12 of Seattle’s most exciting, interesting egg dishes

This Downtown café offers a few varieties of Georgia’s famous cheese bread, including the classic Adjaruli version. Cradling a mix of tart and melty cheeses in the warm, chewy boat-shaped crust, the sunny egg yolk becomes a crowning touch. The yolk, served whole for the diner to stir in themselves, ups the visual appeal and adds richness and a little extra gooey texture to the cheese.

Egg Cloud and Egg Crème Coffee at Hello Em

From inside the Friends of Little Saigon community space, this coffee shop serves up their own roasts of Vietnamese-grown beans, made into classic Vietnamese-style coffees and a few of their own twists, too. The cá phê trung – coffee with egg crème made from egg yolk – is joined by a slightly lighter version designed to use up the remaining egg whites, which Hello Em creatively and descriptively calls egg clouds.

Divorcados at Sazon

Crisped tortillas in dueling red and green sauces come separated by a river of beans and topped with a pair of sunny side up eggs in this classic dish of chilequiles. Cracking into the eggs and letting the yolk spill into the fresh sauces below is a quintessential part of eating breakfast in Mexico, and this pair of Baja-inspired restaurants (in Ballard and Queen Anne) nails both the flavors and its audience – by serving the dish all day.

If the dream of hot pot, dim sum, and ramen all at the same meal wasn’t enough of a dream to lure into you to this Renton restaurant, the signature specialty salted egg yolk mochi should do the trick. The thick salted egg yolk filling, familiar to dim sum fans from its usual role in buns, gets wrapped in the chewy mochi, and then the outside crisps up, making for a wild combination of textures and sweet and savory flavor.

The creaminess of these fava beans makes it one of the only dishes at this Pinehurst Ethiopian restaurant – and many others in town – to come with French bread rather than injera. The simplicity of the bread and beans works well in combination with the toppings – feta cheese, peppers, and sliced hard boiled eggs.

Mushroom Egg Arugula Pizza at Humble Pie

Lots of local pizza shops offer a version with an egg on it, but only at this shop at the corner of the International and Central Districts does that egg come from the restaurant’s own chickens that live just a few steps from the outdoor patio and garden.

This Bellevue bakery has honed the perfect mix of sweetness and squishiness to their version of fluffy Japanese white bread, an essential component to their egg salad sandwich. Like the bread itself, the sandwich replies on its simplicity for appeal, which means leaves no room for error on details like the egg to mayonnaise ratio and the egg salad to bread ratio. A tiny bit of Parmesan cheese, a sprinkle of sugar, and a few radish sprouts complete the dish.

Kerala Egg Curry at Kathakali

The bulk of the city’s Indian restaurants focus on the northern staples of most Indian restaurants in the U.S., but this Kirkland gem serves specialties from the southern state of Kerala. This one, typical of the region, comes full of spices with a base of red chile, tamarind, and tomatoes and featuring fried boiled eggs.

The best breakfast sandwich is generally the one closest to you – it’s early and you just want something warm and salty to wake up your taste buds and fill your stomach. So this is not meant to say Take 5 has the best breakfast sandwich in town – though they do stuff a mighty good egg and cheese onto a delightfully buttery toasted English muffin with your choice of breakfast meat or vegetable (including a meatloaf option) – but rather that it embodies the platonic ideal of the genre: simple, standard, fast and easy.

Avocado Toast with Soft-Boiled Egg at Mr. West Café Bar

Avocado toast has become a joke or a meme or whatever it is people call mocking millennials, but it’s also still one of the loveliest breakfast dishes and this all-day café does world class version, with curry, mustard seeds, and lime. The soft-boiled egg on top runs out over the ample avocado and picks up all of that flavor, plus acts like a sort of sauce on top of the crunch of the bread and smooth spread of avocado.

The polar opposite of Tres’s simplicity is the loaded grits at this South Seattle soul food shop, which seems to pile half the menu onto a cheesy grits base. A giant pile of vegetables, choice of multiple meats, and eggs however you like them sit on top, with a hefty squiggle of sauce.

While the egg gets involved in many pastries and desserts, it rarely plays a starring role. But this sunshine yellow treat available on weekends at Coyles’ Greenwood shop doubles down on the egg – and kind of evokes one with its colors, too. A light, tender crust holds a rich passionfruit curd that resembles the yolks used to thicken it, while the whites get whipped into a merengue, toasted, and plopped on top.