Editor’s Note: This is part 3 in a series about how Erica Hargreave of Roamancing and I ate our way through downtown Seattle on Savor Seattle’s Gourmet Food & Cultural tour. If you’d like to read the earlier posts, click here for part 1 and click here for part 2.
Stop #5 on our food tour was IL Bistro, a romantic Italian restaurant with a speakeasy vibe located right under Pike Place Market near the Gum Wall on Post Alley. Chef Nathan buys the freshest possible seafood from Pike Place market and crafts his dishes around that. Our group was super into the atmosphere as well as the delicious risotto we were served.
I want to come back to Il Bistro at night. I loved this atmospheric bar.
Risotto, made with the freshest seafood available daily in Pike Place Market, is a house specialty
Waving Tree Sangiovese paired nicely with the risotto
The food and wine combo of Waving Tree Sangiovese and the seafood risotto was the overwhelming crowd favorite amongst our fellow foodies. It was Erica’s favorite combo, too.
Left: Chef Nathan at Il Bistro Right: Il Bistro is open until 1 am and is famous for gourmet late night bites
I loved this portrait I shot of a man standing outside the windows of Il Bistro
The Pike Brewing Company was stop #6 on our food tour.
Scenes from our tour of Pike Brewing Company
No foodie tour of the Pacific Northwest would be complete without delving into the world of microbreweries. So we got a cool tour of Pike Place Brewery before heading to their pub for our next tasting.
We got to try two Pike Place Brews paired with Beecher’s Chedder
We weren’t the only girls on a girls trip. Here are our tourmates clicking glasses.
Good Times at Pike Place Brewery
Next up we headed to Thoa’s Restaurant and Lounge, located directly across from the entrance to the fabulous Four Seasons Seattle (where Erica and I were staying on our girls trip), where we had a plate of really delicious Vietnamese noodles in Thoa’s special sauce. It was a tasty and simple dish that left me curious about the other selections on the menu.
Vietnamese noodles from Thoa’s
As we walked the few blocks to our final stop, the Seattle rain briefly turned to hail. Fortunately we’d all had enough to drink that we found the strange weather kind of charming. Our final stop on our food tour was Gelatiamo, which is located at the corner of 3rd and Union street and serves authentic Italian gelato as well as an array of baked goodies. Hail isn’t the weather that puts most people in the food for frozen gelato goodness, but we weren’t too dissuaded.
The baked goodies on offer at Gelatiamo were eye candy enough
We tasted 2 of Gelatiamo’s flavors on offer
Gelatiamo makes over 60 flavors of gelato and sorbetto and offers 16 of those flavors every day
After finishing up our gelato, our tour group did a little wrap up and everyone voted on their favorite tasting. Il Bistro’s food & wine pair was the crowd favorite. Talking with our fellow tourmates, we all agreed that Savor Seattle had some great tours on offer and that the Gourmet Food & Cultural tour was a good time and great value at $69.99. I was also quite grateful we skipped breakfast before going on this tour.
While I started this tour by “going along” I left it super impressed. Erica and I were even discussing possibly going on one of Savor Seattle’s Getaways– such San Juan Islands Gourmet Kayak Expeditions over the summer.