Maui is dependent upon the tourist dollar, and tourism is way down after the recent fire. The Governor of Maui is asking all of us to return to Maui, now. So, to help spur some first-person support for the Valley Isle, we checked out some new options to encourage you to go (soon).

We set out to try a variety of venues for Mexican food. We have explored three diverse options and discovered so many more worthy options that this edition clearly requires a sequel.

Summer seems to be the season for restaurants to open up like flowers in Seattle. We got to two of them in their first few weeks open. And those two are just a few blocks apart on Capitol Hill.

The Much-Awaited Opening in the Old Canterbury’s Location

For this month we tried something old and something new, a hot new Turkish restaurant between Fremont and Ballard, and one of the established waterfront icons.

A New Restaurant on Alki

We escaped Downtown and Capitol Hill for a change and celebrated the reopening of the West Seattle Bridge by taking a journey to check out Driftwood, 2722 Alki Avenue SW, 206.420.7381, https://www.driftwood
seattle.com/. Driftwood is a new restaurant (opened in January 2023) by Dan and Jackie Mallahan. It is in a prime location on Alki beach — our view included the mini-Statue of Liberty, as well as, of course, a sweeping view of the water. Its fairly small footprint is oriented toward the view, including bar type seating at the (open depending upon the weather) window (recommended).

This month we are paying attention to some establishments that have been around a few years, but we just did not find and review them earlier. All three of this month’s choices show why they survived Covid, and we are glad they did.

While we await an exotic review from some of our contributors who have not yet checked in, we continue our local explorations. Close to home we checked out Bar Vacilando, 405 15th Avenue East, 206.420.1584, which is right next to Rubinstein’s Bagels, if you know the neighborhood, right in the middle of the 15th Avenue restaurant area (with Rionne XIII, Coastal Kitchen, Palermo Pizza, Spice Waala, Smith, etc. all withing less than a block). .

Stone House, 9701 Rainier Avenue, info@thestonehousecafe.com, 206.397.4102, is a fun location for brunch or lunch (it closes at 5 p.m.) in South Seattle. The picturesque location, across the street from Lake Washington, was a gas station from 1926 through 1963. The restaurant opened in 2015. The building is very distinctive for its “stacked rock” exterior.

Staying in town for mid-winter, we tried a mix of local new openings and re-openings.