For decades, the Edgewater has been notable around town for three things: for being ugly in an old-fashioned ’60s Seattle way; for selling its ratty old lobby carpeting as a pricey collector’s item because the Beatles had trod upon it in 1964 en route to fishing from their hotel window; and for inspiring Frank Zappa’s hit, “Mud Shark,” about an interspecies Edgewater sex orgy on a Led Zeppelin tour that famously gave new meaning to the phrase “trolling for sex.”
But the Edgewater has not stood still. Boy, has it not, though, as a local boy with no reason to visit the Edgewater except in memory, I didn’t know what a team of interior designers, “using a palette of fire, water, timber, stone, and steel,” had worked into “a concept that reflects Seattle in the 21st century.”
In practice this means that the exterior look is half woodsy Tiki hut, half brutalist metal featuring a weird upside-down “Y” motif. Every room boasts a rubber ducky in the tub (a displaced mudshark, Freud would say) and a bear footrest. In the restaurant, shiny metal pillars half-clad in tree bark sprout branches, or rather branch sections are connected with metal armatures that suggest prosthetic devices for amputee trees.
Restaurant? Yes, the Edgewater has one, tucked obscurely away where waterfront strollers in need of nourishment would never think to find it. The most startling thing about the place is that once you’re used to eating in the midst of a wacky conceptual art show by a ConWorks curator kidnapped by Led Zep, force-fed bad acid, and ravished by an amorous shark, the food is actually pretty good.
It’s called Six Seven (as in Pier 67, the hotel’s waterfront location), and the spectacular view outside, through the long wall of windows dividing the restaurant proper from its outdoor seating, is an antidote to the weirdness overhead: more of a Seattle-in-the-19th-century look. Elliott Bay is prettily twinkly, and many-fanged Olympic peaks floss themselves against operatic cloud banks.
And the menu concocted by chef Hans Reisinger, late of Switzerland’s Gstaad Palace, is downright respectable, leaning to seafood but not stinting on farm-raised chicken and God’s honest pork chops. Tucking into the arugula salad ($8.95), I found it fresh and flavorful, yet craved still more—such as my wife’s plate of perfectly not-too-crisp asparagus ($9.95) in olive oil and a reduced tomato sauce of some sort. Other dishes proved butter-intensive, but in a good way: butter lemongrass sauce on the moist and flaky halibut ($26.95) and, I believe, also on the no-frills dish called Simply Scallops ($24.95).
Scallops are a scary test for a chef: half a minute off either way and the dish is ruined, tough and dry or yuckily sloppy. These scallops were neatly singed at the ends and melt-in-your-mouth tender within, impeccably sauced. I’d just been raving about the nonpareil scallops I’d recently scored at Oceanaire, but they had nothing on Six Seven’s elegantly simple dish.
We had no room for dessert or wine from the dandy but not immense list; but we had no willpower, either, and ordered both. The Perrier Jouet split ($28) did wonders to wash down the vast, intensely sweet but not cloying chocolate banana pie ($7.50), and the service was swift and chipper. The champagne bucket was sparsely filled with ice, as if it were as precious as gems, and the bottle was a bit lukewarm. Even so, one visit made our hearts warm fully to a place we’d never suspected existed.
As we left, a long tableful of prom- going teens—who made up a fair percentage of the underattended restaurant’s clientele—ponced about in fancy prom wear that evidently made the wearers feel on the verge of great things. The girls looked like triumphant flamingos. A little coltish, maybe not fashionable, but facing a radiant future: You could hope the same for Six Seven. Maybe the Edgewater hasn’t changed as much as its face-lift suggests. And maybe the time has come to drop by, tip a glass, salute the view, and recall the days when a visit by four young Liverpudlians seemed like the most important event imaginable. The Edgewater certainly hopes you feel that way—it plans to memorialize it on May 22 with a come-dressed-as-your- favorite-rock-star 5K road race (part of “Fab Four–Oh!,” a yearlong celebration honoring the Fabulous Four), which makes this 48-year-old feel old and unfab. But the kids . . . the kids are all right.
Six Seven (67), 2411 Alaskan Way, Pier 67, 206-269-4575. www.edgewaterhotel.com. WATERFRONT. 5:30– 9:30 p.m. daily.
