On Christmas Day 2019, Evan Leichtling and Meghna Prakash gave themselves a very expensive present: the keys to the space that became Off Alley. Two weeks later, Melissa Miranda debuted her dream, a restaurant where the menu reflected her Filipino Northwest childhood, at Musang. Across town, Victor Steinbrueck worked toward a plan to open Local Tide by March.

Then, of course, March 2020 happened, sending plans cartwheeling off cliffs, churning entrepreneurs down a raging river of ever-changing regulations, and spinning the restaurant industry on a merry-go-round of pivots for months, even years. More than a million people lost battles with Covid in the US, and almost everyone lost something to the pandemic: loved ones, years of their lives, their livelihoods. The restaurant industry took particularly hard blows, with its lack of remote-work options and already low margins.

These restaurants, born in 2020, are among the survivors. Forged in fire, they threw caution to the wind and spaghetti at the wall in search of anything that worked, but they never threw in the towel. None exist in the form their owners expected them to five years ago. But not only did they make it through the pandemic, they rose to the top, becoming some of the city’s best.

Seattle lost more than 300 restaurants between 2019 and 2021, according to the Washington Hospitality Association. By 2024, those numbers had still not fully recovered. But for the restaurants that made it, some keys to success were universal, like building community or lucking into an understanding landlord. In other ways, the experiences diverged. Steinbrueck appreciated the quiet around his opening as the first-time restaurateur found his footing. Leichtling wished for more word of mouth, noting that the topics of conversation, online and elsewhere, mostly consisted of doom and gloom rather than food and restaurants.

By opening in January, Miranda snuck in about two months of massive acclaim for Musang before she found herself grieving that version of the restaurant and making the first of many difficult decisions. “There weren’t any resources. We didn’t know how to navigate anything like that,” Miranda says. She found solace in communities and relief in just trying not to think too hard about the financial aspects. “The best that we could do was talk to each other and try and figure it out together.”

First Pivots

When Gov. Jay Inslee mandated the closure of restaurant dining rooms in March 2020, Musang operated as a community kitchen, preparing meals for those in need. But each day, as the team wrapped up by six, they looked around at the shockingly empty space and marveled at its contrast to the bustling evenings it hosted for such a brief period.

Even by August, when Off Alley opened, restaurants were still limited to half capacity, which meant only six people could eat inside the slip of a space, 12 per night with two seatings. “Opening a restaurant and doing two or four guests a day is kind of soul crushing,” says Leichtling. 

To function with so few people inside, Off Alley’s owners tweaked its concept to serve a reservations-only tasting menu, allowing them to buy ingredients sparingly and precisely. It allowed them to control food costs while Leichtling and Prakash staffed the restaurant alone. While more established places could quickly jump to fried chicken or smashburgers, Leichtling hesitated to get too far from his quirky takes on underappreciated animal parts—grilled venison heart or pickled clams with wild asparagus and smoked butter. “Once you brand a restaurant, you can never really rebrand it.”

Local Tide learned that quickly, though it worked out in favor of the sustainable-
seafood-focused spot. Like Off Alley, it pushed a planned spring start back to August. Takeout still dominated, so Steinbrueck adapted the menu from dishes designed as plated to items that traveled well, stuffing rockfish into banh mi and creating the instantly Insta-famous, weekend-only crab roll.

By the time Local Tide welcomed diners, it had already cemented itself something of a reputation. Rather than reinvent so soon, Steinbrueck swam with the current, keeping the new menu and evolving into a hybrid service system: Customers ordered at the counter, then servers brought the food to the table and checked in, as in full-service restaurants.

“It helped define who we are,” says Steinbrueck. “It separated us from other sit-down restaurants that are small and cute.” The hybrid system allowed Local Tide to get by with fewer staff, too, saving the restaurant money and exposure risk, and prepared it well to weather the storm of labor issues that hit the industry in recent years. The same core team has been there from the start, something Steinbrueck credits with much of Local Tide’s success.

Hard Labor

Off Alley struggled more. Leichtling and Prakash didn’t hire their first employee until October 2020, and even then just a part-time prep cook. By the following spring, they found many veteran cooks had left town or the industry, and most of the people looking for jobs were hobbyists. “I’ve been making sourdough at home, I’m a professional cook. I want to go work in a restaurant. I want to play chef,” says Leichtling. The people they found needed a lot of training, and that led to high turnover. It took well into 2024, he says, to get a full, strong, committed kitchen team.

They had better luck with their front of house, thanks to a surprising assist. The reduced capacity and intimate space meant they got to know diners really well. “We’re still friends with all of these people,” says Prakash. Those committed customers became Off Alley’s community, dropping off care packages or a jar of their grandmother’s chile oil. When more of the public returned to restaurants, early regulars often explained the menu or a specific dish to neighbors at the narrow bar. “We want people to talk to each other. We want people to feel comfortable in this environment,” says Prakash. “This is what we want.”

Despite the through line of community connecting these stories, not everything has been warm and fuzzy. Leichtling and Prakash tally up that they have had 11 break-ins, replacing their back door twice and the locks five times. Other times, thieves took items much harder to replace: Prakash’s bag with her green card in it, the handwritten wine list notebook, and chicken heads and feet from heritage breeds raised on Whidbey Island and harvested only once a year.

It got even chillier last January for Musang, when a cold snap burst a pipe and forced the restaurant to close for six months. It was the literal icing on a layer cake of difficulties hitting the restaurant, which also included the sky-high food and labor costs that have impacted restaurants across the city. “We’re just trying to provide really good service and really delicious food, but, in so many ways, how many hits can you take?”

Other Survivors

February 2020

• Meet Korean BBQ
• Grillbird

July 2020

• Milk Drunk

October 2020

• Chengdu Taste
• The Flour Box
• Cornelly
• Temple Pastries
• Phin

December 2020

• Communion

She does her best to prepare for what she knows is coming—in 2023, Musang added a 22 percent service charge to prepare for the changes to minimum wage regulations at the beginning of this year—and to brace for what she doesn’t. “I don’t know what else we can do,” says Miranda.

But, instinctively, it seems she does know—and Steinbrueck, Leichtling, and Prakash do, too. They look for new ways to do things. To be better restaurants for their teams, their communities, and themselves.

Being on the leading edge requires extra effort, beyond just thinking up ideas and taking stands. It takes behind-the-scenes work to polish messaging and train staff on how to explain changes to customers. There’s blowback online, as Off Alley dealt with when they required proof of vaccination before the state mandated, and there are angry in-person customers, which Steinbrueck experienced while helping diners adapt to his hybrid service system. “As restaurateurs and people in the hospitality industry, we’re trying our darndest.”

Miranda, Steinbrueck, Leichtling, and Prakash are some of the city’s smartest restaurateurs. They made it through five chaotic and difficult years (that felt like 10) with agility, nerves of steel, and suddenly more gray hair. They did it by pushing forward, even as the unpredictable roadblocks stacked up. “We’re here and survived,” Miranda says. “Looking at other folks, we were in it together, and they’re doing it too.”