Who serves the best gorditas in Mexico City? Or Baltimore's can't-miss crab cakes? Welcome to Taste of the Town, where we call on a local expert to share the best versions of one of their city’s most iconic foods. Here, we explore Seattle’s take on teriyaki.
Seattle’s entire teriyaki universe exists because of one man, a pioneer of chargrilled chicken thighs. In 1976, Toshi Kasahara opened a restaurant serving lightly marinated and grilled chicken, glazed in a blend of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and sugar. This wasn’t any teriyaki you’d find in Japan, but a cheap, filling, flavor-packed translation aimed at a working-class city still unaware of the tech boom on the horizon.
Kasahara established and sold about 30 shops over the years, and copycats began copycatting. Teriyaki became ubiquitous, the Japanese name concealing its hometown heritage. Some locals don’t even realize teriyaki joints are a Seattle thing—that is, until they move elsewhere and try to find one.
Kitchens with Vietnamese roots began dishing up teriyaki alongside steaming bowlfuls of pho. Many spots still specialize in a classic interpretation, typically served with scoops of rice, some fried gyoza, and iceberg lettuce bathed in a thin mayo dressing. Enterprising Korean immigrants embraced teriyaki and opened their own outfits, adding bulgogi to the menu and gochujang to the chicken’s marinade.
The forward march of time, trends, and real estate prices means there’s sadly no longer a teriyaki business every few blocks. Those that remain include a few clunkers: Many have succumbed to shortcuts, serving sad chicken in gloopy, way-too-sweet gravy, which obscure the dish’s appeal to outsiders. But find a place still making its own sauce and blasting thighs on high heat, delivering bits of caramelized char that balance its teriyaki sweetness. Then you’ll understand.
Local wisdom dictates the best shop is the one closest to you, but here are eight greats, new and old.
Toshi's Teriyaki Grill
16212 Bothell Everett Hwy, Mill Creek
Toshi Kasahara’s original restaurant, now long shuttered, was the archetype of a Seattle-style teriyaki spot—a spare cafeteria-like space with a streamlined menu built around Kasahara’s iconic chicken. Just a sprinkling of these shops still exist, but today only one is the real deal: a take-out operation deep in a Mill Creek strip mall. It’s open just a few hours in the evenings, with the 77-year-old Kasahara at the grill. He’s tweaked his methods slightly over the years, but his chicken is just as juicy and smoky as ever. No one in Seattle does it exactly like Toshi, but his sons do farther afield. One runs a Toshi’s food truck in San Francisco; the other is opening a Toshi’s outpost this winter in his father’s hometown of Ashikaga, Japan.
Grillbird
Multiple locations
Hawaii has its own relationship to teriyaki. When restaurateur Matthew Parker opened his ode to the teriyaki counters that fueled his first 20 years in Seattle, he looked to his family’s roots in Oahu—specifically to huli huli chicken. That dish inspires Grillbird’s glossy house sauce, sweetened just enough with pineapple juice and ketchup. There’s no iceberg salad here; sides include mac salad and marinated cucumbers, dishes standard to plate lunch, Hawaii’s answer to the meat-and-three. Purists can grouse about how teriyaki shops should be old-school in every sense, but I welcome Grillbird’s modern touches, like online ordering and a mostly gluten-free menu. Grillbird’s original West Seattle outfit occupies a former Pizza Hut, which feels just right for this utilitarian dish. A second location in Phinney Ridge operates alongside sister concept Salad Party, for those looking to get their greens in.
Tá Jóia
22833 Bothell Everett Hwy, Bothell
When the Lee family lost the lease on their longtime teriyaki restaurant, the new location they’d scouted came with a catch: The strip mall that housed it already had a teriyaki shop. So matriarch Yoo-Mi Lee camouflaged her teriyaki menu with dishes from her Korean heritage and influences from the years the family lived in Brazil. Be thankful for that other teriyaki business, because Tá Jóia’s highly specific Brazilian-Korean-teriyaki remix is so vibrant and delicious, it could (should!) be a national fast-casual restaurant chain. Feijoada, a hearty slow-cooked black bean stew made with pork, bacon, and sausage, fits right in next to bulgogi, while the kitchen’s spectacular teriyaki hides in plain sight under the moniker “spicy chicken bowl.” It’s the chicken teriyaki of your hottest, most chili-spiked dreams, brightened with a scoop of pico and a drizzle of creamy house cilantro sauce.
