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I hope, at this point, it’s safe to say we all know Chinatown has the motherfucking goods.
I sure know so. But as I scroll my ADHD-mandated six hours of social media per day, I’ve come to think that maybe, possibly, the range that many Seattle people have with Asian food often starts to dissipate once South Jackson Street hits 12th Avenue South.
So I compiled three of my favorite Asian spots outside the CID that I hope will entice you to explore delicious Asian food in neighborhoods beyond. Ready? Let’s do it.
Thai Tom (University)
This iconic hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant is as much of a fixture of the Ave as the scent of teriyaki grease baked into every brick on the block. UW alumni from decades past may not remember the cherry blossoms in the quad as much as they’ll remember how the pad thai smacks at Thai Tom.
If you’re a Husky or Husky-wannabe, you’re already in the know. But for the uninformed, Thai Tom is one of those places you might take Anthony Bourdain if he were still with us, and if he thought you were cool enough to eat with. It’s tiny, like hallway tiny, and it’s hot, even when there’s snow outside. That’s because Thai Tom centers its guests around the main event: the chefs working the woks with expert-level finesse. In this way, Thai Tom is a show you get to be part of.
Given its limited space, you might wait a short while to get your seat, standing outside in a makeshift queue rubbing shoulders with kids who are younger than the iPhone.
The heat at which these cooks flip noodles and season by eyeball will have you wondering how any of them still have eyebrows. To add to the heat, everyone who works here wears all black, like a Sephora, but with more sweat. Watching the main cook simultaneously service six different woks will break your brain if you stare too long.
Amplifying the mystique, this spot is famously cash only. But it’s cool, nothing costs more than $15. The menus are etched into wooden planks, amended here and there with pieces of masking tape for pricing and availability updates. That’s how you know.
When you make your order, you’ll choose from Thailand’s greatest hits with your choice of protein. I’m giving you permission: Order the fucking pad thai. Go ahead, nobody’s gonna judge you or question whether you are truly a respecter of Asian culture. Everybody’s ordering the pad thai. And as you try the fool’s errand of attempting to determine which wok is cooking your order, before you know it, a plate of hot noodles arrives at your table with a scoop of rice on the side.
You’ll taste it for yourself, but to give you some clues, a wok-cooked pad thai whose flames you witnessed singe the hairs of the person cooking it just hits different—thank the “wok hei” (breath of the wok) that
characterizes dishes cooked like this. You’ll get sweet-and-savory textural intrigue backdropped by smoky, charred aroma that you just can’t replicate at your apartment.
Tung Kee Mì Gia (Burien)
If you ever see a “ Kee Mì Gia” spot, you should clock it as an instant Asian Verified situation. Roughly translating to “House of Noodles,” the name carries lineage, dating back to when Cantonese folks migrated to Vietnam and brazenly showed the Viets how Chinese folks get down with soups. As possibly the two biggest fans of noodle soups on the continent, it was a match made in heaven.
That’s the DNA here, and Tung Kee Mì Gia, at the edge of White Center and Burien, wears it with pride. You’ve possibly driven by it dozens of times—wedged in a stretch of Burien where the surroundings look more like industrial SoDo than your food-crawl bucket list. But if you see construction trucks in the lot and high-vis vests filling the tables, you’re in the right place.
The first thing you’ll notice when you walk in is the aquarium. A giant, crystal-clear tank glows next to the counter, lovingly maintained, with each fish flicking around like it has better health insurance than you (it does). The rest of the space is no-frills but gives me nostalgia for holidays I’ve never celebrated, with goldenrod painted walls, mismatched chairs at glass-topped tables, and a freshly vacuumed burgundy carpet.
Place your order by pointing at huge sun-faded pictorials on the wall, maybe phở gà, maybe egg noodle with duck, maybe one of their signature “Big” bowls (a word that is included in half the menu’s dishes, btw), and before you can text your friend “I’m here,” a Wreck-It-Ralph-sized bowl slides in front of you, enough food to meal prep for the whole week. All for less than one hour of minimum wage.
But neither the quantity nor the price ever cancels out the quality. The broth is always clean, rich, and restorative, the kind of soup that warms your marrow after a double shift. The noodles arrive springy, holding their chew through the last slurp. And the meats—roasted duck, tender slices of beef, bright pink char siu—hit all the comforting notes. Take a nod from the blue-collar workers you’ll inevitably encounter and order the “Big Combination Wonton Noodle Soup,” a basin bowl of soup teeming with the full roster of proteins: pork, chicken, meatball, shrimp, and wontons. If you’re looking for something dry, go for the “Combination Crispy Chow Fun” with shrimp, pork, and chicken, which should really also have the word “Big” in it. Depending on how much weed you smoke, it can feed you for days.
What really makes Tung Kee Mì Gia sing is Quyen, the slender Vietnamese man who greets almost everyone who walks through the door. Conversations with Quyen have a way of grounding you—his easy smile fills the small dining room, a reminder of what we stand to lose in a world dominated by quick-service spots and delivery apps.
For the construction crews, it’s fuel. For me, a soft-handed remote worker cosplaying in my Carhartt, it’s a portal into a melting pot of Seattle that doesn’t need a fake flower Instagram story wall to justify it. It just needs a fat-ass bowl of soup to keep it going. And maybe, so do you.
CheBogz (Beacon Hill)
Over the decades, Seattle’s Beacon Hill has quietly become the city’s new Filipinotown, and CheBogz may be the spot to size that up best. Sitting kitty-corner from the light rail station, in the thick of the action among players like Musang, Homer, and Bar Del Corso, the spot is humming with energy at every hour of the day, attracting a rotating cast of Filipino elders, city and transit workers between shifts, and, yes, healthcare professionals.
CheBogz’s menu is a litmus test for every Filipino classic. Deeply savory chicken adobo, comforting beef kare-kare, Inihaw-style BBQ, and lumpia so crisp you can hear the crunch from the next table. Take your titas, nanays, and lolas here without fear of confronting the disappointment that often comes with taking your Filipino relatives to a Filipino restaurant.
If you’re going for one thing, go with the pork sisig—sizzling, fatty, crispy pieces of pork belly that meld into the garlic aioli and aromatics atop piles of hot rice. It’s the kind of dish that sneaks into your dreams. Their dessert program is also a joy, equal parts nostalgic and inventive. I spent weeks obsessed with their Halo-Halo and their Oreo Ube Tres Leches Cake (to the chagrin of my primary care doctor). These are the crowd-pleasers, yes, but they’re also proof that CheBogz isn’t performing Filipino food for outsiders. This is straight-ahead, in-your-face, Pinoy comfort food, served with pride and without pretense.
CheBogz smacks while staying rooted. And it exists today because the Paraiso sisters refused to let Beacon Hill’s Filipino food story get erased. After losing Kusina Filipina, their first restaurant, to rising rents, they didn’t bow out quietly. Instead, they fired up a food truck, launched a Kickstarter, and kept feeding the people. The response was overwhelming: Neighbors, customers, and fans rallied and CheBogz was born, brick and mortar, on the same hill that had once priced them out.
For Seattle, it’s a reminder: Good food survives because people support it, and fight for it. Let the fight continue.