Themes That Define the City

Coffee: It may be a cliché, but coffee is a huge part of Seattle's cultural identity. Although Starbucks has enough local fans to support quite a few branches within the city, it's not about the 'bucks at all. To truly understand the coffee culture -- and to get a truly great cup of coffee -- you have to visit the independent shops and local mini-chains, several of which manage to roast their own beans on-site without burning them (take that, Starbucks). A Seattleites relationship with coffee ranges from grabbing the daily quick fix in the morning to spending half the day at a local shop where every barista knows their name, reading, chatting with friends, or tapping away on a laptop. Many coffee shops pull double duty as art galleries, and some of them even pull double duty as good art galleries. Occasionally, shops hold special "cupping" events featuring hard to get coffees, which are much like wine-tastings. And don't worry about all that lingo: if someone actually gives you grief for not knowing a drip from an Americano, just go to another coffee shop -- there's probably two or three others on the same block.

Pacific Northwest Cuisine: With such an active population, and easy access to the best the sea and the land have to offer, it's no wonder that eating well is so important to Seattleites. Though you can find foods from nearly every continent, the city really shines when it comes to the cuisine that helped to put it on the culinary map. Pacific Northwest dishes emphasize fresh, locally produced ingredients; even some of the fanciest restaurants in town get their ingredients from the city's farmer's markets, Pike Place Market, and even in some cases from their chef's own organic farms. These fresh, seasonal ingredients can be combined in straightforward ways -- inventive takes on American comfort food is a recent trend -- or fused with European and Asian influences. Many of Seattle's celebrity chefs have gained their fame through their ambitious takes on Pacific Northwest cuisine, but you don't have to spend big bucks to get a taste: many bistros, bakeries, and cafes use local and organic ingredients as a matter of principle. Seattleites are pretty hard on their restaurants -- this is still a city that favors substance over style -- so when they say a restaurant's great, you can believe the hype.

Music: First things first, grunge is over. Incredibly over. It's mystifying that this term is still used to describe all manner of the city's carefully disheveled indie rockers. Grunge peaked in the early nineties and was on the decline by 1996 (some would argue even earlier than that), and today you're more likely to catch alt-country bands, post-emo songwriters, or The Shins sound-a-likes than anything resembling grunge. Now that that's out of the way, know that Seattle's live music scene is still kicking, and it still seems like every other person in the city is in a band (or at the very least, is roommates with someone in a band). But the city's love of music is demonstrated more outside of its clubs than in them. You can see it in the independent record shops where staff members hand write meandering, sometimes poetic recommendations, in the continued success of (and pride in) local label Sub Pop Records, in the nearly mainstream support for excellent alternative radio station KEXP, the emergence and reemergence of mid-size venues that can draw the best national acts, and in the fact that many of the city's baristas treat their shifts like DJ sessions. Though Seattle's hip-hop and jazz scenes have yet to make any serious national waves, they're on the rise, and as the city continues to grow, it's musical lexicon will only widen.