Because It's Tasty
Spring Hill elevates food to an art—and a science.
At Spring Hill, the menu lists the provenance of the meat and the fish, as menus today will—but it also tells us that the fries bubbled in beef fat, the Dabob Bay oysters (there is a lot of shellfish here) score “medium” on the brine-o-meter, that the sea salt hailed from Kauai. (But which shore? wondered my inner smartass.) Even the bar eschews jewel-bright trendy cocktails for darker, woodsier inventions: Douglas fir eau de vie, Bosc pear tonic, charred cedar bitters. Spring Hill was named after the pond that occupied the West Seattle Junction before a thousand storefront eateries did, which—considering the chef’s obsession with nature—renders the name uniquely fitting.
If headlining all these details on the menu seems affected, remember that paying attention to them in the first place is what makes food taste this fine. It’s not all perfection—sautéed Manila clams and lemon mayo and spicy cured pork belly make barely communicative bedfellows, and a beet salad with (too little) blue cheese and Bosc pear and smoked hazelnuts felt all wrong in midsummer.
Bigger problems afflict the front of the house. Servers, though informed, contributed arrogance, even bossiness, where hospitality should have been. Frankly we could have used the warmth, for Spring Hill— a minimalist room in tones of oyster and light wood, with unupholstered tables, concrete floors, and storefront windows—is elegant but chilly. (Booths feel less stark than the tables adrift in the middle of the room.) And the lack of absorptive surfaces makes the place louder than a tiebreaker at Qwest Field. By the time my friends and I plunged into the terrific desserts—a three-part meditation on strawberries, a molten fudge cake topped with salty peanut ice cream—we were hoarse from shouting.
Spring Hill was named after the pond that occupied the West Seattle Junction before a thousand storefront restaurants did.
Flaws aside, Spring Hill is a significant new player on the Seattle dining scene, and Mark Fuller a gifted chef whose clinical comprehension of food serves diners with a glorious aesthetic. To the extent he refined those skills under Tom Douglas, thanks are owed the big guy. One of the joys of covering restaurants in this city is tracing the career arcs of the stars that soar out of Tom Douglas kitchens—talents like Alvin Binuya of Madoka, Johnathan Sundstrom of Lark, Philip Mihalski of Nell’s, and Holly Smith of Café Juanita.
And Mark Fuller of Spring Hill.
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Published: October 2008
