By request: West Seattle Restaurant Guide debuts on WSB

This month we’re marking a lot of anniversaries – six years since we launched this site (December 24, 2005), five years (exactly!) since the windstorm that blew WSB toward morphing into a news site (December 14-15, 2006), four years since your editor here left old media to run the site full-time (December 9, 2007), three years since the crazy snow days of December 2008 that brought community collaboration on WSB to a whole new level … But we prefer to look ahead, rather than look back, so it’s time for more milestones. Earlier this year, more than 500 WSB’ers were kind enough to respond to a three-question survey we posted here, with questions including “what’s missing on WSB?” One popular answer was, weather info. Fixed that. Another one: A restaurant section. So today – we finally have one. See it here (note “Restaurants” in the tab navigation atop WSB pages).

We’ve actually been trying for more than three years to put one together. We didn’t want to just partially launch it and keep adding. But now it’s up, thanks in no small part to WSB contributor Katie Meyer, who did the work that finally got it to the table, so to speak. It’s nothing fancy – meat and potatoes, if you will (tofu and potatoes if you’re meatless), but we believe the pages have the basics for each restaurant, and a place for your comments (please follow the posted rules!). We have pages for more than 120 restaurants, linked from the index page, and we would love you to kick the tires – let us know if we missed someone, if you see an error, etc. If you are a restaurateur or employee and you know the menu/hours are changing, please let us know so we can update the page. Except for a few establishments for which we couldn’t find web pages, we link to restaurants’ own websites, as well as Facebook and/or Twitter. Comments, corrections, etc. are welcome here or to us via e-mail at editor@westseattleblog.com.

(P.S. The guide includes a few White Center restaurants; we’ll be adding more. We also have some of the not-full-fledged-restaurant West Seattle establishments that serve a fair amount of ready-to-eat food items, and are open to suggestions there too.)

46 Replies to "By request: West Seattle Restaurant Guide debuts on WSB"

  • Undefeated Coug Fan December 14, 2011 (4:46 pm)

    This ROCKS! I love the WSB, you guys are the best!

  • k December 14, 2011 (4:51 pm)

    LOVE! Thank you!!

  • Christopher Boffoli December 14, 2011 (4:53 pm)

    Nice!

  • Matt December 14, 2011 (5:02 pm)

    I keep getting an error (Not Found, Error 404) when I try to click on the alphabet search feature.

  • Ben R December 14, 2011 (5:25 pm)

    This is awesome…thanks so much!

  • kathy December 14, 2011 (5:28 pm)

    A perfect addition to WSB! Thank you! Would love to see restaurants classified as to type at some point, so if you want bar food or Thai, you could look up a restaurant that way.

  • miws December 14, 2011 (5:30 pm)

    Happy Anniversaries, WSB!!

    .

    Mike

  • Dee December 14, 2011 (5:31 pm)

    Thank you for doing this!

  • Aman December 14, 2011 (5:45 pm)

    Congratulations, Thank you,& Happy Holidays!

  • MargL December 14, 2011 (6:02 pm)

    This is so neat! Another example of how I still dearly miss my former neighborhood blog (sadly lacking in the area of SF we’re in…)

  • johnnyblegs December 14, 2011 (6:39 pm)

    Ooops! You forgot The Swinery.

    Love it! Very informative.

  • sam-c December 14, 2011 (6:44 pm)

    this is so great !! thank you !!!
    (did Garlic Jim’s re-open?)

  • rw December 14, 2011 (6:56 pm)

    Major congrats to the WSB team. Another indicator of how integral to the community you have become.

  • Bob Loblaw December 14, 2011 (7:06 pm)

    Love that you did this. A tremendous amount of work. Now, two requests: 1) Make it sortable by type of food (maybe it is and I need to look closer); and 2) Make it an app!

    How great would this be as an app? I know Yelp is already out there as an app. But I bet you could make it cleaner and more streamlined (no reviews, user-submitted images, etc.). Just clean, clear listings of West Seattle eats. Hell, you could even sell ad space on the app or charge for it. I’d pay to have this as an app, TR.

