Easy Seattle food scene costumes for Halloween

Dress for Halloween as you like to eat: locally and at least assembled at home, even if you don’t make it yourself.

And if you like to eat, the best Halloween costume could be as close as your next meal. Seattle’s food world provides a treasure trove of totally doable costumes that require just a little creative thinking and almost no actual craftiness – the sweet spot for adult Halloween costumes.

Using repurposed generic costumes, items on hand in a reasonably well-equipped house, and a few special upgrades when desired, we collected a few delicious ideas to help jumpstart your brainstorming and thrift store shopping – or for you to steal and call your own. Keep scrolling. 

Seattle dog

Difficulty level: Easy enough for a drunk person stumbling out of a concert at one in the morning to make.

Start with a store-bought hot dog costume to make things simple, then grab a few white foam pool noodles from the dollar store and glue it onto the sausage part of the costume in a wavy pattern. Ideally, you can trace it over the top of the mustard to hide it, since that’s not an essential part of the Seattle dog experience.

Bonus points: Carry a caulking gun full of cream cheese and a bottle of sriracha to help dress any other hot dogs you might encounter.

Pizza pop-up

Difficulty level: Similar to sorting out exactly which pizza vendor will be where and when this weekend

Over the last two years, so many pizza places popped up, this Halloween costume doesn’t even call for specifying which one you plan to be. All you need to open your portable pizza pop-up – er, costume – is a big pizza box. Pin the bottom to the top of your thighs and the top to your shirt so that if folds closed when you sit and opens when you stand. Don’t stress about having pizza in it, you’ll just be sold out by the time you got there.

Bonus points: Travel with someone dressed as Ballard Brewing District (see below).

King salmon

Difficulty level: Like a fish getting up the salmon ladder at the Ballard Locks, this requires some real effort.

Piece together a silver hoodie and some scaly silver leggings with a few silver cardboard fins, draw some salmon lips on a disposable mask, and throw on a crown. Keep a bag of smoked salmon candy on hand for trick-or-treaters, or to offer anyone who can’t figure out what the heck you’re supposed to be.

Bonus points: Go for Copper River Salmon certification by adding a sticker to your costume.

Ballard Brewing District

Difficulty level: Harder than ignoring the Cycle Saloon when it goes by while you’re trying to eat outside on Ballard Ave, but easier than getting that outdoor seat on a sunny Saturday evening.

Use fabric paint or yellow duct tape to paint a dotted line down the front and back of each leg of a black or gray pair of sweatpants and along the front and back of the center and arms of a matching sweatshirt. Consider your torso to be about the intersection of 11^th Avenue N.W. and N.W 52^nd and pin it with an empty can from Stoup. Using empty beer cans from all of the breweries in the neighborhood to map out the rest of the district. Try to plan ahead so you’re not downing more than a dozen beers before you even leave the house (please don’t forget to rinse them out first).

Bonus points: Bring your dog or children to fully capture the feel of drinking in Ballard.

Extra bonus points: Wear a vintage Bardahl Oil hat to complete the imagery.

Burrito-seeking Californian

Difficulty level: Harder than explaining the allure of Dick’s Drive-In to a die-hard In-N-Out fan

To complete this look, you’ll need to look the part of any Californian stereotype. You can pick from San Diego surf bum (messy beach hair, Sublime hoodie, board shorts) or San Francisco tech bro (Patagonia vest unzipped just far enough to reveal tech start-up logo on shirt or hoodie, Apple Watch), or create your own. You’ll need a large burrito, with the foil unwrapped and a few bites taken from it to reveal the inside. But the real skill on this one comes in the facial expression – either made consistently throughout the night or (expert level!) drawn onto a disposable face mask – that says “Ugh, this is terrible, where can I find a real burrito?”

Bonus points: Carry a basket of lemons or avocados to hand out to trick-or-treaters, while saying “I can’t believe how expensive these are here. These came from my friend’s yard, they grow everywhere down there!”