The Best Food at Sea-Tac Airport

I travel for my day job at least once a month, and the trips nearly always involve flying out of the Seattle Tacoma International Airport, better known as Sea-Tac. My regular visits to Sea-Tac have taught me much about the food options available at the airport. While a brief article cannot possibly cover all of the restaurants and choices available, it can summarize some of the highlights (and low points) of food at Sea-Tac.

Best bet for breakfast
If you're unlucky enough to be saddled with a 6 a.m. flight, you may be thinking breakfast. My top choice for breakfast food at Sea-Tac is The Great American Bagel Bakery. With two locations, in the A and D terminals of Sea-Tac, The Great American Bagel Bakery offers a variety of delicious choices for breakfast. Whether you just want a simple bagel with cream cheese or a fruit cup, or if you're thinking more along the lines of a breakfast sandwich with meat, cheese, and eggs, this breakfast choice at Sea-Tac has what you're looking for. While you can get pastries, fruit, and other breakfast foods at many of the coffee shops at Sea-Tac (of which there are an abundance--this is Seattle, after all), The Great American Bagel Bakery is where I head when I need breakfast at Sea-Tac.

From the mundane to the not-so-mundane
When it comes to lunch and dinners, there are places in all of Sea-Tac's six terminals where you can eat. If you're in a rush, there are fast food options in each terminal. There are also plenty of small shops where you can grab a pre-made sandwich or salad. My favorite pre-made food option, though, is at the sushi stand--Waji's in C terminal. Although Waji's only serves pre-made sushi (no custom orders here), it has always been fresh and tasty when I've been lucky enough to grab my lunch at Sea-Tac Airport there.

When you have time to kill
Normally, I don't spend much more time at Sea-Tac Airport than I have to, but there are occasionally delayed flights and layovers for those who aren't based out of Seattle. If you've got enough time for a sit down meal at Sea-Tac Airport, I recommend the Alaska Lounge in C terminal. When I arrived three hours early for my Christmas Day flight to the Midwest, I took the time to have a regular meal at the Alaska Lounge rather than standing in line for fast food. True, the sit down restaurants are more expensive, but when you're stuck at Sea-Tac for longer than an hour or so, it can be worthwhile to find a place to eat, drink, and watch a bit of television, knowing that if you get up to use the restroom, your seat will still be there when you return.

The curse of the satellites
While most of the food options at Sea-Tac Airport are uniformly good, there is one exception to that rule--the satellite terminals, designated as N and S. In each of the satellite terminals, your food options are limited to one fast food restaurant, one coffee shop, and one sit down restaurant. (One of the satellite terminals also has sushi, but when I've eaten there, the sushi rice has been stale and not edible.) When I discover that I'm flying out of a satellite terminal, I invariably grab food somewhere in the main terminal before taking the train to the satellite.