3 small Seattle restaurants making big wins, amid industry turmoil

09 Nov 2024, 06:00 by Bethany Jean Clement · The Seattle Times

THE DINING ROOM at Seattle’s Off Alley is 6 feet, 5 inches wide. Just a dozen seats run along a counter down one side of the hallway-style space; diners enjoy a stellar menu while seated facing a brick wall — or, sometimes, standing up at a shelf barely large enough to fit a plate. Open since 2020, this tiny place has earned big national accolades.

Going on just a year as a haven for marvelous Guamanian comfort cuisine, cozy one-room familyfriend has garnered major attention, too. And at only 1,000 square feet, new Upwell Wine & Coffee and Walter’s Wine Shop has top-notch food, a master sommelier and the potential for small-scale greatness.

These three debut Seattle restaurants all come from industry veterans with highly impressive résumés. Investors would have lined up to help. Why not go big? Instead, they all sought different footing by way of smaller footprints. And while less-than-large restaurants are nothing new, they might represent a more sustainable model for the city’s economic uncertainties — while providing dining-out experiences that bigger places can’t match.

Off Alley: 4903½ Rainier Ave. S., Seattle; 206-488-6170; offalleyseattle.com
familyfriend: 3315 Beacon Ave. S., Seattle; no phone; on Instagram
Upwell Wine & Coffee: 4811 California Ave. S.W., Seattle; 206-454-9614; upwellwinecoffee.com

“Uncertainties” might be a polite way to put it. Income inequality in Seattle has ballooned following the pandemic: From 2019 to 2023, the average income for the richest 20% of Seattle households increased by 23%, while the lowest-earning 20% saw just a 10% increase. Costs in the city have gone up and up, too.

Commercial real estate broker Laura Miller — the name on the “for lease” signs in many spaces around Seattle, with a list of prior restaurant clients rife with top spots, including Joule, Mamnoon and Le Pichet — says, “A lot of business owners are just realizing that the costs are through the roof.” For restaurateurs, that’s everything from the price of onions, to equipment repair, to credit-card fees, to takeout containers. Concurrently, restaurants have not seen pre-pandemic crowds return, with many curtailing hours.

And with the New Year, Seattle’s tip credit expires, meaning many restaurants with 500 or fewer employees will go from paying a base minimum wage of $17.25 an hour to $20.76. It’s causing “a tremendous amount of concern in the marketplace right now,” Miller says. “It’s a big deal.” Some local owners agree, saying that the increase in labor costs could decrease profits by as much as half. Meanwhile, Mayor Bruce Harrell said in an October statement that the minimum wage change is “a good thing for workers, a good thing for our overall economy and something we should take pride in,” while Working Washington hails it, highlighting the high cost of living for workers in the city and citing University of California research that higher wages create jobs.

In any case, for restaurateurs in increasingly expensive Seattle, a smaller footprint equals not just a savings on rent, but fewer employees to pay. Miller says she sees bigger restaurants — ones that are open for business, not awaiting tenants — sitting empty during business hours. And for those looking to lease, the “more intimate” restaurant spaces are more scarce than larger ones, she says. In Seattle now, according to Miller, prospective owners are “just moving toward, ‘How can we have less employees? And less seats to fill?’ ”

FOR THE 12 SEATS at Off Alley, the roster of employees is a short one. Owner Evan Leichtling and partner Meghna Prakash head up the kitchen and the front of the house, respectively, with two cooks and two servers aboard. While a $143 multicourse menu is available, the diminutive restaurant in Columbia City stands opposed to traditional, expansive white tablecloth fine-dining, and Leichtling and Prakash wouldn’t have it any other way. Their work here has earned honors that include a James Beard semifinalist nomination and multiple laurels from The New York Times.

On a recent Thursday, the place filled up rapidly, with one couple happily willing to take a standing-room-only spot. Prakash offered patrons wine advice (want to try a Châteauneuf that’s white, not red?), happy birthday hugs, shared laughter. With Halloween imminent, the Groovie Ghoulies played, a little on the louder side.

“It doesn’t work for some people,” Prakash acknowledges of the close quarters and dinner-party vibe. She says they’ve had people who saw Off Alley’s name on best-places lists show up expecting the full-on upscale treatment — even mistaking the restaurant for a waiting room — and then not exactly relishing the intimacy. Some won’t come back, and, Prakash says, “That’s OK.” Those who love it end up having an experience that, in a tired world, can be truly one of a kind. “I’ve watched people order a three-pound rib-eye,” Leichtling says, “then share it with people beside them that they didn’t know.”

