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Details on the Demise of Culinary Communion

Gabriel Claycamp and Heidi Kenyon, co-owners of the Beacon Hill cooking school Culinary Communion, finally went public with the news we reported last week: CC is history.

First they borrowed heavily to build out the kitchen of their new building on Beacon Hill. They’d just about about recovered when the economy tanked, taking their business down 90 percent in November.

That plus lingering permitting issues finally forced a closure many had seen coming for awhile. Those who didn’t see it coming may have this (taken from Claycamp’s farewell letter to clients) to contend with: “Funds received for March and April classes have already been used to pay Culinary Communion’s staff.”

He continues: “Gabriel and Heidi will make good on every one of those registrations, although we realize it may take awhile.”

This they hope to do, in part anyway, through a sale of their cooking goods—knife sets and containers to wine and Sub-Zero refrigerators. The sale will be held this Saturday, March 21, from 2pm to 6pm at the Culinary Communion headquarters: 2524 Beacon Ave S, Beacon Hill.

Just show up…just bring cash.

Culinary Communion’s sister biz, The Swinery, will still be offering weekday lunches at its lunch counter, starting this Monday.

As for Gabe and Heidi? They’re pausing, licking wounds, working to get all government ok’s necessary to make their Swinery bacon, laboring to pay back their customers…and grieving. In their words: “Culinary Communion is so dear to us that it’s like cutting off a limb.”











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Kathryn Robinson
Kathryn Robinson
Senior Writer Seattle native Kathryn Robinson, award-winning restaurant critic and senior writer at Seattle Met, has been anonymously reviewing restaurants for over 30 years—first as editor of the Best Places guidebook series, then as staff critic at Seattle Weekly and contributing critic at The Seattle Times and Seattle magazine.  Midcareer she spent a year-long sabbatical studying comparative religion as a Knight Fellow at Stanford University where she had been an undergrad 10 years earlier, gaining a knowledge base she now calls upon for her monthly “Back Fence” column on our collective urban existence and the meaning it holds for our personal lives. In her off hours she is a partner and a parent—which means she has no off hours.