Lifestyle

Anchovies and SaltA lavish dining room on the southernmost shore of Lake Washington, Anchovies and Salt specializes in upscale renditions of regional (and less common) Vietnamese dishes, with a strong oyster game to match. Oysters here are available raw or—speaking of less common — grilled. When served raw, they’re an assortment of Taylor Shellfish Kumamotos, Shigokus, Virginicas, and Fat Bastards, along with a bright Vietnam-evoking mignonette containing calamansi, lemon, and Vietnamese coriander. The grilled oysters are fat bastards made more savory with garlic crisp, cilantro-citrus fish sauce, and green onions.Pro tip: The closest parking is a choice between two pay/garage situations, but you can park for free at the adjacent Coulon Beach Park. Just be aware of when the park closes — hours vary throughout the year.Mark DeJoy

Seattle Seahawks fans are blessed. Not only do they root for a team that is never boring, they also get to take advantage of one of the country’s best stadium district dining scenes. Lumen Field is right next to downtown Seattle, unlike all those NFL stadiums that are millions of miles away from their respective cities. (Just where is “Foxboro, Massachusetts” anyway?) So there’s a tailgating scene outside Lumen, but you don’t have to eat and drink out of the trunk of your car if that doesn’t sound appealing to you. In fact, there are tons of public transportation options that get you to Lumen, so you don’t need to drive at all — what a concept!But where do you eat after you go inside the stadium? That’s what we’re here to help you with. Here are our recommendations for food at Seahawks home games for the 2025 season (note that you have to have access to the Club Level to eat at some of these stands):New to Lumen Field for 2025Catfish from Legion at Lumen Field. Harry CheadleLegion [Club Level Sections 204 and 240]A couple years ago, Seahawks legends Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor opened an upscale sports bar called Legion (as in Of Boom), and now they’ve brought some of the food over to their old stomping ground. The smash burger here (also available at Bam Bam Smash Burger) is a solid option if you need meat, but the fried catfish is the best new menu item in the whole stadium. The fish is crispy on the outside and comfortingly soft inside, and the corn bread with hot honey that accompanies it is just a little sweet.Chung Chun [Section 223]Another outside vendor that’s new to Lumen this year is Chung Chun, which serves Korean-style rice dogs and mochi doughnuts. A rice dog is like a corn dog, except the dog is coated in rice flour and sometimes there’s cheese on the inside along with the sausage. In the stadium context, it’s a fun change-up, and the coating lends the exterior some salty-sweet notes. But the real winner here is the doughnuts, which like all mochi doughnuts are chewier than their “normal” cousins and here are topped with plenty of frosting, cookie crumbles, and so on. It’s a great option to fuel your cheering if you aren’t fueled by Rainier.Lune [Section 105]For those who want brunchy fare for 1 p.m. kickoffs, check out this stand inside the International Eats area, which is serving an array of mini pancakes, plus Dubai chocolate strawberry cups (how trendy!). You can also get energy drinks here — again, a good pick-me-up option if you aren’t fueled by Rainier.The Flaming Hot Cheeto Chicken Tenders at Big Walt’s. Harry CheadleFlaming Hot Cheetos Tenders at Big Walt’s Kitchen [Sections 126 and 321; Club Level Sections 214 and 230]Walter Jones is synonymous with