Seattle’s Best Lunch Spots
Plenty of great lunches are portable. But some days call for tables and chairs, metal utensils, and drinks that get refilled. As always, restaurants’ hours are a moving target, so it’s a good idea to check with an individual establishment before you plan your next vital business lunch or covert midday friend hang.
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North End | City Center | South End (and West Seattle) | Eastside
Lunch in North Seattle
The Whale Wins
Wallingford
These days, Whale Wins operates as a market and all-day cafe, where you order at the counter and dine on sardines on toast, chicken liver pate, or a pristine seasonal salad. The dining room and small, semi-covered patio, shielded from Stone Way traffic, feel equally serene and a Renee Erickson restaurant will never judge you for ordering a little wine with lunch.
Local Tide
Fremont
The famed crab roll is only available on weekends, which means weekday lunch is wide open for the salmon sandwich, rockfish banh mi, and salads and bowls centered on ludicrously fresh Northwest fish. Local Tide is kind of a seafood restaurant, kind of a sandwich shop, but the food is entirely stunning. For more liquid lunches, the Aslan Brewing taproom next door lets you order from Local Tide’s menu and has a pass-through window into its kitchen.
Tivoli
Fremont
The owners of Post Alley Pizza (one a partner in Saint Bread) have expanded their talents to a large, windowy spot on North 34th Street. The pizza—a little New York, a little bit Naples—comes as whole 16-inch pies or slices. Toppings are classic…ish: pesto, a white veggie pie, an Amatriciana-inspired version with chunks of rich guanciale. The seasonal salads and focaccia sandwich could hold their own at any high-end bistro, and yet they feel right at home next to a slice of pepperoni topped with hot honey.
Xi'an Noodles
University District, Bellevue, Westlake
Lily Wu’s original noodle shop on the Ave looks more polished than it did in the early days, thanks to a dining room overhaul. What hasn’t changed: those skeins of biang biang noodles, named for the sound that happens when chefs slap long strands of dough against a counter, creating the fissures that lead to those wide, perfectly chewy ribbons, the specialty of the northwest Chinese city of Xi’an. The newest outpost offers these same noodle-based charms in downtown Bellevue, while the Westlake Center location is more of a food court setting.
Kin Len Thai Night Bites
Fremont
It always feels like last call in this warren of dining rooms, festooned with banners, decorative baskets, and all manner of Bangkok ephemera. But the lunch menu lets you explore some exacting, ebullient Thai dishes by the light of day. The enormous menu spans everything from fried banana blossoms to kra prao (a basil-heavy stir fry), clay pots, and noodle dishes. (Kin Len’s sibling, Isarn Thai Soul Kitchen, serves similarly great Thai lunch in Ravenna, Kirkland, Lynwood, and Queen Anne.)
Asadero Ballard
Ballard
Pestle Rock
Ballard
This many-textured dining room on Ballard’s main drag preaches the pungent, spicy gospel of Thailand’s Isan region, using high-quality proteins, like a nam tok meat salad made extra savory with boar collar, or deceptively fiery Thai sausages. It's hard to narrow things down on a menu full of curries, stir frys and tossed dishes like larb or yum kao tod (aka crispy rice salad) but the soups deserve special attention.
Layers Sandwich Co.
Greenlake
What was once the town’s most sought-after food truck is now an immensely popular sandwich shop near Green Lake. These are sandwiches designed with all the care of a geometric proof, though none of the straight lines and restrained proportions. Favorites like the crispy pork belly, the meatball, or the tuna melt (with a layer of potato chips) sell out fast on weekends, so weekday lunch is a more sedate opportunity to grab a seat and appreciate how great the soups and salads are, too.
Lunch in Central Seattle
Kilig
Chinatown–International District
Melissa Miranda’s new fast-casual spot celebrates bulalo, the beef shank soup from the Philippines. Each bowl is a cornucopia—beef shank, corn cob, tender potatoes, and cabbage, bobbing in a clear, bright broth made excellent with a few cheffy techniques. There are lots of other things to celebrate on Kilig’s menu, like brisk sinigang chicken wings, Miranda's delicate lumpia, and a noodle dish that brings together the best qualities of kare kare and dan dan. The drink list (both alcoholic and non) is a fantastic companion to all of it.
A+ Hong Kong Restaurant
Chinatown–International District
E-Jae Pak Mor
Chinatown–International District
A frenetically colorful fast-casual spot next to Uwajimaya serves delicate rice flour dumplings known as pak mor—a rarity outside Thailand because they’re so darn hard to make. These are assuredly worth investigating, but the non-dumpling options on the menu are just as exciting: spicy beef or sweet and sour noodle soups, marinated pork with rice noodles, khao mun gai, and a khao soi for the ages. Since it’s lunch, don’t miss the iced teas.
