• Best Lounge: Oskar’s Kitchen
• Best Reason to Look Forward to Winter: Urban Downhill Skiing (shout out to the slipper slopes of the Counterbalance)
• Best View of Downtown: Rooftop of the Queensborough Apartments (in Lower QA)
• Best Stroll: QA Top Pot to the ferry terminal
• Best Theater Company: Teatro ZinZanni
• Best Kids’ Thrill: Seattle Center International Fountain
• Best New Building: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Best Children’s Theater Production: Go, Dog. Go! (At the Seattle Children’s Theater in Seattle Center)
• Best Lesbian Bar: KeyArena (See the Weekly’s reasoning if, like me, your response was like mine–something along the lines of “Huh…?”)
• Best Wine List in a Restaurant, Price be Damned: Canlis
• Best Service in a Restaurant: Canlis
• Best Underage Music Venue: VERA Project
• Best Place to Get Fatter: Red Mill Burgers (Technically in Interbay, but it still counts!)
• Best Record Store – Classical Department: Silver Platters
• Best Car Wash: Brown Bear (locations in QA and elsewhere)

Every year Queen Anne gets a number of shout outs in the ‘best of’ issue, because, well, there are just so many bests we Queen Anne-ers have to boast. Last year Queen Anne’s Easy Street Records, El Diablo Coffee, and our many secret stairways (the “Best Alternative to the Stairmaster”) were just a few of the winners. Check out last year’s wins here.

The Seattle Weekly “best of” list includes people, places, food & drink, sports & recreation and shopping & services. To see the entire list, click here.

Over 150 restaurants citywide will be offering three-course dinners for just $28 (sadly excluding weekends), and many will also be dishing up three-course lunches for $15.

There are 13 Queen Anne restaurants participating in Seattle Restaurant Week:

• Betty Restaurant & Bar
• Boat Street Cafe
• Canlis
• Crow Restaurant & Bar
• emmer&rye
• How to Cook a Wolf
• Paragon Restaurant & Bar
• Peso’s Kitchen and Lounge
• Ponti Seafood Grill
• Portage
• Ten Mercer
• The Melting Pot
• Toulouse Petit Kitchen & Lounge

Search for participating restaurants by neighborhood or meal, or get menu details and reservation information from the Seattle Restaurant Week website.

Seattle Weekly’s annual Voracious restaurant guide

In the “Things That Swim” section, Canlis and chef Jason Franey were commended for the menu – a mixture of new dishes and original plates from the restaurant’s early years.

In the “Veggies” section Book Bindery was called out for a salad – “one of the greatest salads ever” – made out of more apples than vegetables.

Check out the full guide to see some other nearby notables, including the selections just across the water in Fremont. What do you think, Queen Anne? Any shocking omissions from the list?

With black and white photos of the two in Seattle’s notable spots, the restaurateurs hope to get enough votes to win Franey the Northwest and the country in Food & Wine Magazine’s new competition.

“We just thought, ‘how can we be creative here and get people to vote,’” said Mark Canlis. “It’s been a riot; it’s just been a lot of fun.”

There are a total of 14 photographs that will be released each day until voting ends March 1. One of the early shoots had the brothers on the top of the Space Needle in a harness braving cold temperatures and high winds.

“We were so high off adrenaline coming off the space needle in 50 mph winds,” said Canlis. “There were some nerves involved.”

The competition is year one of a joint effort from CNN food blog Eatocracy and Food & Wine Magazine, which nominates 10 chefs from 10 regions of the country and lets people vote for their favorite. The most votes in a region make a chef a finalist, of which there will be 10 in all, but the most votes in the country wins the title.

“We want people to vote for us because they believe in us, because we’re doing something creative,” said Canlis. “Because they respect who we are as a company and love that we’re trying to raise the bar of fine dining in the city, love that we’re trying to make this a food town, a food destination.”

The campaign, while garnering some media attention, is running solely on their Facebook page.

“It’s not so much an ad campaign as doing something fun with the city and social media,” Canlis said.

Adding a playful dimension to the Facebook campaign, Morse Code was inserted into the photographs that led to a secret website. The first 10 to the website (which took about six days) were given reservations and a free dinner at Canlis’s pop-up restaurant Hearth & Home held inside Macrina Bakery Queen Anne last weekend.

Their use of retro photographs with 21^st century media herald the next generation of Canlis’s operation. Brian and Mark Canlis have been running the restaurant for five years now, and Chef Franey, the restaurant’s fifth chef in 60 years, has been at Canlis for a little over two years.

“I’m 36 and I’m the oldest person on my management team, it’s a young crew,” Canlis said. “We just thought to ourselves, ‘hey, we’re up for this award, how do we let people know it’s not your grandfather’s Canlis anymore.’”

Alongside Franey, another Queen Anne chef, Shaun McCrain of Book Bindery, is also up for the award.

