This is the second installment of my Eat The Street feature on this blog.  I will be taking you on an eating tour through the streets of Seattle and hopefully other cities in the future.    Last week I took you to my most traveled street in Seattle, Western Avenue.  This week I will take you on Seattle’s most visited street, Pike Street!

It’s the home of Pike Place Market and various other shops that I support and love from a five foot wide deli to fish flying in every direction Pike Street is probably the place you’ll visit on your first trip to Seattle so here’s my recommendations  on places to visit.

Pike Place Market is a year-round farmers market in Seattle. It’s the oldest continually run farmers market in the United States! My school is a few blocks away so over the last few months I have been spending my in between classes time running over to the market area to see what it has to offer.

I look at the market in a different way than I used to. This is the first place you take people when they visit Seattle for the first time. It’s a tourist trap and there are millions of people that visit the market yearly that do not have an intention to cook something using the amazing ingredients available at the market. Instead, they want to pick up a Space Needle souvenir, make jokes about the rain, or ask about a Starbucks. Pike Place Market is much more than those stereotypes.

Restaurants, arts, crafts, produce, fish, seafood, history, producers, purveyors, and even a brewery are among the many things you will find all year round.

If you’re hungry then I recommend eating at the following places or at any other restaurant or small food vendor that peaks your interest. Fixing dinner tonight? That’s the best part! There are so many vendors there to help you find the right ingredients to make your dinner, lunch, or even quick snack more appealing/exciting. One of the things I like to do is have the marketvendors brainstorm for me. “Ok, here’s what I’m going for and here’s who is coming……..What do you recommend?” Two minutes later a complete meal is born!

Here is my list of must visit places when you are on Pike Street.  Some of these places are technically off the street but are contained in the same market area.

Beecher’s Handmade Cheese

One of my favorite places to stop by and visit is Beecher’s Cheese. They use local ingredients and have an open processing facility so you can see the cheese being made right before your eyes.

If there is a worthwhile/fantastic/tasty/favorite cheese of yours then they probably have it. If they don’t then you should just try theirs and it will be your new favorite.

Beyond the ability to just buy cheese they will also serve up some food for you which I strongly recommend. Their food is so good that it takes amazing pictures by itself. The sandwich hit the self-timer and produced this amazing photo of itself………..true story.

I Love New York Deli

It’s not the size of your deli that counts, it’s the quality of your pastrami. I am on a quest to find every deli in Seattle. The only prerequesite is that they slice their meat to order, none of that pre-sliced sitting in a plastic container garbage. For me, eating freshly sliced meat is like opening Christmas presents or like finding a parking spot in Seattle…….it’s exciting.

Located right around the corner, inside of the market, from the airbone fish is the little deli stand that can……make a damn fine sandwich!

The first thing you should do when you go somewhere is check out the menu. I Love New York’s menu is pretty robust for being such a tiny place but don’t be fooled by it’s size………..there are freshly sliced meats here!!

I opted for the Hot Pastrami with a little coleslaw:

This place definitely gets my seal approval. Fantastic meat that is sliced to order.  I go there twice a month!

De Laurenti’s Food Market

De Laurenti’s is an Italian food market in Pike Place Market that has just about every specialty Italian food item available (If they don’t have it then they can special order it for you).  I stopped by to pick up some prosciutto ends so I could experiment with a few flavors before I buy the nice stuff from them. This is the great thing about De Laurenti’s, they have just about every cut of Italian meat available and with different varieties and grades you are able to shop your price point.

They also have a great selection of oils!!!!

AND CHEESE!!!

So if you want to create a real deal Italian meal then get yourself down to De Laurenti’s!

Steelhead Diner

Back in December I bought the book “Coco: 10 World Leading Masters Choose 100 Contemporary Chefs” (click). When I posted it I had not read through the entire book yet but I did and I’m still amazed by it and it’s still my gold standard.

When I read the book I noticed that there was one Chef from Seattle. Mario Batali, a former Federal Way resident (me too!!), gave Chef  Kevin Davis an amazing write up. I told myself, I have to go, no matter what!

I did a little more research and realized that Chef Davis worked at the Oceanaire for a few years.  One of my favorite dishes in Seattle was the angry crab dish they served there.   I loved the name, because I’m angry, and because it was f’ing amazing. To this day it’s one of the dishes Mindy and I talk about when we think crab.   I’m not sure if Chef Davis was responsible for that dish but he was the Executive Chef there at the time so he had control over it going out of the kitchen every night.

In the book there are two recipes he shares. Caviar pie with traditional garniture and Kasu-marinated black cod. Both dishes look amazing and I have been drooling over them for months now in anticipation of my visit.  Last night I cooked my own work in progress with black cod and before doing it again I wanted to visit the Steelhead Diner to see perfection with black cod.

The picture in the  book doesn’t do the dish justice and neither does my picture. The texture of the fish is something that I would love to have someone paint, it’s absolutely stunning.  The dish is perfect, in my opinion. All of the flavors explode, each bite has a development of flavor that is unparalleled.  The showpiece, the black cod, was cooked with such amazing execution…….nice crispy texture on the outside but then a melt in your mouth soft amazingly fresh black cod taste.  If the menu said, “caught 2 minutes ago”, I would have believed it. It wasn’t even close to the quality that I bought from a high end retailer…..not.even.close!

One of my sources for specialty meats.  If you can think of it they can get it for you.  Also, they are my source for duck fat.  I go here often to check out the various cuts and types of meat in order to plan meals for myself.  They are located right next to the flying fish guys so you can’t miss them.

Le Panier

In between classes last quarter I would run over to Le Panier to check out their French pastries and bakery goods.  It helped me out a lot because I was able to see how the items were put together so then I could go to class and act like I knew what I was doing.  Le Panier has a great atmosphere where you can grab a little coffee with a nice merengue and just relax. It’s right in the middle of the madness that is Pike Place Market so it’s nice to have a place to rest your feet while you walk around some more and find another place to eat.

La Buona Tavola

Truffles and truffle oils. This is my source when I have to have truffles.  It’s not a common occurrence because they are expensive but you can’t beat the flavor.   They also have wines and a cafe so stop by and do a little wine tasting and say hi to Chris for me.

Mee Sum Pastry.

BBQ Pork Hombow.  That’s all I need to say.

The first time you visit Pike Place Market go ahead and drool a little bit and write down the places you have to come visit the next time. Check out the flying fish, take a picture with the pig, and check out the original Sur La Table.

I think this is a pretty easy list of places to visit in one day.  There are so many more places to visit that I didn’t even mention so take it upon yourself to visit those places and eat the street for yourself.  I will be updating this list.

Eric

Eat The Street:

Western Avenue. Seattle, WA  (click)