Off Alley’s minuscule scale puts you in the beating heart of a restaurant. Prakash or one of her cohorts greets you, bringing the chalkboard menu to your seat. Meanwhile, Leichtling calls out orders in the galley kitchen that’s mere feet from the end of the dining counter, delineated by a change in the color of the floor tile. “Fire potpie!” he says — tonight, it’s oxtail, beef tendon and porcinis — and you either hope it’s yours or consider adding one to your order ASAP.

Everyone working front-of-house is ready to relay the stories of various ingredients, tying them to the region, the season, even family history. Tonight, there are super-crisp housemade chips, made with Olsen Farms potatoes, served with a dip of bright house-cured salmon roe atop cultured raw cream — with that cream coming from the Whidbey Island cows of the father of Leichtling’s childhood best friend there. Leichtling himself might bring out the blood sausage, explaining how he learned to make it from “little old ladies in Catalonia,” now enriching the old-school style with trotters, lightening it with rice. The iron-rich, deeply savory sausage is almost mousselike in texture; the saucy crabapple jelly for tart contrast comes from the trees of a couple up in Darrington, to whom Leichtling was introduced by the late, great Seattle chef Thierry Rautureau.

The decision to stay small informs every part of the Off Alley experience, absolutely intentionally, Leichtling explains. A tight crew means everyone’s invested, on the same page with the poetry and the party of the place; you can feel the loyalty, and become a part of it. More prosaically, it also means minimal staff turnover, which saves time spent and money lost on training that larger, less personal places must budget for. “Training is really expensive,” Leichtling says. A lengthy interview process helps ensure employees are a good fit for Off Alley, and vice versa.

With his background — including Lark, Harvest Vine and La Bête in Seattle; different kitchens in Paris; and triple-Michelin-starred Akelarre in Spain — Leichtling looked to establish his own restaurant from a place of both practicality and passion. He wanted to do full-animal butchery, to follow the Pacific Northwest’s seasons and ingredients where his inspiration and dedication took him. Where the money came from mattered. “American investors have a tendency to like to own the restaurant and tell you what to do,” he says. “I knew that I needed to be my own boss, and I was going to take some risks … my offal-focused menu, the punk rock [soundtrack], all that type of stuff.” Every would-be “silent” investor, he says, “wanted their claws in the business.” Choosing a small space allowed Off Alley to be “completely self-funded.”

For Leichtling and Prakash, Off Alley offers total culinary creative control. It’s a place to serve the community, meaning their devoted regulars as well as treasured small-scale farmers and fishers. And it’s the freedom to throw their carefully choreographed party their way. Winning people over is also part of the fun — some diners come in “super-guarded,” Leichtling says. Then, “The food starts coming out, they start having some wine, they start relaxing.

“And they go, ‘Oh, this is actually absolutely [expletive] great.’ ”

IT TOOK ELMER DULLA more than 20 years in the Seattle restaurant industry — from classic Vito’s to mainstay 22 Doors, as a cocktail consultant for vaunted Musang and Pho Bac Súp Shop, and much more — before he was finally able to found his own place, familyfriend. The ethos is right in the name — when you’re here, you’re family and/or friend, entirely minus any mass-market hypocrisy. Step inside the Beacon Hill spot with the stark black-and-white exterior, and you’re part of Dulla’s tribute to the pan-Pacific cuisine of Guam, his familial home.

That is, if you can get a seat — after an opening last December accompanied by fierce industry support, along with rabid viral acclaim for the miso-and-Kewpie-mayo-enriched burger, waits to get in stretched to two hours long. “I didn’t think it was going to blast off that quickly!” Dulla says. The fervor was rekindled when familyfriend made The Infatuation’s 12 Best Burgers in America list in June. After that mayhem started dying down, boom: familyfriend made The New York Times’ list of 50 top restaurants in the country at the end of September.

High-profile praise aside — and when there aren’t lines out the door — familyfriend’s small space functions like a house, Dulla says. He means the fun one on the street, with everybody coming and going, lots to drink and eat, the playlist sliding from 2Pac-sampled “Woman to Woman” to an electro version of “Que Sera Sera” in the background.

The 10-seat bar to the right of the single room is painted dark, with a muted TV generally showing the game, whatever season it might be. Here, solo diners from the neighborhood find solace, casual dates take place, and chefs and bartenders on nights off from elsewhere congregate. Dulla says it’s “kind of like the kitchen island at someone’s house, where everyone’s just drinking and talking stories.” Call this familyfriend’s friend side, 21-and-over only with drinks for all, from the gulpable cocktail called Propofol Ice, fruity with a saline hit courtesy of li hing mui (Chinese dried plum), to the refreshment of the housemade mango iced tea (under the heading “4NE1,” for anyone — i.e., no alcohol).

