Street Bean Boils Over into the U-District

This is wonderful news! Street Bean, my favorite Belltown "mobile office," is growing. Street Bean is a wonderful business model—each bag of coffee they sell is converted to one hour of on-the-job barista training for homeless or street-affected youth—but it's also a wonderful coffee shop, being well endowed with plugs, tasty pastries, and patient hospitality. For the "two- or three-hour-old cup of coffee" set, as Dan Savage once described us plug-hungry laptop hobos, it's also some of the best drip in town.

The new Street Bean is on Roosevelt, just north of 50th, and they celebrated their grand opening with a giant, gap-toothed coffee bean mascot dancing around, because of course they did—it's the only thing more "d'awwe"-inducing than their mission. Rejoice, socially-conscious college kids, this is definitely your new place to cram.

Harvard Market Goes "Ooink, Ooink"

Ooink is a Capitol Hill's latest ramen spot. It's in the erstwhile Vostok Dumpling House location, and while I will always miss those glorious, sour-cream-slathered pillows of dough and meat, Yelp is already going nuts over Ooink. The spicy kotteri ramen—a more viscious, viscerally-meaty style of ramen broth—seems to be a mega hit.

SoDo Gets a Pick-Quick

SoDo will be the latest site of Pick-Quick Drive-In, a family-owned restaurant with well-loved locations in Auburn and Fife. The newest location will open on October 18th, in the Young's Market parking lot on 4th, and will be more of a booth with an adjacent lane than an old-timey drive-in with a cute awning, like its older siblings. It's SoDo though, so I'm sure the lack of charming exterior decor won't really be out of place. Also, it's SoDo, which has a healthy and growing population of nine-to-fivers in need of a super-quick lunch.

The March of Poke Continues

Every week when I begin working on this column, I make a little deal with God. I say, "If there's not a new poke place this week, I'll believe you exist and care about us. I'll stroll on down to that new poke spot by St. James Cathedral, grab some cured albacore, and contemplate your glory while I eat it on the steps of your magnificent edifice of worship."

Guess what? There is no God. There is only poke. A never-ending stream of new poke places flooding our city. I'm sure they're all fabulous, and the new Pokeworks location looks as fabulous as any other (they're also as committed to sustainable seafood as any other, but seriously guys, that ain't mean shit unless you got that good eco-label), but do we really need to so blatantly fall victim to a fad? Are we not, as a city, a little more self-aware than that?

Anyway, Pokeworks is downtown on 3rd and Seneca, for all ye fish-loving office types. They'll have a rotating menu of eight chef special bowls (sous vide shrimp looks interesting), as well as the "Build Your Own Poke" option (exactly the Subway experience it sounds like) and some appropriate sides, like miso soup, according to Eater.

Teasome Opens in Phinney Ridge

Speaking of poke, which seems to be all I do these days, there's a new tea shop on 65th and Phinney that is actually a poke joint. While their name says tea, and they'll offer a selection of artisan loose leaf varieties, their Facebook banner image says poke. Their Facebook also says, "New in town!! Try out the all new poke bowl restaurant, with fresh yellowfin tuna brought just for you!! Don't miss out this opportunity to eat tasty!!" Which might be my favorite bit of restaurant industry copywriting in recent memory. Hopefully the poke is as exuberant as the social media management.