The Crumpet Shop

The Crumpet Shop
1503 1st Ave
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 682-1598
https://www.thecrumpetshop.com/

Located within the Pike Place Market, this quaint little shop was one of the highlights of my Seattle trip, and therefore, deserving of its own post. I'd never had crumpets prior to this visit, but I had read and drooled over Gastronomer's post on them when she went to Seattle. She loved them so much that she came back and promptly purchased some crumpet rings to make her own crumpets.

I realize of course that crumpets are not synonymous with Seattle, but some Seattleites were smart enough to open a crumpet shop serving good crumpets in Seattle, something that should exist in every city.

For those of you who've never had a crumpet, I would describe them as a cross between a pancake and an American English muffin. When you bite into the crumpet, the inside looks like a pancake with its little airholes within the batter.  It tastes similar to a pancake, but is chewier, firmer and denser, and slightly salty. It is treated very much the way we treat our English muffins: can be eaten like a sandwich, topped with eggs and ham, spread with jam, etc.

The shop is quite small, but has a smattering of seats throughout, as well as some seats outdoors. No matter what time of day, this place seems to be packed. The staff is really friendly and always willing to describe what a crumpet is. You can watch the crumpets being made from the outside window as well.

On our first visit, we chose to order one sweet and one savory crumpet. You can watch as the employees make the crumpets after you order them.

We sampled a pesto, tomato and mozzarella cheese one. I'm a huge fan of anything pesto, so I liked this. The crumpet was toasted so it was nice and crunchy. The pesto, tomato and cheese went nicely with the crumpet. BF absolutely adored this one.

Our next one was a sweet one: topped with ricotta cheese, honey and slices of almonds. I've recently had a thing for honey and love things with honey. So of course, this was perfect for me. The ricotta cheese helped to counter the sweetness of the honey and everything worked well together. I was surprised at how well the crumpet batter worked with both savory and sweet toppings.

BF found this one a little too sweet and preferred the pesto one.

We had arrived here for a quick snack before our Pike Place eating tour, so we didn't want to eat too much. But after devouring our two crumpets, we wanted more. BF especially wanted another one. One thing we learned on this trip is that walking really works up an appetite. One of the nice things about Seattle is that the bus travels anywhere downtown for free. But we chose to walk to most of our destinations as it let us see more and the walk wasn't too bad. We soon discovered that we were able to consume quite a bit more food than we usually can.

So we chose a third crumpet, this one topped with pesto infused eggs. Again, it tasted delicious.

We loved The Crumpet shop so much that we came back our last morning in Seattle to pick up some crumpets to go (they sell packages of them to go, but only if they have enough), and to eat a few more final crumpets.

We again ordered the pesto tomato crumpet.

We also tried the ricotta and boysenberry preserves crumpet.

We left quite happy with our last meal. I munched on the bag of crumpets we got to go. They tasted good even plain, though I prefer them toasted and with some sort of spread.