Bacco Cafe: Heaping full Dungeness crab omelettes

Bacco Cafe, Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza), Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Bacco Cafe

Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza)

Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

There are a couple of things wrong with Bacco Cafe. First off, the address on their website is totally inaccurate, it says 86 Pine Street but Bacco is in actual fact on the other end of that city block, northeast of the address, on the corner of 1st and Stewart. The restaurant is attached to a plaza on 86 Pine Street though. It took us 15 minutes to loop around Pine Street to figure this out, and these are super steep, sloped Seattle streets, we were panting by the time we got to the restaurant. But I would do anything for fried chicken and waffles. That’s why I picked this place, I saw fried chicken and waffles on their menu online. The other reason why I chose Bacco was because I thought it was located on Pine street and my Google street view research told me that we’d be facing the water and Pike Place Market. Another fail on that part, we were actually facing a dirty billboard and scruffy street folk pushing grocery carts of used soda cans and empty bottles past us.

The service at Bacco was excellent though, our server was friendly and chatty and showed a lot of interest in my ratty old Nikon DSLR camera that I lugged to brunch. My second wave of disappointment came when I scanned the menu for my much-anticipated chicken and waffles. I didn’t see it so I decided to request it, and to my dismay, our server told us that they took that item off the menu months ago. It was too labour intensive for the kitchen to freshly fry chicken everyday he explained. At that point, I felt like leaving. After all, we could have grabbed some food from Pike Place Market for brunch rather than sit around on a patio facing a dirty billboard.

Pineapple smoothie, Bacco Cafe, Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza), Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Then I spotted the fresh fruit smoothies and the selection of seafood omelettes and decided to stay to check those out. We were pretty pooped from our multiple treks up the hilly streets anyway.

We ordered the Moderna smoothie: strawberry, pear, apple and banana and the Genova: pineapple, orange and pear. I preferred the Genova, it was sweeter and much more refreshing.

Dungeness crab omelette, Bacco Cafe, Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza), Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Dungeness crab omelette, Bacco Cafe, Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza), Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Dungeness crab omelette, Bacco Cafe, Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza), Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

We ordered the Dungeness crab omelette and the Dungeness crab croissant. My expectations were pretty low at this point so I was practically expecting canned crab to be placed in front of me. When the fluffy omelette came to our table, it was not sealed shut so we could lift up the corner and peek inside. The omelette really was spilling full of fresh, soft and moist crab. The crab to egg ratio was definitely 50/50. The crab meat was lightly dressed with some lemon and tasted fresh and sweet. It almost made up for the fact that we climbed hills to get to Bacco.

Dungeness crab croissant, Bacco Cafe, Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza), Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Same for the croissant sandwich. The croissant was buttery and rich and stuffed with crab meat. We were pretty full at the end.

Dungeness crab croissant, Bacco Cafe, Corner of 1st and Stewart (Inside 86 Pine Street plaza), Northeast of Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

I’m not sure that I would visit again. I highly recommend that Bacco take chicken and waffles off their online menu and also correct their street address on their website!