Behind each restaurant, bar, or food cart in Seattle, there is a person who expresses their creativity on a plate, their genius in a glass, their love in curating the perfect vibes. When we lose any of those people, we lose a piece of the city; when we remember them, we build it back better.

In reflecting on the legends of the local hospitality scene we lost this year, I see how they pushed the industry forward—whether steering a pioneering lesbian bar or a hot dog cart, snagging big awards or building a big community—and how they paved a path for others to do so in the future.

Binyam Wolde

As smoke and flames surrounded the standoffs between protesters and police on Capitol Hill in 2020, the Dirty Dog never stopped serving hot dogs from its usual corner at 11^th and E Pine, and its hungry fans stayed in line. “I have a good relationship down there and a lot of regular customers,” the stand’s owner and founder, Binyam Wolde told Eater Seattle at the time.

That resilience and commitment to his community shaped his life: Wolde arrived in Seattle at age 16 from Ethiopia, learned English, and went on to start his own business in 2010. That same community rallied around Wolde’s wife and children when he passed away in January at age 44, raising more than $55,000 for them.

Shelley Brothers

Lesbian bar the Wildrose was founded in 1984, and now it’s one of a dwindling few that remain—something it accomplished in large part thanks to co-owner Shelley Brothers. When Brothers passed away in February from complications of cancer, the city lost a queer icon and dogged fighter for one of the city’s most special places.

Brothers, who became an owner of the bar in 2002, dedicated her life to the Wildrose, working hard to keep it alive through tribulations of all kinds—recessions, the pandemic, the fading of lesbian bars, and even the advent of Grindr. She kept a vigilant and protective watch over the space, making sure that it not only survived, but did so as the sanctuary for queer people it had always been.

Binh Dang

One of the owners of Greenwood’s Green Tree Vietnamese Restaurant, Binh Dang, passed away on February 9 at the age of 48. Opened by veterans of Seattle classic Green Leaf, Green Tree opened in early 2020 and quickly became a go-to for bright salads and silky bánh cuốn.

Sam Ung

Seng Kok “Sam” Ung escaped the violent and cruel Khmer Rouge to a refugee camp on the Thai border, and from there arrived in Seattle in 1980 with just two sets of clothes and a pregnant wife. Seven years later, he opened Phnom Penh Noodle House, one of the first Cambodian-owned businesses in the city, and often its only Cambodian restaurant. When he died after a heart attack in March at the age of 70, he left behind a legacy of community. That legacy, and the restaurant, is carried on by his daughters, Diane, Darlene, and Dawn.

With the skills he picked up cooking in his parents’ restaurant in Battambang, his Elvis hair, and a knack for conversation (even in newly acquired English), Ung turned Phnom Penh into a community hub. He also donated time, food, and money for fundraisers and social causes, especially the Wing Luke Museum and Asian Counseling and Referral Service. After writing and publishing a memoir, I Survived the Killing Fields, in 2012, Ung set up an exhibit in the restaurant about his experience in order to help other survivors share their own difficult stories and promote healing and community pride.

Jeem Han Lock

When Jeem Han Lock won the James Beard Award for best chef Northwest in 1997, the same year Tom Douglas’s Palace Kitchen was nominated for best new restaurant, he beat out Jerry Traunfeld and Thierry Rautureau. Before the celebrity-chef era, Lock made lists and won awards for leading the kitchen of the groundbreaking Wild Ginger as its founding executive chef. He died in November at the age of 90.

An immigrant from China and veteran of the US Army, Lock cooked for decades at Seattle’s top restaurants—at Rossellini’s Four-10, the Other Place, and the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel. When Rick and Ann Yoder brought him on to lead Wild Ginger, Lock tamed the fiery flavors of Southeast Asia for local palates while steeping soups and stews in tradition. His respect for the cultures and cuisines pushed the idea of pan-Asian cooking beyond slapdash additions of spices and catapulted the restaurant and genre to the national spotlight. Crowds clamored for Wild Ginger’s food, with multihour waits and impossible-to-score reservations. In 2000, it expanded to its much larger current location on Third Avenue, and still filled nightly. Shortly after that, Lock, well into his sixties, retired from Wild Ginger. Though he was long gone from the restaurant, Lock’s commitment to and respect for the cuisines he cooked left an indelible and inspiring legacy in the industry.

Armandino Batali

Armandino Batali wasn’t the first person to bring Italian food to Seattle—that would have been his grandfather Angelo Merlino, back in 1903—but he did revolutionize it. The founder of Salumi passed away suddenly on November 28, at the age of 88.

Batali spent more than three decades working in quality control for Boeing before opening the shoebox of a deli in Pioneer Square in 1999 and bringing similar meticulous systems to producing traditional Italian cured meats. The restaurant’s fat-dappled chubs of salami, fennel-scented finocchiona, and spicy soppressata and cooked dishes like herby slow-roasted porchetta and tender meatballs drew endless lines squiggling down the block. Salumi demonstrated the place for craft traditions in the modern world and played a major role in Seattle’s rise to culinary stardom in the first decade of the 21st century.

Though he stepped away from day-to-day operations of Salumi in 2007, Batali stayed casually involved for another decade while it was run by his daughter and son-in-law; it now soldiers on under new ownership.

Helen Coleman

On November 29, the woman known as Ms. Helen passed away three weeks after her 90th birthday. For four decades, Helen Coleman fed the children of the Central District and the late-night club crowds on Madison. She fed Richard Pryor and Muhammad Ali when they visited, and she fed hometown celebrities Ernestine Anderson, Gary Payton, and Ken Griffey Jr. She greeted everyone with a warm “Hey baby,” and filled them up with oxtails and catfish and collard greens. 

Born in Texas and raised in Oklahoma City, Coleman lived in Los Angeles before moving to Seattle in 1970 and opening her first restaurant, Helen’s Diner, on Union, just south of 23rd.  “Anybody who was anybody came through there,” her daughter Jesdarnel Henton said in 2021 conversation. Ms. Helen’s Soul Food thrived in the Central District from 1987 to 2001, when its was felled by the Nisqually earthquake. Though Ms. Helen never had her own restaurant again, her cooking lives on in the memories of Seattleites, and at Henton's lunch counter, Ms. Helen’s Soul Bistro.