Kedai Makan
Capitol Hill
New owners moved the fiercely beloved Malaysian to a more easterly corner of Capitol Hill and added lunch service. The founders handed over the original recipes and conducted plenty of training sessions, so classic dishes like roti jala feel like reasonable facsimiles of the original. A waitlist app also helps manage the queue.
Le Pichet
Pike Place Market
It’s a pathologically good Parisian bistro, but also a time-tested Seattle classic. Here classics spark with nonchalant finesse : a bibb lettuce and hazelnut salad, one of the best charcuterie boards in the city. Pichet’s hallowed roast chicken isn’t available at lunch, but the afternoon array of baguette sandwiches, gratins, bisque, and egg plates feels properly French, with a dash of Pike Place Market.
The Boat
LITTLE SAIGON/CHINATOWN–INTERNATIONAL DISTRICT
The dinghy-shaped building that once housed the original Pho Bac is now an all-day restaurant that serves a single dish: Com ga mam toi is a garlic-crusted half chicken, fried crisp and sticky with fish sauce. It comes with rice or a sidecar of noodle soup and a great little salad. While the food menu is hyper-focused, the drinks menu is surprisingly broad, filled with cocktails, Vietnamese iced coffee, and a memorable pandan iced tea. It’s also perfectly okay to come just for the pandan dessert waffles.
Taurus Ox
Capitol Hill
Now ensconced in a new location on 19th Avenue East (the former Vios), Taurus Ox is bigger, more mellow, and open for lunch. The Lao dishes remain, thankfully, the same: nam khao crispy rice salad, bowls of curry, sticky rice and sausage that snaps with lemongrass. The burger, topped with house-cured pork jowl and the condiment jaew, is so good it spun off its own counter over on Madison.
Fat's Chicken and Waffles
Central District
Fogón Cocina Mexicana
Capitol Hill
Serious Pie
Belltown
Tom Douglas’s former Dahlia Lounge is now HQ for Serious Pie and its oval pizzas—crackling, puffed crusts topped with Northwest-friendly combos like potatoes, rosemary, and pecorino (even better if you add lardo). The other end of the room holds an enlarged Dahlia Bakery pastry counter for all your mochi doughnut and coconut cream pie needs.
Damn the Weather
Pioneer Square
This classic old-brick bar (aka no minors) is technically a cocktail spot, but the food menu matches the drinks for care and intrigue. The menu reads like upscale bar fare—a fried chicken sandwich, a burger, duck fat frites—but housemade pasta (with garlic scapes, apples, and pimento cheese) and a salad of spicy pork and kale hint that the kitchen knows its stuff. Interbay sibling Champagne Diner also comes in handy for lunch.
Matt's in the Market
Pike Place Market
It’s a local institution for a reason, tucked up on the second floor of Pike Place Market. And while chef Matt Fortner (his first name a happy coincidence) puts on a spectacular seasonal dinner, the daytime menu honors the restaurant’s lunch-counter origins. The cornmeal crusted catfish sandwich is a staple, but even the housemade chips with bacon and onion dip deliver the same level of care.
Lunch in South Seattle
Ciudad
Georgetown
The large open grill drives a menu of impeccable meats by the pound. Diners can tailor their own platters with various sauces and house flatbread, then round things out with small plates that reinforce the broadly Mediterranean flavors, and the commitment to seasonal produce. It’s visceral, it’s elegant, it’s unlike any other place in Seattle.
Jackalope
Columbia City
Milk Drunk
Beacon Hill
Bopbox
Georgetown
Arthur's
Admiral/West Seattle
Sure, the breakfast menu’s great, but Admiral’s all-day cafe shines just as bright when benedicts and bacon give way to trout salad, bacon sandwiches, and fried cheese curds. Okay, fine, this Australian-inspired spot also serves its breakfast menu all day, just another inducement to visit its white-tiled dining room filled with natural light and a nursery’s worth of plants.
Best Lunch in Bellevue and the Eastside
Carmine's
Bellevue
Dough Zone Dumpling House
Various locations
Japonessa Sushi Cocina
downtown bellevue
Mama's Kitchen
Bellevue/Factoria
Supreme Dumplings
Bellevue, Kirkland
Kathakali
Kirkland
Kobuta and Ookami
Redmond, Capitol Hill
The owners of Thai 65 Cafe in Redmond channeled their off-hours katsu fandom into a hangout that’s all about cutlets (pork, fancier pork, jidori chicken, even cheese). Expert frying delivers radio static crunch levels. Chef Don Tandavanitj drew from Tokyo tradition, Vancouver’s izakaya scene, and his own brain. The result: katsu in darkly chocolate curry or bubbling nabe, even just unadorned and glorious. The showstopper channels chicken parm, swathed in tomato miso sauce and hiding beneath a pile of grated parmesan that demands its own snow shovel. Both locations keep very, very busy.