When I moved to Seattle two years ago, I was almost as excited about the access to mountains as I was that Kenji was living here as well. Coming from a life in New York City and deeply falling in love with the NYC food scene, I figured that I’d be making a major compromise in my city-life by leaving. Instead, I had (in addition to all the wonderful existing publications) Kenji in my Instagram feed putting a spotlight on the good stuff. I’ve been a fan for years and it felt like winning the lottery twice to have him sharing the city.

I’ve been cherry-picking Kenji’s recs to supplement my own personal list of places to check out, but I thought others would appreciate a map that has every single one of his Seattle recommendations* alongside his commentary. I haven’t seen anyone else do this in a comprehensive way. I recently found myself with many hours in front of the computer after my ski season prematurely ended because of an ACL tear. I dusted off this project and have finally completed it!

*UDPATE 6/26: It’s a not exactly accurate that this map is a collection of Kenji’s “recommendations.” It’s more like anything he’s mentioned on Instagram. Rather than make a judgement on whether a place got a strong or weak endorsement, I opted to take it all and just copy and paste his exact words so you can decide for yourself.

In this map you’ll find:

• Places Kenji has mentioend on Instagram since Nov 2020

• Mentions beyond Seattle. Road-tripping up and down the coast and across the state is fun, so think of this map as having a a PNW+ scope. I did not add any mentions from Chicago, NYC, Boston, etc.

• A link to the IG post and a copy/paste of his commentary without me trimming it down. I even kept his typos.

• Repeat visit commentary. There are places Kenji gives a shout out to multiple times (e.g., Volunteer Park Cafe). You’ll find all his exclamations about their breakfast sandwich.

• Commentary repeated across chains. Kenji called out Ezell’s Famous Chicken, and I added every location to this map. I did this for Dick’s and General Porpoise, as well as other local chains. I made an exception if there was something specific to that location he noted.

• Nothing listed if the place is permanently closed. I just skipped those (e.g., Oaky’s Mexican Restaurant).

• Mentions even if he no longer supports the place. For example, Kenji no longer supports Burb’s Burgers. I still kept them on the map.

• Primarily food-related mentions. I tried to avoid parks and local trails he calls out since I’m all set on that front.

To set the map to appear on your default view:

• Go to the map and sign in with whatever Google account you normally use

• Click Follow

• Wait some amount of time and it should start appearing on your personal map. I’ve seen it take a full day.

I plan to keep this map updated regularly, either daily or weekly. If there’s a long lag, it’s because I’m in the mountains. This took me a great many hours to get done. If you’re a fan and appreciate this, please consider making a donation to No Kid Hungry! You could also Venmo me (@raja-h) or Paypal me and I'll have my employer match it.

A few thoughts on my experience putting this together:

• I went through hundreds of Kenji’s post and read or skimmed all of the words he wrote. It was a firehose of Kenji content for hours on end. I already knew this, but even more so I was made aware about what a genuinely kind and thoughtful person he is. It nudged me to be a little better.

• It was cool to see Kenji learn more about his new home at roughly the same rate that I did. He was also raised in NYC and shares similar thoughts on pizza, crowdedness, awe at the proximity of the outdoors here.

• I got tons of recipe inspiration while flipping through his posts. It’s not all just eating out!

• I’ve got so many more places to go, on top of the nearly 200+ spots on my personal map that I’ve already accumulated from friend recommendations, publications, etc. I was particularly excited to identify the places where we had overlap and will be prioritizing those!

If you have thoughts or feedback, leave a comment below, especially if there’s an error you catch. Reach out to me directly or follow @rajawashere.