I really hate Rachael Ray. She’s completely annoying and has no
neck. I would occasionally happen upon her old, pre-Oprah show $40 a
Day and want to vomit. “Bourgeois hog!” I’d think. “Anyone can eat
amazing food with 40-fuckin’-dollars a day! That’s rich-
people
money!”

This was during one of my unemployed spells, when I lived on $20 a
week. You can’t eat out when you only have $20 a week. You have to go
to the food bank and raid Dumpsters and cook, which is fine. But what
is the least amount of money you would need to be able to eat out for
every meal, every day, like Rachael Ray (who, if you think about it,
resembles a shaved ewok)? Could you do it for half of what she does:
$20 a day?

Yes. There are tons of great cheap eats to be found in every
neighborhood of Seattle. For five days, I only ate out at restaurants
(and at delis, bakeries, and other havens of inexpensive goodness). I
had no trouble spending less than $20 a day, and neither will you.

Day 1

When I wake up, Seattle is soggy—the perfect day to hit Pike
Place Market, as the tourist threat level will be low. (They never
bring hoodies when they visit in summer.) A friend and I hop down to
Le Panier (1902 Pike Place, 441-3669) for savory mushroom
turnovers. At $3.50 apiece, they are a significant expenditure, but the
flaky outsides and gooey, cheesy, mushroomy insides are well worth it.
Then it’s up to Bacco (86 Pine St, 443-5443), a pleasant cafe
with a fake-Mediterranean feel, for fresh-squeezed fruit juices. The
Modena is a frothy and pulpy mixture of pear, apple, and strawberry;
chunks travel up the straw. My companion chooses the Ravenna, a
smoother, chunk-free mixture of apple and carrot. Four dollars is not
too much to pay for the fresh, healthy feeling of nice juice on a
shitty day.

At lunchtime, I find myself in Lower Queen Anne and decide to visit
Nielsen’s Pastries (520 Second Ave W, 282-3004). I’d read about
the house specialty: The “potato” is a cocoa-powder-covered pastry that
looks ugly but tastes heavenly. Unfortunately, they were out of
potatoes during our visit, but we ended up eating well anyway. The
$5.50 lunch special included a bowl of cream-free potato-and-corn
chowder (with soft, sweet chunks of onion) and half a chicken-salad
sandwich on fluffy focaccia. I finished up with a soft and buttery
chocolate-chip cookie (65 cents).

Dinner is simple: A $4 hot dog from S & S Cream Cheese Hot
Dogs, otherwise known as “the hot-dog guy outside the Comet” (922 E
Pike St), who splits his dogs down the middle, grills ’em, slathers
cream cheese on the buns, and you know the rest. The perfect
fortification for a night spent around 10th Avenue and Pike Street
(better known as the Booze Block).

Day 2

Waking up in serious need of coffee, I hustle down to the
International District for breakfast. From the bus tunnel, I walk to
Sun Bakery (658 S Jackson St, 622-9288) where coffee is a dollar
and a half-dozen little Chinese doughnut holes is $2. The doughnut
holes are soft and puffy, more like beignets than a Top Pot offering,
and covered in sugar. The grease soaks through the paper bag containing
the two puffs I save for later. I brandish it with pride.

For lunch, I visit KC Kitchen (414 Eighth Ave S, 332-1881), a
new addition to the ID, located in the shadow of the painted freeway
poles. When I walk in, it’s completely empty, but the decor is nicer
than your average noodle house, with dark wooden tables instead of
plastic and pictures on the wall that don’t look like they’ve been
there since Nixon. Thankfully, the upscale-ish decor doesn’t translate
into higher prices: My wonton and dumpling noodle soup is still just
$4.50. Initially, I can’t tell the dumplings from the wontons, except
for one has a veil of wrapper floating around it, but eventually I
figure it out: The dumplings are pork and shrimp, and the wontons are
shrimp and pork. Both are delicious, juicy in a bowl of very hot,
deeply flavorful soup. The noodles are long, kinky, Hong
Kong–style egg noodles, and the soup comes with a healthy portion
of bright-green gai lan, a Chinese vegetable. When I’m done, I
need a walk.

That night, I go to the 5 Point (415 Cedar St, 448-9993), the
nice and divey 24-hour Seattle institution where I get a blue-cheese
burger with tater tots (undoubtedly the best in the city) for
$7.95.

Day 3

I wake up with a small hangover (the 5 Point is also a bar!) and an
indisputable need to eat tacos for breakfast. I also want to do some
grocery shopping, so I hop down to one of my favorite Cheap Eat Power
Blox™—the 3500 block of Rainier Avenue, where there are two
places worth your time. The first is the legendary taco bus Tacos El
Asadero (3517 Rainier Ave S), where I get three carnitas tacos and a Mexican Coke with real sugar for a mere $5.10. The carnitas
have little crispy bits in them and I shove a spicy pickled carrot in
the doubled tortillas and chow down. The second place is the Mekong
Rainier Supermarket (3400 Rainier Ave S, 723-9641), where prices
compare favorably to ID standbys like Viet Wah, and the selection of
sweet Vietnamese treats is very large. I’m stuffed from the tacos, but
I get a $2 tray with a green (tapioca?) jelly, coconut milk, and
crushed peanuts for later in the park, a savory/sweet treat that’s
enough for two, or, in my case, lunch.

Dinner is up north at Shoreline’s Nara (15033 Aurora Ave N,
417-9978), which is ostensibly a Chinese restaurant but the back page
of the menu contains all Korean specialties. Our waitress gives us
forks because we are the only white people there. I order the
black-bean noodles with seafood ($7.50) from the back page. The
spaghetti-like rice noodles come in a large bowl, doused in black-bean
sauce and something that is either eggplant or mushroom, along with
squid and scallops. The noodles have ridges to collect the thick sauce,
and it’s more than enough for two people, especially because we
received free egg-flower soup and some pickled radish and kimchi to go
along with it. My companion orders some tofu Szechuan style ($6.95)
from the Chinese portion of the menu—the tofu is crispy and
delicious, but soaked in a gummy, sweet sauce that isn’t worth the
time. My fortune cookie is prescient: “You shouldn’t overspend at the
moment. Frugality is important.”

Day 4

When it comes to cheap brunch, dim sum is really the only
option, but that’s okay because it’s the best. Northwest
Tofu/Deli (1913 S Jackson St, 328-8320) is an unassuming storefront
that sells tofu out the side, holds a restaurant in front, and serves
dim sum all day. I order pork pot stickers ($3.25 for six) and
something called simmered tofu noodle ($2.75). The noodles arrive
first, and to my surprise, they are vermicelli width and actually made
from firm tofu and served with carrot and spring onion as a refreshing,
slightly spicy cold salad that is incredibly delicious. The pot
stickers are hand-formed and full of spring onion, carrot, and lots of
garlic.

After the meal, I walk up to 23rd Avenue to watch the Umoja African
Heritage Festival. A few blocks east of 23rd is Dallas BBQ (2519
S Jackson St, 329-5814), which is empty but busy filling orders for
pans of catered barbecue to be served at Seafair picnics later in the
day. I order the Snack Pack, a combination of either catfish or chicken
wings, a side, and a roll for $5. When my catfish and fried okra
arrive, I am pleasantly surprised to find that it is the best
cornmeal-fried catfish in the city, wonderfully moist and juicy,
leagues above Catfish Corner. The okra is also delicious, fried crispy
in a regular batter. This combo pack is nowhere close to being just a
snack, unless you weigh 500 pounds. But it’s ultimate proof that, under
the right circumstances, you can even gorge yourself for cheap.