Stepping into Seattle’s Chaco Canyon preferably with bare feet, either in West Seattle or its original U District location will warm your senses with sights, smells and friendly ambiance. The setting intertwines with the menu which stems from the sheer inspiration of nature. The café makes breathing easy and eating comfortable. Decked with live plants, the café offers a friendly vibe; you order at the front from a large, colorfully-chalked menu, pick your seat amongst a fantastic array of salvaged wooden tables and chairs, fill up your glass with water from the restaurant’s community dispenser and wait for your meal to be served.
Chaco Canyon is heralded as “Washington’s First Certified Organic Vegetarian Café and Restaurant”, and is proud to serve organic, ethical, often locally harvested foods to its happy customers. The café serves raw entrees, which I’ve found the most intriguing. I’ve always had trouble merely concocting a recipe that uses only raw foods and the sensational presentation and palatable nature of their specialty raw dishes imbues my consciousness. They also serve warm dishes, none less impressive. The meals can be accompanied by scrumptious smoothies, cleansing, freshly-prepared juices and delectable, local coffee.
Rain or shine, eating a meal at Chaco Canyon is sure to fill some void. The entrees fill you up physically, but leave you craving more. You’re left with a yearning for more raw food, more ethically sound, local production. It’s an interesting twist to add to our modern, fully cooked, deep-fried and homogenized daily world of food.
