Brady Williams didn’t need to open a vacation spot restaurant, sincere. However when he opened Tomo in 2021, there was an comprehensible quantity of hype. Williams’s final gig had been working the kitchen at Canlis, and the chef had gained a James Beard Award in 2019. So though he instructed Eater Seattle on the time that “we’re not fascinated by being an important day restaurant,” it was inevitable that folks started treating Tomo like one. In response to the Seattle Met, it had a web-based waitlist of 15,000 earlier than it opened.
4 years later, Tomo is shifting gears and perhaps turning into a bit extra of the neighborhood restaurant that Williams envisioned within the first place. In the beginning of the month it went from being open solely 4 days every week to solely being closed on Tuesday. It additionally removed its tasting menu, shifting to a completely a la carte mannequin after opening with simply the tasting menu.
Williams says that that set menu — initially $68, not all that top by Seattle requirements — was partially impressed by inexpensive tasting menu eating places that “got here out of the European bistro scene.” (Reasonably priced prix fixe menus have been one thing of a pattern in cities like San Francisco.) “Tasting menu” right here wasn’t synonymous with luxury-level pricing, whilst Tomo became the most popular ticket on the town.
However when the restaurant beginning providing an a la carte menu in 2023, “lots of people would are available in for the set menu first after which come again to the a la carte menu and produce their mates and have, like, somewhat bit extra of a communal type of eating,” Williams says. “And that felt actually good to us.”
The choice to drop the tasting menu was made for a number of causes. With the set menu mannequin, Williams says Tomo was serving about 75 individuals an evening, which after all means “75 parts of the identical factor.” Working with small farms as Tomo does, it may typically be laborious to supply the components for 75 of the identical dish. And altering one dish on the menu would have a “domino impact” on the remainder of it.
An a la carte menu permits Williams and his workforce to be extra versatile, and it makes Tomo a bit extra approachable in a way. It’s not that Tomo by no means took walk-ins earlier than these modifications, however not everybody looks like dropping in to a tasting menu restaurant on a whim. Now, Williams says, “Somebody can are available in and spend $30 on a snack and a drink, or they’ll sit for hours and order a pair bottles of wine and spend way over that.”
The meals is the one factor that gained’t be altering. On Instagram, Tomo described it as “fine-dining-ish, Japanese-ish” delicacies, which feels correct. The menu modifications steadily with the seasons, however standouts embrace cacio e pepe rice muffins, a dry-aged wagyu ribeye, and a Dungeness crab rice with brown butter dashi that was a complement for the tasting menu. Tomo’s Instagram has teased an upcoming youngsters menu this summer time, and the web site even says it’ll supply takeout — each uncommon strikes for a high-end restaurant. However after all, that’s the purpose.
“We need to be your favourite restaurant,” says Williams, “not only a vacation spot restaurant.”
