BBQ Pork hombow from Mee Sum Pastry:Mee Sum’s hombow is on just about everyone’s list of Seattle’s defining dishes, and for good reason.First, though it comes from a static location (most often for me from the little walk-up stand at 1526 Pike Place), it is still street food because everyone who comes here eats theirs walking. And Seattleites love them some street food. Second, the cash-only storefront is usually crowded, from morning ’til night, with people all after just one thing: the hombow. Third, the smell of the place when the wind is just right is something like what heaven must smell like–all sweet and salty and redolent of hot ovens, baking pastry and barbecued pork. On the best days, you can smell Mee Sum from a block away. And standing in line is an experience all by itself–putting you shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbors, tourists, market workers and market shoppers all at the same time. A feeling of community can be built in knowing that everyone is here to score the same thing. A sense of mounting panic can start to grow when, on a bad day, you count the number of hombow remianing, divide it by the number of people still in line ahead of you, and find that the math is not working in your favor. But finally, it’s the thing itself that’s most affecting: the hombow. Nothing more than a bit of pork, a bit of sauce and a bit of bread, it nonetheless stands as one of the greatest three or four-bite meals in the city simply because Mee Sum has managed to put that pork, that sweet-and-savory, bright-red barbecue sauce, and that ethereally soft, warm and fluffy bread in ideal balance–like an edible baseball full of pig, like a bread cloud stuffed with barbecue. One is a snack, two can be a meal. And walking down the street with a crinkling brown paper bag full? That’s just one of the definitions of happy right there–a feeling that, for as long as your supply of hombow holds out, everything is gonna be just fine.