Doris

Pioneer Square 

In the hallowed original Salumi address—which is still around the corner at Jackson and Occidental, don’t worry!—Doris is bringing understated femininity to the long skinny space on Third Avenue South. Equal parts neighborhood bistro and cocktail bar, the core concept is social snacking: think martinis and fries, with a fun menu of shareable bites and small plates. Owner Angela Dunleavy named the lounge after her great-grandmother, saying her vision was for the space to be “super femme.”

Accented by silver mirrors, long lace curtains, tall purple ornamental onion flowers, and sprigs of baby’s breath in jars … she’s done a fantastic job. Both the martinis and the fries are impeccable, by the way, the latter served with tiny pots of ketchup and house-made lemon mayo. Other drinks include the Fold ’n’ Fly—two kinds of Scotch, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, lemon, and nutmeg—as well as a series of mini versions of classics, like the Modern G Hopper, a take on a Grasshopper.

Louie’s Deli

Pioneer Square

Everyone’s talking about Louie’s. The team behind Good Shape Pizza, which also runs the pizza hole in Belltown’s Jupiter Bar, expanded into this secret-ish space in Pioneer Square in May, hidden inside the Europa Gallery building’s airy, glassed-in atrium. Named for the owners’ daughter, Louie’s does five sandwiches and does them very well: an Italian grinder, a turkey, a meatball, a chickpea salad with cukes and giardiniera, and a classic NYC bacon, egg, and cheese. With the exception of the BEC, which is served on a sourdough brioche roll, everything’s piled into masterful, chewy, house-made seeded baguettes, then wrapped in blue-and-white paper like some 1950s deli-themed dream sequence.

Pro tip: Get there in the 11 o’clock hour, or you risk them selling out to the lunch rush.

Rent’s Due BBQ

North Bend

Central Texas-style barbecue is having a moment in the Seattle area, but Rent’s Due BBQ has been serving it quietly for years now, out in the Snoqualmie Valley. (Happily, most would say there’s no such thing as too much barbecue.) Since 2023, pitmaster Harrison Ebel has been selling smoked meats on weekends from a gravel lot with tables and a canopy behind the North Bend Safeway, and lately, he’s been branching out to nearby Volition Brewing on Thursdays. Ebel keeps his menu simple: brisket, ribs, pulled pork, and house-made sausages, along with the usual sides like mac ’n’ cheese, potato salad, and baked beans. He has a few rotating specials, too, like smoked chicken—about which one Instagram commenter wrote, “Harrison’s chicken is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.”

The Crown

Crown Hill

No, it’s not a restaurant themed around the 2016 Netflix docudrama about the British royal family, although that would be something. It’s the next concept to fill in the space formerly known as the Dane. After a brief stint as Schooner Street, the spacious corner unit has been reincarnated as Crown Hill’s newest neighborhood pub. Longtime Ballard bartender Bob Hougland—an alum of dives like the Viking, Olaf ’s, and the Stepping Stone—and his wife, Christine, opened in July, offering craft beer, simple pub grub, sports, and “a focus on serving the Crown Hill community.” The Crown.

Suya Palace

Pioneer Square

Pioneer Square has seen at least a dozen new bars in rapid succession this year, but what’s special about Suya Palace is that it has Nigerian food alongside the sports and suds, a cuisine that’s hard to find in this town. In the former Golden Roosters space, the bar-resto’s menu focuses on Suya, grilled kebabs treated with a Hausa spice
blend called yaji. Recipes vary, but usually include dry hot chili, cayenne pepper, ginger, dried onion, and ground peanuts. Suya Palace offers skewers made from beef, turkey, or gizzards that can be served in various formats—with jollof rice and salad, rolled in a tortilla, as loaded fries, and so on. The menu also includes West African favorites like goat obe ata (red pepper stew) and ofe onugbu (bitter leaf soup).

Sake Noire

Hillman City

Sake Noire comes to us from local hospitality industry vets Quan Liang and Yael Silverman, and the idea here is sake-based cocktails, Japanese-Italian fusion and jazz. Liang often joins the crew of experimental cocktail weirdos at hyper-creative snack-and-bev popup No Call No Show, so it’s not a huge surprise that she’s mashing
up several cool notions into one restaurant. Sake Noire’s Itameshi (a portmanteau of Italia and meshi, meaning “meat”) menu includes brilliant brainchildren such as the mushroom takikomi fondata, made with gochujang mushrooms and rice broiled over Italian fontina cheese sauce and finished with nori, as well as sukiyaki based on wine-braised osso buco. Custom cocktails, meanwhile, are as crafty as they come; try the Kiku Negroni, made with Roku Gin, Hangar 1 Buddha’s Hand citrus vodka, chrysanthemum-infused Cocchi Americano, Luxardo Bitter Bianco, and lemon.

Clove Indian Cuisine

Downtown

Opened in the enormous space in downtown’s Watermark Tower recently vacated by Mint Progressive Indian, this northern Indian fine diner is owned by the Virk family, whose restaurant portfolio also includes all four locations of Maharaja Cuisine of India, as well as Indofusion Kitchen & Bar in West Seattle. This will be the second location for Clove—there’s one at Renton Landing—and the plan sounds similar: patterned tile, jewel tones, splashy cocktails, and modernized Northern Indian dishes. These include latpata chicken, mozzarella-stuffed naan, and lamb tikka masala.