This is always one of our more enjoyable posts of the year as it winds down. 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 causing us to stay home for most of the year. Surprisingly, we didn’t have any problems and actually had a hard time whittling it down to 15.
We’ve already counted down our Best Seattle Dishes of 2020, 15 through 8.
Without further ado, here are our Best Seattle Dishes of 2020, 7 through 1:
7. Paju-$16. Paju Fried Rice – Kimchi, bacon, squid ink, smoked quail egg
Excerpt from our blog post:
Saving the best for last. The Paju Fried Rice contains bacon, kimchi, rice immersed in squid ink with rice with a smoked quail egg yolk in the middle. So many different textures -gooey egg yolk, crunchy kimchi, sticky rice. So many different flavors – smokey, sweet, savory, but none overpowering the others. Such a distinctive dish both visually and taste-wise. You won’t find anything like this in Seattle. This is the dish we’ll get over and over on return visits. I’d love it if they could add more quail eggs. The egg is only able to be mixed with a small percentage of the rice. Definitely, an early contender for top 2020 Dishes of the Year.
6. Salare – $17. Beef Tartare – Sunchoke Chips, Capers & Smoked Egg Vinaigrette
We’re suckers for beef tartare. And as mentioned in our in our Best Dishes of 2018 blog post, we order it whenever we see it on the menu. And as expected when visiting Salare for dinner, we knew it was going to be a quality dish. Bits of capers and onion and bound by raw egg yolk, it’s all that we were hoping for.
5. Fil Cuisine – $20. Sisig -Savory morsels of roasted pork with onions, chilis & citrus juice, placed on a sizzling hot plate!
One bad thing about getting sisig for takeout is that you don’t get it in its intended fashion, which is on a hot sizzling plate with and breaking a raw egg over it. Even so, this dish was one of our favorite dishes of 2020. Another difference is that traditional sisig incorporates chopped up parts of a pig’s head(ear, snout, cheeks, etc) for it’s main protein versus regular pork/pork belly for this particular dish. Even if it’s not presented on a sizzling plate and non-traditional pork, it’s still really flavorful. The sisig is a guilty pleasure due to the amount of grease, but put this over some rice and a I dare you to stop at just one serving.
4. Bok A Bok – $15. Bowl O Shame-Kimchi mac n’ cheese, spicy tater tots, chopped fried chicken thigh, 4 chili hot sauce, green onions, crispy garlic, crispy shallots and a poached egg
This is the forth consecutive dish on the list where a major component of the meal is a raw egg or runny egg. That shows our love of egg yolk. This dish is the perfect for having with a beer or as a hangover dish. But be warned, it probably has a million calories and clogs your arteries the instant you eat it. Ohh…. its so worth it. Mac N cheese, tater tots, fried chicken, hot sauce, poached egg. How can something so bad for you, taste so good.
3. Salare – $21. Cavatelli Lamb Bacon, Parmesan, Brussels sprouts & Cured Egg Yolk
Make that the fifth dish in a row that incorporates a raw or runny egg.
Excerpt from our blog post:
The Cavatelli with bacon and parmasean was another winner. The pasta is so unique and the lamb bacon, name somewhere else you can find that?
2. Bizzarro Italian Cafe – $13.25. Drunken Clams –Local manilla clams in spicy tomatoes with prosciutto, basil, shallots & ouzo.
Excerpt from our blog post:
We started off with the Drunken Clams which is a perfect match to slop up the sauce with the bread. The clams and bits of prosciutto were tasty, but the sauce is the star.
Our server offered to bring more bread when he saw we had extra sauce, but ran out of bread. We were tempted but didn’t want to fill ourselves up before our mains came and said he could take the sauce away. We shed a little tear as he took it.
1. Salare – $22. Trompetti Squid Ink, Clams, Mussels, ‘nduja Sausage, Kale & Garlic Cream
Salare could have easily had four or five dishes in our top 15 dishes of the year. That’s how good Salare is. In the end three of their dishes made it into our list of Best Dishes of 2020, but this was our favorite. It had lots of different types of protein – clams, mussels and sausage. Like the Musang pancit dish above squid ink was used in the pasta and we’re not sure what made it a little spicy, but it was just enough to add to the overall taste.
Excerpt from our blog post:
Our favorite dish was the Squid Ink Trompetti with clams, mussels and sausage. It was just the perfect amount of spicy.
I’m salivating just remembering and writing about this dish. Oh man, we can’t wait til business gets back to normal and we can go back and visit Salare.
This was our Favorite Seattle Dish of 2020
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