The Ave, we’ll be visiting Arepa Venezuelan Kitchen right down the street.
Winner of our Best Small Batch Doughnut Award: Raised Doughnuts
Recommended by: One of our friends recommended Raised Doughnuts after seeing our Family Donut Shop review.
Description on the Raised Doughnut’s website: WE START OUR DAY AT 2AM. Scaling ingredients and mixing our dough. It takes five to six hours for our doughnuts to be made from start to finish. The dough is mixed in small batches, hand cut, shaped, fried and glazed every morning! FROM SCRATCH Our glazes, toppings and fillings are made from scratch using whole ingredients. We don’t use preservatives, fillers, or artificial coloring! Because of this, our doughnuts are best enjoyed as soon as possible!
Neighborhood/Type: Central District
Address: 1101 23rd Ave, Seattle, WA 98122
What we ate/drank: See below
Comments: One of our friends told us we should try Raised Doughnuts. We’d heard great things about them since they opened up back in the summer of 2018, but we’d never visited Raised Doughnuts since it’s a bit out of the way for us.
We decided to go early on a Monday morning and made it there right before 9:00am. Even though we arrived early on a weekday, one of their doughnuts(the mochi sugar) was already sold out. They have 6 original doughnuts which they serve daily. They also have 4 monthly special doughnuts and have also have 3 weekend special doughnuts.
On this particular occasion we ordered each of the 4 monthly special doughnuts along with a couple of their originals, the maple bar and the apple fritter. The person serving us( I believe the owner) gave us a extra apple fritter for free because she deemed the fritter a bit on the small size. Score!
Before talking about the doughnuts, we wanted to talk about Raised Doughnuts. During the time we visited, dine-in wasn’t an option due to the Covid-19 situation, so we were met at the door with a menu posted on the wall for available doughnuts. Although we weren’t allowed inside we could see inside and it looks like it’s somebody’s house with doughnut shop inside it.
Finding parking was a bitch. I think they have two spots outside their building otherwise it’s street parking.
The owner worked at Macrina Bakery for 10 years, so she definitely has a pedigree. For those of you not familiar with Macrina Bakery, they are probably the most popular bakery in Seattle. And not only did she work there, she was actually the head pastry chef.
With that background, it’s no wonder the owner of Eastern Cafe decided to form a business partnership to make Raised Doughnuts into a brick and mortar business after having done numerous pop-ups around Seattle.
During regular times(non-Covid), Raised Doughnuts also offers classes for making doughnuts, cakes and cookies.
And here are some other interesting things about Raised Doughnuts from their website:
- ANTI WASTE There is a lot of food waste in our industry and we don’t want to add to it! We strive to avoid waste at all costs. This is why we choose to make one big batch a day and sell them until they’re gone! We also use every last bit of our dough, recycling the scraps into fritters and holes.
- WEEKENDS We bust out our maximum capacity. Which comes out to approx. 1500+ doughnuts a day on the weekend.
- WEEKDAYS Our weekday batches vary and are determined using our gut and past sales. Sometimes we sell dozens at a time and other days just a few per person. Because of this unpredictability, some days we sell out quickly while other days we last all day. We encourage preordering or calling ahead to put some aside. No minimum required! We just ask you to pick them up by 1PM!
On to the doughnuts. The Cranberry Thyme had a nice thick glaze with sprinkled cranberries on it. It was nice and sweet and perfect with a cup of coffee, but couldn’t really taste the cranberry. Perhaps it’s mainly for aesthetics. Another of the monthly specials was the Gingerbread Fritter, which again had ample amounts of glaze and definitely had a festive look with red(peppermint?) and white toppings and was the favorite of our daughter. The Pandan Mochi is all about the texture. It’s light, but chewy like a mochi doughnut should. We both took a bite and were surprised by the chewiness. We’re thinking it’s harder to make a mochi doughnut in a traditional doughnut shape versus the connected little balls at Dochi.
White Choc Peppermint Bark Bar -$3.50
The White Choc Peppermint Bark Bar was my personal favorite. It was like eating a candy cane doughnut. Really minty fresh. Perfect for the holiday season. The apple fritter doesn’t look like your traditional round flat fritter. The fritter here is actually dense, shaped almost like a muffin. Fluffy with bits of apple, this was another winner. I’m not a huge fan of maple bars and usually maple bars may have a hint of maple syrup. The Raised Doughnut maple bar strongly tastes like maple syrup, so if you’re a fan, grab one of these.
The higher quality(and higher prices) and the one-of-a-kind doughnuts remind us of Half N Half Doughnut Co.
As mentioned Raised Doughnuts is a bit of a trek for us and the doughnuts are a bit on the higher priced side, but you just get the feeling a lot of thought, care and personal touch is put into these one-of-a-kind doughnuts. Our recommendation is to try the specials. The originals are good but, the specials are exceptional. If we have a hankering for doughnuts we’re likely to go to some of the donut places closer to home, but on special occasions or if we want to impress out-of-town visitors, we’ll definitely hit up Raised Doughnuts.
Ratings:
Atmosphere: N/A (During Covid 19, so no entry)
Service: 4.75
Food/Drinks: 4.75
Bang for the Buck: 4.25
Overall: 4.65
Locals Only Factor: “Locals Only” grading-We’ll assign a grading as to how “local” a place is.
-
- Well known or Touristy. Most locals don’t go there unless they have business dinners or visitors in town.
- Most locals know about it
- Locals “in the know” know about it
- Only those who live close by know about it.
- You’re in on the secret. Don’t tell anybody!
Servers recommendations to visit in the future:
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