reliability and respectability, but this season his eponymous concession stand is serving… chicken covered with spicy, bright-red Cheeto powder? Say it ain’t so, Walt! It’s by far the most eccentric food item in the stadium, and yet it sort of works because the chicken inside the Cheeto coating is moist and satisfying. To get to that chicken, though, you have to bite through a thick layer of spicy-sweet dust with the texture of children’s breakfast cereal. It’s reminiscent of the spicy corn dog at T-Mobile Park — can anyone stop this trend before this spicy dust breaks containment and appears on menus in Pioneer Square?Tierra Madre [Section 116]You might think that a football stadium wouldn’t have many vegan options, and you’d be right. But if you’re a plant-based 12 who gets a mid-game craving, you can mosey over to this stand for some esquites, where the corn is drizzled with (vegan) chili-lime aioli, giving it a pleasant pickly flavor. (Even if you’re hungry, the jackfruit nachos aren’t worth it; go with the esquites.)Kings Hawaiian [Sections 120, 131, 305, and 335]A lot of the food at Lumen is barbecue-adjacent, and the sandwiches here follow that trend, albeit with the twist of being served on Kings Hawaiian rolls. This is not the best or most distinctive food in the stadium, but will fill you up.Korean BBQ Steak Sandwich at Hometaste Advantage [Section 311]Of all the meat sandwiches we tried at the Lumen preseason tasting event (and there were a lot), this one stood out for its tender bulgolgi beef, its gochujang spice, and lightly pickled vegetables. If you’re craving something big and meaty and find yourself in the 300s, check it out.Returning FavoritesSample bowls of birria ramen from Bar Dojo. Harry ChealdeBar Dojo [Club Level sections 208 and 236]This Edmonds restaurant wins the “wait, you can get that at an NFL game?” award with its birria ramen and poke nachos, a dish that pairs sashimi-grade tuna with a bunch of toppings and wonton chips — we’ll take that over any of the “traditional” nacho offerings in the stadium. Also on the menu are xiao long bao from local frozen dumpling company MiLa.Bam Bam Smash Burger [Section 122]Here’s another place to get those Legion smash burgers, along with Cajun fries and fried shrimp. If you’re here, check out the Seattle Smash Burger, which is a take on a Seattle dog — burger patties, white American cheese, jalapeño cream cheese, and grilled onions. It’s rich and powerful with plenty of heat thanks to that jalapeño.Sausage Carts [Sections 107, 138, 306, and 334]Don’t be fooled by this nondescript name — these stands serve some creative takes on the classic stadium hot dog. Our favorite last year was a footlong dog topped with braised short rib, crispy onions, and pickled shimeji mushrooms, which imparted a woodsy, slightly acidic tang that livens up what is basically a big ole pile of meat.The footlong hot dog. Harry CheadleTutta Bella Neapolitan Pizza [Sections 107 and 137]Wood-fired pizza at a stadium? Eh, sort of — the pies are parbaked and then taken to Lumen, but they still have a chewiness to their crusts that is pretty, pretty good. (It also serves salads and tiramisu.) It’s the kind of food that’s kid- and adult-friendly. Conveniently, these stands feature Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, cutting down on lines.Pacific Northwest Kitchen [Section 113]This stand is heavy on the cheese, serving nachos along with mac and cheese, including one vegan option. But it’s worth including because it’s also offering banh mi courtesy of popular local shop Saigon Drip Cafe.

