Not to be confused with the late, great local mini-chain Green Leaf, this single location spot does a booming takeout business to Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery next door (and will often offer to bring the food to customers there). But Green Tree produces food worth walking down the block and driving across town for. The bright combo salad mixes the best parts of the lotus root, mango, and papaya salads with a shower of mint, and the char on the grilled beef short ribs crackles, crisp and sweet. Of the many Vietnamese specialties Green Tree nails, none surpasses the silky bánh cuốn: slippery blankets of rice noodles sprinkled with umami-flakes of onion and mushroom, ready to fold around slices of meat.

Second-generation restaurateur siblings Trinh and Thai Nguyen’s follow-up to Ba Sa on Bainbridge Island further refines their vision for modern Vietnamese cuisine. Traditional Viet flavors and dishes serve as jumping-off points as they incorporate local ingredients and techniques from around the world. The bánh tiêu, a fried hollow bread, and its honey butter accompaniment (rightfully) sit on nearly every table, though Ramie’s boldly beet-purple take on shrimp cocktail deserves a similar must-order status.

Both Khôi Phùng and Hiền Đặng grew up steeped in Vietnamese coffee culture, the partners in business and in life created their Georgetown café to showcase and honor that heritage. Strong, rich cà phê sữa đá brewed by phin highlights Vietnamese beans, while jackfruit, miso caramel, and even Red Boat fish sauce lattes demonstrate the pair’s creativity with beloved flavors. The banh mi (conveniently available in mini size, for a lighter meal) transform familiar dishes into sandwiches, including a pho-spiced beef (with broth dip) and claypot-braised vegetarian patties.

Opened by a former chef of Seattle Vietnamese stalwart Tamarind Tree, the food at Lotus Pond shone from the moment it opened, with regional specialties like bún riêu cua, a northern Vietnamese crab noodle soup, and bún bò Huế sườn bò, a spicy soup made with short ribs. Perhaps equally impressive as the food is how Lotus Pond has blossomed in the three years since it opened, slowly transforming its shabby building into an oasis from the chaos of Aurora.

For some of us, the bread makes the banh mi, and this nondescript shop on Highway 99 gets it. The housemade bread, with its thin, crackly exterior, ranks among the best in the city, but a little tweak enhances the sandwich further. Instead of slicing the banh mi in half across the middle of the sandwich, Rise & Shine cuts diagonally, sending takeout artfully resting in a box, rather than wrapped in paper. It offers a tempting preview of the layers of sliced meats and jumble of colorful vegetables and results in an easier sandwich to eat—the tapered end even holds down on flying crumbs. The healthy slather of mayo likely helps, too.

Shiny, clean, and spacious, with friendly and quick service, Blossom sidesteps many of the stereotypical failings of vegetarian and vegan restaurants. The enormous menu features plenty of traditionally meat-free dishes, like lemongrass tofu, and the usual faux-meat subs, like seitan. But where it shines are the unique creations, like the crispy green mussels and the two types of Vietnamese ham on the bánh hỏi—and Blossom’s woven mats of rice noodles could easily go up against those at any restaurant in the city.

As the name implies, baguette sandwiches are the move here. But the lineup contains a few pleasant surprises. Like the banh mi filled with corned beef, or another that contains chicken braised in soy sauce and butter with sweet onions and just a hint of melted mozzarella. A thicket of herbs, jalapeño, and pickled veggies leaven those rich meats. 

Look beyond the vigorously pastel walls to that glorious pay-by-the-pound buffet, a smorgasbord of curry, tofu, braised jackfruit, eggplant, and assorted “meat” that’s the stuff of meatless dreams. Owner Tanya Nguyen also makes tangy noodle soups and a banh mi with faux crispy pork skin that counts plenty of carnivores in its fan base. Online ordering makes life even better.

When you see elderly Vietnamese ladies chatting at a four-top whilst assembling their lettuce-wrapped bundles of banh hoi rice noodles for lunch, you know you’re right where you should be—that is, a restaurant tucked in a busy plaza on Jackson. New owners carry on founder Lien Dang’s commitment to the cuisine of the old royal capital of Hue, from spicy bún bò Huế beef noodle soup to bánh bèo, steamed rice cakes showered with ground shrimp and scallions.

Born in the humble boat-shaped structure across the parking lot, Seattle’s first pho shop has grown into this tropically styled space, whose broad windows sport the steam of all those bowls of rich pho served within. The menu grew as well, to include cocktails, Viet-tinged snacks like fries in lemongrass dipping sauce, and soup adventures like the turmeric noodles and short rib pho. The sibling location downtown offers those same great noodles, plus banh mi on house-baked bread and a hidden cocktail bar upstairs. The original location is now The Boat, Seattle Met's 2023 restaurant of the year, serving equally impressive garlic fried chicken and pandan waffles.

