As a Seattle institution, the Pike Place Market evolves but doesn't really change. The coffee shop called Counter Intelligence has been gone for over a decade, though the sign still hangs over the bar at the remodeled and expanded Matt's In the Market, three times the size it used to be, but no less cozy. For that matter, Matt Janke himself moved on a couple of months ago, leaving the place to his business......

Last night, Seattlest and friends—up for a light dinner and a few glasses of wine—discovered that West Seattle’s cozy, just-down-the-street Blackbird Bistro is, as of this week, shuttered. (No more half-price-bottle Tuesdays!) A note on the door and papered windows cited a sale of the curvy space and promised the new owners will not disappoint. (As usual, West Seattle Blog knew this was coming and we didn’t.) Of some consolation: The Bohemian, new on the......

COME ON AND SAFARI WITH ME: Seattlest's first concert of note was the Beach Boys at the Brevard County Fair in Central Florida. We walked into a trash can, and somehow that's the part of the night we most remember. John Stamos was there playing the bongos. Otherwise, we couldn't really tell you much about the show. That was 20 years ago. So, we have to kind of Salute the Boys (sans Brian Wilson) for......

Seahawks Truck courtesy of Seattlest Flickr user Bernzilla It took us almost four years to get the nerve up to dine at Fisher Plaza’s Sport restaurant. Any bar that close to Steve Pool and Fox Radio gives us pause. The fact that ABC has random video cameras hanging from the ceiling didn’t help either. Sport subscribes to the Fox Sports Grill theory that any modern sports bar worth its weight in jojos must have an......

A while back, we mentioned that Trace Lofts on 12th Ave would soon be home to the unfortunately named "Mexican-inspired" restaurant Barrio. Well, don't worry Eastside, you're getting a ghetto too! Purple Cafe and Wine Bar owners Larry and Tabitha Kurofsky have announced that they'll be opening a second Barrio in downtown Bellevue sometime next year.......

Confluence of Apple and local tech talent: Seattle startup UrbanSpoon (a restaurant review site with Yelp-like feedback features, but for serious foodies) has written a free app for the new iPhone. Says co-founder Ethan Lowry: "When Apple announced that they were going to allow third parties to write apps for the iPhone, we applied, and they accepted." How does it work? Part magic eight ball, part slot machine: you shake the phone, and it......

We do love us some bar food. French fries, burgers (veggie ones anyway), fish 'n' chips. Man, we could live on that stuff and often think of the Albert Brooks comedy Defending Your Life when we allow ourselves to indulge, because he’s told that, while waiting to defend his life, he can do whatever he wants and not worry about the health consequences. We're pretty sure that’s the reason we're hoping the afterlife mirrors that......

It’s a new month, and that means a new dining promotion around town. Returning is New Urban Eats, featuring some of the relative newbie restaurants in and around the Seattle area. For $30, you’ll enjoy three courses—a choice of appetizer, entrée, and dessert from a fixed-price menu. Participating restaurants: 94 Stewart, Beato Food & Wine, Betty, Coupage, Cremant, Crush, Cucina De-Ra, Divine, Enotria, Iris Grill, Kurrent, Lucia, Moxie, 0/8 Seafood Grill, Opal, Portage, Qube,......

For two days earlier this week, over 10,000 restaurateurs swarmed into the Convention Center, where some 500 exhibitors at the Northwest Foodservice Show were offering samples (deep-fried churros, prepackaged burgers, imported desserts), showing off new equipment and point-of-sale systems, offering consulting services. Keynote address from Anthony Anton, CEO of the Washington Restaurant Association, who took us on a quick tour to show off ecologically correct green packaging (forks made of cornstarch). "We have to get......

Damn you, Cafe Stellina. In the year and a half the restaurant's been open in its new space (the Piston & Ring Building, the same as La Spiga, on 12th Ave just before Union), their business hours have thwarted our attempts to eat there on at least five occasions. For a while, they were open for brunch on Saturday but not Sunday, so the few times we stopped by on Sunday, the doors were......