Xiaoli (Lily) Wu grew up in a small village near Songyuan in northeastern China’s Jilin province. Wu describes it as a poor area with no rice production. Any wheat was sold to make money, so corn powder played a prominent role in the diet. The roads were dirt. “One day I walked two miles and saw my first paved road and then saw a car,” she recalls, still with a sense of astonishment. “It made me want to get one, and made me want to make money to change my family’s life.”Wu’s parents sent her to middle school in Beijing to get a better education. The trip marked her first time on a bus. At lunch, she ate Xi’an-style biang biang noodles for the first time — long, wide, at once silky and chewy. She loved them, but with limited money necessitating meals at the school’s cafeteria, those noodles would be a constant craving too luxurious to afford.Decades later, she’s made those noodles the center of her professional life. She opened Xi’an Noodles in 2016 in the University District and has since opened two more locations to make a mini chain. She now has a seafood restaurant called Happy Crab in Auburn and soon will open her most ambitious project — a massive new Happy Crab on the Ballard waterfront where Anthony’s used to be. Wu built up this portfolio of businesses the same way she makes her noodles: from scratch.The inside of Happy Crab in Ballard. Brooke FittsShe dreamed of living in America and managed to get a student visa and funding in 2006. She settled in Flushing, New York, and took English lessons in Brooklyn. In 2010, she moved to Seattle, working up to 15 hours a day as a housekeeper at hotels to make a living. Missing her beloved biang biang noodles, she took a leap of faith and traveled to Xi’an to learn how to make them. She eventually gave her the proper technique for stretching and thwacking the dough (made with high-gluten flour) to get the noodles’ distinctive texture.In 2014 she opened her first venture, QQ Mini Hot Pot, inside the Korean grocery store Woori Market in the U District. This was the first restaurant in the area to serve malatang — a personalized hot pot in which diners choose the ingredients that go in a numbing (ma) and spicy (la) broth. “Malatang is pretty easy to prepare in just putting everything together,” Wu explains, “But it gave me the chance to perfect the art of making biang biang noodles and also liang pi (another noodle dish from Shaanxi province).”A sign at the entrace to Happy Crab. Brooke FittsUnfortunately, Woori closed about a year later, forcing Wu back to the housekeeping world until she caught a break, finding funding to open Xi’an Noodles just a few blocks north of her previous location on University Way. Wu was heavily involved in the physical and mental labor of building out the restaurant and her business. “I had no blueprint. Just a rolling pin and perseverance, working constantly, including all the holidays,” Wu recalls. “I appreciated all the experiences, however hard, in giving birth to my baby. I learned so much. Life is about enrichment.”Positive reviews made Xi’an Noodles a popular place, and after entertaining offers to expand elsewhere, she opened her second location at Westlake Center in September 2019 — just months before the start of the COVID pandemic. Wu remained undaunted. “Life hits us with challenges, but like Confucius taught, we should face our challenges, learn from them, and find opportunity with every crisis,” she says. “I tried to take care of myself during COVID, and I used the time of closure as a chance to remodel the University District restaurant.”An outside table at Happy Crab. Brooke FittsWu would eventually open a third Xi’an Noodles in Bellevue, in 2022. About the same time, though, she conceived another restaurant idea, again inspired by food she enjoyed in China. “There’s a lot of mala crawfish in China. And I noticed Cajun seafood becoming popular in California and elsewhere,” she explains. “I thought to myself, why not create something using ingredients I love, like butter crab over hand-pulled noodles? Cajun meets Chinese could be a rethinking of what Chinese-American cuisine can be.” And thus the idea of Happy Crab came about.She didn’t even start tinkering with a recipe until she found a space in Auburn (“I needed a standalone building with a parking lot”) to lease. During physical construction of the restaurant, she finally started experimenting in the developing kitchen. “After 10 years in the restaurant business, I was confident I could create the right recipes. I have no fear,” Wu says.Happy Crab opened in October 2024. But even as the Auburn location launched, Wu envisioned a Happy Crab restaurant in Seattle, wanting a landmark location for her higher-end dining concept. Her holiday gift arrived on Christmas Day in 2024 when she signed a lease for the former Anthony’s Homeport space on the waterfront at Shilshole Bay in Ballard.Wu says that Seaview will have a more expanded menu than Auburn. For example, given the popularity of xiao long bao (soup dumplings), she plans to introduce ma la dumplings that are both numbing and spicy. She’s also planning to introduce some seafood soup dumplings.A detail of one of the tables at Happy Crab. Brooke FittsAt the same time, with years of experience under her belt, Wu now hopes to help others in the industry. She wants Seaview to provide a place for up-and-coming chefs to show off their talent, planning Resident Chef Nights in which they can create other dishes for the menu on their chosen night. “This can change other people’s lives,” she says. There’s talk of a piano and an open mike as well.But first and foremost, Wu wants her new restaurant to be accessible and affordable—and not a place just for the wealthy to eat. “I intend to offer delicious dishes at a reasonable price so that everyone can come regardless of their income,” she says. “I come from modesty and understand struggle. Now I want to create a place where anyone can come to enjoy the view, enjoy the sea breeze, enjoy the sunset, and enjoy seafood and noodles. I want everyone to come to Happy Crab and be happy.”

