A couple of weeks ago, for my brother’s birthday, my family and I decided to head down to the Kingfish Cafe for some delicious soul food. Kingfish was opened in 1997 by sisters Leslie and Laurie Coaston. Since the day it opened, it has been wildly popular, with lines out the door nearly every night. A word of warning: they don’t take reservations so the wait can sometimes be huge. If you are impatient, like me, your best bet is to get there early. We arrived ten minutes before opening and a line was already beginning to form.

Kingfish is tucked away on a shady street in the quieter section of Capitol Hill. The cafe is understated in its decor but in a very appealing way. It has tall ceilings and big windows which let in a lot of light (when there is light in Seattle, that is.) Large, framed black and white photographs of the Coaston’s relatives line the walls.

The menu at Kingfish features soul food favorites. Although everything sounded good, I finally settled on the crab cake entree for my dinner: three crab cakes with aioli, a roasted yam, and a side of succotash. My mom ordered the fried catfish which was served with spicy grits and collard greens. Robert got the fried chicken, my dad had red beans and rice with andouille sausage, and my brother ordered the gumbo. Everything was simply delicious. The yam was so soft and buttery; even the skin on it was amazingly tender. How on earth do you make a yam skin tender? And, the next day, I actually found myself craving succotash. I never thought I could be this crazy about lima beans.

There are a couple of things that Kingfish does that I really appreciate. One, the menu offers lots of variety but is not so huge as to be overwhelming. Two, most of the entrees come with some sort of vegetable side dish. I hate it when you are forced to order a salad in a restaurant just to get some kind of vegetable with your meal. Three, the prices are completely reasonable. My crab cake dinner, which was a pretty good sized portion, came to just over $12. My dad’s beans and rice were only $11. Now, if they would only start taking reservations so I wouldn’t have to stress about wait times, it would be the perfect restaurant! Kingfish is located on the corner of 19th Avenue and Mercer Street.