Hungry for news? Welcome to our Friday Feed, where we run through all the local food and restaurant news this week—and maybe help you figure out where to eat this weekend.

Comings and Goings

It’s the Dog: After five years and two locations, Watson’s Counter shut its doors this week and shelved its Fruity Pebs French toast. Owner James Lim wrote on Instagram that he plans to focus on being a father—and, presumably, to enjoy no longer having to explain that he is not Watson, Watson is the dog.

Swarming Away: Locust Cider opened its first tasting room in Woodinville in 2015, and then expanded rapidly starting in 2019. Now, it’s headed in the other direction, suddenly closing half of its 14 taprooms, including Alki Beach, First Hill, and Redmond.

Fire on the Hill: Live-fire-focused Eldr, the latest spot from Brian Clevenger’s General Harvest Restaurants, opened in Sunset Hill this week. Like many of the other GH spots, it will offer both a four-course tasting menu, and a la carte options.

Out of the Bottle: Vietnamese coffee popup Plus84 opened in Belltown this week, now brewing fresh drinks along with its bottled ones. Creative options include the kettle corn macchiato, an ode to sweet corn snacks, and its own spin on a classic banh mi that includes housemade meat floss.

My Holiday Wish List

Santa doesn’t stop at my house, but that won’t stop me from trying every avenue to ask for the following things that the Seattle restaurant scene could really use. If you feel like shopping for your local food writer, here's what I'm hoping for:

• A decent Burmese restaurant
• Cake trucks that drive around in the after-dinner hours, serving by the slice, like an ice cream truck for the colder months.
• More relaxed cottage food laws. If whole swaths of the country want to give themselves bovine tuberculosis from raw milk, I should be able to legally buy other things the health department deems dangerous, like tamales from entrepreneurially minded neighbors.

Oh, BTW, here’s what you missed last week.