No seating, no frills, but, yes—some of the best banh mi in the city on fresh-made baguettes, filled with grilled tofu and veggies or three kinds of ham. Others go for snacks packaged in-house: shrimp spring rolls, chicken with rice, or minced pork inside steamed rice wrapped in banana leaf.

“Fusion” feels like a wholly inadequate word for Eric Johnson’s ode to Vietnamese flavors, a love acquired during his years cooking at Jean-Georges in Shanghai and exploring Southeast Asia any chance he got. Johnson’s background in the highest of high-end restaurants informs intelligent explorations of the flavor crossroads of Vietnam and China, like master stock crispy chicken and Vietnamese iced coffee creamsicles.

In 2004, Tam Nguyen expanded the city’s definition of Little Saigon with a deeply atmospheric dining room, serving an enormous menu of carefully prepared Vietnamese regional staples. Very little has changed, save Seattle’s deepening awareness of how lucky we are to have this place. These days, Tamarind Tree is also a destination for a proper bò 7 món, Vietnam’s traditional seven courses of beef. 

Tofu can absolutely be destination-worthy, as evidenced by the lemongrass, chive, and other varieties made fresh and sold here by the pound. Once just a tofu production company, Thanh Son branched out with an unexpectedly glittering deli space on King, with solid banh mi and a build-your-own che (beverage by way of dessert) menu that’s bonkers fun. 

Park behind this shop on MLK and you’ll see duck and pork belly hanging in a glass enclosure on the side of the building, a literal window into the careful ingredients that get tucked into satisfying baguettes. The banh mi lineup includes some classics, like that pork belly, but also nouveau versions made with bulgogi and kimchi. Egg and avocado also make unexpected but thoroughly enjoyable banh mi cameos. Boss Tea, a sibling bubble tea enterprise, has its own counter inside.

This low-key billiards hall just off Martin Luther King Jr. Way South doubles as an impressive Vietnamese restaurant. (Or perhaps it's the other way around?) It starts serving the expansive menu of banh mi, vermicelli bowls, and rice plates early enough to make a late breakfast, and while it makes a solid pho, it also offers a chance to explore other noodle soups like tomato-brothed bún riêu.

We should all be so lucky to have a neighborhood restaurant like this in our midst—crispy bánh xèo, vermicelli bowls full of crunchy vegetables and rich grilled meat, a mango salad you could (gladly) eat every day. Plus a few less-common dishes, like duck noodle soup or a pork chop redolent of caramelized fish sauce and topped with a fried egg. Huong Duong means “sunflower” in Vietnamese, which explains the bright-yellow walls in the laid-back dining room.

Yes, that one time Anthony Bourdain visited for The Layover was pretty cool. But we didn’t need a food celebrity to tell us this sprawling two-level dining room was special. A vast menu includes uncommon meat—grilled snails, deep-fried quail—but the kitchen shows just as much care with standards like bánh xèo or a short rib rice plate (the menu also includes Chinese dishes). Big groups and families make an event out of the whole catfish, fried until its skin crackles beneath your chopsticks like radio static.

Large letters on the front window deliver three emphatic words: com (rice), pho, and bun (rice noodles). But, at least on the first visit, head straight to the large menu’s specialty section, full of noodle soups from central Vietnam. The mì Quảng submerges shrimp, quail eggs, and bits of spare ribs in broth and a thicket of wide turmeric noodles, all topped with peanuts and caramelized onions. Other favorites include big bowls of bún riêu or spicy beef noodle soup known here as bún bò dalat. No wonder nearly every table in this soaring room emits a plume of steam from a soup bowl.

It's easy to take Ba Bar for granted because it’s always there for you. Three locations serve reliable high-quality pho at 10am on a Tuesday, slushy cocktails at happy hour, and a menu built on Saigon street food: vermicelli bowls, crispy imperial rolls, five-spice rotisserie duck. Sophie Banh ensures the food remains great, while brother Eric keeps things of the moment, from adding stylish covered and heated patios to installing a formidable pastry program. Ba Bar Green, a takeout window on the South Lake Union location, serves an entirely vegan menu.

Eric and Sophie Banh’s pair of elegant Vietnamese restaurants still sparkle as they did when the first Monsoon wowed the city in 1999. The original location on 19th and its Bellevue spin-off each retain their own personas, but both nail consistency—in the warm service, the grilled beef lá lốt, drunken chicken, and clay pot catfish, and the allure of weekend dim sum brunch. Beverage director Jon Christiansen ensures cocktails are on point, and the Seattle rooftop remains one of the town’s best, most secluded patios.  

It all began with an unassuming counter on Westlake, handing satisfying pho and vermicelli bowls topped with grilled organic meat out of the walkup window. If this formula was a lock for Amazon lunchers, it has proved even more successful with three subsequent locations that offer actual seating and an entire wall of automated pour-it-yourself beer taps.