Everyone’s always raving about Spring Hill, Mark Fuller’s West Seattle hotspot. In fact, Fuller recently became a James Beard semifinalist, nominated for Best Chef in the Northwest. Learn all about his restaurant in this Seattle Met review.

WHEN MARK FULLER WAS HEAD CHEF at the Dahlia Lounge, his boss Eric Tanaka bugged and bugged him to put a particular dish on the menu: Veal sweetbreads with dipping sauces; one sweet, another barbecue, maybe a third like housemade ranch. Yeah, that ranch—Homer Simpson’s salad dressing of choice. At, yes, that Dahlia—big-deal Seattle chef Tom Douglas’s elegant flagship restaurant. “We’ll call it McSweetbreads!” beamed Tanaka. Fuller laughs at the memory and shakes his head. “I just couldn’t do it.”

So to find “crispy veal sweetbreads with three dips” on the starter list of Fuller’s own restaurant, Spring Hill in West Seattle, was an unlikely surprise—yet there they were, between the duck egg yolk raviolo with garlic chips and the apple-wood-smoky rib-eye steak with steak tartare and potato cracklings. And they made a most cerebral comfort food. The sweetbreads contributed their luscious mouthfeel and quiet almost-sweetness, the frying produced a perfect coat, the dips—fireweed honey, coffee barbecue, and, there it was, housemade ranch—delivered cool, satiny counterpoints. Why the chef’s change of heart? Continue reading review….