You can ask acclaimed chef Makini Howell to make roasted yam–ginger soup with toasted pistachio dust. You can ask her to make an oyster mushroom po’ boy sandwich. You can even ask her to whip up some of her iconic Mac & Yease.But please don’t ask her to cook chicken.“I have no idea,” Howell said of her recent chicken-cooking discoveries while preparing a tofu chorizo crumble taco at the cooking station in her Georgetown tofu factory. “It’s way harder to make tasty tofu than it is to make chicken. I just found that out. I was like, ‘That’s it? It’s done? Oh.’”Howell’s recent foray into the world of chicken cookery came courtesy of her desire to learn more about what makes it so delicious to meat-eaters and omnivores, something she’s never needed to understand in her personal life or culinary career so far.Makini Howell. Makini HowellA lifelong vegan — her mother is also a vegan restaurateur —, Howell is best known for Plum Bistro and its more casual offshoot, Plum Chopped, which brought creative and flavorful vegan food to Capitol Hill and acted as a cornerstone for a burgeoning vegan empire that at its height included cookbooks, a bakery, a burger truck, a dessert shop, and a world tour as Stevie Wonder’s personal chef.In early 2025, she announced that she was walking away from the restaurant business, shuttering Plum Bistro and Plum Chopped to give her full attention to her new tofu company, Makini’s.“The mission is authentic, good plant-based protein,” says Howell. “It’s made inside the city of Seattle. It’s hyperlocal. Can’t get more local unless you have chickens in your backyard.”There are sound financial reasons to enter the plant-based protein market, which was worth $8.1 billion in 2024 based on retail sales data. Making tofu is also a way for Howell to continue her mission of making vegan food so flavorful that even omnivores will crave it.Makini’s isn’t trying to follow in the footsteps of companies like Impossible Foods, which sells products that attempt to replicate meat.“We’re trying to make the most delicious tofu or the most delicious plant-based protein we can, but we’re not trying to be a burger,” says Ann Altman, Makini’s head of sales and marketing. “We’re not trying to be chicken. We’re not trying to be pork. We’re trying to be totally delicious and make you not miss the other thing, but we’re not trying to be the other thing.”To accomplish that goal, Howell quite literally scoured the globe to find the equipment she needed. To find a semi-automatic tofu machine that met her specific demands, Howell sourced it from Taiwan, where it was shipped in pieces and took several months to set up.“We’ve been making tofu since January,” said Altman as she and Howell walked me through their Rube Goldberg-esque tofu-making setup that begins with Charlie’s Produce-sourced organic and non-GMO soybeans arriving in tubs.Some of the equipment at the tofu factory Makini’sAfter a cooking process that includes soaking, swooshing, and slurry-making, the beans become a milk that could be the base for many products beyond tofu (“Makini has a lot of ideas, but right now we’re in the tofu phase,” says Altman). That milk coagulates, gets batched, and finally firms up. Industrial-strength pressers ensure that the tofu doesn’t need to be pressed at home (the bane of many vegetarians’ and vegans’ existences). From there, it’s cut into blocks, where it can remain as-is (what they’re calling “naked”) or get packed with some serious flavor.“Bad tofu can happen to good people,” says Howell. “We want to make sure it’s good tofu. We want to make sure our product is consistent. We want to make sure our product is flavorful. And that it’s something that when the consumer tries it, they’re like, ‘Oh, okay, I could be vegan if it tasted like this.’”While the seven flavors on Makini’s website “telegraphs our dreams, not our right now,” per Altman, they are presently making shiitake-ginger, smoked, tofustrami, and the chorizo crumbles, the latter of which are available as part of Evergreen’s Hot Grill Summer salad.All four products were also recently introduced at PCC Community Markets, where they’re being incorporated into various hot bar, cold bar, and pre-made products, including the iconic Steph’s Tofu dish, as well as being sold directly.The grocery chain jumped at the chance to work with Howell.