Customer Reviews

eat.shop seattle: the indispensable guide to stylishly unique, locally owned eating and shopping (eat.shop guides)

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When I found out in April that I would be moving to Seattle in August, I naturally started researching the city: looking at housing costs, learning the available options for public transportation, checking out the neighborhoods, etc., and bought a couple of travel guides to get an idea of what I can look forward to once I arrive. I was bit disappointed at the small number of restaurants and shops featured in these guides, especially when different travel guides started churning out the same names. Wanting a book devoted solely to restaurants and stores, but simultaneously wanting something less inclusive than a Zagat survey guide, I ordered this book, sight-unseen.

I am very pleased with it. It features 90 different businesses, which is, I think, a perfect number. Any more would be overwhelming, and any less would make you rethink your purchase. Each business has a two-page spread including pictures, shop owner information, business hours, payment options, and a paragraph describing the business, often with personal anecdotes. The neighborhood maps make it easy to get an idea of where everything is.

However, I do have two small problems with the guide:
1) The restaurant section provides cost estimates in the "$-$$$$" notation typical of travel guides. Usually, the $$$$ marking means that your meal will easily be over, say, $60 a person, but after searching every possible page that would contain the specific ranges the author is using, I can't find any such key. Checking the eat.shop.guide's website provided no further clues as to what I will be expected to pay once I commit to a restaurant and sit down for a meal.
2) The book is very poorly edited. Typos, misspellings, and general inconsistencies are found everywhere. For instance, at Green Leaf, is the "Soda Chanh Muoi" really a Pickled Lemondade Soda? Is the owner of the Capitol Hill shop "Fleurish" named Nisha or Neisha? This is, of course, not enough to render the book unusable, and is really only a small problem. Still, it's a little annoying.