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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Some Seattle spots need to be avoided

Dan Webster

Seattle is what drew me to the Northwest in the first place. I'd flown up in 1973 to meet my then-girlfriend, Lyn, who was working a summer job as a camp counselor on Orcas Island. I was living in San Diego at the time, and as a Navy brat I had lived all over the country — on the Texas Gulf, Tidewater Virginia, coastal Rhode Island, in two different parts of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. And other than Florida, the tip of New England and Alaska — places I've since experienced as an adult — I'd visited pretty much every other part of the U.S.

Except the Northwest. And if the view of all that green and the feel of that cool Puget Sound air didn't hit me when I first rode in on Greyhound, it certainly did as I flew in a small airplane to Orcas. I vowed that, one day, I would live in Seattle.

That never happened, and I don't regret it. Living in Spokane, which is far more inexpensive and manageable than anything in or around Seattle, is more to my liking. And besides, anytime I want to enjoy what Seattle has to offer, I just have to make the four-and-a-half-hour trek west. Instant gratification, and then I get to return home. And to sanity.

The question is, what does Seattle have to offer? For me, it's the opportunity to see first-run films that might never play a Spokane theater. It's the chance to see major-league baseball and NFL football. And it's the chance to eat at some world-class restaurants.

But it's not as if everything about our state's biggest city is great. A recent posting on Zagat makes this point well enough as it rates the "8 Most Overrated Seattle Food Icons." If you've spent any time there, you've likely eaten at one or another.

See if you agree. Then think of your own choices and share them.

We'll start our own list of overrated Spokane eateries some other time.