“She’s just a wonderful person,” says Tracy Marik, who oversees several fresh food departments at PCC. “She’s passionate about food, she’s passionate about people, she embodies the values that PCC has around sustainability.”As for why their product is available in such limited spots, it’s because Makini’s is thinking much larger than farmers’ markets and pop-ups.“Makini has big aspirations, and we are at the very, very beginning,” says Altman. “It’s a new-to-world product. Yes, it’s tofu, but really what it is is delicious, flavored, clean protein.”How does it taste? That aforementioned chorizo crumble taco delivered on Howell’s promise to pack every bite with flavor. It may not have been actual meat, but as the red-stained oil dripped from the tortilla and the chewy, chili-powder-infused crumbles danced on my tongue, I thought that any meat-eater would be hard-pressed to find fault with the presentation or product.“That’s something that my dad understood,” Howell said. “He didn’t stop eating meat because he didn’t like meat. He stopped eating meat because he had another mission… He used to eat meat, and then he said, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can do this with tofu.”

Part of brunch’s appeal comes from its total superfluity. It’s not breakfast, it’s not lunch, and it’s rarely a wholesome, nutritious, or sober prospect. A reprieve from the rushed protein shakes and sad desk salads that fuel many a workweek, brunch provides the opportunity to sit and savor something unnecessary. At its worst, brunch is a dumbed-down, overpriced version of a restaurant’s regular menu. But there are loads of places in Seattle doing genuinely creative riffs on the brunch classics: Benedicts topped with braised duck and hoisin butter, Vietnamese-style chicken and waffles, and of course the Dutch baby, that oft-overlooked symbol of Seattle civic pride.In our August 2025 update, we’re saying goodbye to The Whale Wins, an outpost of the Renee Erickson empire which is closing permanently amid a tectonic shift at the celebrated restaurant group. We added a couple of local favorites with weekend specials worth lining up for, plus a newcomer to the North Seattle brunch scene. We also revisited a few places already on the list to make sure everything is current.Know of a spot that should be on our radar? Send us a tip by emailing seattle@eater.com.

This is a curated list of Seattle’s most notable and permanent restaurant and bar closures. See a closing we missed? Then drop us a line.CAPITOL HILL — Acclaimed Vietnamese-influenced restaurant Stateside and its sibling bar Foreign National both abruptly closed at the beginning of the month, after a decade in business. Owner Eric Johnson was fairly tight-lipped about what happened, giving no reasons in extremely short Instagram posts, but told Eater Seattle that the end of Stateside’s lease was what prompted the closure.CAPITOL HILL — Another particularly notable closure announcement came from Mamnoon, the flatbread-centric Middle Eastern restaurant that has become a cornerstone of the dining scene. It will close on September 14; co-owner Wassef Haroun told Eater Seattle broader economic factors (like Seattle’s recent slow growth) made the restaurant unsustainable. Haroun’s restaurant group, Mama, still operates Mbar and Mamnoon Street and it is making selling prepared foods in grocery stores a larger part of its business.ROOSEVELT — “Geeky third place” Distant Worlds Coffeehouse, which appealed to the overlapping sci-fi/fantasy/board game community, is closing at the end of the month. In a goodbye message, owner Rebecca SerVoss wrote, “You have sent us love and let us be part of your joys. We have been co-conspirators and celebrants and friends. ⁠But the sad reality is that we’ve been unable to negotiate a sustainable lease with the landlord. We tried.