Bacco Cafe at Pike Place Market

Back to my recent weekend in Seattle.

There were so many brunch options I had picked out for Sunday morning in Seattle- but of course we can’t visit them all in one brunch. Among the options I presented to F included Portage Bay Cafe for their fruit bar, Skillet Diner because they have bacon jam, and Toulouse Petit for their French-New Orleans offering, but all these were greater than a mile away and he was still sore from being on his legs all day while working in the Seattle office. So I yelped options closer to us that included Cafe Campagne for their French brunch take, Library Bistro because someone talked about how they felt like Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and I was using my smartphone to browse and we were impressed with the mobile version of the Library Bistro website and I wanted to reward them for it, Sweet Iron that specializes in waffles and Biscuit Bitch which specializes obviously in biscuits, but…

He went with Bacco Cafe Pike Place Market because after our meal we could then wander the Pike Place Market for a while, and also visit the Waterfront. It is a tiny little cafe that is mostly known for their Dungeness Crab and Smoked Salmon offerings (including in omelette, benedict, and sandwich form) and various fresh fruit shakes.

Note that although their address says they are on Pine, we ended up having to walk back up to 1st street and Pine for their breakfast food- the address they list seems to be more for their bar area downstairs that is part of the rest of the plaza and isn’t entrance to the space they were using for breakfast/brunch.

Bacco Cafe at Pike Place Market’s hot oatmeal with seasonal fruit and steamed milk and brown sugar served in little vessels on the side. He thought it was thoughtful that the steamed milk was already warm so as to not make the oatmeal cold. I had the specialty of Dungeness Crab Benedict, with dungeness crab meat, two poached local free range eggs, hass avocado with hollandaise sauce on multigrain english muffin served with herb roasted potato. I thought my dish was ok- plenty of crab, but it seemed underseasoned. I wish I had had a little lemon- maybe they forgot or were rushed, admittedly we did get our order very quickly, I think in 10 minutes of ordering it.

They make the fruit shakes right there (you can watch them putting in the fruit into the juicer). Both of us enjoyed our fruit shakes- mine with strawberry, banana, pear and apple was not as tart as his with grapefruit, lime, and kiwi I think?

Bacco Cafe is a tiny place with 6 counter top seats and about 10 two-tops I think (there is a nice area outdoors to eat that offers more tables but isn’t used when the temperature if around freezing like it is now). So I was surprised there was no line at 11:30, though as it approached lunchtime the place began to fill up but even then it was maybe a 20 minute wait (and this was for larger groups of 5-6 that were showing up). It seems they have a downstairs area as well which we walked past on our way to try to find the front door of this place, but it was closed off. Bacco serves breakfast all day (from morning to mid afternoon, they close before dinner) everyday, so you don’t have to come get that Dungeness Crab bennie only during brunch on the weekends. If you want a break to sit down and warm up by the market, this would be a nice hidden retreat from the other crowds for some coffee or shakes to regain energy.

We’ll be back in February to attend Pike Brewery’s annual chocolate and beer pairing event dubbed Pike Chocofest, so I’ll have the opportunity again to try one of the other brunch places I found. We found out about the Chocofest event last year but I had to travel for work, so I missed it but we decided to try it this year. We won’t need to wander the Pike Place Market area though during our next visit (though we will likely stay in this area again for convenience to Pike Brewery)- we did lots of wandering in this area next after brunch, to be covered in the next post…