First there was the 25 for $25. That became 30 for $30. (Okay, it’s actually called Dine Around Seattle, and you can cash in on it through the end of this month.) Then came another 30 for $30 called New Urban Eats, featuring newly opened restaurants. That will return in May. But between now and then comes an all-new 25 for $25 known as Seasoned Seattle. Throughout the month of April, choose a restaurant, and......

It was recently brought to our attention that Top Chef Zoi—one half of this season's lesbian couple, both of whom made it on the show—is the daughter of one of our former roommate's friends. We don't know her, but we recall her mom as being super cool. Zoi was born and raised in Seattle, but now lives in San Francisco with her fellow contestant/girlfriend Jen. She's a restaurant consultant who, according to her bio, has......

JAZZ: Dr. John kicks off a 6-night run at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, giving audiences the benefit of a life studded with "troubles at home." Singing about New Orleans before, during, and after it was cool, he created a musical love letter to the city of New Orleans in 2004, "N’awlinz Dis Dat or D’udda," and won an award from the Académie Charles Cros at their 57th awards ceremony. He may be most famous as......

Do not be surprised to see a $1 suggested donation for tap water on your restaurant bill if you dine out from March 16 to March 22. During this week in March, restaurants around the nation will ask patrons to donate the price of their tap water to support UNICEF’s Tap Project, which provides clean drinking water for children in need. One dollar affords 40 days of clean drinking water for a child –......

Maybe when your club is as steeped in musical history and genetically bound to its host city as the Crocodile Cafe, explaining a sudden shut-down is embarrassing. Maybe a public statement is too daunting a task. Maybe a background in law teaches you to keep your mouth shut. Whatever the reason, Stephanie Dorgan could pick up some PR tips from Matt Feigenbaum, owner of Bellingham's just put-to-rest Nightlight Lounge. Feigenbaum sent a 1500-word "formal......

You know how sometimes it seems like you read about the same damn thing every time you turn around? Like Britney. Or Ron Paul. Or the Sonics. It's going to happen again this week, and the name you'll be hearing is Txori. (Think "chirp," like a birdie.) It's the new Basque café (more accurately, a pintxos bar) in Belltown owned by Joseba Jimenez de Jimenez and his wife, Carolin Messier de Jimenez, the couple who......

On Saturday we will be in a land where betting on sports is not only legal, they reward you with free drinks for doing so. We'll be placing some money on the Seahawks, with the understanding that if they lose we are out both happiness and money. Losing bets never has a reward, except in the case of the chefs of Lambeau and Qwest Field. Wouldn’t you know that Levy Restaurants is in charge of......

There they were last night, perched at the counter at Steelhead Diner, enjoying a glass of bubbly and gossiping with the chef: Jon Rowley and his wife, Kate McDermott, quietly celebrating their appearance in the new issue of Saveur. The least ostentatious of Seattle's food stars, Rowley is probably the most influential. He's the oyster guru, the peach guru, and above all the salmon guru. No one in town has done more to change the......

When traveling the country and trying to avoid the Cheesecake Factories, Cracker Barrels and Claim Jumpers that clog the arteries, we get excited whenever we see a Martin Luther King street exit. The same can be said for exit 157 off I-5 in Seattle, where, just to the north, you’ll find a diversity of delicious restaurants. But things are changing there before our eyes. We headed down recently for some bahn beo chen at Huong......

Are food safety and food tasty mutually exclusive goals? You have to ask after both Zesto's and Wild Ginger show up on the P-I's list of Seattle's dirtiest restaurants. Zesto's, the venerable burger joint of 15th N.W. and 65th, has the most "red critical" violations of any restaurant in Seattle this year: 15. Frankly, if it takes 15 red critical violations to get the yumminess into their burgers and shakes, we will assume the risk.......