⁠”BALLARD — Sad news from Bickerson’s Brewhouse, courtesy of MyBallard: The brewery is closing its Ballard location on August 29 because co-owner Shaunn Siekawitch has been diagnosed with “advanced-stage cancer. ”We cannot continue to run two locations and make sure Shaunn has the attention to care she needs,” the owners wrote in an announcement. Bickerson’s Renton location will remain open.BELLEVUE — Just months after opening, SuperKim Khao Man Gai has shut down its restaurant in the Bellevue Towers development, reports Puget Sound Business Journal. This was originally the second location of SuperKim Crab House, but in May it became a chicken and rice–focused concept. “The company cited issues around the property’s infrastructure, particularly its all-electric kitchen configuration, as a reason for both closures,” the Journal writes. Electric kitchens produce lower carbon emissions that gas ones, but, as the Journal notes, restaurants believe electric stoves are slower and harder to use. The Pioneer Square SuperKim space will now incorporate the Bellevue concept, now called SuperKim Chicken House.BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — Acclaimed seafood restaurant Seabird is closing on September 28. Though it only opened in 2022, it made a big splash, netting a number of awards and accolades from local and national media for its inventive dishes and creative use of seaweed. Owner Brendan McGill — who operates several area restaurants under the Hitchcock Restaurant Group umbrella — told the Seattle Times that the restaurant was no longer viable during the slow, rainy winter months, when Bainbridge gets fewer visitors. He plans to open another restaurant in the space at some point.

At Eater Seattle, we have to eat out a lot — it’s right there in the website name, next to “Seattle.” Sometimes, this research shows up in the articles and maps we publish, but sometimes, we eat something so good that we have to tell everyone about it. This running monthly column is a place for us to share especially good dishes with you.Pike Place Market is full of same-y menus — a lot of the restaurants serve tourists, and tourists want seafood, ergo seafood flourishes. So it can take a lot to stand out from the crowd, but Matt’s in the Market accomplishes that. If you have a craving for a bowl of bivalves, check out Matt’s, which is really more “above” the market than “in” it. The broth is loaded with lemongrass and cilantro, which gives it an earthy, herbal flavor, and you get a lot of different textures from the chorizo, the crunchy croutons, and huge, creamy corona beans. Combine that with the waterfront views and you have yourself a luxurious lunch.I went to this upscale Scottish pub in Ballard — one of the city’s few Scottish eateries — to try the fish and chips, but once I saw haggis on the menu I had to order it. If you don’t know, haggis is a “savory pudding” made from offal and oats. It has an earthy, dark, slightly gamey flavor, and these croquettes are a great way to package that haggis-y goodness. The whiskey-mustard cream sauce didn’t add a lot, in my opinion, but these little guys didn’t need any sauce.It’s “little fried balls” month here at Eater Seattle! There are a couple things to know about this new takeout spot on Aurora near Green Lake: One is that it’s serving big portions of Southern food for under $20. And two is that one of your sides should definitely be the corn fritters, hot, slightly sweet balls of comfort that come loaded with whole corn kernels that are like buried treasures. Maybe two of your sides should be corn fritters.Mean Sandwich opened nine years ago, which makes it not quite old enough to be a revered local institution but also not quite new enough to qualify as “hot” anymore. It’s not newsworthy, it just makes incredible sandwiches. This po’ boy is a shining example of the form: pickly remoulade, crunchy fried oysters that are hot and meaty inside, and some spice from something — maybe the lemon pepper mayo? We should all be talking a lot more about Mean Sandwich, is what I’m saying.