The friendliness also shows in a hodgepodge of stuff on various shelves: a plush SpongeBob, three shiny glass mushrooms, a can of Spam. Behind the bar, you might find Dulla himself, probably wearing a tropical-print shirt buttoned all the way up and a backward snapback. He jokes with patrons (recent topic: candy corn — he’s pro-) and, at the end by the kitchen, triages service (e.g., a server with a question about a part dine-in, part to-go order).

Familyfriend’s immediately adjacent dining room is “like we’re hosting a family party every night,” Dulla says, “like the living room of someone’s house, where there’s all the kids and everyone’s in here running around.” It looks like an ideal little diner: honeyed, worn hardwood floors and bright-but-warm lighting, white walls with cream-of-avocado accents, four upholstered booths and two eight-top tables. (In summertime, the back patio means extended family.) “I have a lot of nieces, nephews, godchildren,” Dulla says — having a place for all ages was paramount. It’s perfect for bringing your parents and/or your kids, and the big tables host multigenerational groups, casual celebrations and/or communal seating.

Dulla keeps the shades drawn throughout the space, giving a clubhouse vibe. “We focus on the people inside here,” he explains, “and they get to focus on their experience in here.” People have commented that it’s not Instagrammable. “I’m like, that’s not what we’re going for!” Dulla says.

Familyfriend’s menu mixes, matches and enlarges upon the multicultural influences of Guam, with abiding comfort as the throughline. The famous burger is all that — served with truffle fries that stay on the deliciously subtle side — but the menu rewards those who go past the social-media hit with the fresh seafood, island flavors, deeply flavored meats of Dulla’s homestyle excellence.

Corn soup sounds simple, but familyfriend’s is in the rosary style of Guam, with sweet corn complemented by smoky chicken thigh meat, creamy coconut milk, and plenty of onion and garlic, swirl-topped with achiote-infused oil, a heavenly combination. The fried estufao chicken plate takes both fried chicken and Hawaiian-style plate lunch new places: The chicken’s encased in an extra-dark-browned, superbly crunchy, thick coating, flavored with vinegar, soy sauce and a faint spicy heat; the macaroni salad skews limey rather than over-mayo’d; pickled red cabbage stays crisp; and Guamanian red rice balances it all with a faintly floral, subtle brothiness. The New York Times called the La Beacon batchoy, La Paz style, “an envelopingly unctuous noodle soup of pig offal and fermented shrimp broth,” and there’s nothing else in the city like letting it envelop you inside familyfriend’s embrace of a space.

“I was actually looking for something smaller,” Dulla says. From the get-go, he wanted to keep things tight — he doesn’t begrudge the building’s cramped kitchen, and he’s thankful for an undersized hot-water tank that, for dishwashing purposes, obviates opening hours any longer than the current daily 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. It might seem counterintuitive — longer hours, like serving lunch, equals more money — but for Dulla, that means increasing the size of the staff and diluting the intensity of attention. “Having a four or four-and-a-half hour service,” as opposed to longer shifts, he says, “helps you focus more, instead of being drained the entire time.” And, in turn, for familyfriend diners, this adds to a highly-honed, quality experience.

With a small staff, Dulla says, everyone stays busy, and everyone does a little bit of everything — meaning cooks develop an understanding of what’s happening in the dining room, servers know what’s what in the kitchen and the familyfriend organism makes adjustments throughout service as “second nature.” “It’s kind of just streamlining it, actually,” he says. “It’s definitely flow” — a state that wouldn’t be possible with a bigger operation, nor with trying to increase the bandwidth of this one.

Dulla also just said no to the idea of investors when planning familyfriend. He’s witnessed problems with this model before — if you can possibly avoid it, why wouldn’t you? Doing it on his own, “I’m 100% creative,” he says.

On Instagram, Dulla calls his place a “Vibe Dispensary on Beacon Hill” with a “Guam Galleria of Flavors,” and the feeling and tastes are so good inside the little building’s walls — joy with a cultural purpose, inhaled through food, drink and hospitality, emanating out into the city and far beyond.

“This is kind of like the ideal situation I find myself in,” Dulla says.

NEW IN WEST SEATTLE since mid-July, Upwell Wine & Coffee and Walter’s Wine Shop represents the serious restaurant-industry firepower of co-owners Rosanne Zhu and Chris Tanghe. Originally from Yakima, chef Zhu cooked at Café Campagne in Pike Place Market; spent three years at New York’s Gramercy Tavern under Tom Colicchio; then, back in Seattle, worked for dear departed Little Uncle and became Stateside’s chef de cuisine. Tanghe’s first restaurant job was as a dishwasher at age 13; he’s now a master sommelier and director of education at the nonprofit GuildSomm, with a résumé that includes The Herbfarm, Matt’s in the Market, RN74 and Canlis.

