HELLO, It’s been a while!
It’s been a little while since we’ve reached out, so we thought it would be an excellent time to talk about some shifts and changes, and upcoming events.
First off, now we’re 5 months into our shift from moving away from our service charge, into an all encompassing model, and we couldn’t be happier with everyone’s feedback. We’ve had a huge amount of support, from guests, along with other industry professionals about our shift to making our prices, and your final bill, more clear and transparent.
We’re happy to say, our entire staff is now being paid a lot more equitably, with all members of the staff being paid well for whatever the task is. If it’s prepping 50 lbs of anchovies on a day we’re closed, to serving on a busy Friday night, everyone is making the same wage, regardless of business/days of the week. So thank you for the support during this transition, as it’s a little unheard of in our profession to throw service charge and the burden of tipping out the window.
Other exciting news, this year we turn 5 years old! Can you believe how fast time flies? We sure can’t. Five years is always a big marker for restaurants, and while we were in the space 5 years ago exposing brick and building the restaurant.. our officially opening date is August 1st. We couldn’t wait to celebrate our birthday, so we’ve already thrown a few parties. During the month of May, we had Shaun McCrain of Copine cooking at Off Alley, and last Monday Evan was up at Copine cooking in their (very large!) kitchen.
Coming up, We’ll be collaborating with Keiji Kuma Tsukasaki from LTD Sushi at the end of July here at Off Alley, and we couldn’t be more excited. Did you know Evan originally went to a Japanese Culinary school? Japanese offal dishes incoming? Details about this event will follow in coming weeks once Keiji and Evan are able to sit down and discuss ideas.
The following collaboration to announce will be Jarad Hadi of Grape Ink wines in August. This will be our fourth dinner with Jarad, and for our five year anniversary Jarad want’s to go big. This year, we’ll be leaning into Evan’s Gluttony tattoo, with inspiration from the French film Le Grande Bouffe. Not a dinner for the feint of heart or small appetites. More details to follow, with very limited seating.
Speaking of August, we’ll be throwing our Five year Anniversary, Friday August 1st. SAVE THE DATE!
We’ll be pulling out chairs, opening up magnums, and doing finger food all day, very similar to our one year party for those of you who have been supporting us that long and were present!
Evan’s dear friend Christopher Gay, who drew our original Alley Cat, and most of Evan’s tattoos, will be on premise doing Alley Cat Off Alley tattoos. There’s talk of a live band at night, and we’ll all be a little disappointed if the police don’t get called on us at least once. This will not be a party to miss and we hope to see you all!
August also brings some changes. As you may have seen on the Seattle Met, we’ll be retiring our Tasting menus. While we had a lot of fun seeing how far we could push the kitchen, and our creativity, we just miss the days of the organized chaos and energy of only doing small shared plates. While we’ve heard a lot of the feed back loud and clear, We’ll be keeping reservations all night, and we’ll also be reserving space for walks in every night.
Our hope is we can recapture the fun we had the first couple of years, while trying to keep our prices more affordable, as rising costs of goods, tariffs, and labor costs have skyrocketed dining out prices. We’ve always strived to be a restaurant rooted in our local community, supporting local farmers and artisans, rather than a once a year destination dining spot, so we look forward to returning to our original concept and welcoming everyone in more often.
Lastly, a reminder that we are not that tiny restaurant with hour long wait lists anymore. We have space for walk-ins, every night, and we’d love to see you again! Feel free to text, or call us any night to find out what the evenings last minute availability looks like. Reservations are available through our website or Tock, for the tasting menu until its gone come August 1st.
We hope to see you soon, and encourage everyone to celebrate a little joie de vivre with us!
Best,
Evan Leichtling