Gordon Bowker, an entrepreneur most known for co-founding Starbucks but who also founded Redhook Brewing during a long and eventful career, has died at the age of 82, reports the Seattle Times.Bowker was a uniquely Seattle character. According to a history of Starbucks’ early years, he was born in Oakland, California, but after his father died in a World War II submarine, his mother moved them to Seattle to live with her parents, who were “Norwegian immigrants who had taken part in the Alaska gold rush before settling in Ballard.” He went to college at the University of San Francisco, where he met one of his future Starbucks co-founders, Jerry Baldwin, and then moved back to Seattle, where he worked as a cab driver, Underground Tour guide, and editor at the original Seattle magazine.In 1971, Baldwin, Bowker, and third co-founder Zev Siegl opened the first Starbucks location (Bowker came up with the name). It didn’t serve drinks but sold coffee beans sourced from Peet’s along with tea and spices. Initially, Bowker kept his day job at an ad agency while working in the shop on weekends. (He also earned some publicity by sending some free beans to a Seattle Times columnist.) Starbucks struggled throughout the ’70s, then, in 1982, it hired Howard Schultz as director of marketing. Schultz pushed the company to focus on selling espresso drinks, and, after briefly leaving to start another coffee company, bought Starbucks with the help of investors in 1987. (To this day, Schultz is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the founder of Starbucks.)In a 2008 interview with the Times, Bowker complained that people asked him too often about the founding of Starbucks. And he certainly did a lot more than just that. For years he was on the board of Peet’s, which Starbucks owned briefly in the ’80s. He encouraged the journalist David Brewster to start Seattle Weekly and wrote restaurant reviews for it under a pseudonym. And in 1981 he founded Redhook Brewery, one of the country’s first microbreweries.“In 1981, there was no roadmap, no playbook,” wrote Kendall Jones at the Washington Beer Blog. “The world was thoroughly dominated by the biggest beer companies, which were growing through mergers and acquisitions. Even regional breweries like Rainier were too small to survive and were gobbled up by bigger fish, which in turn were gobbled up by even bigger fish. But a few weirdly creative fish were hatching new ideas and swimming against the current.”Bowker is linked to another moment in Seattle beer history: Before starting Starbucks, he founded an advertising firm with Terry Hecker, and that firm went on to produce the delightfully weird Rainier Beer ads in the ’70s and ’80s that featured “herds” of “wild Rainiers,” aka huge beer bottles with legs. The commercials were so iconic that years later, they inspired a documentary.In the 2008 Times interview, Bowker attributed his success in part to a “contrarian” streak. He saw opportunities in fields where everybody else saw problems. He treasured the sensation of figuring out that “something’s been overlooked.”Baldwin told the Times that Bowker, who was a lifelong friend, “really was able to feel the pulse, or maybe the pre-pulse, of the zeitgeist of the moment. … He could see what was coming, and it was just part of his wiring. He wasn’t looking for it, it was just there.”He also may have had an instinct to be a little bit of what we would today call a troll. For many years (ending in 2012) Alaska Airlines handed out prayer cards with meals, a practice that struck Bowker as odd. He told the Times in 2008: “What’s the idea of putting a prayer on there? Please don’t crash? God help us, don’t crash?” So he read the prayers out loud.“I also was curious what kind of effect that would have,” he said. “The flight attendants didn’t like it at all.”

