Best of '09: Food

This round-up celebrates only the best--check out everything that captured our attention this year

Best place to get locally made late-night munchies
Tucked away in a small alley storefront adjacent to King’s Hardware, Snacks (5219 Ballard Ave. NW; 206.453.3806) on Ballard Avenue mixes convenience-store classics with higher-end, locally produced treats (Molly Moon’s by the pint, Rock Ridge Apple Cider, Zaw Pizza). Owned by the Dante’s hot-dog-cart folks (you can get a dog to-go), it’s perfect for satisfying late-night cravings (the shop is open until 2:30 a.m. on weekends).

Most creative doughnuts worth the drive
How far would you go for a maple bar adorned with pieces of real bacon? Or a peanut butter and jelly doughnut? We’d head north to Mill Creek for Frost Doughnuts (Mill Creek, 15421 Main St.; 425.379.2600), and we’d also pick up a couple of banana-split fritters while we’re there.

Best vegan and gluten-free chocolate chip cookie
The oxymoron of the century, perhaps, but this delicious kid- (and adult-) tested version, made from scratch at Healeo (Capitol Hill, 1520 15th Ave.; 206.453.5066), Capitol Hill’s new health food and vitamin shop, is a dead ringer for the traditional version. All you need now is an ice cold glass of...soy milk.

Most creative new restaurant financing
In these economic times, who’s going to fork over financing for a new restaurant? Cooking up a creative solution, Thierry Rautureau, owner of Rovers, invited his customers to invest in his soon-to-open restaurant, Luc, by buying $1,000 gift certificates, good for $1,300 in dining credit at Luc. The catch? Investors can only cash in a third of their investment at a time, between March 2010 and March 2012. But with Thierry in the kitchen, those meals will be worth the wait.

Best chocolate creation of the year
It’s hard to pick a favorite in a year when adored Fremont chocolatier, Theo Chocolate (3400 Phinney Ave. N; 206.632.5100), introduced a flurry of new products (including classic combination bars of dark chocolate plus orange, and mint or cherries with almonds, and spicy chile), but we are partial to the coffee and cream bar made with Theo’s velvet milk chocolate and Caffé Vita coffee. Available only at Theo's Fremont retail store and some Caffé Vita locations, it’s like solid mocha butta.

Best new bakery
We couldn’t decide between the luxurious chocolate mousse cake (special order only, pictured here), the salty sweet kouign amann or the macaroons, so we picked the whole lot offered at Honoré Artisan Bakery (Ballard, 1413 NW 70th St.; 206.706.4035), the sweetest thing to happen to the east side of Ballard in a long time.

Best wine storage away from home
Looking for a wine that’s not on the menu? No problem—you can rent a wine locker at John Howie Steak (Bellevue, The Bravern, 11111 NE Eighth Ave.; 425.440.0880) and stock it with your favorites. Which means that the next time you crave that hard-to-come-by Cabernet with your porterhouse, it’ll be waiting—and at just the perfect temperature. Better yet, the wine lockers are hooked into the restaurant’s Enomatic wine serving system, meaning that you can enjoy just a glass, and the rest of the bottle will keep for as long as 28 days with no loss of quality. We’ll raise a toast to this deal.

Best Dairy Version of a Sushi Bar
Cheesoholics are enraptured by the Bar du Fromage at Terrance Brennan’s new Artisanal Brasserie at The Bravern (Bellevue, 11111 NE Eighth St.; 425.372.2200). Resembling a sushi bar, the 25-foot marble slab is piled with select cheeses—hard and soft, mild and sharp, local and international—to sample with a glass of wine in hand beckoning lovers to belly up to the (cheese) bar.

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2009: The Explosion of Cheap Eats
This year, Seattle’s hottest eatery openings were of the mobile variety: Tasty kimchi quesadillas at Marination Mobile, piles of pulled pork at the now-hibernating Maximus-Minimus, Cuban sandwiches at Paladar Cubano, even pork belly (and braised beef tongue, and tender octopus) tacos at our (now-defunct) favorite street food joint, Eastlake’s Tako Truk. But it wasn’t just nouveau mobile food that hit the spot this year; the original mobile eateries—taco trucks (or more often, taco buses)—also continued to satisfy. Our new favorite: El Camion (Shoreline, 11728 Aurora Ave. N; 206.367.2777), which has been treating north-enders to its fresher-than-most Mexican in the Haller Lake Home Depot parking lot for two years, spawned a SoDo truck this summer (2918 First Ave. S; 206.659.0236). With still-firm veggies, fresh fish tacos, and beef cheeks, tongue and some darned fine carnitas, the food’s worth standing in line for.

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2009: The year of affordable, sweet indulgences
Pie: Topping the year of sweets like a big dollop of whipped cream, pie shops became the new cupcakeries as Magnolia’s Seattle Pie (3111 McGraw St., Suite 101; 425.512.5570) churned out perfectly crusted beauties like key lime pie and a coconut cream pie to rival a certain Tom Douglas concoction. Available at Fuel coffee shops, High Five Pies adds clever, petite sizes like the Piejar (a tiny pie in a small glass jar) and Flipsides (turnovers) to the sweet mix, as well as savory items like its crazy-good mac-and-cheese pie.

Candy: Ballard’s got a sweet tooth going on: Blackbird Men's Clothing Store (5410 22nd Ave. NW; 206.547.2524) opened a tiny sweets shop—Blackbird Candy Shoppe—in the corner of its space, while Ballard Avenue neighbor Duque Salon, Spa and Boutique (5348 Ballard Ave. NW; 206.706.7177) also added an old-fashioned display of equally old-fashioned candies in its entryway.

Ice Cream: Molly Moon’s, old school frozen custard and Blue bird opened almost on top of each other last summer on Capitol Hill. While we like them all, our favorite frozen-treat newcomer is Adria Shimada’s mobile Parfait ice cream truck; her organic, small-batch ice cream is made from scratch, not from a custom base (a claim few others can make), and flavors are clever without being too far out: Meyer lemon bar, butter toffee and a simply perfect vanilla bean.

Cupcakes: The cupcake trend continues with Trophy Cupcakes opening two shops—at The Bravern in Bellevue and University Village—making it possible to pick up a chocolate-peanut butter or chai cardamom cupcake just about anywhere in town. Seattle’s other fave, Cupcake Royale, hired pastry wizard Sue McCown to rework its recipes and dream up irresistible monthly specials (huckleberry in summer). Newcomer Yellow Leaf in Belltown added buttery smooth frosting and inventive flavors (root beer float!) to the mix.

There’s much more Best of ’09 where this came from – click here!

By: Kate Calamusa, Brangien Davis, Karen Johnson, Deanna Duff, Rachel Hart, Allison Austin Scheff, Lei Ann Shiramizu and Virginia Smyth
With: Amelia Apfel, Madeline Boardman, Thea Chard, Amy Minor and Jacquie Perez