  • Christopher Boffoli December 14, 2011 (7:14 pm)

    Maybe this list could be augmented with food trucks too.

  • Star 55 December 14, 2011 (7:15 pm)

    Love it, you guys rock. Just another reason to start my day with the WSBLOG!!!

  • shed22 December 14, 2011 (7:21 pm)

    GREAT addition to the blog!

  • mookie December 14, 2011 (7:26 pm)

    @christopher I do see Beloved Mexico and El Rey del Taco on there…

  • Mannamc December 14, 2011 (7:27 pm)

    Awesome!! I had started doing this with the wstogo.wordpress.com site but realized what a big undertaking it was and put it off… So happy to see it here!

    • WSB December 14, 2011 (7:55 pm)

      Manna – I think we linked to some of your work – much appreciated. I would love to get scans of all the non-online menus but at some point we just drew the line and said ok, if we can at least get the basic info, and menus when possible, let’s just get this OUT there. I remember starting to rough it out when I went to the first conference I’ve gone to as WSB editor, a gathering in Minneapolis in May 2008, the weekend the Corner Inn abruptly closed (Patrick had to handle that one) … I was sitting in the lobby of the college dorm where I bunked for the duration, sizing photos. Oh well. Better late than never :)
      .
      Re: The food trucks. The ones that are here permanently – Beloved Mexico and El Rey – do have pages. The others come and go often (I’ve had trouble just tracking them for the calendar) and do have plenty of online presence. Maybe at some point a general food truck page .. which can in turn point to some of the regulars. There are a few sites in town tracking them already, like seattlefoodtruck.com and for the Uptown pod in The Junction, wseattleeats.com … (forgive me if either of those URLs are imprecise, I’m on a deadline for something else) … TR

  • JO December 14, 2011 (7:37 pm)

    fantastic! thank you. I think A Terrible Beauty is great, please consider adding them as well, thanks

  • austin December 14, 2011 (7:49 pm)

    Holy cow.. I’ve clicked around the new section a little and it’s Amazing. What an incredible addition to an already kickass source of information. Thanks WSB!
    .
    Mannamc I’ve been enjoying the takeout menus wordpress site practically since you put it up, thanks for doing it in the first place! Still my go-to when I want a pdf of a menu. :)

  • JanS December 14, 2011 (7:50 pm)

    JO..A Terrible Beauty is on the list…right near the top of the A’s

  • Kelly December 14, 2011 (8:11 pm)

    Yay! (PS – Link to Locol is broken–missing underscores?)

    • WSB December 14, 2011 (8:13 pm)

      thanks – looking into that one and a couple others. REALLY appreciate the “tire-kicking” … no matter how hard you work on something, a fresh eye (however many we can get from WSB-land!) really helps. TR

  • MMB December 14, 2011 (8:27 pm)

    I will take a look, but meanwhile, yay to WSB for thinking of this. I believe that West Seattle is becoming kind of a restaurant mecca, as I know people who come for just that reason. We have a lot of good eateries of all kinds, you must admit. As someone who moved here in 1990, I believe it is part of a sea change in the landscape of West Seattle that has taken place over that span of time.

  • Michelle R-R December 14, 2011 (9:09 pm)

    Bravo! A job well done. Thanks for providing this great resource for our community!

  • SSF December 14, 2011 (9:20 pm)

    Wow this is great. Now I can my way threw west seattle alphabetically. Nice job.

  • westseattledood December 14, 2011 (9:33 pm)

    Late is better than never!

    I am missing how to directly access guide Tab from iphone/mobile? Probably right in front of me no doubt but I checked both “menu/categories” and saw “ws restaurants” but no direct submenu to guide.

