‘Twas a fine, fine year to be hungry in Seattle. For ten days I’m reminiscing about just how fine, in my annual recap of the top ten plates of the year.

#1 No recent debut has made a bigger impact than Revel, the Joule folks’ fizzy and utterly original tribute to the street food of Asia. Their ever-changing menu is consistently impressive, but I remain smitten by the Manila clam soup, which arrived wrapped in veils of steam, heady with shallots and scallions and Serrano chiles, sesame and basil and brine. Every slurp was as complex as it was satisfying, and loaded with global references. The hand-cut Thai basil noodles recalled Italian papardelle en brodo, the shallots and zucchini tasted French—all in a recipe that’s a classic of the Korean genre, pulled off with these chefs’ zeal for scrupulously local ingredients, in this case herbs and clams. Genius.