It's the '90s Wolfgang Puck Cafe closed The celebrity-chef trend seems to be, mercifully, on the way out, but the Wolfgang Puck Cafe, the "casual dining" restaurant launched by the movement's original star, hangs on tenaciously in that most '90s of developments, downtown's Harbor Steps. You enter the restaurant, decked out with "fun" mosaics in garish shades of yellow, red, and black, and take a walk down memory lane to a time when a college grad with a degree in comparative literature could pull in six figures managing content for e-commerce. The menu is a hodgepodge of '90s classics (actually 1980s Californian food)--easy fusion, designer pizzas, Chinese chicken salads, and once-trendy peasant dishes. And hurry up: Puck's own joyful overexpansion seems to be rolling back--you never know how much longer you have to bask in the new-economy vibe. SARA DICKERMAN

(Ed note: When last we tried to call this restaurant the number had been disconnected. Apparently the '90s are finally over.) You're Knocked Up Continental Store 5014 Roosevelt Way NE, 523-0606 Every pregnant lady needs a good pickle dealer, and there is no better place than this German food shop/deli. The store is a shrine to brine, with sweet pickles, hot pickles, garlic pickles, and, should you grow tired of cucumbers, pickled red cabbage, pickled celery root, pickled chanterelle mushrooms, and, naturally, pickled herring. Should your sudden cravings run to the sweet end of the spectrum, there is a wall of German candy, plus a baked good so lumpen that you have to love it: the chocolate potato, a cream-stuffed pastry enrobed in marzipan and rolled in cocoa powder. On the off chance that your food choices aren't entirely driven by hormones, the store's Black Forest ham sandwiches on crusty Kaiser rolls have made it into the Seattle sandwich canon. SARA DICKERMAN A Republican When eating at a $2,000-a-plate George W. Bush fundraiser, wouldn't you expect Texas-sized steaks, tankards of beer, and mounds of presidential potato salad? The menu was far less copious at an August 22, 2003, Hunt's Point event, where Dubya himself was the featured speaker.

Michael Heijer, an Eastsider and president of real estate investment company GranCorp Inc., attended the event out of curiosity more than any burning loyalty to the president. Heijer said his $2,000 bought him crappy finger foods and not enough of them. "We waited in the hot sun for mini-hamburgers." Mini-hamburgers? "I managed to grab a few," he said. "They were on tiny buns with a little bit of lettuce. There was no ketchup or mustard."

Guests washed down their mini-burgers with mineral water and red or white wine. "Getting food was a slow process," said Heijer. "It was a food disaster." MAHRYA DRAHEIM A Toothless Old Geezer Mike's Noodle House 418 Maynard Ave S, 389-7099 There is too much emphasis on chewing these days, n'est-ce pas? On the al dente pasta, the rare beef, the octopus sushi? Mark my words, there will come a time when chewing does not seem to be such a good idea, when your teeth are gone, and all you have left to gum your food down with are your tender and pinkly gums. This is when you'll bless the skies for places like Mike's, where the menu is mainly congee, the ultrasoft Chinese porridge made of a little rice and a lot of water and flavored with all kinds of tender meats and fish and ginger and scallions and peanuts, as well as gelatinous, mushroomy "century eggs." It slides down with hardly any effort at all, no tedious chewing necessary. Enjoy the perks of old age. EMILY HALL Your Job's Been Outsourced to India Shamiana 2255 NE 65th St (with a branch in Kirkland), 524-3664 Unlucky you. Your job has been filled by an aspiring techie in New Delhi, and you're sitting at home watching MTV and eating ramen. Don't mope--get back at the world the only way you can: ironically.

If your employer prefers to support an Indian version of you, take your revenge by patronizing an American-owned Indian restaurant: Shamiana, owned by a brother and sister team who spent part of their childhood in East Pakistan, boasts food and atmosphere pretty much like (and sometimes better than) a lot of other Indian restaurants around town, and while you're having your revenge, you'll eat quite well. (Try the scallops Shah Jahan, if they're available, and tamarind pork kebabs.) You'll really be socking it to the subcontinent, frequenting the Americanized version over the so-called "real thing." EMILY HALL A Bleeding-Heart, NPR-Supporting, Volvo-Driving Seattle Liberal FareStart 1902 Second Avenue, 267-7601 You can go to FareStart, the on-the-job culinary education program and restaurant at Second Avenue and Virginia Street, for one of two reasons. Perhaps you want a reasonably cheap, yummy meal. That's practically a guarantee at FareStart, where, every Thursday night, dinner ($16.95) is prepared by a local "celebrity chef," backed by a team of formerly homeless student chefs.