Mamnoon, the flagship of the Mama restaurant group, is closing after 12 years, ownership announced on Monday, August 25. Its last day of service will be Sunday, September 14.When owners Racha and Wassef Haroun opened Mamnoon in 2013, it was a celebration of the cuisines of Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, reflecting the Harouns’ backgrounds. They were first-time restaurant owners, but they created an instant hit. Seattle Met named it the restaurant of the year, praising its mana’eesh flatbreads, sayadieh (roasted halibut over smoked green wheat), and spicy-sweet muhammara spread. As the Harouns wrote in a goodbye letter posted to Instagram, Syria was consumed by civil war at the time, which meant “our family couldn’t travel back and mamnoon became our new haven — peering into the past and future— that couldn’t wait to welcome you into.”The Haroun family gradually expanded into a restaurant group that included the South Lake Union rooftop spot Mbar, the Eastside restaurant Hanoon, and a place next to the Amazon Spheres that has run through several names and concepts but won praise last year from the Seattle Times for its mashup of Lebanese and Mexican cuisines. But Mama group has shrunk in the last few months: Hanoon closed earlier this summer, and the Mexican influence is off the menu at the Amazon-adjacent restaurant, now called Mamnoon Street. Meanwhile, the company has pivoted to selling its mezze, sauces, and chips in upscale grocery stores in the Seattle area.The goodbye announcement said that “Mamnoon’s end is the rule rather than the exception in our business in Seattle,” a reference to the difficult economic climate for restaurants at the moment. There have been several notable closure announcements in the last couple of months, including Stateside and the Whale Wins. “A restaurant like mamnoon needs a healthy urban environment with diversity in all dimensions, density, spontaneity and predictability,” the owners wrote. “Alas, the last 2 years has seen scary declines in all of these, in addition to increasing costs.”Eater Seattle reached out to Wassef Haroun for more details about the reasons for the closure, but has not heard back.Mamnoon has hosted countless fundraisers and pop-ups over the years, including many that supported charitable efforts in the Harouns’ home region. In 2020, it raised money for victims of a massive explosion in Beirut, and more recently put on an event with local Palestinian American chef Nadia Tommalieh that supported the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.“It was important for us to connect Seattleites to the struggles of people in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine,” the Harouns wrote, “and connect our global communities to Seattle. And to be a part of a first wave of forward-thinking Levantine restaurants that allowed the world to understand us as modern, resilient, culturally proud, and creative people.”

Once upon a time, the Canterbury Ale House was famed far and wide — at least on Capitol Hill — for being a dive, a sprawling bar haunted by literal ghosts as well as plenty of living regulars. Soundgarden played there in 1987, long before anyone cared who Soundgarden were. It changed owners in 2014, and they revamped it into a brighter, more family-friendly space that actually served good food, which some regarded as a sign of the Hill’s gentrification. Then it changed owners again, then closed, then in 2023 the space was turned into a stylish, but short-lived restaurant called Meliora, which closed last year.Now the Canterbury is fading further into the mists of time, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reports, as the owners of the mixed-use building the bar used to occupy are splitting the 5,000-square-foot space in twain. That’s a huge footprint by restaurant standards, and landlord Meriwether Partners hopes that the two smaller spaces will be more attractive to commercial tenants. There’s no sense yet of whether one or both of those tenants would be bars or restaurants, but Meriwether is open to the idea.There’s one leftover bit of Canterbury legacy that might sweeten the deal for prospective tenants, CHS reports: There’s still a single suit of armor kicking around.Bumbershoot reveals food lineupSeattle’s most famous musical festival has in recent years leaned into the food, and this year is no exception. New additions to the culinary slate in 2025 include Homer, Mexican Seoul, and Lenox, while returning vendors include Local Tide and Chicken Supply. Basically, if a restaurant has recently been on the Eater 38, there’s a good chance it’ll be at Bumbershoot on Labor Day weekend. For a full rundown of all the musical acts, food, and artists that will be at Bumbershoot, and to buy tickets, go here.Fair Isle is hosting a fortnight of pop-upsBallard’s Fair Isle Brewing has long been one of the city’s premiere pop-up incubators, and the brewery is leaning into that this September, launching a 14-night dinner series called the Chef Sessions. It’ll run from September 15 to September 28 and feature some of the best pop-ups around, from the Cavatelli Project to Seila. (Current kitchen resident La Marea is taking a break during this time.) These dinners will be walk-in only; note that Fair Isle is a 21-plus space. For the full lineup, go here.The ‘Seattle Times’ names the sandwich of the summerFinally, the Seattle Times had a fun rundown on the trendy dish du jour, the mortadella sandwich. For the uninitiated, mortadella is bologna’s fancier cousin, and area restaurants have been pairing it with cheese, hot honey, pistachios, and other accoutrements; it’s often served on focaccia, a bread that is a kind of local trend all of its own. Our top pick for a ‘della sandwich, and also one of the Times’ top picks, can be found at Tivoli in Fremont.