Gallery Café

It’s not a proper museum visit without a stop for cake and coffee. This is an acceptable café for sufficiently fancy teatime.
Make sure that there’s a free table and that you don’t have to sit next to some noisy art expert and you can have your Frye intermission in style.

This café is my little secret on how I make it through my stressful work week. (well, my blood pressure pills get some credit, too) but I am blessed to have this little Zen gem of delicious food near my office. The café is housed inside the most lovely (and free admission!!!) Frye art museum. It is bright and clean and the employees are downright awesome. They are so hardworking yet so polite. I love them all.
Some of my favorite items are the tuna nicoise salad, the chick pea salad sandwich, the curry quinoa salad, the French onion soup and anything in their dessert case. They have rotating specials and I haven’t had anything that I wouldn’t gladly have again. They only use the freshest ingredients and damn, they do such a great job. Its a great place to veg out and and do your solo thing but its always fun to meet friends here, too.
I’ll see ya there. :-)

I really like the Frye and really love the café – but the food could be so much better! The menu has been the same FOREVER and it needs some shaking up – some new marketing. Like why don’t you guys become the RAW have. For the downtown area? Look at Thrives menu and adapt! I guarantee you serve organic fresh juices, quinoa, continue doing your great soups and you all will be a hit! Seriously consider it! Dump half of you baguettes and replace w yummy raw stuff!
I love you guys… but it’s time for the same make over that happened w your gift shop!

Decent coffee.
Soups that tend to fall flat/​on the bland side.
Sandwiches that are tasty but — being a museum café, a little more than you may pay for somewhere else down the street.
The ambiance is great though, the people watching fun, not to mention it’s just a lovely spot to take a reality break and relax before heading back into the hustle and bustle. I love the Frye. Seriously — amazing museum. Their focus is art, unique and interactive exhibits… so while their café serves, don’t expect anything on par with the installations you have been looking at.

Cool little spot… Busy;crowded on the lunch hour, but pleasant. Lots of windows & seating. Cute cashier/​cook/​waiter guy– always a bonus ;). They bring the food to your table so you can just sit back and enjoy the scenery. Reasonably priced and good quality food! Can’t beat a delicious lunch on a beautiful day

I had a very nice americano and pleasant service while waiting to meet someone. I want to go back and have lunch there some time; the menu and specials look really good.

Great place to enjoy on a nice summer day. choices are somewhat limited and prices are on the higher side but service is good.

Perfect refuge for a lunch time break.

The eating choices around Swedish on First Hill are a little limited, but I was curious to try the Gallery Café. I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and would definitely go there again. I had the special: tuna nicoise salad and it was perfect. The greens were fresh, cold and crunchy. And the dressing was amazing – a just-​right-​spicy mustard vinagrette. My friend had the tuna sandwich which was packed with chopped red onions and full nice leaves of red lettuce. I think the prices are reasonable based on the quality of the ingredients. This is a really nice change from Subway, World Wrapps and the hospital café.

I just had the perfect «pick me upper» lunch on my break. The cashier was helpful and suggested to order their curry chicken sandwich (aka their most popular sandwich). So got that and a bowl of their tomato garlic soup for a little over $ 7. The portions do look small but it was a very satisfying meal.
The curry sandwich had the perfect amount of curry so if your not a big fan of curry, I encourage you to try it! You may become a new curry fan. ;) The tomato garlic soup was light and flavorful. I have now found a new lunch spot to run to when work at harborview gets hectic.

My fabulous friend Meredith K. recommended the Café at Frye to me, and since she is my guru for all things First Hill I decided to check it out.
I really like the ambiance of this place, it’s simple, clean lines, water and from what I saw beautiful paintings in big open rooms. The café is small with small tables. The menu seems to have a couple new things everyday to spice it up. I had the garlic tomato soup and my friend had the lentil salad. My soup was really good. It had a crisp tomato and garlic flavor that drew me in, honestly I think someone needs to use this soup as their base for cioppino — it would blow people’s minds. The bread is also really good, and I’m not a bread person. Jenn enjoyed her salad quite a bit.
I will definitely make this a regular place for me to grab lunch at work when I’ve forgotten to bring my own!

decent food, but way expensive and portions are way small.

Gallery Café is the hidden gem on 1^st hill. It is sooooo nice to go there when the weather is nice because they have outdoor seating in the courtyard patio area, but it’s also nice during the winter too :)
I love their sandwiches the best. My #1 pick is ham and brie on potato baguette. All warm and melty on delicious fresh bread, it’s fantastic. Runner-​up is curried chicken salad. Their rendition is very nice, but ask for it without mayo on the bread (isn’t chicken salad mayonnaisey enough?)
Soups are hearty, I think they make them there. Salads are fresh and tasty. If you ask really nicely they will do you up a green salad with a scoop of the curried chicken salad on it for a couple bucks more. Yum!
I haven’t tried the entrees yet because I’m always dreaming about the ham sandwich while I’m walking over, but I’d like to branch out and give them a go.
Definitely a nice getaway from the craziness of some 1^st hill lunch joints.

OK… It pains me that it doesn’t show up on a restaurant map, so I’m putting the café on the map. This is my favorite place to eat lunch, for reasons enumerated herein:
— short, reasonable walk from all First Hill hospitals.
— elegantly sparse, with lots of windows. Lots of windows = light. I want maximum light during lunch because that is it for the day. If I don’t leave for lunch and I go to and from work in darkness: all day darkness.
— great coffee.
— tasty, thoughtful food: soup, rustic sandwiches, and an entrée or two.
— never absurdly busy, always chill.
— free priceless art on your way to and from the café.
— fun people watching: besides the interesting museum patrons, you can contemplate the nature of youth (basically: cruelness) after you walk by O’Dea, and/​or the aging process as a senior bus pulls up for a museum tour. Sip coffee, ponder. Eat dessert.
The bad:
— slightly pricey (entrees can top $ 10; sandwiches are less but not much less)