Or, maybe you go to cement your status as a bleeding-heart Seattle liberal--FareStart's perfect for that, too. Your tab--including tip--goes straight to support the program, so you can forget that you stiffed the homeless guy who asked you for change when you parked your car. Halfway through dinner, a host parades the recently-down-on-their-luck students out to the dining room so you can see just who you're helping, while you uncomfortably polish off your mascarpone potato purée (AKA "pushing your comfort zone"). And you're surrounded by NPR liberals like yourself, so you can bask in your common spirit of giving. You're such a good person. AMY JENNIGES A Princess Queen Mary Tea Room and Restaurant 2912 NE 55th St, 527-2770 The cabbage-rose prints and chintz might attract an older (lady) crowd, but the mood at Queen Mary can quickly turn to something a little nuts and not the least bit prim. There are piles of stuffed animals heaped around the dining room; feel free to invite as many of them to your table as you desire, and if you like, the servers will supply you, without a trace of condescension, with a tiara to wear while you eat. The fare is pure Mad Hatter/Frances Hodgson Burnett: tiny tea sandwiches and amazing little tarts and fruit and sorbet, all accompanied by oceans of tea. If you have a little princess inside you and never let her out, here's the place to do it--however spoiled she may be. EMILY HALL You Have Two Weeks to Live Inn at the Market 86 Pine St, 443-3600 First, get as many credit cards as you can (the soon-to-be-dead can forget about debt), then head to the Inn at the Market. Take the swankiest suite available, and then eat yourself into oblivion on the best room service in Seattle, imported directly from the Inn's illustrious downstairs neighbor, Campagne. If there's a better way to end one's life than scarfing down red-wine-and-orange-braised lamb shank with chickpea purée and Picholine olives in a king-sized bed with a waterfront view (not to mention high-quality cable), we don't want to know about it. DAVID SCHMADER You've Had Gastric Bypass Surgery Various, see below At most, a fully expanded stapled stomach will hold no more than one cup of chewed food, so portion size is key. Restricting oneself to two or three bites of standard portions would quickly prove torturous (would you be able to stop after two bites of a delicious slice of pizza, even at the risk of rigorous vomiting?), so smart staplers will stick to the naturally-small-portions trinity: tapas, satay, and sushi. For tapas, locals cheer for the Harvest Vine (2701 E Madison St, 320-9771), Bandoleone (2241 Eastlake Ave E, 329-7559), and Tango (1100 Pike St, 583-0382). For satay, there's the love-it-or-don't Wild Ginger (1401 Third Ave, 623-4450), while sushi folk choose between relatively thrifty Hana (219 Broadway E, 328-1187) and the relatively expensive Shiro's (2401 Second Ave, 443-9844). No matter where you go, remember to eat slowly, chew thoroughly, and, if need be, puke mightily. DAVID SCHMADER You're a Soldier Stationed in Iraq www.saratogatradingcompany.com My father is not picky about food--generally, if it's cooked, it's fine. This carelessness of palate surely has something to do with his stint in the army, where cuisine, especially as it was executed in the thick of Vietnam, places two requirements above taste: speed and transportation. Military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) are the Pentagon's meals on wheels, and though they may sacrifice a platoon's worth of flavor, they are exceedingly well-designed products, easy to cook under most any circumstances.

What sort of dining is offered by MREs? Everything from a beef enchilada to turkey breast with gravy, all packed in pouches. Generally, each pouch contains eight ounces of food, and can sit on the shelf for five years--a long time, to be sure, for any cuisine combining the words "beef" and "enchilada" to sit around. And to heat your meals, you use handy MRE heaters: water-filled pouches that, through the wonders of science (and the villainy of chemicals), can heat your MREs to over 200 degrees in about 10 minutes. Ain't military science grand?

Though soldiers routinely choke down MREs at the front, any of you--how shall I put this?--more rabidly paranoid citizens can purchase them as well. You know, in case of invasion or fallout or whatnot. For more info, head to www.saratogatradingcompany.com, which provides MREs for civilians, and whose slogan is "Helping America Prepare Since 1998." Go with God, and pass the pouch of scrambled eggs. BRADLEY STEINBACHER You're on the Eastside... Without Going to the Eastside! P. F. Chang's China Bistro 400 Pine St, Westlake Center, 393-0070 P. F. Chang's is a little bit of Bellevue tucked away in a tall, cavernous corner of Westlake Center. The room, lined with vaguely Asiatic murals of pastoral scenes in washed-out khakis and greens, seems designed to maximize the bodies-to-square-feet ratio. The food, like the space, is bland, vastly apportioned, and devoid of any particular ethnic affiliation. P. F. Chang's comes closest, as its name suggests, to Chinese, but even the Chinese offerings (demarcated on the menu in a section called "traditions") are remarkably uniform. Everything seems to come in one of two flavors: salty (the shrimp with lobster sauce, $11.95, came drowning in a thin, brackish broth) or sweet (the kung pao scallops, $12.95, were spackled in the same sticky glaze I saw on many other diners' tables). P. F. Chang's, ultimately, is a lot like the Eastside itself: Pricey, bland, and culturally ambivalent, though not entirely distasteful. ERICA C. BARNETT