Joining forces to open their first restaurant endeavor, why would two such stars choose to start small? To them, a multifaceted model in a pared-down space made all the sense in the world: Tanghe would run a wine shop of meticulously chosen selections (and name it after his dog), while under the same roof, Zhu planned a cafe-by-day/restaurant-and-wine-bar-by-night situation.

The harder part, they say, was actually finding a less-than-large space for lease — they looked long and hard. “We looked at so many places; we put in so many offers,” Zhu says, losing out to “all the big names.” Finally, they found their spot through a neighbor of Tanghe’s. He lives about a mile away, and Zhu also counted herself a West Seattleite for more than 20 years before a recent move.

In a new building just south of the main part of the Junction, Upwell/Walter’s is just about 1,000 square feet, with one long table, a few small ones and a glossy wood coffee counter/wine bar. “Standing basically almost anywhere,” Tanghe points out, “you can see the entire thing.” The interior’s clean, sleek lines — black shelves stocked soothingly with wine bottles, surrounded by cream-colored walls — create a calming feeling. Recently, a board with pushpin letters by the shiny metal kitchen door read, simply, “WINE TIME.”

Zhu makes all the pastries for daytime coffee service, citing her pistachio pound cake with rosewater crème fraîche icing as most popular in the sweets category. As wine time gets underway on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, she switches to a local/organic-focused small plates and charcuterie menu from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Those hours and offerings are set to expand soon, and given the loveliness of what’s already available, that’s something to look forward to.

Zhu’s purple and gold smashed potatoes, crisped on the outsides and tender within, get served with a cilantro-cashew pesto that’s brightened with jalapeño to an exacting, exemplary degree. A dish of multicolored roasted beets came warm instead of chilled, helping marry their natural sugars to the extreme creaminess of a marvelous glob of stracciatella cheese, all dressed with pistachio, rosemary and very good olive oil. Italian capicola with strata of melty fat and a softly peppery porkiness stood out on an artfully arranged meat plate, sided with Zhu’s sweet-and-spicy tomato jam. And it’ll likely be gone by the time you read this, but her bibb salad with Oregon bay shrimp, Point Reyes blue cheese, end-of-season cherry tomatoes and buttermilk vinaigrette was pretty much perfect.

Wine gets served in gossamer-weight, handblown Sophienwald stemware from Austria, bringing a fancy feeling to the proceedings, as do Tanghe’s by-the-glass selections. A 2019 Martin Muthenthaler “Old Garden” grüner veltliner, also Austrian, shone a pale green-gold and came carefully not too cold; long a champion of Washington reds, Tanghe’s recent choices included Devium’s Mourvèdre blend and Cadence Coda, both 2021. Despite his highest possible certified level of expertise, he’s anti-wine-snobbery — he thinks it should be fun, and he’ll help you pick a bottle, if you want to go that route with your supper (or afterward).

“The idea is to be part of the community,” Tanghe says, “to be that place where you can go and get something delicious, any time of the day.” It’s working. “We have one gentleman” who lives upstairs, Zhu says, “who comes in every day, three times a day, for his coffee or his wine. We love that.”

Zhu and Tanghe extol the other virtues of staying small-sized, too — lower labor costs, no investors. (“If you have someone that’s a silent partner, are they going to be silent?” Zhu asks.) Zhu works with small suppliers, so she doesn’t have to “hit those big order minimums” for food service companies, and with a close eye on everything, she can minimize food waste. “Everything is super-fresh,” she notes, “and it really helps the bottom line.”

She doesn’t miss the intensity of supervising two dozen cooks and kitchen staff at Stateside; at Gramercy Tavern, she recalls, there were seven people employed just to do the floral arrangements. “It’s a lot,” Zhu says. “We just want something small, something manageable.”

“Chris and I are here all day, every day … and it’s a labor of love.”

IT DOESN’T SEEM like hyperbole to say that love is another common denominator for these three Seattle restaurants creating experiences that enlarge our lives, while their modest size might help keep them safe. “We’re small enough that we’ll be able to weather some of the storms,” Off Alley’s Leichtling says. “I look at bigger places, and …”

Tanghe of Upwell and Walter’s says compact restaurants can be “more of a rewarding experience … because the owners are there, because the owners are super-invested.” It’s “more than just like a money proposition,” he says. “You’re supporting a local business, supporting local farms and professionals in your community. So I think you feel that connection more.”

At familyfriend, Dulla says, it’s about “anything that helps the bottom line, that also gives us wiggle room to be more creative or figure other things out where we can.” At a bigger restaurant, he says, “It’s almost like cookie cutter,” while smaller “is kind of like changing that mentality of what a restaurant is.

“I feel like keeping it small.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the 2025 minimum wage for businesses with 500 employees or fewer in Seattle. It will be $20.76. The article has been corrected.

3 small Seattle restaurants making big wins, amid industry turmoil

Related

Sponsored