First Look: Ethan Stowell’s New Ballard Restaurant
Stowell plans to open Staple and Fancy Mercantile by the Fourth of July. Take a photo tour today. (Bonus: Get a look inside the Walrus and the Carpenter, the new oyster bar from Boat Street Cafe’s Renee Erickson.)
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jun 03, 2010 at 01:09PM
7 Comments
The restaurant’s name comes from this lettering, written on the wall on the second floor of the building, to be used as offices for a PR company.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Stowell’s new restaurant will occupy the front section behind the construction trailer in this photo. Erickson’s oyster bar is directly behind it. A Danish bike shop is going into the north side of the building, behind the van.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Ethan Stowell points to the section of the restaurant where the bar, which is being built offsite, will go.
View Slideshow » Illustration:A row of banquettes bifurcates the restaurant and runs parallel to the bar. Staple and Fancy seats 40 guests.
View Slideshow » Illustration: View Slideshow » Illustration:A glass wall will separate the pristine and Frenchified Walrus and the Carpenter (left) from the rough-hewn Staple and Fancy (right).
View Slideshow » Illustration:View from the rear of the Walrus and the Carpenter. The oyster bar extends into a 300 square-foot patio in the back.
View Slideshow » Illustration:The side of the bar and yet-to-be-installed lights at the Walrus and the Carpenter. In the back of the photo is a banquette lining the length of the oyster bar.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Subway tile at Walrus and the Carpenter
View Slideshow » Illustration:A wine bar and cellar, available for private wine storage, is hidden in a corner of the basement. The building owners are planning a private dining room for special events and dinners. Stowell will cater.
Yesterday Ethan Stowell took me on a tour of the Kolstrand building on Ballard Avenue. The brick structure, built in the early 1900s, is owned by some entrepreneurial thirtysomethings who approached both Stowell and Renee Erickson (Boat Street Cafe) about opening restaurants there.
Both restaurateurs said no—the proposed 2,400 square-foot space seemed prohibitively large—but then the friends figured out they could share it and create two restaurants.
Stowell’s Staple and Fancy Mercantile (let’s call it S&FM, shall we?), took the 1,500 square feet at the front of the building. Erickson claimed the 900 sf in the back for an oyster bar she brilliantly named the Walrus and the Carpenter.
Both restaurants hope to open in early July.
Stowell will be the chef at S&FM. He’ll cook there every day it is open. When I ask him whether he’ll worry about his other restaurants (Tavolàta, How to Cook a Wolf, and Anchovies and Olives), he explains that the menus at those restaurants really belong to the chefs who run them. It bums Stowell out that his chefs don’t receive more recognition. How can we attract good cooks to Seattle, he asks (rhetorically), unless restaurateurs step back and give their chefs some limelight? So that’s what he plans to do.
When S&FM servers (look for a lot of familiar faces from Union) seat their guests, they’ll explain that there is a small a la carte menu, but that the restaurant’s specialty is a daily, four-course, chef’s choice menu.
The chef’s choice model affords diner the opportunity to eat foods they normally would not (anchovies, sardines, pig brains). But Stowell says its not just about adventure eating. He hopes that some 75 percent of diners will opt to put themselves in his hands, and this will allow him to order foods that normally couldn’t—he mentions pork shoulder—since he’ll know he can use it in the daily menu.
S&FM will seat 40 people. Walrus and the Carpenter, meanwhile, has squeezed in space for 65, if you count the outdoor patio. Even seeing it under construction, you can tell the oyster bar is going to be a beauty. We’d expect no less from the owner of Boat Street, a charming eatery if ever there was one. You’ll be able to access each of the restaurants by transversing the other. Erickson and Stowell will share the walk-in storage space in the basement. Good thing they’re pals.
The bricky, open feeling at Kolstrand will remind you immediately of what’s going on at the Melrose Building on Capitol Hill: shared spaces with a food-comes-first, collaborative appeal, spare aesthetics, lots of deliciousness all around.
great sneak peak!! thanks!
cool!
Given how different the restos seem and that they’ll be divided by a glass partition, how is that going to work? Can’t picture that meshing so well…
That’s a good question. Walking around the space, it seemed to me that the two interiors would contrast nicely rather than clash. Maybe the point isn’t so much to mesh as to sort of acknowledge one another. You know how an antique velvet sofa can look so attractively bold and not-trying-too-hard in a modern loft or gallery? Maybe it’ll be a little like that. I also can imagine the glass wall acting as a sort of window. Instead of looking at a view of the street, your view is into the world of another restaurant. Kind of cool, no?
food and drink
I love the idea of vendors sharing spaces. It’s so 2011. Did you see the stuff in New York mag about shops, et al doing it out there? Am looking to see more of this in Seattle. http://nymag.com/guides/everything/collectivism/
Re: “He’ll cook there every day it is open. When I ask him whether he’ll worry about his other restaurants (Tavolàta, How to Cook a Wolf, and Anchovies and Olives), he explains that the menus at those restaurants really belong to the chefs that run them.”
It’s “belong to the chefs WHO run them”…chefs are not OBJECTS!!!