Back to the Classics

The first restaurant your parents took you to where you couldn't color on the tablecloth. The place where you and your husband celebrated your first, 10th, and 20th anniversaries. The place you've sent so many out-of-town guests to that you feel like you've earned a free banquet.

There's a class of restaurants in Seattle that have transcended restaurant criticism and foodie gossip, transcended being both trendy and passé. They just are, and at the age of 20—or in some cases, 60—these quiet classics keep drawing customers. Half of Seattle likes to claim these restaurants are as amazing as ever; half declare they have gone downhill. Few can back up their strong opinions with hard data, and everyone takes them for granted.

Over the past two months, I set out to visit a number of them.* As a newcomer to this town, it felt like attending someone else's 20-year high-school reunion. Which ones used to be the cool kids? What was that guy with the pleated khakis and the trophy wife really like at 18? No context. No nostalgia. Then again, no ill-formed prejudices picked up from my boyfriend's boss' story of his 1989 engagement party.

Some, I thought, are in step with Seattle's evolving restaurant scene, while others seem to be showing their age. One may be entering a second midlife crisis. However, whether I'd send my own out-of-town friends to these seven places or not, I have enormous respect for each one. In a Darwinian business that eviscerates the idealism and the bank accounts of all but the most driven restaurateurs, it takes passion and commitment to keep a restaurant alive for 20 years.

Ray's Boathouse and Cafe [1945]

For the first 30 years of its existence, this 61-year-old restaurant was primarily a lunch counter where you'd find off-duty Scandinavian fishermen hanging out with amateurs who'd just spent the morning casting lines from one of Ray Lichtenberger's rented boats.

According to current chef Charles Ramseyer, dramatic shift number one came when a team of professionals, led by Russ Wohlers, transformed the fish-and-chips shop into a real restaurant specializing in wild seafood purchased from local fishing boats. "They were the first Seattle restaurant to put calamari and whitefish on the menu," Ramseyer says, "as well as Olympia River oysters and Copper River salmon." Dramatic shift number two: a massive fire that burned down the building in 1987. It took a year for the owners to rebuild, and when they did, they added a second story to house a casual cafe. Since then, the remote restaurant with its spectacular Puget Sound view has been one of the city's must-visits, attracting tourists from all over the world.

Ramseyer, a Swiss-born chef who'd toured the Pacific Northwest with the Four Seasons hotel chain, came on board 14 years ago. "My job," he says, "is to secure the best-quality seafood in the Pacific Northwest, from San Francisco to northern Alaska, and whatever is in season is important to us." Over the years, he's expanded his mission to include sustainably grown, local vegetables and meats, too.

Perhaps due to its tourist-destination reputation, I've heard more local Seattleites report to me that the quality of the food has slipped, but I found every piece of fish that I tasted sublime. The stuff surrounding the actual seafood—the salads, the side dishes, the sauces—varied in quality from ho-hum to delightful, but the actual meat, from the Alaskan coho salmon to the sea scallops, was all finesse. My smoked Chatham Strait sablefish was a revelation: the outside of the creamy white filet only brushed with wood smoke, and the interior flesh tasted as if Ramseyer had molded it out of butter.

A downstairs meal can cost you $80 if you drink lightly, and after the light fades, the interior becomes just another seaside restaurant. So the best way to enjoy Ray's, longtime Ballard residents have told me, is to race home from work, pick up the kids, and run up the steps to the cafe so you can secure one of the tables closest to the edge of the patio, bundle up with blankets, and watch the sun set over the Sound while you snack on crab cakes and fried calamari.

Ray's Boathouse

6049 Seaview Ave., 206-789-3770, www.rays.com.

Canlis [1950]

It's hard to think of Canlis as revolutionary, but back in 1950, when Peter Canlis moved from Hawaii to Seattle, he created a formal restaurant that defied all the conventions of formality: The chefs didn't hide back in the kitchen but grilled—grilled!—steaks where the customers could see them. Instead of tuxedo-clad waiters parading in French formation, Canlis staffed the floor with Japanese women wearing elegant kimonos. Not only did his Asian-influenced food capitalize on America's post-Prohibition fascination with tikitude, but Canlis turned out to be a master restaurateur. He, and then his children, ran a restaurant so well that they were able to transfer it to the third generation. In the restaurant world, that's practically immortal.