Seats Going Fast at Staple & Fancy Mercantile
Ethan Stowell's new spot, Staple & Fancy Mercantile, opened for business Sunday evening. When this Seattlest dropped in at 6:30 Monday night, the next available table for two was at 9:30.
The moral of this sad story? Get yourself on Open Table, pronto, if you want to score one of the 35 seats during peak dinner hours.
Staple & Fancy's earthy, elegant Italian cuisine is the latest chapter from the chef behind Tavolata, Anchovies & Olives, How to Cook a Wolf and the recently departed Union. Check out Roger Downey's great piece on Staple & Fancy and its lineage over at Crosscut.
The a la carte menu includes a ravioli filled with sweet corn, garnished with speck and chanterelle mushrooms ($16) and a grilled mackerel entree with fried cauliflower and ham hocks ($18). However our money's on the $45 four-course chef's tasting where you put yourself in the kitchen team's capable hands and enjoy whatever comes your way. Stowell himself is working the line in the kitchen five or six nights a week.
Staple & Fancy gets its name from a prior occupant in Ballard's restored Kolstrand Building. As My Ballard tells it, contractors working on the building unearthed a brick wall upstairs with a painted sign advertising the prior occupant as a "Dealer In Staple & Fancy." Stowell was taken with the idea of a staple menu (the a la carte version) and the fancy (the chef's tasting).
Duck into the small hallway to the right of the bicycle shop and you'll find yourself at another newly opened spot, Renee Erickson's The Walrus and the Carpenter.
