When I walk out my front door, it’s usually in pursuit of something delectable to put in my mouth-stomach. That is equally true when I travel. Sure, I want to see old friends and new places and have deep and meaningful cultural experiences blah blah blah. But I really want to eat.
I spent yesterday eating and drinking my way through Seattle, walking through the misting rain with a clear focus: coffee-seafood-beer. Coffee-seafood-beer is all the reason you need to need to visit Seattle, a city that offers a plethora of lovely, non-coffee-seafood-beer destinations, such as Mount Rainier, Gas Works Park, and the Space Needle. You can skip all those. The places you really want to visit in Seattle provide serious mouth pleasures.
If you’re like me, then you take a lot of Xanax on a six hour, cross-country flight. So, the very first thing you want when you land is coffee. Seattle is the home of the original Starbucks. The inaugural café, original bare-breasted logo intact, sits on a heavily trafficked-touristed street near Pike Place Market. Don’t go there. Instead, take the bus well north of downtown, across the river, to Fremont neighborhood. There, your fooding adventure begins.
Coffee
Start at Milstead & Co: serious coffee for serious hipsters. It just opened, and it’s just right. A loft-like industrial space manages to feel warm and soothing, with large tables perfect for a coffice. Several single-origin beans are available, and the coffee is brewed by the cup, pour-over style. I had the lightest roast, an Ethiopian, which was mildly fruity. Also charming were the baristas: they gave me a great recommendation for lunch AND the secret log-in information to the sadly-not-public wifi.
Seafood
For sustenance, both the baristas and yelpers recommended I walk half a mile uphill, in the pouring rain, with a giant heavy backpack, to Paseo. Golly, was it worth it. Cuban sandwiches and seafood platters! This tiny neighborhood spot has locals lined up out the door. I had the scallops platter, which consisted of fresh scallops swimming in a spicy rojo sauce over rice, with a salad and a cup of comforting black bean soup. Given the low price point - $14 - I was fairly shocked that the scallops were perfectly cooked, silky and moist. Not only is the food fast and cheap – it’s prepared by people who respect the quality of their ingredients.
Beer
With a full belly, and now fully awake, I trekked through Fremont into Wallingford, towards beer. Bottleworks is a specialty beer company, stocked full with every kind of Belgian bourbon-aged triple pumpkin porter you’ve never heard of but have to have. They keep several beers on tap, so you can imbibe while you shop. I drank a Big Time SMASH in the store and left with a cold Rachel’s Ginger Beer for my journey.
(Tea)
Taking the bus into Ballard, a neighborhood on the water in northwest Seattle, I decided to deviate from my strict coffee-seafood-beer agenda and have a pot of tea. I ended up in Miro Tea, whose painfully delicious gluten-free brownie overshadowed their wide selection of tea. After rousing myself from their deep, leather sofa, I walked down the street to the restaurant I had been anticipating all day: The Walrus and the Carpenter.
(More Seafood)
This oyster bar, hidden in the back of another restaurant in an industrial area, is why tongues were invented. A server with a waxed handle bar mustache took my order of half a dozen local oysters, fried padron peppers, and harissa-coated shrimp in the shell. The man behind the bar shucking the oysters had even more ironically awesome facial hair. A small place and small plates with big attitude. Add an aperol cocktail, and I was ready to move there permanently.
Sadly, I could only spend 24 hours in Seattle before I had to depart. My coffee-seafood-beer goal has not changed, though: I’m leaving Seattle for Portland.
Image via DigitalColony's Flickr