You recall the other day we were mad as hell at the Washington State Ferries for running their boats until they rusted through, leaving everyone high and dry while new ones can be built. WSF is still dead to us, but Governor Gregoire could make our "holiday card" list if she keeps it up. First the viaduct course correction, now she's scrounged up $100 million to pay for three new ferries. Budget, schmudget! She's......

Realizing we’re in the midst of the “R” months, we had a sudden craving for happy hour oysters. But where? Recalling a recent review, we Googled “shucker's happy hour oysters” and quickly jumped on a bus after reading the first result: a June reprint of a 2006 rave in the Seattle Weekly about Shucker's fifty-cent oysters, two-dollar margaritas, and free parmesan crisps. We lost on almost all three accounts. Oysters had doubled to a dollar......

Braiden Rex-Johnson's new book, Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining, is a fine complement to Kurt Dammeier's Pure Flavor (reviewed by Seattlest back in August). Affectionate portraits of leading players: wine makers Bob Betz Kay Simon, Harry McWatters; unique restaurants, cooking techniques, recipes. Rex-Johnson, a familiar name whose previous books include the iconic Pike Place Market Cookbook, writes a food & wine column for Wine Press Northwest and served as food editor at Seattle Homes &......

Why do food writers go apeshit every time they see a fucking insect? Popular blogger named Adam Roberts, aka The Amateur Gourmet, knows his limits. Couple of weeks ago he admitted he's not qualified to review restaurants (would that the Pee Eye's Leslie Kelly would do the same). Today, preparing dinner at home, he's freaked out to find an bug in his arugula. Oh, Adam! It's organic arugula, hence no pesticides, and that tiny critter's......

Baby, it’s getting cold outside. Not that we need that excuse, but the nip in the air has us craving something volcanic. Time for some soon-doo-boo chigae. Head north on 99, and you’ll start hitting some Korean restaurants at the upper reaches of the city limits. Many are mediocre, while one is great for grilled meats, but continue on to our prime pick for a special soup that’ll cure the winter blues. Destination: Hoosoonyi, where......

Our favorite local food site has been doing some thinking about politics and the way people in different cities eat and vote. They divided the number of steak restaurants by the number of sushi restaurants in a given city to come up with a "Steak/Sushi Index." Seattle's SSI, for example is 0.75, indicating that we eat more sushi than steak; the SSI of Dallas, TX is 3.01 indicating a preference for steak. Urbanspoon has been......

Outfit called Not For Tourists has just published a guide to Seattle. It's a handsome book, looks just like Moleskine journal, complete with oilcloth cover, fat elastic closure, gorgeous paper. The Seattle version is tenth in a series, cobbled together by a design staff in faraway Noo Yawk with input by a locally based "city editor" named Fred Beldin, who contributes occasional music reviews to The Stranger. NFT Seattle starts out with a grid of......

Our country is in restaurant danger. In many parts of America, pizza is Pizza Hut, Mexican food is Taco Bell, and chicken is Kentucky-fried. YUM. That’s not praise, but the stock symbol of Tricon Global Restaurants, which represents that trio and is trying to reintroduce Taco Bell into Mexico after failure the first time. (Will renaming the tacos “tacostadas” and adding French fries to the menu add to the Americana appeal?) For many Americans, cheesecake......

Stand at the corner of First and Pike, and you almost hear the thunder of Seattle's hotel wars, the howitzers of the future as they battle for attention in the trades, the travel mags, the lifestyle glossies. First into battle: a new Four Seasons, across the street from the downtown Art Museum: 21 stories, 149 hotel rooms, 36 residential condos, opening 2008. If your memory goes back more than two years, you'll recall that Four......

We really hesitate to head out for curry, as it’s a staple in our cooking repertoire – sort of our emergency food. But when we found ourselves at Racha recently, we decided to give the exotic sounding Jungle Curry a try. It’s not that it was bad… we just don’t get it. A small sampling of vegetables along with some slices of pork (our choice of meat) cooked in a curry paste for $12.50. (Prawns......