There definitely isn’t a shortage of food and restaurants in and around Pike Place Market. It seems that you are met with a new restaurant or food stall every 5 steps you take!
We started our first day with a simple breakfast at the Crumpet Shop, a business that’s been thriving for over 40 years.
We ordered 2 sweet and 2 savoury crumpets to share and these definitely tasted much better than they looked.
We started off with the savoury pesto tomato and green eggs and English cheese. Then we finished it off with the sweet lemon ricotta and ricotta walnut ones. All of them were delicious, but if I had to pick, I found the sweet ones better. The savoury ones seemed to be lacking a bit of seasoning, whereas the sweet ones were just perfectly sweet.
We had set our sights on Pike Place Chowder for lunch. It opens at 11am and we found it around 10:30am and there was no one in line yet, so we continued to walk around for a bit and then finally ended up back here around noon.
The line moved surprisingly fast and although we were at the end of the first line, we were at the front and ordering within 5-10 minutes. During the wait, we got to look at all of the awards this place has won over the years.
We ordered the 8-Sampler so that we could try one of every kind that they had, including the Market Chowder which was a Salick Sea Halibut chowder that day.
We ordered the 8-Sampler so that we could try one of every kind that they had, including the Market Chowder which was a Salick Sea Halibut chowder that day.
The toughest part of the experience was finding an available table. The restaurant has a rule in which you are not allowed to save tables and can only sit down once you have your food in hand. This proved a bit difficult for us as we had to carry around 8 scalding hot bowls of chowder and look for a table at the same time. In the end, we finally found a table inside the connecting mall area, which I’m still not sure if we were allowed to have sat at, since we didn’t buy food from the mall, but it was the only free table we could find at the time.
Since we ordered all 8 flavours, and many of them look the same visually, we had to depend on our taste buds to try and figure out which chowder was which. This was part of the fun as we got to decipher and eliminate the choices as we tried them. In the end, I loved 6 of the 8 chowders and would order any of those 6 again.
After some hot chowder, it was the perfect time to try some Ginger Beer, right next door at Rachel’s Ginger Beer. Thankfully, they give out little samples for you to try and I was able to do that before ordering one. It is quite spicy and the ginger taste was too strong for me so I didn’t end up getting one, but my friends certainly enjoyed theirs.
When people think of Seattle, I think Piroshky Piroshky instantly comes to mind, as this bakery has been in business in the Seattle area for over 25 years. The Pike Place Market location constantly has long lines in front of the store, but again, the lines are quite fast moving. We probably lined up for about 10-15 minutes, but prior to lining up, we actually took a picture of the menu pasted on their window so that we could pick out what we want, while in line.
I ended up trying two savoury ones, as none of the sweet ones appealed to me that day. I ordered the bestselling smoked salmon pate along with the traditional beef and onion. You can tell the smoked salmon pate is the most popular because they had a huge basket full of them, whereas they would only have small baskets for everything else.
I actually preferred the beef and onion one over the smoked salmon pate. The beef and onion one was greasy because it was a phyllo pastry, but it was stuffed to the max and seasoned perfectly. The smoked salmon pate was more of a bun and at times I found that there wasn’t enough filling.
Overall, this was one of the best breakfasts or snacks we had and I wish we had had more time to try more of the pastries.
After having two pastries each at Piroshky Piroshky, I needed to wash it down with some refreshing yoghurt from Ellenos. I love all of the unique flavours that they have and since I felt like I wanted something with more texture that day, I ordered the lemon cheesecake.
Since we were only in Seattle for such a short time, we didn’t have enough time to try all of the foods we had wanted to. We walked by Beecher’s in Pike Place Market and saw the big cheese bath, but didn’t have the room to try it at that time, but we knew there was one at the airport and we were hoping that it would be located close to our gate.
It turned out to only be a few steps away from our boarding gate, so I was able to order a mac & cheese to try. I’m so glad I got the small, because it was the richest mac & cheese I’ve ever had. In fact, it was a bit too rich for my liking and I had wished that there was a bit more mac and a bit less cheese.
Unfortunately at the airport location, they didn’t have many choices for sandwiches. I had heard that the crab grilled cheese is popular at the Pike Place location but they didn’t have this available at the airport.
There is so much to eat in and around Pike Place Market and a weekend in Seattle definitely whet my appetite for all of the amazing food found there.
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