Canlis, Finally

And finally, Canlis.

Joshua Huston

Is that Lance Armstrong at the far left table?

Location Info

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Canlis

2576 Aurora Ave. N.
Seattle, WA 98109

Category: Restaurant > Pacific Northwest

Region: Queen Anne

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Details

CANLIS 2576 Aurora Ave. N., 283-3313, canlis.com. 5:30 p.m.–close Mon.–Fri., 5 p.m.–close Sat.

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More About

• Peter Canlis
• Jason Franey
• Jason Sheehan
• Food and Cooking
• Eating Out

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For the first time in 10 years, I make reservations under my own name, dropping all attempts at subterfuge and evasion. I don't do anything strange with my hair. I don't put on the glasses that I don't need.

When the hostess calls and asks if I am Jason Sheehan, I say yes, I am. And yes, I will be there at 5:45 for dinner. And yes, it will be a party of two. Across three states and a decade's worth of work, I have never answered that question honestly. It feels good not to lie.

When I step into the cloistered luxury of one of Seattle's best and eldest fine-dining institutions, I am met with nothing but smiles. I have been here before, but never as myself. It is a strange sensation, like walking in naked, stripped of pretense and here only to dine.

In the lounge, there is the burn of Redbreast whiskey and the slow settling into the timeless state of dining. Drinks will come and they will be taken away. Food will arrive when it arrives. I'll know it's a good night if I don't look at my watch for the first couple of hours. I'll know it's a great one if those hours pass like minutes falling from the clock, unknown and unnoticed. I'm wearing my good jacket, a shirt with one button missing (hoping no one notices because I didn't until it was too late), and my best black jeans in defiance of the house's "no denim" policy. Oddly, I feel right at home. The truest magic of the best restaurants in the world is their ability to make anyone melt into the flow of service, to feel not just comfortable, but comforted—as though someone out there is looking out for you and wants only good things to happen.

"Entering Canlis is like entering our home," it says on the website, one of a hundred different mission statements, truer than most. "From the very first visit you will sense you belong here." Much later in the evening, Mark Canlis will reiterate this message in his own way, telling a story about him and his brothers sleeping in the offices upstairs when nights ran long for their parents, bunking down together and falling asleep to the sound of ringing glass and clattering silver. Canlis is his home, and pride in that radiates from him like heat.

My date for the night arrives, has her coat taken, and orders a French 75 from the bar. Service is quick and faultless, orchestrated and balletic. The staff has had a lot of practice—60 years' worth, stretching back to 1950 when Peter Canlis opened his Seattle restaurant, took up residence at the room's most perfect table with a view out over the water and of nearly every other seat in the house, and never left. He had a rotary phone installed, sitting on the railing, near to hand. Whenever he saw something wrong, he could call the front desk and inform them of it. Apparently, he called a lot. Not because there was anything wrong, necessarily, but because he was building a reputation—one which lives on today, most recently validated by yet another James Beard Award nomination for Outstanding Service.

When we move from the lounge to the floor, we are given Peter Canlis' table. The phone is still there. Still works, too.

We order whiskey and wine, are handed menus, and pore over the document which, in itself, exists like a history lesson on the glacial change of tastes and flavors and the particular obsessions of the Canlis family. There are dishes here that have existed, fundamentally unchanged except in price, for 60 years. The Canlis Salad has been called one of the 100 best dishes in America by Saveur magazine. The steak tartare is still made in accordance with a recipe written by the elder Canlis, if with somewhat different ingredients. And if you ever get the chance, the Peter Canlis Prawns are, with no exaggeration, one of the best things you will eat in your life.

We start with the prawns—two orders, extra sauce. An amuse arrives from the kitchen to bridge the gap of time between ordering and arrival, so we drink a couple ounces of cauliflower soup, warming and restrained, and suck down an encapsulated bubble of tequila sunrise set quivering on a pho spoon—a little bit of molecular gastronomy from a kitchen as traditional as they come. The effect is jarring, as it is meant to be—the little ball of gel bursting in the mouth, flooding the tongue with the sharp hit of tequila, the sweetness of orange juice and grenadine. It is gone before I can really process the effect, save for the texture of the deflated gel sphere (like sucking on an empty Tylenol gelcap) and the crunchy bits of savory herb that had been set atop it.

The prawns come on white plates, awash in puddles of impossibly rich and buttery sauce. They are such simple things, curled against each other like small pink commas all in a line, perfectly done, sautéed with dry vermouth and garlic, striped with a bare sprinkle of salt, but really existing solely as a vehicle by which to eat the sauce, which, if I could, I would simply drink. I would fill a CamelBak with it and sip it all through dinner. It tastes of expertise, of years of refinement, of luxury—condensed and gently flavored with the bright heat of red chiles and cutting acidity of lime.