Hello, can you believe it’s already December, and the end of the year? I can’t.

As we close out our year, there’s a lot to look back on, especially this year, in the mean time let’s first finish it out strong, yeah?

We’ve got a couple short announcements to make!

First, I (that’s me, chef) won the Star Chefs Rising star Chef, as one of 25 incredibly talented people in the city. While never in my life, did I ever think I’d see my name among John Sundtroms in the same award ceremony. (He won Rising star chef years ago, this year he won a mentorship award, and speaking on behalf as me as my mentor!) It’s an organization that really supports the industry, and we couldn’t be more excited to be recognized by it. We’re so honored to be included in so many incredible places, along with so many close friends.

They’re taking over the city, throwing a Seattle Rising Star restaurant week, and we’re participating! To highlight one of the dishes that blew them away, we’re deboning and stuffing pigs feet with blood sausage and serving them with wild mushrooms. That’s a whole lot of pig feet to debone, so put us to work!

We’ll have the blood sausage stuffed pigs feet on the menu from Thursday 12/4 until Sunday 12/14, at the very least. Along with whatever excess pigs feet we have we’ll turn into pickled pigs feet as stocking stuffers, just don’t ruin your kids Christmas, or you do you. Just don’t make me responsible for that childhood trauma, unless you got some real cool kids.

As for the rest of the year, a couple dates with the holidays upcoming to be mindful of;

• Feast of the seven fishes, our annual seafood focused menu on Christmas Eve, is nearly fully booked. We’ll take walk ins at our standing rail, and outside, but if you’re eyeing a seat inside to celebrate the holidays, book quickly

• New years Eve, our big blow out dinner where we throw out all the heavy hitters, still has a handful of spots left if you want to go out with a bang. 

Speaking of New years eve, between Christmas Eve, and New Years Eve, we’ve always done tasting menus, and we’re bringing them back this year. Call it our “NYE light” menu, it allows those who don’t want to fight for a seat on one of the busiest nights of the year in one of Seattles smallest restaurants, and those who want to celebrate on a less busy evening, a chance to try our tasting menus now that they’re gone. Reservations still through Tock.

We’re also breaking protocol, and staying open a couple days after NYE. We’ll be open Friday January 2nd, and Saturday January 3rd, before we let the staff get some rest and re-open January 22nd. No tasting menus, just us having a lot of fun on one last weekend before our annual two week break.

Lastly, we had two really fun events! Most recently was our first Spanish wines take over, where we pulled out all the chairs and pretended we were in the Basque region for a day. We had so much fun with Ezra from Kily wines, we’ll definitely be hosting it again.Thanks for showing up!

Our second recent event was our first cooking class at Off Alley on a Wednesday evening. Everyone really enjoyed it, along with we’ve received multiple requests to host another, so we’ll be hosting our second one Wednesday December 17th. Great gifts for those curious about food, one of our most adamant students last class, was exactly that, an early holiday gift! Book the whole 8 seats as a team building exercise!

If you're interested, shoot me an e-mail inquiring about what I've decided, or just say fuck it, and come hang out with, send me an e-mail. Limited to eight guests, we'll see if I can procure Squabs for this class, and host a Squab master class, or as I always do, I'll come up with something on the fly. The class comes with a full private experience with myself where you can pick my brain as much as you like, wines flowing, and food to satiate a dinner appetite. Otherwise, our next class will be in February.

As always, thank you for all the support over a year with lots of changes, from removing our service charge to pay our staff more equitably, to removing our tasting menus, and everything in between. We appreciate your ongoing support, and we wouldn’t be here without you. May your holidays be filled with a little Joie de vivre

Chef Evan Leichtling