Nosh Pit

Seis Kamimura Is the New Chef at Michael Mina’s RN74

Expect some “bold interpretation” of France’s classics.

Posted by: Allecia Vermillion on Feb 09, 2012 at 04:05PM 0 Comments

Seis Kamimura is the new exec chef at Michael Mina’s RN74. Photo courtesy of Midori Jordan Photography.

There’s a new chef in the kitchen at RN74, Michael Mina’s stylish downtown wine restaurant that arrived in June and has since challenged that adage that this town doesn’t cotton to big name chefs from other cities.

As of February 6, Seisuke (or Seis) Kamimura is running the show as executive chef. Original chef Michelle Retallack, who has spent most of her career cooking for Mina and waited for years for the Seattle job, is having a baby. It’s a process highly incompatible with the long hours and on-your-feet nature of kitchen life.

Kamimura’s resume incudes Wolfgang Puck’s Spago, Boka, and Terrance Brennan’s Artisanal Brasserie in Bellevue, a place that did fall victim to our skepticism toward outside chefs. Most recently he was at Munchbar, the loud clublike establishment that came to Bellevue Square by way of Vegas.

Per the press release, Kamimura cooked for Mina back in his Spago days. He trained at New York’s French Culinary Institute, which should be helpful in a French-focused restaurant, but the release also flat out says that the new chef will be applying some “bold interpretation” to the classics.

Though Mina, who grew up in Ellensburg but made a name for himself in San Francisco, has his hands full opening a big project in Baltimore, a rep says the chef will be spending more time in Seattle in the coming months while his new exec chef gets settled in.

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Tags: RN74, Shift Change, Seis Kamimura

Restaurants with Cushions

If your tushy could talk, where would it beg you to take it for dinner?

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Jan 23, 2012 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

RN74’s cushy booths and chairs.

I get loads of requests for restaurant recommendations, but here was a first:

“I have a ‘bony butt’ which means it’s painful to sit on chair with little or no padding. I carry a cushion in my car so that if I end up in a place with hard chairs I can use it. However, I don’t want to carry my chair pad into a restaurant with my colleagues.”

(Not to mention the prospective job candidate she was seeking to impress.)

“I was hoping you could suggest a few restaurants that have excellent food, are not too loud, and have comfortable, somewhat cushy seating. I know I am not the only one with this issue; it might make a good post!”

Indeed. As I stopped to reflect, however, I realized that this was not going to be an easy question to answer. I had recently dined at Terra Plata, which has hard wood chairs, and Altura, in which my seat was hard as a church pew (indeed, it probably had once been a church pew)—but neither bothered me overmuch, owing probably to a posterior which I’m fairly sure has no bones at all.

I reflected on a few super pillowy places—-the Moroccan belly-dancing haunt Kasbah; the lay-down-if-you-want-to Thai joint in Madrona, Naam neither belly dancing nor full-body reclining seemed particularly right for a client dinner. A few casual places have struck me as comfortable over the years; namely Madison Valley’s casual French bistro Luc; Fisher Plaza’s TV-and-burger emporium Sport; and the sceney, singlesy Sip downtown. All are ‘third places’ of a sort, encouraging the kind of lubricated lingering my friend wasn’t talking about. The Herbfarm in Woodinville also has notably cushiony chairs; but then they’d better have when dinner comes in nine courses over four hours.

What she was talking about was a place like the elegant and comfortable Book Bindery, whose lightly cushiony chairs I remembered as very comfortable. Or RN74 downtown, whose booths and chairs both allow a nice friendly sink.

In fact she chose the latter, and had a wonderful time.

If your derriere has any favorite restaurants, won’t you please invite it to share them here?

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Tags: The Book Bindery, RN74, Critic's Notebook, Terra Plata, Altura

Michael Mina Thinks Seattle Diners Are…

You know you want to know what the bigshot San Francisco chef who made Seattle the site of his 19th restaurant, RN74, really thinks of us.

Posted by: Kathryn Robinson on Oct 17, 2011 at 09:00AM 1 Comments

Photo: Lucas Anderson

Michael Mina’s RN74 Seattle.

His story’s well-known among restaurant watchers: Born in Egypt, raised in Ellensburg, Michael Mina went on to seize the restaurant world by the gullet with his upscale seafood at San Francisco’s Aqua in the early ‘90s. After racking up accolades and awards the chef partnered with tennis pro Andre Agassi to pepper the country with concept restaurants, from the elegant Michael Mina in San Francisco to the manly Bourbon Steak in Washington D.C.—and, now, some 17 in between. In June he opened his second RN74 on the corner of Pike and Fourth in downtown Seattle. Five months in, I asked him how it’s going.

“RN74 feels a lot like when I first opened Aqua,” Mina told me by phone from San Francisco. “Seattleites are enthusiastic in that way that says they hadn’t quite known what to expect. In this case I think they weren’t expecting RN74 to be so approachable. They knew it would have fine wine elements so I think they weren’t expecting it to feel casual.”

Mina was touched that so many of his high school buddies came to the opening. “I think there were 18 people from my high school graduating class there. My best friends live in Seattle. I tell you, it’s hard to get my head around how Ellensburg, this whole area, has changed since I’ve been here. It’s always been about farming, yeah…but it was cool when we were trying to find a great source for heirloom tomatoes and I learned that the best came from Ellensburg.”

During a brief stint living in Seattle after high school Mina worked at the Space Needle and the Kirkland Anthony’s HomePort; now he operates 19 of the most sophisticated and high-profile restaurants in the country. What regional dining habits has he noticed? “Definitely there’s heartier food on the East Coast, more traditional French technique,” he said. “The West Coast, spreading from California, is more product-driven, more rustic Italian.”

“And happy hour!” he hoots. “Seattleites are WAY over the top!” Utterly taken aback by Seattle’s bottomless thirst for the late-afternoon “meal,” Mina had to add a cooking station to the back of the house and change up his staffing patterns to accommodate. “Some nights I have half my line busy with happy hour food…it’s amazing,” he marvels. So happy hour is a bigger deal in Seattle than anywhere else?

“It sure feels bigger!” he roars.

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Tags: Celebrity Chefs, RN74, Critic's Notebook, Seattle Restaurant Culture