Savor Seattle Pike Place Market Food & Cultural Tour

I love getting lost in my city. An excellent time to embark on this is with out-of-town visitors. I recently entertained such visitors from the fair city of Chicago. When Stacey mentioned the Savor Seattle tour with nine stops in and around the Pike Place Market, I was sold.

We met the tour at the Starbucks facing the market at 1st and Pine. Tour guides Brett (two T’s, no N) and Mark welcomed us and had us make introductions and mention our favorite food.

The tour began at the Daily Dozen Donut Company.

These pint-sized delights are bagged and still warm as each one hits your palate. If you haven’t yet tried—make the trip.

Next stop was Market Spice. If you need spice in your life, get yours here. When you buy your spices off the grocery store shelves, you don’t know how long they have sat. In some cases, it’s years. This means you aren’t getting the full-on flavor boost of freshly collected and ground spices. Market Spice offers a massive variety of spices, tea and coffee at competitive prices. And, they have teas to sample.

If there is one place out-of-towners must see, it’s the fish mongers at Pike Place Fish. (Some 40-somethings may remember the Levi’s commercial that featured the fish throwing at Pike Place.) If you are a college kid visiting Seattle to attend the Huskies v. Arizona game and you get a chance to throw a fish, such as this young Arizonian did, you get into the spirit (he caught it too):

At Frank’s Produce, we sampled apples and pears. Brett taught us to select the perfect eggplant—look for the male—the one with the round bellybutton versus the line. (The eggplant with the line is the female and contains more seeds.)

We stopped at Pike Place Chowder where the clam chowder and seafood bisque were so amazing that they’ve been inducted into the Hall of Fame. If you like cherries—dried, chocolate-covered, in salsa and jams—Chukar Cherries does it all and they do it naturally. At Beecher’s Homemade Cheese, we savored Gouda, Cheddar and the creamiest award-winning Macaroni and Cheese that even Oprah chose as one of her Favorite Things of 2010. Mac and cheese doesn’t ring my bell, but I licked the cup when I was done with my sample. At Piroshky, Piroshky, we sampled a meat and a sweet piroshky. The savory was my preference; I bartered the other one for another meat despite being stuffed. That didn’t stop me from eating the crab cakes at Etta’s Seafood Restaurant, our last stop. Tom Douglas is a culinary genius.

This tour is a winner for tourists as well as Seattle residents. Brett and Mark were excellent hosts, even if Brett was upset at being upstaged by the warbler during the Piroshky, Piroshky stop.