As part of Seattle Met’s Best Restaurants feature, we asked dozens of Seattle chefs and restaurateurs to give us their take on trends, customers, competition—pretty much everything under the restaurant sun. What we got was an earful of juicy insider insight. We’ll be posting some of the responses in the coming weeks.

Owning a restaurant is a tough racket—this you probably figured—but what are the hurdles that really trip up restaurateurs? The crowded market, for one: "There are a lot of restaurants now, and there are a lot of good ones, so while you’re getting ready to open you need to be building curiosity and anticipation," opined a respondent. Echoed another: "It seems to me that there’s more restaurants in the city than the city can actually hold."

Another biggie: permitting and "trying to jump through hoops that change constantly." "In Portland their rules are so loose, it seems like everyone opens whatever they want wherever they want. Up here it’s pretty restrictive, but heading in the right direction."

For a breakdown of other obstacles peep the pie chart.