CITY FOCUS
multicultural chefs, including Mutsuko Soma, Edouardo Jordan and husband-wife Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi, which drew attention to Seattle’s growing diversity. Farm-to-table is
now assumed at these restaurants; what’s “newer” is the exploration of heritage cuisines and what has now become a group of fourth and fifth generation Seattle chefs returning to their roots. “When I was a second-
generation chef, you were successful if you were at a hotel, but since then chefs have started to migrate to different neighborhoods,” says Custer. “It was either downtown or Capitol Hill for higher-end food, but now it’s Ballard, Queen Anne or Belltown.”
The aforementioned
chef Jordan opened his first restaurant Salare, in 2015, in the Ravenna area of Seattle,
quickly earning accolades. Two years later, he opened JuneBaby in an exploration of the foods of the African diaspora. Amid some recent controversy in the news and sexual misconduct allegations, Jordan has announced plans to reopen JuneBaby this year. “A lot of chefs might have been ashamed or afraid of their culture in the past, but not anymore,” says Barker. “During the pandemic, chefs had time to reconnect with their roots and heritage.” This is being reflected in the current landscape of up- and-coming, ethnic-focused restaurants in Seattle with a Pacific Northwest flair. Archipelago and Musang Seattle are two new Filipino restaurants. There’s also Jerk Shack in Belltown exploring Caribbean cuisine. “Maiz at Pike Place
Market is Pacific Northwest ingredient-driven with a throwback to classic Latino, where they nixtamalize their own corn for tamales,” Barker says. “Señor Carbón is serving Peruvian cuisine and then you have a new concept called Jackalope with Tex- Mex-meets-barbecue. Chef Kristi Brown of Communion in the Central District is a huge human rights advocate. Taku is a fast-casual karaage (Japanese fried chicken) spot by chef Shota Nakajima.” Even the old-school
Renee Erickson's company Sea Creatures includes many notable Seattle restaurants, including Walrus & The Carpenter (above), Barnacle (left) and Willmott's Ghost (above left and far left)
For more go to
fcsi.org
Seattle fine-dining steakhouse Canlis has had to adapt to the times. This is the iconic waterfront restaurant that back in the 1950s and 1960s used to have Japanese waitresses wearing kimonos
– very non-PC by today’s standards. Now, sons and brothers Mark and Brian Canlis run the restaurant. They hired the restaurant’s first woman executive chef, Aisha Ibrahim. During the pandemic shutdown, they took things to the streets to feed the community at large.
The pandemic and beyond Just before the pandemic hit, things were booming in very high-end fashion. “Everyone had a PR agent, everyone was out there in the press, earning awards,” Barker says. Seattle was finally being (rightfully so) recognized as a high-end, culinary destination beyond just Pike Place Market and the restaurants “with a view.” Some of that boom came
crashing down in March 2020. “I remember walking down the street with all of these brand-new high rises and there were no cars and no people on the street and no chefs in the kitchens and I thought: 'This is bad',” Barker says, referencing what felt like a scene out of Vanilla Sky with a deserted Times Square, NYC. The silver lining of a
pause like that, however, is that it gave room to a blast of creative freedom among chefs who chose to – and could – stay in the game. Some shut up shop for good. Others – newly furloughed and with no kitchen to cook in – went off on their own Instagram pop-ups.
Chefs lucky enough to
be employed (even if hours were cut) kept charging through. But perhaps the most noticeable impactive of this
slowdown was the growth of small butcher shops, bakeries and other outlets serving and selling food outside of the traditional restaurant space. There was a boom of neighborhood, chef-driven restaurants, butcheries, bakeries and cheese shops where chefs have the creative freedom (and curious clientele) to support them. If these shops had already existed pre-pandemic, they were now the talk of the town. “We can go to Beast and Cleaver and pick up 100-day dry-aged steaks and curry daikon pork sausages and then walk to the local bottle store and select a natural wine and go to the bakery and grab fresh bread and to the fish store for fresh fish and never have to set food in a grocery store,” Custer says. Brimmer & Heeltap, a restaurant that opened in 2019 and shut down during the pandemic converted to a bottle shop offering specialty wines to go and a wine club subscription that’s the talk of the town. Naturally, there are
ongoing challenges in Seattle’s culinary and dining industry just like in other parts of the country. “Finding staff is a huge problem, even dishwashers and service technicians,” Barker says. As a consultant and chef, “the structure of how we do things is completely changing.” It is still too soon to tell what will result from those changes, but with many restaurants in Seattle getting back on their feet, things are looking up. Fortunately, not in that Vanilla Sky way.
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GRAEME KENNEDY
THE AMERICAS
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