Tasty Trends and Fusty Fads

The many meals I eat to compile guides to the city’s 50 best restaurants, best new restaurants, and top tasting menus for $100 or less give me a lot of time to notice the tiny details that can set a restaurant apart and the little patterns that emerge at any given moment. Some of these trends deserve to be served up to customers on a silver platter; others leave a bad taste in my mouth. Take a nibble of this season’s trends, listed from sweet to sour.

Expanding Coffee Geography

Bonhomie Coffee Bar brings Haitian brews to pop-ups around the city, Ballard’s Nudibranch imports its own Thai coffee (online only as they seek a location), and Vietnamese coffee shops have gone from rare to legion in the last five years.

Dimples and Stacks

Sandwiches all come on focaccia now, including at Bottega Gabriele, one of our best new restaurants of the year, Heavy Restaurant Group’s Hushy’s Sandwiches, and Greenwood’s Fortuna Bottega. (Technically Fortuna Bottega uses schiacciata, not focaccia—a very similar dimpled bread. Don’t @ us.)

Growing Families

Bars and breweries are seeing the light of—or cash in—family friendliness and opening an all-ages sequel to their 21+ original. See: Cloudburst Brewing, Holy Mountain Brewing, Radiator Whiskey.

Feeling Green

Kale is like muscles after the first day of ski season—much improved by a massage. A few seconds of rubbing with some salt or oil lets it relax into the salad, but too many places skip this step.

Unsanctioned Drive-Ins

The most unfortunate recent trend in restaurants seems to be cars. Literally, in restaurants—Chiang’s Gourmet and Mioposto both got hit this summer. 

Published in the Best New Restaurants issue of Seattle Met.