Opening Soon

Vendemmia in Madrona, from chef Brian Clevenger (Staple & Fancy Mercantile, Tavolata, Cicchetti, Serafina) will open tomorrow, Thursday, May 28. Given Clevenger’s past work experience, it’s no surprise the menu will focus on handmade pastas, with a heavy emphasis on seasonal vegetables (the restaurant takes its name from the Italian word meaning harvest). The seats most likely to be coveted? The five at the chef’s counter (facing Vendemmia’s open kitchen), available only by reservation, for which Clevenger will write a different, four-course, $50 menu every day.

In Columbia City, Salted Sea, a seafood and raw bar on the ground floor of a new building where Angie's Tavern used to be, will open its doors on June 3. The menu will include raw oysters with accompaniments like rhubarb mignonette and bloody mary granita, small plates such as green curry mussels, and entrées like the Salted Sea banh mi, featuring pan-fried oysters.

Edouardo Jordan’s (Bar Sajor) Ravenna restaurant Salare will open on June 12, but in the meantime, you have a chance to preview both the food and the restaurant space on June 4 when the One Night Only Project holds a Salare preview dinner. For $100 (which includes tax, tip, and wine pairings), you’ll dine on a ridiculously good looking menu that includes spot prawns, salmon rillettes with pea fritters, halibut with fiddleheads and sea beans, and oxtails with gnocchi and pea vines. (The menu comes with the disclaimer that it’s all “subject to change at chef's whim,” but that actually just makes it seem more exciting.)

Closing
Mama’s Mexican Kitchen, a Belltown institution serving burritos, enchiladas, and beans buried under blankets of melted cheese since 1974, will close this fall, reports the Seattle Times. Owner Mike McAlpin sold the building to a Chinese development firm for more than $4.5 million in March. The new owners plan to raze the building and replace it with an eight-story, mixed-use structure. While it’s sad to see Mama’s go, McAlpin, who has run the restaurant with his family since 1976, is 65, and wants to retire, has a pragmatic take on it. “Other places have closed down and life goes on,” he told the Times.

Beer News
It seems like every week brings more news of growth and expansion in Seattle’s microbrewery scene. Ballard’s Peddler Brewing Company, located on Leary Way just under the Ballard Bridge, has opened its beer garden in time for summer. The patio features four taps, seating for 400(!), and lawn games like corn hole(!!).

This past weekend, I stopped in at Sodo’s Seapine Brewing Company to fill a growler with their Northwest Pale Ale (and have a pint of their excellent, dark and toasty Sea Witch milk stout), and co-founder Adam Smith told me about the brewery’s upcoming expansion plans: They’ll be increasing production from their current five, seven-barrel brewing systems to seven new fifteen-barrel systems and moving west across the neighborhood from their cozy, wood cabin-esque, 750-square-foot brewery and taproom into a 6,000-square-foot space on Utah Avenue South. There, they’ll be in good company near Epic Ales and Gastropod, newcomer (and gluten-free brewery) Ghost Fish, as well as whiskey makers Westland Distillery. The new Seapine expects to be up and running by mid-August.The south end is already home to a number good microbreweries, but it feels like that corner of Sodo, like Ballard, may be on the verge of getting its own little brewing district.