Seattle Foodies

Fresh spring rolls with a surprising fried crunch inside.

If you love treasure hunts, then you have to love Seattle’s International District, where gems lie hidden in unassuming places. Green Leaf Restaurant is one of those places, and when the First Friday Foodie Lunch Club chose them for October, I rushed out to do some reconnaissance work in advance. Multiple times, in fact. Yet by the time fifteen of us foodies arrived for our lunch feast, I was eager for more.

To say Green Leaf has super-fast service, fresh, crisp produce, clean, bright flavors at unbelievable prices (as reviews for decent Vietnamese restaurants inevitably do) would be accurate, but misses what makes them special. It’s the consistent, and obvious care that they take in the kitchen. Fried dishes are crisp and hot, not soggy or oily. Like the Vietnamese pancakes, full of shrimp and creamy with coconut, with edges so crisp they flake apart. The platter of fresh lettuces and herbs and dipping sauce make this one a messy but must-order dish. Grilled dishes have crunch and deep flavor. Even the fresh spring rolls, with lettuce, shrimp, and pork, pack a wonderfully crunchy fried center that elevates this simple appetizer, and also tells you they’re made to order rather wilting in a cooler in huge batches.

Grilled shrimp on sugar cane.

Places like this remind me of the origins of much of classical French cuisine. Humble (meaning cheap) ingredients transformed through creative and careful preparation into something amazing. Green Leaf does exactly this with fresh and simple ingredients, inventive twists on Vietnamese classics, and an apparently highly trained and consistent kitchen staff. It’s so good, the tiny bill always shocks me, as if somehow it’s cheating to get so much for so little.

One final bonus: their recent remodel and expansion upstairs added tables and one of the swankest I.D. bathrooms, but mercifully did nothing to diminish the magic.