  • ghar72 December 14, 2011 (9:48 pm)

    Wowsers! This is great! What an incredible amount of work…links to websites, menus (ya!), FB, twitter, photos of each restaurant, map…fabulous!
    .
    Agree with the suggestion to have categories by type of food. What about a map on the main restaurant page? Then you could zoom in on the desired ‘hood to see what’s there.
    .
    Thanks so much WSB, for this and ALL that you do for our community!

    • WSB December 14, 2011 (10:44 pm)

      The map’s a good idea, would take time – might be most valuable if we had different icons for different types of food! Google’s stock icons only go so far (for example, they have little evergreen trees that we are making use of on the Christmas lights map on the Holidays page) … Don’t know if anybody else will care about this one, but one categorization we’ll include will be “late night.” Too often we find ourselves wondering at 11 pm “is anybody still serving dinner?” (WSB sponsor Fresh Bistro, it turns out, goes till midnight most of the week, and I believe there are a few others).
      .
      Re: mobile – we have to troubleshoot that one with an expert; might be that the tab navigation is not speaking to the mobile design, since both involved some custom tweaks along the way.

  • twicksea December 14, 2011 (10:19 pm)

    Congrats and Happy (multiple) Anniversaries, WSB. This is great–thank you. You have become an indispensable part of living in West Seattle!

  • Worldcitizen December 14, 2011 (11:46 pm)

    Porterhouse is missing

    • WSB December 14, 2011 (11:51 pm)

      Worldcitizen – assuming you meant that seriously … they are closed as of a week and a half ago, storefront up for sale. – TR

  • sam-c December 15, 2011 (5:42 am)

    Garlic Jim’s is not on the list any more- that answers my question.

    thank you for such a comprehensive list!

  • westseattledood December 15, 2011 (8:04 am)

    OK, tab is visible now and goes directly to guide. Very nice. Thanks!

    I cast my vote in agreement that some way to wrangle food truck data would be outstanding and incredibly useful, but appreciate the guide as is!

  • Alice Kuder December 15, 2011 (8:08 am)

    You guys are incredible! When do you ever get time off, let alone sleep?! (And I think your “few strands” of lights on the shrubbery look very nice :)

  • April December 15, 2011 (9:12 am)

    Merry Christmas to us! What a great Christmas gift to all your fans. Thank you so much! This is awesome. I am certain we will use this all the time. We really appreciate all you do! Merry Christmas and a blessed new year to you! :-)

  • sun*e December 15, 2011 (9:32 am)

    WSB – Once again you are totally awesome!
    .
    Worldcitizen – I went by Porterhouse the other day and sadly it appears to be closed and the space/building is available for sale or lease – I can’t remember which.

  • Yeah-me December 15, 2011 (11:07 am)

    Love it. Thank you WSB… But why open in a second window? Makes browsing more hectic.

    • WSB December 15, 2011 (11:21 am)

      We open all links, whether internal or external, in another window/tab and have for years.

  • digidoll December 15, 2011 (4:50 pm)

    RE: opening new window… I’ll have to say the the whole “new window” practice, especially when browsing the restaurant guide, is especially tedious on an iphone… instead of one tap to go “back” to the list, it’s tap-tap-slide-tap. On my computer, if I WANT to open a link in a new window, I can… but there’s no way to force the links to open in the same window. Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine. Still love the blog!

  • mookie December 15, 2011 (9:11 pm)

    This is the only site I visit that has so many links open in new windows. I agree w/pet peeve, and with still loving the blog. (I’m just used to hitting back button on other news sites.)

  • Sue December 16, 2011 (5:58 pm)

    Love this! Thanks so much for such great info in one place. Already came in handy when I was interested in trying out a restaurant for the first time and wanted to know if it was open that late – got my answer and headed on over!

  • yeah-me December 17, 2011 (8:16 am)

    As a web designer/developer our “policy” is to only open a new window if the link leaves our domain.

  • moji December 17, 2011 (8:07 pm)

    The Blog is already the most-clicked favorite in my bookmarks…and this addition is so awesome! Congratulations, Happy Anniversaries, and THANK YOU WSB!!!

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