Who Are Seattle’s Most Underrated Restaurateurs?
Hint: They’re married and recently opened a hit restaurant in Fremont.
Posted by: Seattle Met Staff on Oct 20, 2011 at 12:23PM
5 Comments
As part of Seattle Met’s Best Restaurants feature, we asked dozens of Seattle chefs and restaurateurs to give us their take on trends, customers, competition—pretty much everything under the restaurant sun. What we got was an earful of juicy insider insight. We’ll be posting some of the responses in the coming weeks.
They were recent subjects of Food Network fawning, and all the critics love ’em, yet Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi just don’t get the props they should. The duo behind Joule, Quoin, and Revel are Seattle’s most underrated restaurateurs, according to the crew we polled.
Commented one chef: “People who are really into food know about them, but I don’t know if they’re really attracting the crowds they deserve. Revel and Joule—they’re very unique, nothing else like what they do.” Said another: “They get a lot of local attention, but then you kind of forget they’re there, you don’t hear much about them.”
Behind Yang and Chirchi was Renee Erickson of Boat Street Cafe and The Walrus and the Carpenter (“She’s just doing her thing, she doesn’t do PR; she just has really cool, straight-ahead places”); and Dana Tough and Brian McCracken (Spur, Tavern Law, Coterie Room).
Other mentions included Scott Carsberg, Ba Culbert, Jim Drohman, Bruce Naftaly, Ryuichi Nakano, Melissa Nyffeler, and Scott Staples.
Agreed, though Food Network and other accolades have been noted ( and deserved).
What about Philippe Thomelin, chef/owner of Olivar on Capitol Hill. Classical French trained, lived and worked in the south of Spain, while producing some of the best gnocchi in the city. Passionate about local and seasonal as well.
Phillippe is definitely one of the low-key underrated ones. We go to Olivar every other week and the food/$ ratio is consistently good.
David Kong of Perche’ No is a super Italian chef. The food is wonderful and the open kitchen is fun.
Agreed about Perche’ No. It’s sad that the food gets overshadowed by all of the kitsch, because the food, vibe and service are often really stellar.
I agree. Some of the best restaurants in Seattle are only known by word of mouth. Restaurateurs like Bruce Naftaly, Jim Drohman, Melissa Nyeffeler and Ryuichi Nakano should definitely be recognized. I recently found a site that features some of these under-represented restaurants and even provides you an incentive to give them a try. Check out: http://www.restauranteers.com