Lupe Flores serves up her signature Lebanese-spiced beef, creamy garlic mashed potatoes, and herby cauliflower in crunchy tacos with the same flair with which she played drums—her pre-Covid career. The tacos are pinned together with toothpicks and dunked in the fryer to a crispy and delightfully greasy end. Flores’s rotating cast of comforting soups, such as spicy chicken tortilla or vegan seven-spice Lebanese lentil, round out the short menu. After a year as a popup, then three more operating from of Jupiter Bar, the restaurant lets the pale pink shade of the building, its hand-painted signs inside, and floral oilcloths on the tables make a statement that this place belongs to Flores and the Lebanese taco tradition passed down from her situ (grandmother).

Through woven kantael mats on the wall and plenty of the fermented fish paste called prahok, Sophon explodes with pride in founder Karuna Long’s heritage and the flavors of Cambodia. Lemongrassy kroeung spice paste marinates fried oyster mushrooms and fragrant tuk trey dresses crunchy, punchy shredded salads as the food incorporates the flavors and techniques of traditional Khmer cuisine without getting bogged down in arguments over authenticity. The result is playful, intriguing, and unique, and sets the table for a better understanding of Khmer food and culture. The cocktails, impressively, follow suit with plenty of coconut and creativity, and just a little less fish sauce.

Opening one of the only restaurants in the area serving food from Ghana and Liberia meant that first-time restaurateur Tina Fahnbulleh started an already difficult job by playing in hard mode. She struggled to find the potato greens  and jute leaves that melt into her stews and needed to take extra time to train her chefs in the art of making fufu—the thick starch used to scoop up her goat peanut soup. But she missed the flavors of West Africa—of palm oil and the shrimp pepper sauce called shito—and correctly assumed others did, too. Her elegant First Hill space, with minimalist decor and bright white walls, quickly filled with a steady stream of regulars diving into her grilled branzino on a bed of grated cassava and newcomers sitting down for plates of fried plantains, veggie handpies, and peri peri wings.

Tivoli is as much a pizzeria as Yasuaki Saito’s previous opening, Saint Bread, is a bakery. Which is to say, it gives diners a general framework. But Saito specializes in threading together eclectic inspirations and innovating away from categorization. In Tivoli’s roomy and bright Fremont space, chef Jim McGurk’s caesar salad draws devotees for its shower of cheese and pankogratto in place of croutons, drawn from Saito’s Japanese heritage. The pizza (by the slice at lunch,  or a 16-inch pie anytime) sits somewhere between New York and Naples style, while the black garlic knots come out of McGurk and Saito’s shared midwestern roots. And it doesn’t matter where the pistachio-slathered mortadella sandwich with whipped ricotta on sesame focaccia came from, as long as it’s going into your mouth, ASAP.

Like most younger siblings, chef Melissa Miranda’s follow-up to Musang is a little bolder and a little more likely to color outside the lines. The food at the more casual Kilig remains steadfastly tied to Filipino cuisine, with Miranda’s cheffy ideas pushing powerful flavors. Salted duck egg counters the sweetness of summer tomatoes in a salad, and chile crisp meets calamansi to sauce the noodles in one of the pancit dishes, which, along with bulalo—beef soup—form the heart of the menu. Though conceived as a QR code–type lunch spot, like most little siblings eventually do, Kilig grew up. It evolved into a sit-down spot, but remains fast, casual, and extremely cute, with a postcard-style mural that dominates the back wall, splashing the room with color and matching the green chairs.

There’s only a single, barely visible sign marking this Beacon Hill restaurant and bar specializing in Guamanian food, part of owner Elmer Dulla’s effort to build a low-key neighborhood spot. When the pickle-packed smashburger and crisp, thin french fries went viral earlier in 2024, visiting tourists and camera-toting TikTokkers trampled all over that idea. But things have calmed down, making room on the shady back patio and in the pale pistachio booths of the small dining room, and giving regulars space to branch out to the foods that track Dulla’s personal history. The menu nods to his Filipino heritage with chicken adobo tacos, his childhood on Guam with the thick, silky corn soup, and into life as a Seattle service industry stalwart at places such as Bar Sajor and Musang. Which is great, because the flaky orange empanada stuffed with potatoes and beef deserves a viral moment at least as big as the burger.

The small orange building affixed to the side of the Crown Inn on Aurora fills up quickly, especially on weekends, when co-owner Baburam Panday estimates the kitchen makes and serves somewhere between seven and eight hundred momos. The six-page menu lists vegetarian and chicken versions of the dumplings in 10 different styles (order the combo plate to try a few), plus a full slate of vegetarian options, and a subcontinent’s worth of bread. The Nepali Dal Bhaat makes a good starting place: the thali serves as a sampler plate of traditional foods, and Panday says it is the closest thing to what you would get for dinner at someone’s home in Nepal.

At Ba Sa on Bainbridge Island, siblings Trinh and Thai Nguyen make upscale renditions of Vietnamese favorites. Their new spot on Capitol Hill takes an inverse approach: Ramie channels familiar Viet flavors into contemporary dishes that take notes from around the globe. Wagyu carpaccio and hamachi crudo burst with herbs and nuoc cham; risotto is dressed in a pesto that summons Southeast Asia rather than Italy, and trotters arrive with a ssam-like bevy of herbs and greens for wrapping. The cocktails alone are worth a trip, as is the banh tieu, or hollow bread with honey butter.

With its innovative takes on Nuyorican cuisine and laid-back beach vibes, Lenox brings Seattle’s restaurant scene an exhilarating breath of fresh sea air and a free hand in pouring samples of the clarified piña colada. The palm-print wallpaper, rattan light fixtures, and rum-soaked cocktail list transport diners straight to La Placita, the party-hardy Puerto Rico neighborhood for which one drink is named. The cuisine honors the diaspora that brought Caribbean cuisine to Harlem, where Lenox, the avenue, brims with adobo and sazón. At Lenox, the restaurant, those same spice mixes (made in-house, naturally) season the lechon, the undisputed star of the menu, and its shatteringly crisp skin protecting the tender meat rolled inside.

Can food be this stunning—and this much fun? Chef Johnny Courtney walks this fine line in the converted Craftsman home that was once housed Tilth. Nearly every table orders a round of savory rosette cookies, one of a handful of fancy starters intended as individual servings. But thrills lurk everywhere on the hyperseasonal menu, from the crumpets to the dungeness crab and caramel on toast, even an entree of salmon or pork collar. Courtney’s cooked in Denver, Melbourne, and Mexico, but recently spent four years at Canlis. Atoma is much smaller, and way more bootstrapped, but displays a similar attention to detail.