Rainier Teriyaki
No matter which member of the Kim family is behind the counter here, chances are they will offer you tea while you wait for your order. If the hospitality is great, the food is even better. Chicken teriyaki looks like it came off a photo shoot, deeply juicy with properly charred edges. It’s chicken that needs no supporting cast, but with so many combos on the menu, it’s fun to compare how the gingery sauce hits different proteins including beef, pork, prawn, or tofu. (If you’re exceedingly hungry, go for the formidable triple combo, which delivers chicken and beef teriyaki, golden-fried gyoza with a flaky, blistered exterior, and fragrant mounds of fried rice.) Teriyaki lovers are especially protective of Rainier Teriyaki since its late owner, Hansoo Kim, was tragically killed during a 2023 attempted armed robbery; the family banded together and reopened the restaurant in his honor.
Fremont Bowl
Most people show up at Fremont’s busy donburi shop craving its chirashi bowl, but the chicken teriyaki imagines what Seattle’s signature dish might have looked like if it actually hailed from Japan. Butterflied thighs with the lightest of marinades come straight off the grill to be dressed with a sauce that’s thin by Seattle standards, but nonetheless lands a careful balance of savory and sweet. I appreciate this subtler rendition of chicken teriyaki, which complements an otherwise traditionally Japanese menu of rice bowls. Granted, people don’t usually crave Seattle teriyaki for its subtlety; add a dose of the house chili oil for texture and kick. Fremont Bowl is a kiosk-driven take-out machine, but the dine-in vibes are friendly, provided you can find a free table.
Ask a local about their favorite teriyaki shop, and chances are high it’s this been-there-forever counter next to a laundromat not far from Lake Union’s north end—not to be confused with other very similarly named Seattle teriyaki practitioners, including one on this list. A high ratio of dark soy makes for a standout sauce, while the thin mayo-based salad dressing plays well against the crispness of the fresh iceberg lettuce. The kitchen even uses an old-school mold to press rice into a pleasing half-football shape. Many teriyaki shops also have chicken katsu and egg rolls on the menu, but the versions here are standouts for their nongreasy crispy exteriors. The tables are mostly waiting zones for people ordering takeout, destined for a lunch in Gas Works Park, the nearby brewery taprooms, or just back to the surrounding tech offices. Come hungry: Portions are huge, even by generous teriyaki shop standards.
Nikko Teriyaki
Nikko is busy most of the day, feeding a bustling lunch rush, teenagers after school, and evening take-out crowds. That turnover means teriyaki that’s always fresh, swiped with sauce that’s more soy than sugar and thick without verging on gummy. Jong Kwon and his family have run this West Seattle staple with warmth for more than two decades. Step inside the narrow shop and you’re transported back to Seattle’s era of peak teriyaki, a simpler time when one ordered off pictures on the wall rather than QR codes and the cashier remembered your name.
I Luv Teriyaki
Clamshell take-out containers are so inherent to the teriyaki experience that nobody asks if you want your food to go, they generally just assume you do. But visit this Georgetown favorite (no relation to I Love Teriyaki) and you’ll witness a rare sight: Diners eating off actual plates. After a three-year closure following a fire, owners Don and Eva Lo rebuilt the original building (once a KFC) into a shiny new space. Aromas of grilled meat hit you from the parking lot, and the cheerful dining room is usually full. Skip the newish teriyaki burritos, and run, don’t walk, to the short ribs teriyaki, so smoky and tender that you might almost be tempted to bypass the chicken altogether. Almost.
.jpg)