Shoo Loong Kạn, a hot pot chain from Sichuan, China, is coming to Bellevue. | Jack X. Li The new location in an Eastside development is a “future flagship location” for the chain Bellevue has landed a lot of national and international chains in the past year, from Milk Bar to Daeho to Sui Wah Seafood to Asian grocery heavyweight T&T. Now there’s going to be yet another massive, bring-the-whole-sales-team-or-the-whole-family restaurant in downtown Bellevue: Shoo Loong Kan, a hot pot chain originating in China’s Sichuan province, is arriving to West Main. West Main is a gigantic development ..read more

A Dough Joy Everything Bagel doughnut. | Harry Cheadle Plus, a highly anticipated restaurant opens in Fremont, and more news of the week One of the emerging trends of 2024 is burgeoning Seattle restaurateurs opening second or third locations of their businesses. To wit: This week Dough Joy, a vegan doughnut shop with locations in West Seattle and Capitol Hill, announced on Instagram that it would be opening a third spot in Ballard. It’s been a quick rise, pun intended, for the plant-based, yeast-raised doughnut shop. Christopher Ballard and Sean Willis started it as a truck in 2021, followed t ..read more

Fremont Brewing’s beer will stay the same under new ownership. | Fremont Brewing Seattle Hospitality Group, which also owns Pike Brewing, has acquired a controlling stake in another famous brewery One of Seattle’s most notable breweries is changing hands — on Monday, April 15, the investment company Seattle Hospitality Group (SHG) announced that it was acquiring a controlling interest in Fremont Brewing. That will bring the brewery, founded by Matt Lincecum and Sara Nelson (who is now president of the Seattle City Council), under the same umbrella as Pike Brewing, another venerable Seattle bee ..read more

Cans of the new Spiked Jones. | Jones Soda Plus, a notable bagel shop gets a second location, and more news of the week Jones Soda has always had a grunge era vibe. The craft soda brand’s signature black-and-white, customer-submitted photos that adorn its bottles give it a vaguely MySpace air — artsy and hip back when Jones launched in the late ‘90s out of Vancouver, British Columbia, now nostalgic for anyone who grew up drinking Jones. Now the company — which has been based in Seattle since 2015 — is jumping onto the latest beverage mega craze with a line of hard sodas called Spiked Jones. (S ..read more

A bag of Chipotle | Getty The Seattle Office of Labor Standards secured a record-breaking settlement after investigating the fast-casual chain On Thursday, April 11, the Seattle Office of Labor Standards (OLS) announced that it had reached an agreement with Chipotle over alleged violations of a pair of city ordinances governing scheduling and sick time. As a result, the fast-casual Mexican chain will be paying nearly $2.9 million to 1,853 employees in a settlement. The laws OLS accused Chipotle of breaking are the Secure Scheduling Ordinance (SSO) and the Paid Sick and Safe Time (PSST) ordinan ..read more

The interior of El Gaucho’s Seattle location. | El Gaucho A $50 dinner (with drinks) for two, a shockingly affordable bento box, and more The spring 2024 edition of Seattle Restaurant Week, which lasts from April 14 to 27, is a deceptively named two-week spree of prix fixe menus that allows diners the chance to sample restaurants they might otherwise not visit. The way it works is that participating restaurants throughout the Seattle metro area offer limited-time menus for fixed prices that are usually lower than what they’d normally charge for a meal, incentivizing people to go out for lunch ..read more

Brisket, matzo ball soup, and sides at Zylberschtein’s. | Zylberschtein’s Zylberschtein’s and Dingfelder’s are the only places carrying on a difficult-to-pull-off tradition  In 1992, when Vance Dingfelder arrived in Seattle from New York, he was hit with a culinary culture shock. Dingfelder, the grandson of a Brooklyn cab driver, is one of those native New Yorkers who feels like a physical extension of his city. More than 30 years after he moved, he still has a trace of a Brooklyn accent and more than a trace of that characteristic New York chattiness. “There’s something that [living in N ..read more

A DoorDash worker on the job. | rblfmr/Shutterstock DoorDash and Uber Eats have ratcheted up prices in response to a City Council ordinance, and drivers and restaurants are suffering After years of complaints over low pay for gig workers and occasional protests from app delivery drivers, the Seattle City Council took action in 2022. Members voted unanimously to pass legislation called PayUp, which among other things was supposed to guarantee a minimum hourly wage to delivery workers, including those who work for apps like DoorDash and UberEats. On January 13, 2024, the ordinance finally went i ..read more

Poke at HI LIFE. | Jay Friedman Sandwiches from a molecular gastronomist, top-class poke, and more Bainbridge Island is a scenic half-hour ferry ride from Seattle, but it’s easy to feel like you’re a world away. The land and the water here once provided abundant food sources for the Suquamish people, and at one time the island was home to many Japanese-American strawberry farmers; today Bainbridge may be best known as the birthplace of pickleball. (You can still see the original court, which is on private property.) Upon disembarking, you can walk to the commercial district of Winslow within m ..read more

The beloved music venue and bar could return shortly with a new funding model On March 31, a capacity crowd filled Ballard’s Conor Byrne Pub for what was originally billed as the beloved venue’s final night; the send-off to its vibrant and long-running series of Sunday open mics and a goodbye to one of Seattle’s most historic bars and music venues. But before last call, the night culminated instead with possibility, as a group of Conor Byrne employees, musicians, and advocates took the stage to announce a plan to reopen the bar as an employee- and community-owned cooperative. It’s become a co ..read more