For the second year in a row Canlis is up for two distinctive awards as a semifinalist in both the “Outstanding Restaurant” and “Outstanding Wine Service” categories.

Other Seattle restaurants on the semifinalist list this year include Joule (honoring chefs Seif Chirchi and Rachel Yang in the “Best Chef: Northwest” category), Sitka & Spruce chef Matt Dillon (also up for BCN), and Spring Hill chef Mark Fuller (BCN), Staple & Fancy Mercantile’s Ethan Stowell (BCN), Spinasse’s Jason Stratton (BNC), Staple & Fancy Mercantile (“Best New Restaurant”), Poppy’s Jerry Traunfeld (for “Outstanding Chef”), and Tom Douglas (of Dahlia Bakery, Dahlia Lounge, Etta’s, Lola, Palace Kitchen, Seatown Seabar & Rotisserie, and Serious Pie for “Outstanding Restaurateur”).

Check out the full lit of semifinalists here (.pdf).

The contestants for this The People’s Best New Chef 2011 include two new chefs from right here in Queen Anne, Jason Franey from Canlis and Shaun McCrain from Book Bindery. Here’s some of what Food & Wine had to say about the two:

Jason Franey:

• Why he’s amazing: Because he has somehow kept his restrained and subtle style of cooking while maintaining Canlis’s famed lavishness.
• Best known for: Introducing avant-garde flourishes to a venerable 60-year-old institution in Seattle.
• Must-try dish: “Of Earth & Ocean”—a classic Canlis dish of avocado, prawn and mango updated with braised octopus, lobster knuckle and Hawaiian seaweed.

Shaun McCrain:

• Why he’s amazing: Because his illustrious training and limitless imagination produce food that’s polished and exhilarating.
• Must-try dish: Hamachi with house-made chile rice crisps, gelled dashi and avocado.

Check out other Pacific Northwest chefs up for the title here. Want to cast your vote for Franey, McCrain, or another top chef? Vote here.

The restaurant held a private dinner party celebrating its 60th on December 12, and invited 230 local influential non-profits, private foundations, artists, business leaders and politicians, who all are making a positive impact on the Seattle community, to attend. Focusing on the importance of community giving and generosity, the restaurant used the evening as an opportunity to “give a gift to the city”, a $500,000 Matching Campaign for non-profit organizations in which Canlis will match up to $500,000 in gift certificates purchased from the restaurant for donation to any non-profit organization in the city.

“Alice and I are so proud of our sons for continuing the Canlis legacy of community philanthropy and choosing to celebrate our 60th birthday with those who are making a difference in this community,” Chris Canlis, son of Canlis founder Peter Canlis, said to the crowd. “The people in this room are the revolutionaries—the influencers who are defining Seattle in a new way: by its generosity.”

“Generosity is not a financial word,” said owner Mark Canlis. “The Matching Campaign is the third leg of the stool: the model invites the people of our city to partner with businesses in order to support Seattle’s non-profit movement.”

“Every person has been given something they can be generous with,” he said as he introduced Canlis’ own giving campaign.

And that’s not all. Today, Friday, December 31, the 50 winners from the menu hunt are taking part in another local scavenger hunt, this time for a grand prize of dinner for life at the restaurant.

In the spirit of generosity, these participants will be competing for the opportunity to give this dinner for life away every year to a person or charitable organization that embodies the spirit of philanthropy.

The crazy-costumed menu finders are Tweeting their way through the hunt. Follow that here.

Clues to the menus’ hiding places will be sent out daily via the @Canlis Twitter account and the Canlis Facebook page. More information and all the small print can be found here.

The restaurant, which celebrates 60 years on the hill this year, says the party is a  way of getting the community together for a fun time and saying thanks.

The Block Party will be stocked with free burgers, prepared on-site by Canlis staff, shaved ice, live Hawaiian music, face painting, and a special appearance by Queen Anne firefighters.

And following tradition, the party will culminate with an epic tug-o-war battle between Canlis and the Queen Anne neighborhood. (See pictures from last year’s block party here).

Last year the Canlis Block Party raised over $1,700 for the Queen Anne Helpline. This year all proceeds will benefit the Queen Anne Farmers Market.

Swing by the event, or follow the action on Twitter at #CanlisBlockParty and @canlis.

Four Queen Anne restaurants were involved in the first week, including Betty, Canlis, Crow, emmer&rye, How to Cook a Wolf, Ponti Seafood Grill, Portage, Ten Mercer, Paragon, and Via Tribunali. This time around, organizers are turning to Seattle residents to find out what restaurants they’d like to see on the list. Offer up suggestions via Twitter (@SeattleRW) or look for them on Facebook. Each restaurant submitted will be contacted to join in the 10-day foodie celebration.

The second Seattle Restaurant Week, from October 17 to 28, will offer the same deals as the first–a $25 three-course dinner menu and optional $15 three-course lunch menu, Sunday through Thursday.