Cantaloupe makes excellent ice cream, as I learned when I tasted the soft serve at Temple Pastry’s Ice Cream Window. At the tiny, eccentric Columbia City restaurant on my birthday, Evan Leichtling proved the same point, only weirder: infusing it with the air-cured ham they make in-house. The flavor is less porky than the name implies, and more like melon sorbet with a glow-up; the umami-fueled complexity lurks behind the scenes of the frozen scoop, but you can still feel its presence.

Though joltingly purple, this play on the shrimp cocktail brings the pleasant heat via slow boat down the Mekong River. The plump tiger shrimp could be a star of a different dish, but here they take a back seat to the thick dip of beets, makrut lime leaf, and condensed milk. Decorated with nasturtium leaves and watermelon radish, it looked as impressive as it tasted.

Rarely does a restaurant capture its own essence so perfectly in a dish that also is this good to eat. In this golf ball–size study in contrasts, creamy pimento cheese fills the light, crunchy shell, the slight heat counteracted by the sweetness of onion jam. It radiates with the Indian inspiration behind the Tacoma restaurant and the Southern flavors of the chefs’ backgrounds, packaging them into a single, wildly expressive bite.

Little Jaye, the bakery offshoot of West Seattle’s Lady Jaye, can do no wrong. It’s adorable, the pastries are fun and good, and it’s mercifully far enough from my house that I can’t show up for the breakfast sandwich every single day. Anchored by a lacy-edged sausage patty cooked like a smashburger and topped with a slice of American cheese, it comes on a soft roll slathered with spicy mayo that just barely contains the runny egg as it soaks into the crowning touch: a crispy cake of hash brown.

Sushi Kashiba alum Keiji Tsukasaki takes his fish seriously and it comes at a fittingly serious price, but eating through the dozens of courses in his omakase menu is, in a word, fun. Though reservations for the sushi bar are tough to snag, the table option ends up nearly as entertaining, especially when the handroll cart rolls up with a tray full of bright orange uni. À la minute, heaped with the briny sea urchin, and served with a side of banter, it highlighted what makes LTD standout in Seattle’s crowded omakase scene.

Nothing has ever made my car smell as good as the garlic sauced Greek fries from this nondescript fast-casual spot in West Seattle. It popped up enough in my research on the city’s best french fries that I had to have a look, and immediately after my visit I considered three more research trips. The fries themselves are terrific, thick and battered, which allows them to stand up to the hefty toppings—while I ate many in the parking lot before driving home, the ones I ate hours later stayed impressively crisp. Those generous toppings include the classic feta, parsley, and sprinkling of sumac, but it’s the lavish application of creamy garlic sauce that throws it over the top—and only works because the fries stay crisp underneath.

This was on my list last year, so it seems weird to write it up again. But when Good Shape started opening during the day, it changed my Belltown lunch rotation and it was again one of my best bites of the year. The bacon, eggs, and mozzarella, the everything-seasoned crust, cream cheese, and chives—it just all works together and remains my favorite pizza in the city.

When the baby cinnamon rolls dream of what they want to be when they grow up, I hope they envision these soft sweethearts. The classic fall flavors of pumpkin and cinnamon cozy up with the languid richness of mamey, exemplifying Mayra Sibrian’s skill at combining local flavors with those of her Central American heritage. The roll itself is squishy but not spineless, like a whole roll full of that ideal center of the traditional spiral.

What happens when a pastry chef tries her hand at something savory? In this case, beautiful magic. Temple Pastry’s Christina Wood created an aesthetic masterpiece, with ribbons of the soft cheese piped into thick squiggles and decorated with baubles of apricot chamomile gelée. It tasted as good as it looked, too, and proves that Sacro Bosco is far more than a pizza restaurant—which is a good thing.

When I left my lunch at Ilmu, the multicourse-tasting-menu restaurant run by and in T55 Pâtisserie in Bothell, co-owner Katie Pohl told me they were going on a break for three weeks due to staff shortage. Three weeks became three months, and so on, and I worried nobody else would ever get to experience this bite, or anything from what was the best meal of my year. But then Christmas came early when Ilmu announced its return in mid-December. And you, dear reader, should book that table as fast as humanly possible. While most of the menu leans heavily on chef Muhammad Fairoz Rashed’s French fine-dining training, this dish brings his Malay heritage into play. He stuffs the crunchy Singaporean rice flour rosette cookie with a spicy fish paste inspired by otak otak—fish cakes—and adds a dollop of osetra caviar on top. While Atoma’s rosette made headlines, this innovative version displaying Rashed’s pastry skill and haute cuisine training deserves at least as much national attention. That, of course, requires Ilmu to actually stay open. My fingers are crossed!