Seattle Simply Obtained a Wave of Sizzling New Oyster Bars

Prior to now twenty years, Seattle seafood homes established the prototype for the trendy oyster bar: ethereal areas with geoduck-length shellfish menus harking back to wine lists. At locations like Elliot’s Oyster Home and the Walrus and the Carpenter, visitors can tour Puget Sound–space waterways via bivalve consumption and get a crash course in differing ranges of brininess and taste from educated servers.

The Garrison takes a barely completely different strategy. This can be a moody, mussel-sized 17-seat bar and restaurant occupying the entrance room of the previous Lodge Albatross on Ballard’s Market Road. Le Coin house owners Josh Delgado and Jordan Melnikoff quietly opened it late final 12 months, with Delgado growing a concise seafood-forward menu, together with a simplified oyster choice primarily that includes Treasure Cove oysters from Emerald Acres Oysters.

However the smaller oyster choice on the Garrison doesn’t make it any much less of an oyster bar; it’s about highlighting a purveyor and a product Delgado holds in excessive regard.

“Kevin (Riley) is an oyster farmer via and thru,” Delgado says. “He spreads the seeds, he harvests himself, he luggage them, delivers them himself… [And] he type of blows your thoughts with oyster data. What I like about his product is it’s an important illustration of an precise naturalized Washington oyster.”

The Garrison

The Garrison

The Garrison is certainly one of a number of just lately opened oyster bars from skilled restaurateurs that eschew bigger choices with “market worth” listings and as an alternative convey a way of accessibility that’s unusual for Seattle, with out sacrificing something in regards to the expertise.

When Brendan McGill (head of the Hitchcock restaurant group) opened Oyster Cellar in Could, he launched a extra informal strategy he mentioned was impressed by Manhattan’s historic oyster bars. The restaurant’s lengthy bar is fronted by chef Alex Jackson’s uncooked station, permitting diners a view of the chef making brief work of shucking. It’s a setup that’s true to kind for its old-school inspiration, because it creates an environment of entry between chef and diner that’s a trademark of the traditional oyster home — although Jackson’s banter is extra affable than the sass that’s conventional again East. Just like the Garrison, Oyster Cellar incorporates a compact oyster choice and a particular reverence for the suppliers, which on this case is Baywater Shellfish Firm and Jamestown Seafood.

“Our relationship with our farmers permits us to obtain oysters the identical day they arrive out of the water”’ says McGill over electronic mail. “Baywater Shellfish relies on Bainbridge Island, so I first met (founder) Joth Davis within the early days of Hitchcock. We’ve been shopping for oysters instantly from them for 14 years… I really like these oysters.”

Mark DeJoy

At across the identical time Oyster Cellar was opening, Tom Douglas Eating places was bringing its Pike Place Market-adjacent Etta’s Large Mountain BBQ again to its seafood roots. As a substitute of returning the title to Etta’s Seafood, although, the corporate selected the oyster-evoking title Half Shell. And equally to McGill, Douglas and chef/managing accomplice Eric Tanaka discovered inspiration within the oyster custom of the japanese United States.

“Seattle is understood extra for seafood homes versus oyster bars,” Tanaka factors out. “And I believe once you go to New Orleans, there’s an oyster tradition. I believe again East, there’s an oyster tradition. And I believe bringing that extra oyster-forward presence to the atmosphere of a Seattle fish home is absolutely what we have been capturing for.”

The thought is to see oysters as not a lot a rarified, big day dish, and extra of a important, informal a part of the town’s eating scene. However to ensure that that to be the case, the oysters need to be inexpensive, and the excellent news there may be all three eating places are working completely happy hours the place a dozen oysters may be had for $24.

“I believe folks have a tendency to think about oysters as being so treasured,” McGill says. “I perceive that at $5 to $7 a pop, it’s powerful to actually get down on them. We’re making an attempt to interrupt that conception with our $24 dozens … like, oysters don’t need to be bougie.”

Are we on the cusp of an oyster zeitgeist shift, then? Are extra accessible oysters a pattern? Or a mini-trend? Does it even matter if it’s a pattern or not? So far as McGill is anxious, “I’m 1,000 p.c right here for it if it implies that Seattle can reclaim its identification as a top-tier seafood city — the type of place the place people casually drop into their neighborhood bar (or elegant downtowner) for a chilly dozen and a cider, glass of wine, kombucha, martini, no matter.”