The Wandering Goose – Best Breakfast in Seattle?

**********12/20-Unfortunately, This Restaurant Has Closed Down**********

The Wandering Goose – Best Breakfast in Seattle?

Recommended by:  Our server, Marissa at the The 5 Spot recommended The Wandering Goose to try out. She advised they had breakfast everyday and had some of the best fried chicken in the city.

Description on the The Wandering Goose’s website: The Wandering Goose is a thirty seat Southern influenced cafe in the heart of Seattle’s North Capitol Hill neighborhood. The Wandering Goose is warm and inviting with bright natural light streaming in through the east facing windows. The demising wall between the neighboring restaurant is made from vintage leaded glass windows allowing for even more light and a sense of openness in this tiny but magical café. Offering Southern inspired breakfast and lunch fare including biscuits, cookies, layer cakes, biscuit sandwiches, hushpuppies, crock pot grits, country ham, sawmill gravy, country sausage gravy, greens, pimento cheese, chow-chow and fresh salads. All ingredients are seasonal and affordable fare. We will offer baking classes, cooking classes and retail sundries.

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Neighborhood/Type:  Capitol Hill

Address:  403 15th Ave E, Seattle, WA 98112

What we ate/drank: Hangtown Fry-fried oysters, cured pork belly, poached eggs. Fried Chicken Plate w/collard greens, coleslaw, butter milk biscuit. The Sawmill Biscuit Sandwich-fried chicken, sawmill gravy, cheese, poached eggs. Machiatto using Caffe Vita coffee.

Comments:  Update 9/22/19: Wandering Goose just made Seattle Met’s 100 Best Restaurant

Marissa at The 5 Spot did not let us down with her suggestion!  We’ve now been here multiple times and The Wandering Goose is now in our rotation of breakfast places.

Wandering Goose has two similar characteristics of two other recently reviewed restaurants:

1. Like Il Corvo, you line up, put your order in toward the back of the restaurant, pay and then take a seat. They’ll bring out the meals to you. Also similar to Il Corvo lines through the restaurant form regularly due to it’s small size and popularity.
2. Like Citizen Cafe and The 5 Spot, it’s one of those rare Seattle restaurants that’s opens for breakfast at 7:00am not only on weekends, but on weekdays.

If there is anything you take from this post it’s if you have a group of four or more, you’d better get there as soon as it opens or you’ll be waiting awhile. The Wandering Goose only has 30 seats. We’ve only come on weekdays in between 7-8 am to ensure we get a table. We won’t even think about going on the weekends unless we do takeout.  There’s basically two rows of long benches on either side of the restaurant with tables and adjoining chairs.

The Wandering Goose specializes in Southern comfort food and has the decor to match. It feels like a diner in a small farm town – branded wooden tables, weathered window panes, ceiling fans with long downrods, lamps made of burlap sacks, old cases behind the cashier. It has that laid back country feel, which is a nice departure from the modern hip restaurants that permeate the Seattle landscape.

Here are some of the yummy dishes we’ve had.  There aren’t many places that serve a Hangtown Fry(typically eggs, bacon and oysters) in Seattle, so whenever I see it, I normally order it. Usually the ingredients are all scrambled together or as an omelette. I like Wandering Goose’s variation on the dish. You have a poached egg, so you have the runny yoke.  You have the pork belly instead of bacon. Take a look at the picture down below to see how thick the piece of pork belly was. Whoa. Lastly you have fried oysters on top of a bed of potatoes in a skillet. Lots of savory flavors in this dish. I added a bit of their house made “sweet heat” sauce too. As with all their dishes, the portion size will leave you full.

Note: There are two entertaining origin stories of how the Hangtown Fry came into existence. The first was a gold prospector hitting it rich and going to a hotel in California and ordering the most expensive things on the menu which in those days were eggs, bacon and oysters.  The other story is that a condemned man was due to be executed and for his last meal he specifically ordered oysters, because he knew it would take more than a day to get them, so he gained an extra day of life.

Fried Chicken Plate w/collard greens, coleslaw, butter milk biscuit. Their fried chicken definitely deserves mentioned when talking about the best fried chicken in the city. Perhaps Wandering Goose will enter the fray in the war over who has the best fried chicken in Seattle between Ezell’s and Heaven Sent.  Crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. The seasoning on the crispy skin was  flavorful, but not overly seasoned like many other places. Our two year old devoured the drum stick like the Tasmanian Devil from WB. The Fried Chicken Plate also came with collard greens which were sweet and spicy and cole slaw which was crisp and fresh.  It also came with one of their biscuits.

The Sawmill Biscuit Sandwich-fried chicken, sawmill gravy, cheese, poached eggs.  Like the Fried Chicken Plate, The Sawmill may give another Seattle Food War a new combatant. Wandering Goose may give Morsel and Bean & Biscuit a run for their money for Best Seattle Biscuit Sandwich. Take a gander at the pictures of The Sawmill below!  Your mouth is salivating, ain’t it? I opted for the addition of a poached egg for extra. How could I not have some runny yoke with this bad boy?

This is not really a traditional sandwich you can eat with your hands. You’ll need a knife and fork. The biscuits are huge and fluffy. I always expect biscuits this big to be dense. Everything about this dish is substantial from the size of the biscuit and chicken to the amount of thick gravy. The sandwich was delicious and despite it being so substantial, I finished it. Needless to say, there was no need for lunch that day. I think the next time I order this, I’ll try it without cheese. The cheese melted into the gravy, making it cheezy. It was still delicious, but I’d like to taste the gravy on it’s own.

The Sawmill – **Before**cutting into it $13.00- fried chicken, sawmill gravy, cheese add poached eggs $1.25. Score: (5.0/5.0)

Summary: Are we ready to crown The Wandering Goose as our favorite breakfast spot yet? Not quite yet, but it’s a front runner.  I think if we were to put it in a category, it would be our favorite breakfast spot when playing hooky from work. Due to it’s small seating capacity and popularity, I think we’d only come here during early morning weekdays.

If you want to learn more about the history of The Wandering Goose you can read about it here.

Ratings:

Atmosphere: 5.00

Service: 5.00

Food/Drinks: 5.00

Bang for the Buck: 4.50

Overall: 4.85

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: The cashier recommended Fat Hen as a suggestion. We’d heard of Fat Hen and have a funny story about it, but we’d never been there. Stay tuned for our visit and review of Fat Hen  and the funny story connected to it.

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