Three-day Asian food tour near Seattle
With just 3-hour drive from where we live, my family went to Seattle a lot. Nowadays, we do not visit the tourist spots anymore. Our target is the food, Asian food specifically. This post is about our 3-day Asian food tour around Thanksgiving.
Watch out! Washington King county imposes COVID-19 vaccine mandate. As of Oct 25, the county requires people 12 and older to verify they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to dine in at restaurants.
Where we stayed
We stayed at Element Seattle Redmond (15220 NE Shen St, Redmond, WA 98052). This hotel is close to most of the restaurants we want to visit. The room (we usually stayed at) has 2 queen beds, 1 sofa, 1 desk, 1 decent-sized refrigerator, and a well-equipped-enough kitchen. The breakfast is included. However, on-site parking costs extra.
Day 1’s coffee
We started driving at 8:10 am, and arrived at Seattle at 11:00 am. Before lunch, we stopped at Lighthouse Roasters (400 N 43rd St, Seattle, WA 98103). We love the coffee here and have been visiting this place every time we visited Seattle. Due to Covid-19, it is take-out-only. When we want to treat ourselves, we will also buy some beans so that we can make our own latte back at home.
This is at Fremont and close to University of Washington. One can also walk around Fremont or University of Washington and stop by for coffee. That is what we often do between meals in the summer time.
Eater Seattle has an article, 11 SMALL BATCH ROASTERS EVERY SEATTLEITE SHOULD KNOW, and Lighthouse Roasters is mentioned in the article.
Day 1’s lunch
We had our lunch at Looking For Chai Edmonds (找茶) (22511 Hwy 99 Suite 100, Edmonds, WA 98026). Looking For Chai is not close to our hotel; thus, we decided to knock this one down first. The location is in the same shopping plaza as “99 ranch market”. We walked around in the market while waiting for the restaurant to open.
They serve some extra Taiwanese dishes as Weekend Specials. Too bad that we did not visit during the weekend this time.
“Looking For Chai” is a good place for some Taiwanese food and tea. Yi Fang’s tea is carried here. We like Yi Fang’s tea. We usually order our tea with 30% ice and 30% sugar. The above are what we ordered this time. They are all pretty good. There are quite some real passion fruit and real guava in those drinks.
We have “Yi Fang” near where we live. Even though we like it, we seldom buy those drinks due to dietary choice. Being in the travel mode, we decided to indulge ourselves.
We ordered the dishes shown in the figures above.
- “Oyster Pancake 蚵仔煎” is among the best oyster pancakes we have tried near Seattle.
- “Water Spinach With Garlic 蒜蓉空心菜” is beyond our expectation. It came with huge quantity and with a lot of garlic. With our small stove at home, we cannot stir-fry vegetable like this.
- “Pork Intestine with Vermicelli 大腸麵線” is on par with what we can get at Taiwan.
- “Fried Stinky Tofu 炸臭豆腐” is fried very well. It is also stinky enough. When we visited last time, the stinky tofu was not stinky enough and just tasted like normal tofu.
Day 1’s afternoon snack
After lunch, we checked in at the hotel and rested a little bit. Then we went to Meet Fresh Bellevue 鮮芋仙 (15552 Lake Hills Blvd, Suite F5, Bellevue, WA 98007).
I like “grass jelly 仙草” and my wife likes “taro ball 芋圓”, so this is our go-to dessert place. They serve shaved ice, hot drinks, and some regular tea drinks also.
Meet Fresh is pretty busy after 8 pm, so we usually visit in the afternoon.
“Matcha shaved ice 抹茶冰” has strong matcha flavor. Originally, it tasted very good. After a while, the flavor was a bit too strong and overwhelming. If you like matcha a lot, you will like this one.
We added a lot of extra ingredients into our shaved ice, including taro balls 芋圓, taro 芋頭, pudding 布丁, black sugar boba 黑糖珍珠, barley 薏仁, and grass jelly 仙草. We found out later that we were too ambitious. We should just order 1 shaved ice instead of 2, and we could not finish all those shaved ice. We will try to remember this next time.
We ordered bubble waffle also. My family like bubble waffle at Meet Fresh more than the one at Happy Lemon.
Day 1’s dinner
We had the dinner at 7 pm at Dough Zone Dumpling House at Overlake 麵貼面 (14625 NE 24th St #4b, Bellevue, WA 98007). This is a great place for dumplings, xiao long baos, baos, and noodles. Compared to other restaurants we visited this time, Dough Zone is the least pricy one.
- “Green Onion Pancake 蔥油餅” is good. It is the thin-type-of pancake, not the thick type some one may prefer.
- “Pan Fried Chive Dumplings 韭菜盒子” is very flavorful, and we like it. It will be better if it is a bit less salty.
- “Pan-Fried Berkshire-Duroc Pork Buns 煎包” has tasty meat filling. The bottom is pretty crispy.
- About noodles, so far we liked all the noodles we have tried.
Dough Zone is opening a new location at Portland, Oregon. Thi is good news for us. We can have these food more often in the future.
Day 2’s lunch
We had the lunch at Ten Seconds Yunnan Rice Noodle 十秒到 雲南過橋米線 (1299 156th Ave NE Ste 135, Bellevue, WA 98007). It has several flavors of Yunnan rice noodles. The food is served very fast. I guess this is why the restaurant is called “ten seconds”.
The soup comes in the sizzling stone bowl. The noodles and the ingredients are put on the side. You can then put the noodles and the ingredients inside the stone bowl. The heated stone bowl can keep your soup and noodles hot for a long time. Ten Seconds has become our go-to place for hot noodle soups.
Day 2’s snack
After lunch, we went to Daiso (15600 NE 8th St H2, Bellevue, WA 98008) since it is just at the plaza across the street of the lunch place. Daiso is a Japanese variety-store chain with housewares, toys, stationery, decorations, bento supplies & gifts. We can get many useful stuff with fair prices at Daiso.
After Daiso, before going back to the hotel, we stopped by Yomie’s Rice x Yogurt (1422 156th Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98007). This is the first time I tried Yomie’s Rice x Yogurt. I ordered the most basic drink, cooked purple rice mixed with yogurt. I have to say that I like it very much. The yogurt is very milky and strong, and the purple rice is cooked just perfectly for me. My wife and my son don’t like it that much though, and the yogurt is too milky and too strong for them. I definitely will visit Yomie often in the future.
Day 3’s lunch
This is our last meal before driving back to Oregon. We had the lunch at MonGa Café (14603 NE 20th St, Bellevue, WA 98007). MonGa Café is a good place for Taiwanese food. It is a bit pricy though.
- “Braised Tofu 滷油豆腐”, “Port Meatball Soup 貢丸湯”, “Braised Pork over Rice 魯肉飯”, “Blanched Pork 肝連肉”, and “Braised Napa Cabbage 白菜滷” are all very authentic. These are what I ate regularly at traditional markets at Taiwan when I was young.
- “Deep Fried Pork Chop 炸排骨” is deep-fried pretty well and it is still juicy inside.
- “Beef Noodle Soup 原味牛肉麵” has rich soup, and the beef is tender. The taste is Taiwanese flavor and is very authentic.
After the lunch, we drove back to Oregon. The drive back home took about 3 hours and 40 minutes. It was raining pretty hard along the way, and there were also a lot of traffic. It was what we expected. If you want to spend less time driving from Seattle to Oregon, we recommend that you start your drive before 8 am in the morning.