The Best Lunches in Seattle

What we’re trying to do with this map is break you of these habits. You don’t need to eat lunch at your home office desk every day, you don’t need to get trapped in routine — lunch, like any meal, can be a source of joy, not just sustenance.

One note on this map: You can get a lot of takeout lunch, but here we’re going to focus on places that really specialize in midday meals — i.e. they don’t do dinner service at all or have a great sit-down lunch experience.

Billiard Hoang

Is this a pool hall? Yes, but for the sake of this blurb and for the sake of you not getting hustled, let’s skip that part — it’s also one of Seattle’s best Vietnamese restaurants. There’s a full sit-down menu, but if you’re here for lunch you’ll probably be drawn to the banh mi, which here come with scrambled egg, an innovation that adds a layer of fluffiness and warmth to the usual combination of ingredients.

Slice Box Pizza

People talk about New York–style pizza in almost mystical terms, but the real draw of it is this: You go into some random little door, order at the counter, and a few minutes later get a hot slice with a foldable crust and pep cups that collect incredibly delicious oil. SoDo ain’t exactly SoHo but Slice Box would fit right in in New York — its a slices-for-lunch pizza restaurant in a town where a lot of the top pizzerias do the whole wood-fired-pie-for-dinner thing.

Kilig

Melissa Miranda’s follow-up to her celebrated Musang was originally going to focus on pancit (noodle) dishes and bulalo, a slow-cooked stew. But since it opened in late 2023 Kilig’s menu has expanded — there’s a whole silog section now, and killer fried rice, and wings and a cocktail selection. All that plus one of the brightest dining rooms in the whole Chinatown–International District makes this the place to go if you have a first date at 1 p.m.

Hole in the Wall BBQ

This aptly named barbecue joint was started by Chuck Forsyth in 1989 — back when Texas-style barbecue was a rarity in Seattle — and is run today by Chuck’s son and daughter-in-law, John and Diane, who only serve lunch and only open on the weekdays. Come for the brisket, the smokey barbecue sauce, and the dry-rubbed St. Louis–style ribs. The only bummer about the place is you have to go back to work afterward.

Oriental Mart

The salmon collar sinigang and succulent longanisa have made this tiny Pike Place Market spot into an American classic. Literally, the James Beard Foundation gave Oriental Mart an America’s Classics award in 2020, and you can see why — sitting here eating adobo dishes makes you part of a long lineage of people of all classes, creeds, and colors who have eaten adobo dishes at this stainless steel lunch counter. While you ponder this, you can look at the handwritten signs cluttering the kitchen. One of them reads, “WIFI PASSWORD: TALK TO EACH OTHER”

Cafe Suliman

Don’t go to this counter tucked away inside Melrose Market unless you want to risk a lunch that swallows your whole afternoon. Ahmed Suliman’s Arabian food menu shifts with the seasons but it can be relied on for some meal-sized toast (on sourdough from Ben’s Bread), a roasted cauliflower dish that demands your attention, and lamb with hummus. It shares a space with Cantina Sauvage, a wine bar owned by Marc Papineau, who used to run Bar Ferd’nand and is probably one of the most charming people in Seattle. It’s the type of atmosphere that will have you smashing the “out of office” button on Slack.

Made In House

Why is this Fremont cafe constantly packed? One reason has got to be the crispy, sticky rice on the bottom of the BopBowl, not just a base for the noodles, protein, and egg but a star ingredient that’ll have you scraping the stone bowl. Another reason is the bento box, which comes with a rotating selection of banchan but always includes a jammy egg — unless you want to keep it vegan. Did we mention Made in House is very vegan friendly?

Asadero Ballard

Dinner in Ballard? You have dozens of great choices. Brunch in Ballard? The world is yours. Lunch in Ballard? Annoying! But one of the best options is surely this Mexican steakhouse (with another location in Kent). Even at lunch you get a lot of those fun steakhouse touches — citrus water, a selection of salsas, warm tortillas to wrap around that meat. You even get a little palate-cleansing tea at the end, which makes you feel like a fancy gentleman (non-gendered).

Layers

What makes Layers stand out among all the city’s sandwich shops is the uncommon amount of care the team takes with everything. The sandwiches seem composed, and are full of little delightful twists: a grilled cheese with not just jalapeños but dates; a riff on a banh mi that subs Fra’Mani mortadella for the usual pork. These are experiments that advance the field of sandwich science.