SEAGuide
The Best Special Occasion Spots In Seattle
photo credit: Suzi Pratt
Maybe you’re getting engaged or celebrating a major birthday—or maybe you just want to go big on a particularly awesome Tuesday. No matter what your special occasion is, you need someplace exciting for dinner. Someplace that probably requires advance planning, costs more than you’d usually spend, and has outstanding food and service. Even in windbreaker-loving Seattle, there are plenty of places that rise to a more buttoned-up moment, no matter what it is.
THE SPOTS
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You don’t need us to tell you that Canlis ticks all of the special occasion boxes—but we’ll tell you anyway. The jaw-dropping mid-century modern architectural landmark that overlooks Lake Union is the only restaurant in the city with a dress code (no T-shirts, shorts, or hats). Energy in the dining room is powered by chatter, professional piano-playing in the lounge, and plates of tweezer food whizzing by with gusto. Matchbox-sized strip loin and bacon-y romaine salad for $175 will not necessarily change your life, but the fancy song-and-dance makes it all taste better, especially if you’re celebrating something. Or if someone else is picking up the check.
There’s no special occasion too small for the best Italian restaurant in town. Birthday? Have some revelatory sage-buttered tajarin to celebrate. Got engaged? Toast with a couple of textbook paper planes and sausage-stuffed cipollini onions. Promotion? Splurge on the $115-per-person option, which includes every single appetizer, pasta, and entree on the menu. Spinasse doesn’t have an off day, and they don’t have an off dish.
photo credit: Chona Kasinger
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Nabbing a reservation at this fine-dining Filipino spot in Hillman City is really difficult. You’ll have way better odds of securing a counter seat if you go solo—plus, there’s no need to guilt anyone into the $239-per-person price tag and you can focus fully on the experience. That’s what Archipelago is, complete with rich history lessons and outstanding Filipino dishes like sour apple sinigang or homemade miki noodles made using PNW-only ingredients. You don’t really need a dining companion to celebrate that.
If the guest of honor has ever enthusiastically shown you a phone photo of a steak they made at home, there’s only one place to take them. That’s this butcher shop in Ballard that transforms into a fancy restaurant alter-ego after hours known as The Peasant. And somehow, it feels super special to clink glasses of red wine and tear into lovely beef tartare on a tallow-infused scone while sitting at a table kitty-corner to a display case of raw links and chops. When it’s necessary to make a to-do without really making a to-do, you’re in good hands here.
photo credit: Nate Watters
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This tiny restaurant in Queen Anne is where you should absolutely wear a pair of expensive-but-painful shoes. It works well for a special occasion that’s a breeze to get on the books, like if you forgot to plan dinner for a friend’s highly specific anniversary occasion. There’s a tasting menu that changes nightly, but if that feels too constricting, the a la carte lineup is full of exciting things like a crispy “candy bar” loaded with pig’s head, beef tongue pastrami tartines, and foie gras-based desserts. All that’s left to do is commemorate your pal’s 10th year of being a PCC member.
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Meat, seafood, and butter seem to suck up all the special occasion attention. But if you’re looking for a vegan option that’s event-worthy, head to Harvest Beat in Wallingford—a tasting menu spot that serves one 7pm seating per night for $135. The meal begins with the chef ringing a ceremonial gong to give a monologue about the farmers and foragers who supplied ingredients that went into the silky carrot ginger bisque, or the spongy cashew paneer-style loaf. It typically ends with at least five birthday candles jabbed into the trailing berry bread pudding. There’s a wine pairing included, but you can also choose an “elixir” pairing involving fresh-pressed fruits, vegetables, and herbs—a refreshing change of pace from champagne. Yeah, it all sounds like a Portlandia episode, but it’s lovely.
photo credit: Chona Kasinger
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Sushi Kashiba is one of the rare Seattle sushi restaurants where you can have an omakase tasting while seated at a regular ol’ table. Book for a big group, and you’ll get pretty much the same excellent nigiri as the lucky ducks at the counter. Other things like lollipops of juicy karaage and broiled miso cod are great (and mandatory) additions to all of the raw fish. Get some bottles of sake flowing and prepare to eat some stupendous seafood.
photo credit: Nate Watters
This farm-to-table Georgetown restaurant is convenient for literally every romantic relationship milestone. If it’s early in the game but you want to step things up, an a la carte meal outside on the beautiful garden terrace that overlooks wood nymph sculptures should help. Hand over a key to your apartment over albacore confit and braised short rib with creamed cabbage and bacon. Maybe in a few years, you can propose at the end of a prix fixe tasting inside the antique brick cottage-like dining room. Then, get married here—it’s a wedding venue, too.
photo credit: Rafael Soldi
Copine is impressive by design thanks to chocolatey-wooden furniture and a Glassybaby on every table. It also has a menu of French-ish dishes worthy of acknowledging a graduation, home purchase, or completed laundry pile. Among the crudos, smoked pork bellies, and tempura-battered salmon is Copine’s greatest contribution to the world: a warm brioche thyme roll so fluffy you could forgo cake and jab a celebration candle through the middle.
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Ah, The Met. This Downtown velvet-wrapped legend has been around since 1983, and it still holds up. Think of any steakhouse prerequisite, and they’ve most likely surpassed it. Service is attentive without being smothering. Steaks are cooked so well (in quality, not temperature) that you’d be in good hands choosing a humble sirloin over flashier wagyu. You’ll get delicious free bread in droves, roasted garlic mashed potatoes in a massive mound, and a skyscraper-sized carrot cake with an entire pint of ice cream. Do it when you want to go all out for someone’s job offer, amicable divorce, whatever.
photo credit: Ray's Boathouse
Let’s say you want to keep the celebrations simple, with something on the water that serves a few variations on a nice piece of fish with a carb and a vegetable. Skip all of Seattle’s other mediocre waterfront seafood restaurants and prioritize Ray’s Boathouse. Sure, dishes like grilled king salmon with mashed potatoes and buerre blanc tastes like something you’d eat at a gala, but it all just works. Especially if you time things out to have dessert as the sun sets behind Shilshole Bay.
photo credit: Adam Joseph Wells
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From start to finish, dinner at Tomo in White Center is a seasonally changing voyage that involves simple ingredients like charred squash bits floating in stracciatella cream and polka dots of chile and dandelion oil, or the more extravagant kakigori topped with hazelnut butter and whipped cheese. And if you need to give yourself a quick pep talk in the restroom before asking if your partner will move in with you or at least go halfsies on a Paramount Plus subscription, there are soothing whale noises to ground you.
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Everything about The Pink Door is a spectacle—the candlelit dining room, the conical glasses of prosecco, the occasional acrobat dangling from the ceiling, etc. But the best spectacle of all is the food. Not every Italian dish at The Pink Door has stood the test of time (please don’t mess with the meatballs), but the slab of spinach lasagna served in a ramekin bubbling with swirls of marinara, pesto, and besciamella has virtually no known flaws. Add charred fettunta and a caesar salad, and end with a victory lap around Pike Place Market.
