The new Zagat is out, at least the one "devoted to Seattle" restaurants. And with "all due respect" to "local editor" Alicia Comstock Arter (who also contributes to Northwest Palate), it's "a freakin mess." The trouble, "brewing for years," is that the "capsule reviews" take isolated "nouns and adjectives" from "reader comments" and string them together to make "nonsensical" and "often inaccurate" profiles. It's a Fox News approach to dining, all pseudo-oracular, disjointed headlines with......

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.......

We usually run from restaurants that have pictures on the menu. They remind us of steakhouse chains from our childhoods or Chinese takeout places where the food tastes like the box in which it’s packaged. But we find endless delight in staring at Malay Satay Hut’s full-color menu. If we could resist distraction, we’d laminate our takeout copy and hang it on the wall. Explore the whole menu. Everything’s great, except for dessert, which we......