FAMED SEATTLE RESTAURATEUR RENEE ERICKSON IS PUTTING THREE NEW RESTAURANTS IN PIONEER SQUARE

One of Seattle’s most celebrated and prolific restaurateurs plans to make a big splash in Pioneer Square: Renee Erickson’s Sea Creatures group, which you may know from such restaurants as the Whale Wins and Bateau, plans to launch not one, not two, but three new restaurants at 419 Occidental Avenue, part of the Railspur development.

Erickson, a James Beard Award–winning chef, has owned restaurants since 1998, when she bought the now-shuttered Boat Street Cafe, but she’s really been on a tear since she opened her Ballard oyster bar the Walrus and the Carpenter in 2008 — her Sea Creatures group now has 10 restaurants, including the doughnut mini-chain General Porpoise. (Sea Creatures also operates Westward, which it acquired in 2018.) Along the way Sea Creatures has established itself as one of Seattle’s most recognizable dining brands — an Erickson restaurant combines a focus on seafood, millennial-friendly soft minimalist design, seasonal menus, and an overall sense that you’re hanging out in the lobby of your coolest friend’s apartment building.

Sea Creatures restaurants adorn several of Seattle’s cutting-edge real estate developments. Roman-inspired Willmott’s Ghost and the cocktail bar Deep Dive are inside the Amazon Spheres (as is a General Porpoise location you need an Amazon lanyard to access). Erickson’s latest restaurant, the wine bar Lioness, is inside the Shared Roof mixed-use building on Phinney Ridge, a project of developer Chad Dale — who is also a co-owner of Sea Creatures.

Railspur fits the bill of that new-wave Seattle development — it’s a “transformative micro district” of three buildings and a series of alleys that already houses upscale taqueria Tacolisto and the Hotel Westland, which is set to open next year. Railspur is a major component of the post-lockdown revitalization of Pioneer Square that has unfolded as events return to the stadiums and cruise ships return to the nearby waterfront.

So what are these restaurants going to be? The first is Lowlander Brewery, which the press release describes as one of the country’s first “tank bars,” a place where customers can watch the beer being brewed, then get beer served “directly from specialized tanks.” It marks Sea Creatures’ first venture into the beer world. Lowlander will have 100 seats inside, a bunch of outdoor seating, and TVs — it’s going to cultivate a sports bar atmosphere, partly as an homage to FX McRory’s, a former occupant of the building.

The second restaurant is Un Po Tipsy Pizzeria, a largely by-the-slice wood-fired operation that will cater to the takeout crowd. The third is an as-yet-unnamed “higher-end, European-inspired restaurant” with 40 seats plus a cocktail bar that presumably will be in line with Erickson’s other restaurants.

There’s no opening date for any of the restaurants, which will all be located at 419 Occidental Avenue, but it should be sometime early next year.

2024-04-24T20:08:05Z dg43tfdfdgfd