Top Ten Eating Experiences in the Pacific Northwest

An unbiased selection of the best food & drink experienced by two sisters from the Northeast over a one-week period in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Find more photos here.

1. Dinner in the cafe at Chez Panisse, Berkeley. Eating at Alice Waters' restaurant has been a life-long dream for me and my sister, who grew up on the Fanny at Chez Panisse cookbook. It lived up to our expectations for incredibly fresh, delicious ingredients and simple food, made well. We had the iconic baked goat cheese with greens in a lemony vinaigrette; chanterelle mushroom lasagna with bechamel baked in the wood oven; fresh pork sausage with shell beans and sage; the Chez Panisse house red zinfandel; and for dessert, vanilla bean ice cream with lavender honey and nectarines.







2. Wood-fired pizza at Delancey, Seattle. Brandon and Molly (of Orangette) do one thing at Delancey, and they do it well. In my opinion, it'd be hard to find a better pizza outside Italy. The key? Fantastic ingredients, including fresh mozzarella and Grana Padano cheese. Molly's chocolate chip cookie with grey salt for dessert was not bad either.



3. The Ferry Market on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Better fresh fruit turnovers than those from Frog Hollow Farm I have truly never encountered. The cherry was good, but oh my, the fresh peach & frangipane was deluxe. Not to mention the exquisite selection of fruits and vegetables and cheeses and meats and so on from local purveyors all around. Plus Blue Bottle Coffee, dripped fresh for every single cup.







4. Bread & treats from Little T American Baker in Portland. Just down Division St from the Bluebird Guesthouse where we stayed, Little T is a fine place for croissants and baguettes in the French tradition, as well as tasty quiche and blackberry muffins.



5. Enormous burritos in the Mission District, San Francisco. We don't get burritos like this on the East Coast. We just don't.



6. Dim Sum at Tom Kiang in Richmond, San Francisco. Per instructions from a friend, we then proceeded to eat a hot fudge sundae at Toy Boat Cafe and browse at Green Apple Books nearby.



7. BridgePort Brewing Co. beer in Portland. The Portland "brew pub" is a great tradition, and this place is the oldest craft beer brewery in the city.



8. Burgers & shakes at Red Mill Burgers, Seattle. Oprah says this is "one of the 20 hamburgers you must eat before you die," and I have to agree. Note the huge stack of bacon for bleu cheese & bacon burgers in the photo below.



9. Salty caramel ice cream at Molly Moon, Seattle. New but already popular Molly Moon offers flavors like balsamic strawberry, rosemary meyer lemon, cardamom, and pleasingly salty caramel.



10. Thai food at Pok Pok, Portland. An American guy is responsible for this hip spot with more-authentic-than-most Thai food. It falls to number 10 because my sister (who's been living in Bangkok for the past 2+ years) says it's still not quite right. Blame the difficulty of sourcing Thai ingredients.

11. Homemade Marionberry pie in Manzanita on Hwy 101, Oregon. So this wasn't really in Portland, and that's why it's #11. But it did qualify as one of the best things I ate all week--on the same day in which we spotted a bald eagle, and witnessed several people being baptized in the Pacific Ocean at Cannon Beach. Marionberries are a kind of blackberry that grow like crazy in this region.