Seattle Welcomes Canal Market: A Modern Mercantile

Always fresh goodness.

Since opening Volunteer Park Café, these three words have been chef and owner Ericka Burke's motto. At her latest venture, the just-opened Canal Market, this credo continues, so much so that it's sweetly stamped on their coffee mugs.

Canal Market is a grocery store, coffee bar, bakery, deli, and eatery all wrapped in one delightful location. Did I mention the boutique wine? The farm-fresh eggs? Canal Market is that shop that every neighborhood dreams of; in this case, it's the Portage Bay denizens that lucked out.

For breakfast, dunk a fig and maple scone into a mug of Stumptown coffee. At lunch, the salad bar brims with mouthwatering options – choose three, like chicken apple almond and quinoa tabouli, for $12. No desire to cook dinner? Each night features a different dish (Monday night is meatloaf) you can reheat at home. Those with a sweet tooth will relish that Burke brings Volunteer Park Café's pastries here; the butterscotch oatmeal cookies are sinfully good.

The perfect pit stop as you drive crosstown, everything is easily packed to go (boaters and picnickers take note). Or, if you chose to dine in, secure a stool with a view of the open kitchen or along the wide bank of windows.

As a mercantile, Canal Market stocks food-lovers' favorites like Zapps Cajun dill pickle potato chips, La Quercia 'nduja, and Ayako & Family jam. With fresh produce, beer and wine, and even a gift section where those aforementioned mugs are sold the market and eatery is, as the website touts, a "one-stop-shop."

Open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.