Georgetown
Georgetown
Friday, August 22, 2014
When I told my friends I was opening a restaurant on Bainbridge Island, most of them told me that I was crazy. More than one tried to talk me out of the decision. I won’t credit myself with having had the foresight to see how much a community can shift in four years; there was a heavy dose of dumb luck involved. If I had known the street would be torn up and the “downtown” revitalized, I probably would not have signed the lease. All I saw was a storefront in a cool old building with a hood hanging in it, and a failed restaurant business for sale. It cost a lot less than a Capitol Hill storefront, and I was starting to get the feeling that the Hill had jumped the shark.
Now that I’ve gone from being the Seattle Chef who had the audacity to open on the island to the Island Chef who is making inroads into Seattle (alas, some of our fooderati haven’t been hanging around Seattle that long), people ask me constantly: why Georgetown?
To understand my love for the neighborhood, we’re going to have to rewind to 1984, Fairbanks, Alaska. My dad was a cabinetmaker, and to afford a full-sized shop we moved into a big fixer-upper, seated between a welding shop and a trailer. This was Dale Road, a quarter mile away from an international airport (a major polar route cargo hub) with an apparent lack of zoning since its inception. Neat homes shared property lines with all sorts of industrial endeavors. Small packs of dogs ran the streets, as did our little gang of neighborhood kids. Some of lived in trailers, some of us lived in houses... some of us lived in trailers on top of houses.
The old neighborhood.
The blue-collar ethos, industrial/commercial/residential mix, and constant rumbling of jumbo jets overhead make Georgetown feel just like home.
There’s something brewing in Georgetown, and it’s not just the Manny’s; just down the street from OG/pioneer Matt Dillon’s beautiful Corson Building sits tony, architecturally-inspired townhomes, lining up neatly next to the funky old houses from the ‘50s. The offices aren’t inhabited strictly by artists and squatters anymore; now it’ architects & commercial photographers. Space isn’t at a premium - warehouses are becoming sandlots for year-round beach play, and button-makers throw pinball arcades in their storefronts because, well, they can. My landlord gave me his blessing to throw up a graffiti mural on the side of the building. To boot, Fran’s is going full-on Willy Wonka right across the street.
Insert chocolate factory here.
Which brings us to the curing and smoking of meat. The price of quality meats is through the roof these days, and the space that it takes to process them into the charcuteries we know and love is prohibitively expensive for most operations. We like doing things the hard way, and the low Georgetown overhead means we get a walk-in meat curing room, commissary space in the back to accommodate growth, and plenty of room for seating, something we’ve always wanted on Winslow but couldn’t swing.
The thing about the frontier is this: you’ve got to be a pioneer, and keep in mind that you’re rolling the dice. There’s a reason we can afford the space: it’s not on Ballard Ave., or East Pike, or even upper Fremont. Georgetown is a destination within the city - an anachronistic blue-collar time warp in a shining pinnacle of gentrification.
A few of our Georgetown neighbors talk about the “New Georgetown,” and some people don’t seem to think that a place that sells high-quality cuts of locally-sourced meat has a home in a place that boasts as much grit and dust as Georgetown. I tell ‘em to brush up on their history: check the old-timey photo of our building, next door to the Beehive Meat Market, “Store No. 1.” A hundred years ago, in Seattle’s infancy, Georgetown had a meat market. Sure, the neighborhood hit some rough patches since then, but I’m proud to be part of the renaissance.
The Hamilton, in all her glory.
28 feet of subway tile.
Original leaded glass with some fresh tiles. Chandelier from the old Crocodile.
Brandon Thompson looks on with All City Coffee’s Seth Levy as we shoehorn in our case.
A deli line, coming together. Design inspiration: SOHO Dean & Deluca.
Can’t get enough bowling alley lanes - all the tables and counters are reclaimed maple lanes from Sunset.
Our sharp retro sign with the Beehive Meat Market throwback, courtesy of Trevor Flake.
Need a gigantic mirror? Try giganticmirrors.com, no shit.
The lab is built for speed; speed racks roll straight from the smoker to the walk-in.
Lunch rush. We already need more seats, fortunately we’ve got the space.
Mr. Graham Leon, GM and Partner, next to a very sexy piece of German slicing equipment (Graham’s not so bad himself).
Meats to go, from slices to whole parts. Three-week pancetta.
Our first batch of sour dills getting their brine. Cukes, dill blossoms, garlic and grape leaves from the same organic farm. Our pickles will totally beat up your pickles.