Meat Beet Manifesto

Not a month after its opening, Matt Dillon and Wylie Bush's new restaurant, The Corson Building, inspired one of the most fascinating exchanges I've ever read on Chowhound, the food discussion site. One diner boasted about his meal the night before, raving about the food and the communal atmosphere—with the exception of the couple next to him. He complained that these two poor souls, whom he named with initials, completely missed the point of communal dining, refusing to interact with the rest of the table. Right under his rant, the woman he bitched about responded with a post of her own, thanking him for ruining her memory of what had been a lovely birthday dinner.

I remembered those diners two-thirds of the way through my four-hour meal at The Corson Building a few weeks back, when I was seated on the border between a joke-sparring group of out-of-towners—one an open W fan—and six quiet-spoken West Coast liberals of a classic stripe. The two sides would flick wary glances at one another, speaking only as they passed the platters of food, while I tried to make small talk with both sides. It was a testament to the mood Dillon and Bush created—and to the power of candlelight and the romance of the dining room—that both sides appeared to leave the table thrilled with an experience they had shared, at a per-person cost of $150.

In the ranks of 2008's most-hyped restaurant openings, The Corson Building is right up there alongside Justin Neidermeyer's Spinasse and Jerry Traunfeld's Poppy—all three have occasioned glowing mentions in local and national pubs well before their opening dates. The excitement over The Corson is due to great ideas and a better pedigree, both of which can be attributed to Matt Dillon, the chef-owner of Sitka & Spruce, who made his name at the Stumbling Goat and the Herbfarm (as Traunfeld's sous-chef) before that. Dillon teamed up 15 months ago with friend Wylie Bush, owner of Capitol Hill's Joe Bar, to gut the building and reassemble it, plant the gardens, and bring to life their dream of a restaurant that is more than a restaurant—a center for Seattle's food community.

The duo's venture feels particularly Northwestern. Not just Dillon's food—ultra-local, replete with homemade conserves and cured meats as well as rare finds from the chef's frequent farmers-market runs—but also the restaurant's eclectic, personal vision and the uneasy relationship among its idealism, its urbane-rustic aesthetics, and the money the business requires to sustain both.

There's a Robin Hood quality to the dinners that the pair throws most Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, for which you'll need to make reservations at least two weeks in advance: The Building charges $80 per person, plus $30 for wine pairings (at my dinner, one glass of sparkling rosé, a chenin blanc, a riesling, and a Côtes du Rhône), plus tax and tip. With the approximately $4,500 the restaurant grosses each of those nights—not a huge take, mind you, especially since the meal includes about eight courses—they fund their other projects. These include a nearby garden operated with the nonprofit Youth Garden Works, and cooking classes Dillon plans to start teaching once he establishes the fine-dining end of the business. And more modestly endowed Seattleites don't need to spend $150: Dillon and Bush have hosted $25 picnics and $80 suppers to date, and plan to devote Wednesday and Sunday nights to more affordable meals. "I hope people will check the calendar on the Web site and think, 'Oh, the Corson is doing a rosé and crab dinner for $30 tonight. We need to go,'" Dillon says.

The almost paradoxical tension between feeding the rich and feeding the poor isn't the only one The Corson Building thrives on. There's the whole urban-peasant dynamic as well. When my tablemate and I arrived at 7 for the dinner, we joined the other diners in the garden outside the 1910 Spanish-revival house, located just beneath an I-5 overpass. It was a gorgeous late-summer night, and we drank flutes of rosé as we toured the perimeter of the ironwork-walled garden, inspecting the hens and doves in their respective pens, Italian plums ripening on the tree, and beds of herbs and greens. Then we moved to the brick patio to inspect the other guests, the perennial Seattle blend of tucked-in and dressed-down. As we snacked on crostini with chicken-liver paté, a cucumber slice, and some pickled fava beans, a jet roared overhead so low that my hair vibrated. Then a two-car train rumbled down the tracks just behind the house, followed by the fat roar of a Harley motoring down Airport Way.

But once we entered, I discovered that the spell cast by the dining room included industrial-noise-blocking properties. Space-expanding properties, too: It looked like a tight fit for 32 diners, three waiters, and a couple of cooks, despite the fact that Bush and Dillon have knocked down a few of the walls separating the low-ceilinged rooms, and even removed half of a story in order to hang a woven-paper light sculpture above one table. Sitting along the heavy wooden tables surrounding the room's central hearth, we felt ensconced, not cramped, in an ageless country house. I almost expected Dillon to come around belting opera and exhorting us to all eat, we were so thin.