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Le Zinc, Neighborhood Hot Spot

The chic Capitol Hill bistro and bar from the folks behind Maximilien serves genuinely admirable French food.

Kathryn Robinson
Author: Kathryn Robinson
Less than 1 min.read

Mon Dieu! What were the chances that a chic Capitol Hill bistro and bar—gleaming mercury glass, mod metalwork partitions, a single blood-red banquette curving coolly through the room—would traffic in genuinely admirable French food? Thank the owners of Maximilien in Pike Place Market, who imported its fine chef to pan sear half chickens to heartbreaking tenderness, serving them over fingerlings and garlic butter with a flutter of nasturtiums; to steam Penn Cove mussels in four ways every evening, perhaps in a fragrant fennel bath with pork belly beside a cone of perfect frites. Amid all this culinary overachievement, a glass of well chosen French wine or an absinthe cocktail (complete with absinthe fountain) might at first appear as too much happiness. You’ll get over it.


Published: October 2013

Published in the Day Trips: Best Fairs, Fests & Drives issue of Seattle Met.




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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.