Food and Drink of Seattle

Offers a comprehensive exploration of Seattle’s cuisine from geographical, historical, cultural, and culinary perspectives.

From glaciers to geoducks, from the Salish Sea with swift currents sweeping wild salmon home from the Pacific Ocean to their original spawning grounds, to settlers, immigrants, and restaurateurs, Seattle’s culinary history is vibrant and delicious, defining the Puget Sound region as well as a major U.S. city. Exploring the Pacific Northwest ‘s history from a culinary perspective provides an ideal opportunity to investigate the area’s Native American cooking culture, along with Seattle’s early boom years when its first settlers arrived. Waves of immigrants from the mid-1800s into the early 1900s brought ethnic culinary traditions from Europe and beyond and added more flavor to the mix. As Seattle grew from a wild frontier settlement into a major twentieth century hub for transportation and commerce following World War II, its home cooks prepared many All-American dishes, but continued to honor and prepare the region’s indigenous foods. Taken altogether and described in the pages of this book, it’s quickly evident few cities and regions have culinary traditions as distinctive as Seattle’s.