Jim Henkens is a top local food photographer (he shot Renee Erickson’s beautiful cookbook), and his knack for finding perfectly weathered props from around the globe is unmatched. Come to his shop for culinary treasures both new (heavy linen dish towels, donabe steamers, earthenware casseroles from Colombia) and old (glass measuring beakers, vintage ironstone dishes).

Truly in the heart of the Pike Place Market, Inn at the Market gives you crisp luxury with a cozy, small-hotel touch and wide-open views of the mountains and languorous ferries crossing Elliott Bay from your floor-to-ceiling bay windows. (Request a water view room for the best views.)

The luxe choice in town offers sleek rooms that overlook both the water and the towering Seattle Ferris wheel. (Street views of Mirror, Doug Aitken’s video facade on the Seattle Art Museum, are pretty cool, too.) Its two crowning features, however, are its rooftop pool and an in-house restaurant, Goldfinch Tavern, from terrific local chef-rauteur Ethan Stowell (Staple & Fancy, How to Cook a Wolf, and other favorites).

Let your coffee geek flag fly at Milstead & Co., the Fremont multiroaster that isn’t at all embarrassed by how much it fusses over the details. Its coffee program is a moving target, guided by whichever renowned roaster—from local favorites like Kuma to Portland’s Coava and Canada’s Bows & Arrows—it has on the bar.

Born in 1988, Espresso Vivace helped shape the latte art–driven era of espresso drinks we’re currently living in. It doesn’t serve drip coffee (don’t even try asking for it), and there’s no chance you’ll get a light roast. But even after 28 years, it still pulls some of the best espresso shots in the city.

The bar food merrily snatches powerful flavors from around the world, with curries, spicy rice balls, and a singular crowning triumph, the okonomiyaki waffle griddled savory batter studded with seafood, topped with juicy bits of bacon and octopus and fat shavings of dried bonito quivering from the heat of the waffle beneath.

Owner and longtime restaurant server/sommelier David Butler parlayed his regular pilgrimages to France into his ideal wine bar. It’s a great pre- or post-theater haunt, where bebop fills the air and most bottles cost less than $50, telling a story worth far more. Though the wines are strictly French, Butler is a great champion of regional diversity and seeks out underpromoted regions and producers. It’s a place to scratch your Muscadet itch and to get your Gamay on (Beaujolais selections run especially deep).

You know you’re in a serious cocktail spot when the vermouths get front-page billing on the menu. Fortunately, this brick-walled bar in the oldest part of town is rakish and relaxed rather than prim (as some serious cocktail bars can be). The young after-work crowd tends to mingle by the front door, but as with a sushi joint, what you really want is a spot at the bar, where you can go omakase-style with DTW’s veteran bartenders and let them create your dream drink.

Lark standbys are hard to resist: a pan-crisped potato rösti with clabbered cream, hamachi crudo with preserved lemon and green olives, and chicken liver parfait with tart huckleberries. But don’t fail to order the specials—especially pasta specials—made with whatever local seasonal windfall has taken Sundstrom’s heart for the moment.

It isn’t surprising that Jerry Traunfeld’s Sichuan-style restaurant serves spicy food, but it’s hard to describe the sheer, slightly terrified joy one feels staring down a mountain of lacquered peppers tossed with a few bits of fried chicken (la zi ji), or the unfamiliar cold-heat sensation of chilled beef slices in an aromatic chili oil humming with Sichuan peppercorns.

The food is as funky and inviting as the drinks: raw spot prawns with pickled plums, sticky rice toasted to an amber crust in a clay pot, and gently smoky braised pork in broth are all profoundly satisfying and memorable.

You’re supposed to come here for the beef, it’s true, but take a cue from your chefs and feel free to blaze a different path with silky smoked tofu topped with a tangle of mushrooms; risotto with geoduck clams; and a whole grilled mackerel.

The kitchen bar, where regulars chat like it’s the local pub, is built around a fire-breathing hearth. In truth, though, it’s the texturally thrilling cold food that will linger in your mind. Think albacore ceviche with tiny pops of puffed quinoa; complex seasonal slaws with layers of herbs and spicy almonds; or silky, barely smoked salmon with a small puddle of sour cream and salty bursts of roe.

The setting here is restrained but warm. Don’t come to Kashiba in a rush; this is a place for contemplative eating. Eating here helps you feel an intense connection to the sea and all its creatures, from the first bit of, say, tender conch, served atop a burnished rock, through the tasting flights of extraordinary salmon nigiri (a place to finally grasp the difference between sockeye and king).

There’s no place like Canlis. For starters, it’s housed in a 1950s modernist masterwork atop a hill, where the cantilevered glass walls scoop up the glittering cityscape and the dark ribbon of the ship canal below...Food is served on Japanese ceramics, and earthy flavors like buckwheat, mushrooms, and seaweed ground the all-out blitz of Wagyu, prawns, and foie gras. You can get great sake too, but if ever there was a place to splurge on Burgundy or Barolo, it is here.

Oysters are perhaps Seattle’s greatest food resource. And with Walrus, celebrated chef-owner Renee Erickson has redefined the raw bar with French nostalgia and low-key American funk: lighter, brighter, better music. Make sure to order more oysters than you think you want, tasting your way up and down the Northwest coast with bivalves with Narnian names like Sea Nymphs, Emerald Pool, and Flapjack Point.

Bright, simple, down-to-earth decor lets you focus on your pie. Make it a comparative study if you can: Order one cheese pizza—say, the Brooklyn—to fully savor the perfect blend of salty Grana Padano and melty mozzarella, but also get a cheese-free version, like the anchovy-tomato Romano, to better contemplate the flavor of the thin crust, dappled just so with oven blisters.

It’s true: We’ve never met a Renee Erickson restaurant we didn’t immediately love. On the corner is Bar Melusine...Next door is Bateau, which is a steakhouse as only Erickson could imagine it: one that brings in whole animals from Whidbey Island, butchers and dry-ages them in-house, and sells each steak by its weight, accessorized with your choice of bone-marrow or preserved-lemon butter.