The Bite of Seattle Is Back and Just Revealed Its Restaurant Lineup

One of the oldest and most well-known events on Seattle’s culinary calendar is coming back with a vengeance (and a new owner). On July 21, 22, and 23 Bite of Seattle will return to its old stomping ground at Seattle Center, and this week the festival released its lineup of participating restaurants.

We’ll get to the highlights of that list in a second, but first some background: The Bite started out in 1982 as a Green Lake event — organizers of the first festival thought 25,000 people would show up then got overwhelmed by 75,000 attendees. It later moved to Seattle Center and typical attendance landed at about 425,000 across the three days.

When COVID-19 lockdowns shut down much of the restaurant industry, it shut down the Bite as well, which didn’t host its namesake event in 2020, 2021, or 2022. (Alan Silverman, the Bite’s founder, died in 2019.) The rebooted Bite is now owned by the payment app CHEQ.

Entry to the Bite is free, though there are VIP areas that you can only access if you pony up for a $60 VIP pass. It does seem like you’ll have to download CHEQ though, as you place orders through that app — the Bite touts this as a way to avoid the lines, though it remains to be seen how smoothly this will go. (You can even apparently order food before the festival starts.)

In addition to the food there will be a substantial lineup of musical acts, headlined by Seattle mainstays Sir Mix-a-Lot and Polyrhythmics. Local restaurateur Ethan Stowell will also be on site each day from 2 to 5 p.m. in the wine garden for book signings and meet-and-greets with fans. (The wine garden is 21-plus, sorry teenaged Stowellheads.)

The Bite says it will have more than 100 food vendors, though the site lists less than 70. Of those, a few that caught our eye are Luke’s Lobster, Ma and Pops ice pops, Ong Lam Bistro, Dough Joy, the Original Philly’s, Kenyan Kitchen, Puffle Up... we could be here all day. Click around the Bite website for more.